Seeking Mr. Wrong

by Natalie Charles

  “It was nice to meet you both,” he said. “I’ll get that nameplate for you before the first day, Matilda.”

  Oh no.

  Brunhilda shot him a look. “It’s Aletta, not Matilda.”

  He looked from me to Brunhilda and then back again. I bit my lower lip, feeling like a bug on a pin under his questioning gaze. Then when I saw the realization settle across his face, I felt like a real jerk. “Just Lettie is fine.”

  “My mistake.” His voice was tight. “Then I’ll get the nameplate for you, Lettie.”

  I gave a little wave. “Thanks. That would be super.”

  Mindy and I held it together until we heard them in the next classroom, chatting up Mrs. Beatty. Then we both covered our mouths with our hands. “Oh my gosh—”

  “Do you think they—”

  I nodded. “Yes. They definitely heard.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Crap!” Mindy laughed quietly and set her hands on her hips. “He’s totally cute, though. I wasn’t wrong about that. Not my type, I don’t think. He’s a bit too straitlaced.”

  “He’s okay. But I just got out of a bad relationship, and he’s an administrator, and—”

  “Hey, uh, Lettie? Are you feeling okay?” Mindy put a hand to my forehead and pretended to check for a temperature. “I’m not suggesting you actually date him. He’s kind of your boss.”

  I laughed, but it sounded weird to my own ears. “Yeah, I’m kidding. I thought we were joking.”

  “Oh, good! Because you cannot date Eric Clayman, as hot as he is. If Brunhilda ever found out—”

  “For sure. No way. I was only kidding.”

  “Good. Plus he’s a weirdo, calling you Matilda and all.” Mindy smiled. “I swear, sometimes I think I’m a bad influence on you.”

  She wasn’t, though. Faye had always said I had a self-destructive streak. The challenge was keeping it in check.

  CHAPTER 3

  ON THE SATURDAY morning before the first day of school, my only plan was to have lunch with my editor, immediately sign the five-book contract she was sure to offer, and find an obedience class for Odin. He’d chewed my toothbrush. It had to stop.

  I’d met my editor, Marcy Winters, through the friend of a friend. It seemed like fate: she was a young editor, hungry for books, and I had some books. We’d met a few times, since her parents lived close by, and every now and then we grabbed lunch. It was bad for my waistline but good for my ego. We had agreed to meet at Sombrero’s, a popular place downtown. My brother-in-law, Win, goes there all the time on business lunches, and he insists their margaritas are the best in a twenty-five-mile radius. Twenty-five miles, because that’s how far we are from New York. Nothing in Westborough quite compares to New York.

  The day was glorious, cloudless and bright. I pulled on a blue dress and sandals and even dabbed on a little makeup. For the first time in months, I felt good as I left my house. Like, really good. Hopeful. Writing made me feel that way, like I could leave all the frustration with Brunhilda behind and do something I genuinely loved, without worrying about dress codes and nameplates and salary freezes. Yes, I’d convinced myself that I did it for the love, but a little extra money was nice, too.

  Did I want to write a bestselling children’s book one day? Sure. I mean, I wouldn’t mind success. Sometimes when I was bored, I even imagined being a beloved author and giving an exclusive tell-all interview. That morning, as I wondered if my life was about to change forever with a huge book deal, I crafted my narrative. Yes, Oprah, that’s correct. I did work for Brunhilda for a while, before I signed my first six-figure book deal. I wouldn’t say it was a terrible job, per se. She taught me a lot about responsibility and discipline. She is an amazing woman, and a strong role model for young girls.

  Pretend success made the future me magnanimous, but some days I felt like I was lying to myself, and to Oprah in the future. Brunhilda is just the worst.

  Oh, and the vice principal? Yes, I seem to recall him. His name was Clay-something. Eric Clayman. Nice guy. He was sorry to see me go. I always suspected he had a little crush on me. I don’t believe he’s ever married.

  The drive was quick and traffic was light, and I pulled into the parking lot only fifteen minutes after I’d left my house. You’d expect a large sombrero on the entrance sign to a place called Sombrero’s, but you’d be disappointed. I prefer my Mexican restaurants on the corny side of authentic, with colorful flags strung across the space and mariachi music piping in through the speakers. Serape rugs on the floor and a fresco of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the back wall. Then I know I’m in good hands. But the tables at Sombrero’s were decorated with white linen tablecloths, a single LED candle and a red geranium in a pencil-thin glass vase. The waitstaff was dressed in white shirts and black pants, and they all seemed to be white college kids. It was kind of a letdown.

  Marcy was already there when I arrived. She gave a big smile and a wave from her table on the side, by a black-and-white framed photograph of Chichén Itzá. “I’m so sorry,” I gushed. “I had to avoid some construction.”

  “Don’t worry, I just got here.”

  Marcy had had a bunch of bright red curly hair that she said she’d been teased for endlessly as a child. Now, it was a beautiful deep auburn, voluminous and thick. I touched the ends of my flat hair. At least I had a new hair dryer.

  I may have been desperate to peddle my literary wares, but I wasn’t so far gone that I launched into a sales pitch the minute I saw Marcy. We did the usual small talk, asking after each other, how work was going, and so on. But after we’d ordered our lunches and settled down with a basket of tortilla chips and some watery salsa, I said, “I have a new manuscript for you. It’s an alphabet book.”

  I pushed it proudly across the table. Marcy wiped her fingers on her black linen napkin and moved the tortilla chips aside. “Sweet Pea’s Foodie Alphabet,” she read. “I’m intrigued.”

  “I was thinking, what would make parents buy an alphabet book? There are so many of them on the market, right? So I thought, I know! Recipes.”

  Marcy flipped through the manuscript. “I see. It’s an illustrated alphabet book with recipes.” She paused to chuckle. “ ‘M is for mascarpone.’ I like it.”

  My chest puffed proudly. Oprah, I knew that no matter how awfully that week had started, it would end well. I just had a feeling that Marcy would buy several of my books, and that it would represent a turning point in my career. I guess you could call it destiny.

  “I believe this fulfills my current contract,” I began. “But I have ideas for a few more books in the series. I don’t know if multi-book contracts are something you do after—”

  Marcy closed the book sooner than I had expected. “It’s very cute, Lettie.” She slid it back across the table, her mouth tightly drawn.

  My heart did one of those somersaults. “But . . . ?”

  “But.” She folded her hands in front of her. “Thomason was just bought out by Baxter House. News of the merger was made public yesterday morning.”

  “Oh.” I stared down at a square of tomato on the tablecloth and tried to sort out why this was bad news for me and Sweet Pea. “I guess I don’t understand.”

  “A lot of us are still trying to figure it out.” Marcy scratched at a spot on her temple and took a sip of her seltzer water. “I’m pretty sure I still have a job, but it doesn’t look good for my authors.”

  “Meaning . . . me.”

  I should’ve been happy that Marcy still had a job. That would’ve been the decent thing to feel. Right then, though, I felt as if the chair had been pulled out from under me. I licked my lips and frowned at that little tomato. “What does this mean for the Sweet Pea series?” My voice was tiny. Childish.

  Marcy swallowed and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m afraid they’re going to be discontinuing any current series. The biggest earners may continue, but .
. .” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Lettie.”

  I struggled to catch my breath. All of those characters—I’d signed my rights to Thomason. I couldn’t just write a new Sweet Pea book for a different publisher. My head was light, and I leaned one elbow onto the table. “This . . . is awful.”

  “I think you have a bright future in children’s books,” Marcy said with a forced smile. “I love your illustrations, and you always have unique approaches. The recipe book is a cute idea. Maybe you could invent a new character and reuse it.”

  “Maybe.” My fingers shook as I slid the manuscript into my bag.

  She cleared her throat and folded her hands on the table. “Look, I have to talk to you about your contract. Under the terms, you still owe us another book.”

  I blinked at her a few times. “But this is that book. The foodie alphabet. You rejected it.” My chest hurt when I said it out loud.

  Marcy calmly reached into her handbag and retrieved a few pieces of paper. “Unfortunately, Thomason paid you a portion of your advance for that book, and now that we’ve been sold, that means you owe your next book to Baxter House. See?” She pointed to one of the pages of my contract.

  “But Baxter House doesn’t publish children’s books.” I leaned my elbows onto the table, feeling dense. “I’m confused. How am I supposed to fulfill my contract? Isn’t there a clause for something like this, when the publisher is sold?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” She smiled overbrightly. “Look, I can let you out of the contract, but in order for me to do that, you just have to pay back the advance we paid you for your next book. Could you do that?”

  My blood went cold. She kept talking, but I could no longer process the words. Pay back my advance? That money—paltry amount that it was—was long gone, and I wasn’t going to be able to replace it anytime soon. Not when my salary was frozen and I was still paying for a wedding that had never happened. Crap on a cracker.

  Leave it to me to sign a contract so one-sided that it didn’t protect me in the event my publisher was sold. My father was a lawyer—why hadn’t I asked him to give me the name of a colleague who could review the terms? Oh right, because I’d been so eager to sign my first publishing contract, I would have promised them my firstborn child. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying.

  Marcy must have realized I wasn’t listening, because she paused and looked at me with kindness and concern in her eyes. “I forgot to ask you about the wedding. Last time we had lunch, you were only days away from the ceremony. Was it wonderful?”

  How nice of her to try to change the subject. How unfortunate she chose that topic. I forced a tight laugh and waved my bare left hand at her. “No wedding, actually. We sort of went ahead and agreed to call it off.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  I made the mistake of looking in Marcy’s eyes and noting the questions lingering there. She felt bad, and that wasn’t how I wanted her to feel. I mean, at that point I was feeling bad enough for most of the world. So I did what I always did in those situations and fluttered ahead in an attempt to explain why none of it was any big deal. “People grow apart, that’s all. James and I had been dating for, like, years. And I guess I always assumed he and Dave were just good friends. In a way, I was right.” I laughed, but man, it still hurt my heart to talk about it. “We had a long talk two days before the wedding and decided we wanted different things out of life, and it was just best not to go through with something if our hearts weren’t in it. It’s fine,” I added, to show Marcy that it was, even though it totally wasn’t. Not at all.

  She reached for a tortilla chip, broke it in half, and dusted the crumbs off the table. “Wow, Lettie. You’ve been through the wringer lately.”

  A large diamond ring on her left ring finger caught the light, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask about it. There’s only so much happy a person can fake. I unrolled my utensils and set my napkin on my lap and then reached for a tortilla chip. “Are these any good?”

  “Salty and greasy. Good enough.” She dragged a piece through the salsa and paused. “You know, I’ll still be acquiring for Baxter House. I’ve got a blank schedule that I’m going to need to fill.”

  “Oh yeah? What are you looking for?”

  I was staring at the salsa. The texture looked off, like someone might have simply blended tomato sauce with some red pepper. I sucked in a breath and decided to go for it, hoping it wouldn’t be the colossal disappointment it appeared. My book dreams were busted. Oprah wouldn’t be calling. Sombrero’s had white tablecloths. I couldn’t take any more disappointment that day.

  Marcy brought her napkin up to the corner of her lips and watched me. Then she lowered it and said, “I’m going to need some smut.”

  A piece of red pepper caught at the back of my throat, and I started coughing. I covered my mouth with my napkin, the tears streaming down my cheeks. Finally, after a long sip of seltzer, I managed to choke out, “You need what now?”

  I was certain I’d misheard, but it sounded like she’d said—

  “Smut. Smutty smut smut.” Marcy took a sip of her water. “Baxter House is the leading publisher of erotica titles. I’m not sure if you knew that. And they’re only going to grow now that they have access to Thomason’s distribution channels. These books—they’re flying off the shelves. Readers eat them up. I’m looking to acquire some new authors, wink wink, nudge nudge.”

  I sat back in my seat. A blond girl with large breasts and a ponytail came over with our lunch orders and set the steaming plates in front of us. Marcy grinned and made a show of sniffing her enchilada. “Mmm. This looks great.”

  I poked at my fish tacos with a fork, but I couldn’t get past the smut. “So you’re going to be editing erotica now? How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m actually excited for the change. I love a sexy read.” She bit a forkful of cheese enchilada and sighed. “Okay. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go after that salsa, but this is fabulous.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “So listen, if you don’t want to pay back the advance, you can fulfill the terms of your contract by delivering an erotica title. I’ll even extend the deadline a few weeks to give you more time.”

  “But I—I’ve never written anything like that,” I stammered. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “You begin by picking up a few good titles and studying those authors. I can give you some names.”

  “And those books actually sell?”

  I realized it was a dumb question. Of course they sold. I paid attention to the bestseller list, and I walked through bookstores. But Marcy confirmed it when she widened her eyes and nodded enthusiastically. “They sell, Lettie. If you want to keep writing, this is an avenue.”

  I mulled it over as I chewed my lunch. Broiled fish tacos with mango sauce, only mildly spicy. They tasted faintly like bleach. Blah. I turned to the rice and beans. “Erotica, huh?”

  I couldn’t pay back my advance. No way. I’d used every penny for my wedding, and I’d have to search between seat cushions for months to scrape together enough to buy my way out of that contract. Where would I even begin to make up that amount? I could sell my car, buy something even older. Or I could find a new publisher for my children’s books, sell a book to them and use the advance to buy myself out of my old contract. But pursuing children’s books with a new publisher would require me to create a new series, find an agent—not making that same contract mistake twice—and hope the sales of my Sweet Pea books were good enough that a new publisher would sign me. Fat chance of any of that happening. Odds were good that my books would be off shelves sooner rather than later, given the merger. My sales would suck. I’d be a publishing pariah.

  Erotica was the answer.

  But could I write erotica? The passion had to come from somewhere, and my vagina was usually comatose. “Erotica.”

  “Give it a
thought, okay? If you come up with something, I’m filling my dance card. It’s an opportunity, Lettie. Even if it’s not the one you expected.”

  So there I was, Oprah, picking at my fish tacos and hating my life. And I thought about Brunhilda and her war on camel toe, and the new vice principal, who already thought I was at best a liar and at worst pathological. I had my editor right in front of me, waiting for my response like I had a real choice to make. I didn’t. I couldn’t pay back that advance, period. All I wanted to do was drown my sorrows in a mojito, except I knew how much bartenders hate it when people order mojitos. I didn’t want to be that asshole.

  As I set down my fork, I felt the fish tacos form a hard marble and sink to the bottom of my stomach. “Looks like I’m going to write erotica.” I tried to breathe some enthusiasm into my voice.

  Marcy clapped her hands together and grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that! I thought you’d be game.”

  My smile tightened. Yes, I was game all right. Desperate times will make you that way.

  JAMES WAS GETTING his doctorate at MIT in theoretical physics, which makes him sound like a boring guy. Black matter, multiple-universe theory, we’re all two-dimensional holograms, the universe is complete, blah blah blah. I know what you’re thinking: Aletta, you must be so brave, to face a future with a man who can talk about the mass of the Higgs boson for hours. The thing is, he’s not boring at all. He’s animated, and passionate about his work, and handsome in a slightly nerdy way. He’s probably the smartest guy in most rooms he enters, but you’d never know it. He’s humble. Everyone in my life loved James, and so did I, which only made it more difficult to accept that he couldn’t love me back.

  We were sitting in my car, and we were supposed to be heading to the florist to finalize the flowers for our wedding, and he just blurted out that he was gay. Like, “Oh, hey, before we get married in forty-eight hours, there’s a little something you might want to know about me. . . .”

  There should have been some clue, but there wasn’t, not even in hindsight. No one thought James was awesome and brilliant and gay. They thought he was awesome and brilliant and in love with me—imagine! B is for blindsided.