Chapter 6 – piper
six
piper
My chair almost goes over. I catch it in time, my palms slapping my desk to stabilize myself, but it nearly sends me to the floor. I definitely haven’t mopped recently enough for that to be okay. Am I writing?
“Going straight for the jugular, Dorian?”
He sits up. “I didn’t mean—”
“One of the country’s most popular thriller authors is asking if I even put pen to paper anymore? Ouch.” I’m being prosy, stretching it out, but mostly just stalling for time. Yes, I write. I put out more books each year than he does. But I don’t have anywhere near his level of fame.
And apparently my books end too conveniently.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He dips his head, looking up at me through his lashes, which makes my stomach dip. “You have so much talent. I’ve kept an eye out for your name, but I’ve never seen it.”
“I’ve never seen yours either,” I quip.
Dorian’s eyebrows shoot up. That was the wrong thing to say. It was too close to revealing the truth.
Maybe because you want him to know the truth?
Okay, shut up, inner voice that sounds like a taunting Aubrey Plaza. I’ve been watching too many Parks and Rec reruns.
No one can know the truth. Least of all him.
It’s too embarrassing. My first-ever novel is basically cathartic therapy for the way he treated me in college and very clearly gives him a gruesome death.
My second novel takes place in an apartment building where he’s essentially the love interest who turns out to be a psycho murderer.
But there’s some major romance before he tries to kill her and, again, suffers a gruesome death.
Stripping Dorian of his dignity—or just making him insane—was a bit of an obsession when I wrote my first few novels. But I had to explore reasons why he hated me. It never made sense to me.
“Anyway,” I say, dragging my eyes back to my computer screen. “You have twenty-five students signed up, and so far, their response to the news that you’re taking over as the headlining teacher has been overwhelmingly positive.”
“Who will team with me?” He pushes up the sleeves of his sweater, revealing lean, corded forearms. How much does a man have to write to get that kind of definition? He clearly has other hobbies as well.
“Dr. Potts, a retired teacher from Vanderbilt, will be in next week to go over dialogue dos and don’ts, and Kerry Phelps, a professor at Tennessee State, is coming in the following week to teach the differences between character-driven and plot-driven stories and how to utilize them.
You have the final week all to yourself. ”
“Why don’t you take that one with me?”
“And teach what?”
His brown eyes pin me in place. “You were always a killer descriptor. You should teach layering in scenes or how to leave hints so they don’t get buried.”
Despite the simple way he delivers this line, my body hums from the praise. Although…if I could properly leave hints, he wouldn’t have thought Jackson showing up at the gas station was so contrived.
OKAY, Piper, let it go. One negative criticism doesn’t need to spoil the entire day.
“I’ll be present at each class, but I don’t teach. I don’t have the accolades, so why would anyone listen to me?” I ask.
“Because you’d give good advice.”
He’s so confident in me, I want to bask in it. But school was eons ago. For all he knows, I’ve forgotten everything, and now I’m terrible. This is a lot of misplaced faith.
On the other hand, I know he’s only gotten better and better every year.
I choose not to lie to him and not to push it, either. “Do you need help coming up with a curriculum for tomorrow night? The plan was to dive into a general story-arc explanation first. Explain the point of character wounds and what drives them.”
“The hero’s journey?”
“Sure. Whatever you’d like to do.”
“Okay, great. I’ll come up with something.” He watches me, the barest hint of a smile on his lips. What is he thinking? I’d give so much to know right now.
“Class begins at nine and runs for one hour.”
“Great.” He still hasn’t taken his eyes off me. The tension between us is so tight, you could flick it like a string and it wouldn’t bounce. “So what have you been up to since school? Have you been in Nashville all this time?”
“For the most part, yeah. I lived with my parents for a few years to save money to start this place, and then the rest is history. We opened three years ago, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“It looks good on you,” he says.
“The store?”
“Ownership. Being a boss. You’re good at it.”
My neck heats, and I have to look down. “Thanks. Do you still talk to anyone?”
“Charlie,” he says. “And Elena. We get together occasionally.”
What? “I see both of them, too. That’s funny…
they never mention—” I don’t finish that.
Why would they mention seeing Dorian? Everyone knew he couldn’t stand me.
But Elena is one of my closest friends. The fact that she’s seen Dorian, that she knows he lives locally and never mentioned it? That stings.
Speaking of…why is he being so nice now?
Has maturity helped him deal with his adversaries better?
I want to ask, but I’m also afraid of jeopardizing his place as my star teacher, so I tuck that curiosity away where it can’t peck at me too much.
My weird little crush clearly hasn’t gone anywhere, so it’ll be a good thing once I’ve seen the back of him.
I stand. “Well, I should get back.”
“Oh.” He looks surprised, and maybe even a little hurt. That’s something to think about later. Or not at all. He stands, tugging his jeans at the knees. Pants shouldn’t fit a man so flawlessly. They have no right to drape this way. He must be a swimmer or play a lot of pickleball. “Sure, yeah.”
I close out my computer and push in my chair, following him from the room.
Except he doesn’t leave. He stops at the door, which makes me nearly run into him.
I get a strong whiff of what I’m beginning to suspect is his hair product—slightly spicy but incredibly manly, and definitely the same thing he used back in college.
“Would you—uh, I just wondered if you’d want to grab dinner tomorrow before class? I could show you what I come up with and get some pointers before taking it to twenty-five hopefuls.”
My gut reaction—that he’s asking for a date—is quickly snuffed by the reality that he just wants help with his class.
He is clearly insecure, and I’ve dropped this on him at the last minute.
The last thing we need to do is engage in date-like activities.
My brain doesn’t need that kind of confusion.
“You’ve got this, Dorian,” I say, slapping him on the shoulder like a chum. “You don’t need me to look over your notes. It’s going to be great. I have total faith in you.”
Dorian looks like he wants to protest, so I reach around him for the door handle and push it open. He twists as I do it, letting me pass him. I hold the door open with a smile.
“Total faith,” I reiterate, walking him back through the store. I can’t get enough distance between myself and this man fast enough. Mostly so I can call Elena and demand an explanation. We pass the endcap Ravi had been working on, and I come to a halt. “What the heck, Rav?”
“Half and half,” he says innocently. But I know better.
He’s trying to prove a point. He didn’t put Dorian’s books on top and mine below; he put D.M.
James books on the left side and Clancy Calloway books on the right.
Some little indie author that we stock out of the goodness of my heart and because everyone knows thrillers are my favorite genre.
To be fair, my pen name has gotten big enough that people come in looking for her books—she follows directly behind him on all of ’s best-selling thriller charts—but just like D.M.
James, no one knows Clancy Calloway is me.
Which means I’m the only one who sees our college rivalry in the flesh right now, with his books directly stacked against mine.
I chose to have a pen name so I wouldn’t lose control over how I’m perceived—to keep a solid separation between my emotional wall and reader opinions.
But this situation is leaving me feeling a little helpless.
It’s the first time my pen name hasn’t protected me.
It’s blocking the things I wish I could say.
“May the best man win,” Ravi says, walking away.
I’m definitely changing this the moment Ravi leaves for the day.
“Woman,” Dorian mutters.
“What?”
He tips his chin toward Clancy Calloway’s books. “I did a little digging once because the name can go either way, and it’s apparently thought to be a woman. But just like mine, no one really knows who she is.”
We are reaching a danger zone here. He swings his attention to me, and I want to melt away.
I give him a bright smile instead. “Then I’m rooting for her.”
Dorian flashes his teeth as he barks out a laugh, which courses through my veins like a drug. “Of course you are.”
Woo. He needs to leave before I do something reckless, like tug him down by the collar and put my lips on his.
I’m sorry, but did you hear that laugh? Music.
The man is intelligent, his forearms are sculpted from some sort of regular exercise beneath that professor’s sweater, and he writes like a king.
His storytelling chops are a divinely appointed gift.
It’s a very dangerous combination for a nerd like me.
“Good luck with everything,” I sing out, opening the front door to my store. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Okay…how?”
“How what?”
“How will I let you know if I need anything? Should I call the store?”
“You can text me.” I open my phone and create a new contact, then hand it to him so he can put his number in. “I’ll send you my number.”
“Great.” He plugs in his phone number, then slings his hands into his pockets and walks away. I only watch him for a moment. The view is just so good I can’t resist.
Once he’s out of sight, I immediately call Elena.
The customer is still browsing the shelves, and Ravi is keeping an eye on her, so I speedwalk to my office as one of my oldest friends picks up the phone.
We met in high school, roomed together in college, and her revolving crushes on Dorian’s housemates were partially to blame for why he never left my sphere during our four years at the University of Tennessee.
“Hey,” she says, answering on the fourth ring. “I’m picking up Harper from the sitter, so I only have a second.”
“You see Dorian McConkie?” I close my office door behind me and drop onto my sofa.
Her silence is incriminating. She coughs lightly. “I mean…occasionally?”
“Are you asking me?”
“No?”
“Elena.”
“Okay, fine. I ran into him and Charlie while I was out a few years ago. It was totally random. But it sort of turned into something. I felt…I don’t know. We’ve only gotten together like three times, but I didn’t want you to feel left out or cheated on.”
She’s right. That’s exactly how I feel. My best friend is cheating on me with my nemesis.
“He just brings out this obsessive side of you, and you were starting the store around that time, so letting you know I saw Dorian McConkie, of all people, was the exact last thing you needed to know. And then it just became…like, easier not to say anything. But honestly, we’ve grabbed brunch twice. ”
“Three times.” My fingers trace the armrest of the sofa.
“Well, that first time was out downtown, and it was an accident. Doesn’t count.” I hear her blinker, and she sighs. “How do you know, anyway?”
Elena knows about D.M. James choosing my store for a signing, so she must not be aware that he’s also Dorian. Man, that guy really has his pen name under wraps. “He came into the store,” I say honestly.
She hollers like a cowgirl at a rodeo. “What?! Did you chase him out?”
“No.” My cheeks heat, and I feel overwhelmingly defensive. “It was…we were cordial. It’s been a long time since college. We’ve both grown.”
“I don’t know. By graduation, you couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him.”
When I think about the last time we were in the same room together before the signing, it was at our graduation party, and neither of us were running away. Until we were.
My body gives an involuntary shudder. “Anyway, he’s still writing, so I roped him into helping with a few things around here. But only for a few weeks.”
Elena’s car turns off, and she closes the door with a thunk. “Try not to hurt him. Those creative types can be more sensitive than they appear.”
He appears rock solid, so that makes me wonder what she knows that I don’t. “I doubt we’ll even be around each other all that much. He probably just wants to make a few bucks.”
“Gotcha.” Elena gasps. “Hi, baby!”
Her attention has officially shifted. “Give Harper a hug for me.”
“Will do. Want to come over for dinner this weekend?”
“Sure. Let me know what to bring.”
“If I get my act together enough to know what I’m making, I will.”
“Friday. I’ll make breadsticks and the Alfredo that Harper loves. You do the pasta and salad.”
“Done. I love it when you take charge. See you this weekend.” She hangs up, and I lower my phone, leaning back against the seat.
I don’t really blame Elena for keeping those things from me.
I’ve texted her every day since Dorian’s book signing and never mentioned that he was the author.
But what would I say? Dorian came into the shop, and now I can’t think about anything else.
Oh, and also, have you seen his forearms?
Why do I think they’re hot? What do I do if he shows up at class tomorrow in short sleeves?
I’m like a Victorian man getting my first glimpse of an ankle.
Except it’s the twenty-first century, and I look at men’s arms every day.
I drop my face into my hands and groan. Heaven help me.