Chapter 5 – dorian
five
dorian
The last time I was this nervous to speak to a woman, I was about to sign a contract with my publisher and agree to give them six bestsellers or my first unborn child.
Now I’m walking into my parents’ house for lunch because I need something to distract me from the fact that I have a meeting with Piper Monroe in a few hours, and I don’t know how to be normal around her.
Mom is sitting at the dining room table with a sandwich and the month’s bills splayed out before her. She lifts her reading glasses onto her head when she sees me. “Hey, honey. I didn’t expect to see you today.”
“Just dropping in.”
“Hungry?”
“Maybe.” I go to the fridge and look around, noting the leftover chicken pot pie. “Did Dad ever fix that step?”
“He’s planning to, but you know how it is. His to-do list is a mile long.”
“I can take a look.” I plate some pie and stick it in the microwave. “After I eat.”
“If you don’t have anything going on, that would be nice.”
I fill two cups with ice water and bring them to the table.
“Thanks, hon.” Mom sips the water, then turns her attention back to paying the bills. “Paisley told me your signing went really well. She had to wait almost two hours in line.”
“Some people talked quite a bit.”
Mom reaches for my hand. “Don’t be modest. We all know how good your books are. I wish I could have been there, but Dad wasn’t feeling great.”
“We’ll take our good days where we can, eh?” I pull my hand free and go to retrieve my pie from the microwave. When the conversation turns to my dad’s health, I always feel antsy. “It was nice of Hudson to stand in that line.”
“I love him,” Mom says, taking a swig of her water. “He’s smitten with P. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t propose before the end of the year.”
“Which means you’ve already started planning the wedding.”
Mom’s smile is guilty. “Just some of the components. Obviously, Paisley and Hudson will have a lot to say about it. His family probably wants some big to-do in a ballroom downtown, but Paisley has her eye on this cute barn-style venue, so I’ve been watching it for openings.
Don’t tell a soul. I don’t want to jinx them. ”
I mime zipping my lips.
“Enough about them. What are you working on now?”
Should I tell her the truth? I haven’t been able to write anything good in at least six months. The moment Dad’s diagnosis came in, a solid wall went up, blocking me from getting any new, original, good ideas. “Nothing.”
“You said that last time.”
“It’s still true. I just can’t…nothing good is coming to me.
” I fill my mouth with chicken pot pie so I don’t have to keep talking about it.
Dad’s mortality and the diagnosis of his heart condition brought me crashing down to earth in a hard way.
Developing worlds and stories where people are fighting for their lives against psychological warfare hasn’t felt as motivating since I started watching my dad fight for his actual life.
They just don’t seem to matter anymore.
Why should I care if Logan Oakley finds his missing sister and takes down the fictional mob boss threatening his small town?
If I stop writing in the middle of the book and Logan never finds his sister, no one actually gets hurt.
She doesn’t actually die. It’s not like real life, where people face real catastrophes every single day.
Dad’s diagnosis? Now that’s real stakes. It made all the fake stakes in my fake stories feel inconsequential.
But a double-bypass surgery saved his life. Here we are, three months later, with our priorities straightened out, and I still can’t seem to write.
I’ve lost my mojo.
“Something good will come to you again,” Mom says confidently. “You have a gift.”
She’s my mother. It’s her job to think I can do anything.
“I’ve agreed to help out at Piper’s Books with a writing class for the next few weeks. Maybe that’ll break something loose in my brain.”
“Maybe.” She removes her reading glasses and sits back, appraising me. “This is the same Piper you knew in college, right? Paisley told me she got to meet her the other night. Really nice girl.”
Girl? The woman is thirty.
“Super nice,” I agree.
“Single?”
My pie looks really interesting all of a sudden. “Doesn’t matter. I’m helping her in a purely professional capacity.”
“It’s okay to have friends, Dorian. You can open your mind without putting pressure on the woman to have a full-blown relationship.”
Says the woman who just asked whether Piper’s single.
I shove a bite of pot pie into my mouth.
“I don’t want any relationship with her,” I lie.
The moment I saw Piper, every old feeling from college came rushing back to me.
But the truth is, I don’t know if she’s single.
I don’t know anything about her life right now or what she’s been through in the last nine years.
All I know is that she runs an incredibly cozy bookstore, looks adorable in cat PJs, and gets an intelligent look in her eyes when she concentrates that gives me an unaccountable yearning to break into a smile.
Yes. I am so into her. Always have been.
I couldn’t even sit next to her in class because I knew she would take my focus a hundred percent off the teacher, and I would learn nothing.
I was later diagnosed with ADHD and discovered this thing called hyperfocusing.
But even now, properly informed and medicated to level out my brain chemistry, it was difficult to focus on the line of customers, knowing she was somewhere in the building during my signing.
“How’s Dad today?” Rerouting the conversation works because Mom dives into details about his doctor’s latest advice and how closely he is and isn’t following it. She finishes her sandwich while I eat the reheated pot pie, filling my soul with the smells, sounds, and warmth of my childhood home.
I leave her to finish paying her bills and check out the loose step on the back porch, which takes five minutes to secure. But then it takes another half hour to sit and listen to the birds in the early spring air and breathe.
By the time I need to head to the bookstore, my battery feels completely recharged.
“I need to get going.” I lean over where my mom is standing at the sink doing dishes and kiss her cheek. “The step is fixed. No one should trip again.”
“Thanks, hon. Dad will be so grateful.”
We’re all stepping in. I’m just doing my part.
The drive back to the edge of town, where Piper’s Books is located, takes about twenty minutes, and I use every one of them trying to think up a plot for a new story. When I arrive, I still have nothing.
I find a parking spot and let myself into the store. Piper is easy to find, and I spot her right away like a bright beam of sunlight on an otherwise bleak day. She is chatting with Ravi in front of a section of books, her arms waving while she tries to make her point.
Ravi listens intently, then shakes his head.
Okay, I have to know what they’re disagreeing about.
I shove my hands into my pockets and make my way toward them.
“They’re pretty much the same thing,” Ravi argues. “People who want his books”—he points at the D.M. James books—“also want his.” He points at Clancy Calloway’s.
“But we should give James an entire endcap. You saw that line, Rav. I want to capitalize on the obvious audience—” Piper looks up and notices me, her words dying a sudden and total death.
She flushes cherry-tomato red to the roots of her hair, which is weird.
It’s not that big a deal to want to capitalize on what was clearly a successful event.
That’s just good business sense. “Oh, hey,” she says breezily.
Except it’s not that breezy. Loaded would more accurately describe her greeting, and I can’t put my finger on why.
Maybe it’s the reason she’s white-knuckling my debut hardback to the point that I’m surprised it hasn’t caved in yet.
I reach for the book and gently pry her fingers off it. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem,” she says quickly, flashing the fakest smile in her repertoire.
A customer walks in, and Ravi salutes his boss. “On it.”
The book is warm, making me think she’s been holding it for a while. “You’re devoting an entire endcap to me? I’m honored.” I notice the stack of books next to mine and pick one up. Clancy Calloway. “Oh, I see. Ravi wants to split the focus. It’s a good idea. These are the same audience.”
“I mean, kind of.”
I lower the book and peer at her. Has her face gotten even redder? “Well, Calloway’s books are cleaner.”
She seems to freeze. “Cleaner?”
“Maybe that’s the wrong word. Tidier? It feels like everything wraps up with a nice little bow.”
Piper stares. “Which is what we want when we read. Closure.”
“Right, yeah. Every book should close all the gaps.”
“Your books tie up all the loose ends. Everything clicks together at the end.”
“But it’s not—”
“Wait,” she says, grabbing my arm. I flex on impulse. “You mean convenient, don’t you?”
Definitely, but with how personally she’s taking it, I don’t want to admit that now. “Not exactly.”
Piper shoves me. “I can’t believe you said that. There’s literally a reason for everything in these books.”
“Right, but a conven—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” Piper lifts a stack of Calloway books and flips through them until she finds Jagged Risers. She waves it in front of me. “Was it convenient when all the people came together at the end and saved Mary from her grandma?”
“Well, Jackson showing up at the gas station kind of filled a need.”
Piper slams the book down and clenches her jaw. “Okay. Cool. I think it makes perfect sense, since Jackson smoked like a train engine and complained about running out of cigarettes earlier in the day, but you’re right. Convenient.”
Had Jackson made that complaint? Maybe I was skimming too fast and missed that part. “I might not have caught the—”
“Clearly.”
I have other examples, but I want to be friends with her, so it’s time to drop it. “Should we talk about the class?”
Piper inhales slowly. “Sure. We can meet in my office.” She searches the store until her gaze lands on her employee, who’s hanging out near the register. “Rav? We’re heading to the back. Will you finish this up if you have a second?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.” Piper leads the way between middle grade chapter books and manga to a door on the far wall.
It’s next to the storeroom where Ravi let me catch my breath before the signing the other night.
The office is small and features a mustard-yellow sofa.
Besides the chair at the desk, there is nowhere else to sit, so I make my way to the sofa and sit on one end.
“So your employees don’t get along?” As soon as the question leaves my mouth, I regret it. I’m not usually a gossip, but so far, I really like Ravi and Natalie. They both seem so pleasant. The kind of people I could sit and chat books with for hours.
She tosses me a look. “They got along excellently until a few weeks ago. He broke things off, and now we all get to feel her wrath when they’re in the same room.
I don’t usually schedule them at the same time, but they’re my only employees aside from my accountant, and sometimes I need more hands on deck. ”
“If it helps, I had no idea.”
She considers this. “From a business standpoint, it does. Thanks.”
Piper immediately moves toward her desk.
No surprise there, but I’m not going to lie.
I’m disappointed. Although, given the size of this couch, we’d be all up in each other’s business if she sat with me.
It’s surprisingly soft and matches some of the art on the walls.
I remember her cat PJs having yellow on them too, and against my conscious mind, I remember the backpack she lugged around in school. Same color as this couch.
Yellow’s a happy color. Mustard yellow is like the vintage version. It’s very Piper. I kind of want to bathe in it.
Not mustard. Just the color.
She opens the top drawer as she sits and slides a few things into it, closing it with a smooth motion. Her cheeks pink again. Hiding something? She turns on her computer and starts clicking around. “If you give me your email address, I’ll send you the outline we came up with.”
I rattle off my address as she types it into her computer. Her pert nose wrinkles as she looks for the file, and she chews on her lip. I need to get the conversation moving now, or I’m in danger of giving myself away.
“Have you heard back from Hannah yet?” I ask. Part of me is hoping she has, just so I’m off the hook, but the larger portion of me is crossing everything that she hasn’t—that my time with Piper won’t be cut short.
Piper looks sharply at me. “No.”
Well, that’s a loaded look. I pull up my email on my phone and find her outline. “How new are these writers?”
“We billed the classes as craft-focused for beginners.”
“Great. So stick to the basics.” I click off my phone and lean back on the sofa, inhaling the soft amber scent that infuses her entire bookstore, but is strongest in here. Basics. I can do that. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I originally thought. “I’ve just got one question for you, then.”
“Yeah?” She folds her arms protectively over her chest. “Shoot.”
“Are you writing anymore?”