by Julie Wright
I didn’t give an answer to that question. She didn’t need to know that my publisher had ordered me to get a publicist because they had the same sort of concern. She didn’t need to know that the new couch and coffee table and drapes in my apartment had been purchased for the purpose of marketing, not because I had finally figured out how to make grown-up purchases from places other than Goodwill.
She didn’t love hearing about me quitting my job.
I would have thought she’d be glad about that. She hated where I worked and took every opportunity to slam it and my wasted potential. Instead, she seemed perturbed that I dared do something so boldly irresponsible as leave secure and gainful employment. She told me to go to them and grovel to get my job back.
Kat’s focus was in her lap. I understood why when my phone buzzed with an incoming text. “You doing okay? Want me to kick her under the table?”
I smiled but texted, “That might not be the best idea.”
“If you change your mind, just say the word.”
“Kat, please don’t text at the table.” Mom’s voice cut into the digital conversation with my sister.
I jerked my head up from where I’d been looking at my phone, even though the reprimand wasn’t for me.
“Sorry,” Kat said without looking, or sounding, sorry at all.
As my mother opened her mouth to probably acknowledge the fact of Kat’s empty apology, I hurried to interject. “I truly hope you’ll all be at my book launch. I managed to talk them into having the launch in Boston instead of New York. That way, you won’t have to go far. And, considering what a big deal this is for me, I would really love your support.”
“Sorry,” I texted Kat and meant it. I hated it when we were both doing the same thing wrong and Kat was the one who ended up getting chastised.
She shrugged.
The conversation then went to the date of my launch and the difficulties it would present to my mother to actually attend, what with all her new responsibilities at work, even though the release was months away, and where was that waiter to refill my mother’s water glass.
Overall, though, the evening went well, even if the only one who promised to be at the book launch was Kat. I hugged my sister extra tight when we parted and was surprised when my mom hugged me as well. It was a limp sort of gesture but, considering that such things hardly ever happened, it might as well have been a death-grip embrace.
As I walked up the stairs to my apartment, I received a text from Toni.
“The photographer took several pictures of you with someone I assume is your boyfriend. He didn’t send them to me until now, since I asked him for specific shots and these were different from what I’d requested initially. He finally decided to pass them along, however, because he thinks they turned out nice. The guy in the photos looks like a nice guy, but I want to make it clear that I vet all of those pictures for your social media sites. It’s best for you to appear to be flirty and single, not in a serious relationship. The pictures are telling me it’s a serious relationship. Please do what you can to keep him at a distance—at least until a couple of months after the book releases.”
I stood in the stairwell trying to understand what she was trying to say. Did she want me to dump Anders? Because that wasn’t going to happen.
I wrote back. “I don’t think I understand. How would my relationship affect anything?”
“It could hurt sales. Available, free women offer more to admire. A relationship might make you appear boring instead of adventurous.”
“Boring to who?” I said out loud to the empty stairwell. I texted, “I’m not breaking up with him just for sales.”
“I’m not asking you to break up with him. You can keep him and keep it private. But it’s important you earn out your advance. If you don’t have the sales to cover what they’ve paid, you might never get another book published.”
I frowned at my phone and stomped the rest of the way to my apartment. The door hadn’t even been closed long enough for me to put down my purse when Anders texted. “You’re alive!”
“Barely!” I texted back. “How did you know I was home?”
“It was either you or a yeti with the way you thumped up the stairs.”
“Right. Well, you know, family functions.” I didn’t tell him about the new directive handed to me from the publicist. Lillian’s words to push back if Toni ever asked too much of me echoed in my head, and I’d done that. I’d pushed back.
“How did they take the news?”
The discussion about my family was easier than the one about my PR firm. I texted, “My mom seems like she’s still on the fence about whether or not to believe me. Edward is supportive, and Kat is still thrilled. I could use a mental distraction. Want to play video games with me?”
“Lettie, you don’t own any games.”
“But you do. We can play in your apartment.” I tried not to think about why I suggested his apartment, but some part of me felt like we’d get caught together if we were in my apartment.
“But you don’t really like playing games like that unless Kat’s with us.”
Why would the man bicker now for us to not play when he usually took the other side of this argument and begged me to play? His favorite was Sorcerer’s Guide to Winning, which was a full-on adventure quest game that he loved. I appreciated the game’s storytelling and the beautiful graphics, but it took way too long to solve all the quests. I honestly believed the creators of the game never intended players to stop playing. You finish one quest and there was a new one waiting to be solved.
I texted with what I was sure would be the decision maker. “We don’t have to play anything. We can watch The 10th Kingdom instead if that’s what you want.”
Which was how we ended up in his apartment with controllers in hand, helping the game’s local villagers figure out who had stolen their rune stone. We sat on the floor with our backs against the couch and our legs touching.
With my eyes on the game because, for whatever reason, I was a completely coordinated human in real life and a total klutz in the gaming world, I asked Anders how work had been.
Asking after the job usually didn’t require much conversation because, according to Anders, the job was 95 percent mundane. On occasion, interesting things happened. On occasion, terrible things happened.
Which meant that up until now his odds for interesting conversation trumped mine every time because 100 percent of the job at Frankly Eyewear had been mundane.
But still, it always surprised me when he started with, “It was an interesting one today.”
“Oh? Why?” I asked.
“Had a rookie with me. The kid spent the entire morning checking the ambulance because he didn’t think I was thorough enough when doing safety checks. We got a call, and the kid looked like he’d just had Christmas handed to him in a puke bowl.”
I looked from the screen to Anders. “Ew. The imagery of what you just said. What does that even mean?”
He snorted. “It means what I said. The kid looked excited and like he was going to throw up all at the same time.”
“You keep calling him a kid as if you’re some sort of ancient creature. It’s hard to play the mature card when we’re playing video games.”
“Says the woman who likes fairy tales. Anyway, this kid is just barely twenty. And so we take the call. I’m driving. And I remind the kid, when we’re driving sirens, his job is to check all the traffic coming from the right of the intersection because he’s the passenger. I swear, Lettie, I told him a half dozen times that he had to acknowledge an all clear. There were a few close calls. I was afraid we’d end up needing the ambulance.”
I laughed and also felt relieved because Anders was still here next to me. He hadn’t needed an ambulance. “So how did the call go?”
“It was a teen. The boy was cold and stiff. Dead on arr
ival. It looked like he’d been gone for a while. His sister had found him in the backyard and immediately started compressions. We took over, but I honestly didn’t have even the smallest hope.”
“Oh, Anders, I’m so sorry.” He hated to lose anyone, but he hated it most when they were young like that.
He shook his head. “Don’t be. The kid lived.”
I fumbled the controller. “What? How? Didn’t you say he was cold already?”
Anders shrugged. “I’m calling it rookie luck. There was no reason for that monitor to start beeping, but it did. We got him to the hospital, and they were able to keep the monitor beeping. It made for a good ending to what started out as a cursed call.”
He placed his bare foot on top of mine.
It wasn’t exactly a show of intimacy. He would have done that same thing a million times before we had decided to try this new place in our relationship. But Toni’s warning rolled around and around inside my skull.
You might never get another book published.
Was kissing Anders a tactical mistake? Should I have stayed single? How did we recover from moving forward? Could we go back?
No.
Going back would mean losing him entirely—even more entirely than when he was supposedly engaged. I didn’t want to go back, either. I wanted to move forward, not backward. I wanted to be in his life. And I wanted him in mine—all of mine. How could I recover from wanting to share all the things inside my head with him?
I heard the click of his camera and turned to catch him taking pictures of me.
“What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Can’t help it. You’re too beautiful to not acknowledge.”
His compliment should have made me smile. Instead, it filled me with unease. I slid my foot out from under his and began playing the game again but ended up getting my character killed.
“So why are you being weird, Lettie?” Anders asked.
“Me dying in this game is not exactly weird, Anders. I do it all the time.”
He paused the game and turned to face me in a way that ended up with him resting his elbow on my knee. “You know what I mean.”
I did know.
But I couldn’t tell him that Toni wanted to scrub my social life as well as my housewares.
But I had to tell him something. “I just . . . worry about losing this.” I motioned through the space between him and me.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ve never been so sure—”
I wanted to stop him before he got that far into the sentence. Stop him because I hadn’t been so sure about anyone either. But I was also sure about my career finally being what I’d worked so hard to achieve. “I only want us to take our time. To keep the friendship part going. I don’t know that I’m ready for us to be more than we are.”
His entire body went still, like the boy he’d thought was dead on arrival in his earlier call.
That boy’s heart had found a beat, but mine had stopped.
The words were in exact contradiction to what my heart wanted. And if the way Anders held himself rigid told me anything, my words were also an exact contradiction to what his heart wanted.
“Okay.” He dragged the one word out, likely gathering his thoughts. “Lettie, I thought us together was something you wanted, too. Are you having second thoughts?”
No. None. But what I said was, “I just want us to be best friends without making it complicated.”
“Okay. Well, that translates in my head to you not liking the idea of us as a couple. So I would love to hear an alternative translation if you have one.”
“Of course I like the idea of us. I love the idea of us.”
“Like it and love it in theory, but not so much in reality? Is that where we’re going with this?”
He sounded hurt, which hurt me and left me flustered.
“Anders, I like it and love it in theory and reality. I just . . .” A relationship might make you appear boring instead of adventurous . . . You might never get another book published. “Just want us to take things slowly. That’s all.”
“But you’re good with this? With us?”
I wanted him to be okay, to feel assurance. I put my bare foot over his. “I’m good with us.”
The muscles on his face relaxed. His lips curved into a gentle smile. “You don’t have to worry, Lettie. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
I smiled back and wondered how I would do the same favor for him.
“So nothing to worry about?” he asked.
“No. Nothing.” I was determined to let that be the truth.
Anders didn’t reach for me throughout the rest of the night. He didn’t reject me taking his hand or resting my leg on top of his or leaning my head on his shoulder. He didn’t pull away when I kissed his jawline, but none of our physical contact originated with him.
Part of me felt grateful. Part of me felt irritated. Irritated with myself, not with him.
Which was why, when I kissed him good night, I forced myself to forget Toni’s words and book sales and the importance of earning out my advance. His hesitation about kissing me at all was enough for me to know I really couldn’t go back to being just friends.
Anders had said it. Nothing to worry about.
So there wouldn’t be.
Chapter Twelve
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Unless it’s a poisoned apple. Then you might feel bad that you didn’t spend enough time cultivating a better relationship with the guy you’re going to need to save you from dying.”
—Charlotte Kingsley, The Cinderella Fiction
(The “Be Healthy” Chapter)
Aside from that brief time during his false-alarm engagement, Anders had always been a part of my daily life. Fortunately, that continued after our little talk. Things went back to normal. Nothing really changed. Yet, everything changed. When we were together, my stomach filled with the fluttering people always talked about when describing a significant relationship. When we weren’t together, my brain could only think about being with him. Or planning the time we’d spend together when I was with him. Or texting him. Or thinking about what I wanted to text him.
Even better was the fact that he didn’t act needy. He gave space where space was needed. And it turned out I needed a lot of space. I had thought—and hoped—that once I’d crossed off all the to-dos on Toni’s first list, that would be that. It wasn’t. She made new lists. She made new lists all the time. She spent months making me feel like her social media slave. Hundreds of advance reader copies had been printed and distributed at the book expos Melissa had talked about and the final edits had been turned in, but my plans to start writing a new book during all the free time I’d acquired by quitting my job had been put on hold. Lillian, who had become my direct messenger voice of reason, kept telling me that this time before the book released was the eye of the storm—the only time I’d have to myself until after my scheduled tour was finished. She reminded me to push back when needed. Toni, however, seemed to have absolutely zero concern about my personal time. Thankfully, Anders was patient. He acted like he didn’t mind the time Toni occupied in my life. He affirmed over and over that he understood how important this book’s success was to me.
I stole moments where I could, managing to sneak away every now and then to go with Anders on one of his photo shoots. He loved taking photos and then manipulating them digitally into art. Several of my writer friends who were going the indie route for publishing had seen Anders’s work when I’d linked to it, back when my social media accounts really belonged to me. He’d taken quite a few jobs from them and had produced some amazing cover photos for their books. He didn’t take on all the work offered to him—only the jobs that spoke to him on some artistic level.
One of those jobs required photos with a woodsy fantasy feel. His client had been on my short
list of dependable beta readers for years, so he’d asked if I’d like to come along for the shoot.
“What are you wearing?” he asked when he appeared in my doorway to pick me up.
“Oh.” I looked down at the shirt, which had a British flag emblazoned across it. “Toni picked it out. It’s the newest Cora original.”
“Did you need me to take pictures of you today?” The slow way those words exited his mouth revealed apprehension.
He’d taken lots of photos of me over time, but, lately, it seemed like we ended up arguing whenever I asked him for help with pictures. What Toni wanted and what he felt showed the real me were not the same thing. The worst fight we’d been in had ended with him calling Toni the “used car salesman of humanity,” which made me ask if he’d really just compared me to a used car. We didn’t talk for almost a week, before I apologized for being overly sensitive.
Since then, anything having to do with Toni had been a carefully avoided conversation piece. Until now.
I swallowed hard. “Do you not like it?” I asked even as my mind screamed that only stupid women ask questions they don’t want honest answers to.
“It’s fine. It’s just . . . you should put on a long-sleeved shirt. The mosquitos will be out thick tonight. It’s not like you need to market your book to them. They don’t know what a Cora original is. The only thing that shirt is marketing is your blood to the Massachusetts state bird.”
I lifted my chin, not liking his implication that everything to me was marketing. “I don’t want to change. I like this shirt.”
His lips formed a thin line while he surveyed me. He likely wondered if this was a fight he wanted to have. He decided against the fight with a shrug. “Fine. Good. I guess I didn’t know you were into waving the flags of other countries.”
“Well, I am.” The words weren’t meant to sound snippy and snobby all at the same time. But they did.
“Good to know.” He looked away and said, “God save the queen. I’ll get you a shirt with the Swedish flag sometime just for variety.”
