Chapter Seventeen
Operation Small Town, Day 26
Fuck , my head hurts.
I woke up around four, still in my jean shorts and tank top, groggy and disoriented. After fumbling my way to the bathroom in complete darkness, I stripped down, pulled on the firstshirt I could find, and collapsed back into bed.
The sun wakes me up next, glaring through the window. I give it the finger. I roll over and search the nightstand for my phone. I eventually find it tangled in the sheets with me. It’s past nine. I groan and curse the sun. My body is in no condition to be awake right now. I roll over and see a note on the nightstand.
Breakfast will be on the front porch when you wake up. Call me later.
—Your Perfect Love Interest
What.
The.
Hell?
I spring upright, immediately regretting it. I whine as blood rushes from my head and pressure compounds at my temples. I roll back, willing the pain to dissipate. When I can finally see straight, I grab the note off the nightstand and read it again.
I cover my mouth with my hand.
I didn’t.
I didn’t.
Please, God, tell me I didn’t.
Maybe I did.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
I didn’t tell him everything , did I? I remember playing on the bouncy castle with Liam. I remember puking—a lot. I remember the drive home, and talking to Liam, but I can’t remember exactly what I said. But if I had said something incriminating, he wouldn’t have made me breakfast. He would be mad. Those are not the actions of someone who is mad. I take a deep breath. I collapse back on to the pillows and open my phone.
Lucy: Any chance you woke up with amnesia this morning and completely forgot who I was and anything that happened yesterday?
Liam: Not a chance. You?
Lucy: It’s a little foggy.
Liam: Happy to fill in the blanks for you. You went on a bender at a one-year-old’s birthday party and had to be dragged out under duress. There was talk of calling the police. Real bad influence on the kids.
I send him the middle finger emoji.
Liam: Kidding!
Liam: I guess you didn’t eat or drink enough yesterday because you were too busy losing to me on the bouncy castle. Rookie.
Lucy: I feel like I’m going to die.
Liam: You’re not going to die. Did the pancakes help?
Lucy: I haven’t made it out of bed yet.
Liam: SMH. Have something to eat before the raccoons get it. You’ll feel better. I’m at the restaurant all day if you want to drop by.
Lucy: I will be hiding from you for several days, hoping you forget me and the embarrassment that I am.
Liam: Not possible.
My stomach is in knots from my performance yesterday, but even more so because I miss Josie, and I can’t bear being apart from her when she is hurting.
After I clean myself up in the bathroom, and try not to scream at the horror that is my face, I make my way outside and see a takeout bag from Liz’s outside on the porch. I heat up the large stack of pancakes and try to FaceTime Elle, but she doesn’t answer. A few minutes later, she calls me back using audio, not video.
“Hey! I’m at the store, what’s up?” she says.
“Well, we’ve reached the point in the story where I make a small-town fool of myself,” I say, my throat raspy.
“Uh-oh,” she says, concerned. “What did you do?”
I relay the whole miserable story to her, scowling when she snickers at my many memorable antics.
“You drank sangria? And nothing else? Maybe not the best idea on the hottest day of the year,” she says once I’ve finished the whole sad story.
I drum my lips and sit down with my pancakes. My stomach grumbles. No wonder I’m hungry. My anxious stomach and the extreme heat took away any appetite.
“Yeah, I think it may have had something to do with the fact that I’m falling for a guy who I’m lying to,” I say bluntly.
“You’re falling for him? That’s quite a confession,” Elle says, a wary tone in her voice.
“I don’t know what to do,” I murmur, the thought making my stomach tense.
“Lucy, you need to stop asking everyone else what to do and ask yourself what is best for you! Only you know how you feel,” Elle says, the sympathy back in her voice. I stare down at the food on my plate, my appetite quickly fading. “That was an invitation for you to tell me how you feel, by the way,” Elle adds.
“Oh,” I say surprised. I struggle to find my next words. “Can I get back to you on that?”
“No,” Elle says with a laugh. “Just don’t think about it. If I asked you right now, how do you feel about Liam, what would you say?”
I could see myself falling in love with you.
Oh shit.
“Oh shit,” I say out loud, shocking Elle.
“What?” she says, concerned.
“I think I told Liam I was falling in love with him last night,” I mumble, trying to piece together the flashes of my memory. I rub my temples as if that will magically clear up the night for me.
“Come again?” Elle says, the panic in her voice mirroring mine.
“I was so out of it and I was falling asleep and… Oh man, I am so not equipped to handle this,” I say defeated. I slump back in my chair, my mind going in a million different directions.
“Tell me exactly what you remember,” she instructs, and I comply. I say that Liam drove me home and we talked before I fell asleep. I don’t remember everything, but I think I compared him to a love interest.
“Well, this is a lot to process,” Elle mumbles.
“Oh!” I exclaim. “I also got the big sister talk from Liam’s sister yesterday,” I explain, cringing at the memory.
“What did she say to you?”
“Basically, that Liam’s heart has been broken before and he’s the most amazing person who puts off his own dreams to take care of his family, and basically I’m just a monster who came here and is threatening to destroy him,” I ramble.
“I’m going to assume you’re paraphrasing there,” Elle says sarcastically.
“That was basically the gist,” I reply flatly.
Elle lets out a big sigh. “Well, here’s the good news. You’re coming home in a week. So, whatever is going to happen, will happen.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? How the hell is that good news?” I practically scream at her.
“I’m not sure. I’m working on the fly here,” she says casually.
I lay my head on top of my folded arms on the counter. “I can’t do this, Elle. It’s too much. Everything that’s happened… There’s no way this ends without me hurting Liam. And I don’t want that.”
“What do you want to do? Do you want to tell Liam that you were basically sent there to plot a romance series and just so happened to fall for him in the process?”
“Not when you put it like that,” I mumble.
“He might understand. He might think it’s cool that you’re using him for the book,” Elle says, trying to be empathetic.
“But I’m not using him,” I say quickly. “I think I’m using the setting more than I’m using the people. Either way, I would throw this whole book away just to keep him,” I admit, my heart physically aching at the thought of leaving Liam in a few days. “I really believed that I would never feel something like we read about in our books, that all of it was just a fairy tale, but with Liam—”
“Then I think you have your answer,” Elle says, pithily. I look at the Liz’s bag on the counter and think about all the times I’ve smiled over the past few weeks.
I was in a rut before I came here. I needed a change. I needed to remember why I loved romance, and this lake, this town, this man, has done that. As much as I hate to admit it—and never will publicly—Anne and Josie were right. This city girl needed to experience small-town life. And now that I have, I think it may have changed me forever.
“I think I just need some processing time.” Elle likes to compare my “processing time” to Sherlock going into his mind palace. I say it whenever I need to take a break from reality, sit by myself with a manuscript, or go for a walk. It’s the time when I let the logical side of my brain take over and push my creative, emotional thoughts to the side. I think that is the only thing that is going to get me out of this situation.
“I feel like the past few days have just been too emotional for me, with Josie and then this Liam... situation. I just need to take a beat.”
“That sounds like a good idea, call me later,” Elle says, with an oddly upbeat voice. She hangs up before I have the chance to respond.
I wander outside and lean against the railing on the deck. I take a photo of the sun shining on the lake. I’ve been waking up to this view for weeks, but it hasn’t lost its appeal yet. I wonder if it ever will. As I finish my pancakes at the kitchen counter, I write out a post to go with the photo on my Instagram.
What. If.
So many of my favorite romance novels explore the complex relationship between these two words.
What if?
What if there is a novel-worthy romance out there for me? For all of us? Isn’t that what we all believe when we open a book?
I’m waffling, I know. A few weeks ago, I might have answered a HARD no to these questions. But now… what if?
I hit “Share” and feel the urge to keep writing. Now that my body is nourished and hydrated, I have a lot to decompress from in the last few days.
I turn to my computer and alternate between speech-to-text and typing. I start by taking notes, with setting descriptions, but soon I find my mind wandering into character profiles. Every small-town romance has a customary cast of characters. Once I start, I find it hard to stop.
Heroine
Hero—librarian, library assistant? Researching for grad school on Native American history?
Small-Town Head Bitch in Charge
Family—hero’s sister/brother? Kids?
Small Business Owner
Side character who befriends the heroine, shows her the town?
I type HEROINE on top of the page and HERO on the bottom. I add a table and label each row with a heading: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION, LIKES/DISLIKES, BACKSTORY, CHARACTER ARC.
I’m a bit hesitant to start with the heroine because I feel like Anne would definitely call me out if she turned out too much like me. I turn my attention to the hero section and get to work. I write pages of character profiles, setting descriptions, and plot charts.
Outlining is a lot harder than I imagined.
The problem is, I need to make the characters different from the actual people I met here.
Small-Town Head Bitch in Charge: shoulder-length gray hair, small brown eyes that can be daggers in the right setting.
Small Business Owner: coffee shop, café; happy-go-lucky guy, married to a strong-willed woman (HBIC?), father-figure for heroine.
Hero: tall, lean muscles, hair falls just below the ear; tragic past
Parent deceased?
Character Arc – learning to accept help/laugh again from heroine?
After typing and deleting on repeat for what seems like forever, I sit back and take my hands off of the keyboard, defeated.
As much as I try, I can’t escape the similarities. Because it’s them. It’s May and Max, and Liam and Jill, that make this story. It’s May with her megaphone. It’s Max with his big belly laughs and overgrown mustache. It’s Liam and his grief, his loss, and big heart. It’s Jill with her kindness, her determination. It’s what makes them… them . That’s what this story is.
Without them, there is no story.
Who was I kidding? I can’t pretend that the characters I came up with are any different from the people in Hudson Hollow. I can’t sketch out a setting and give it a different name when this place is the heart of the book. The whole plot of the story I dreamed up for Ruby, it’s them . It’s all the people I’ve met, it’s this town. And I’ve betrayed them.
Anne sent me here to map the setting of a small-town romance, and Elle’s right, I’ve started living one.
I’m frozen at the counter with my hands on either side of my face, the heels of my palms pressed into my temples, the contents of my brain swirling so fast I feel like I should be frantic. But instead, I can’t move.
I scroll through pages of the document—pages of work that I sat here toiling over for the past two hours. Work that, up to this point, I would have been proud of. Now I just feel… ashamed .
I hate that I’ve proved Liam’s initial suspicions right, and that I’ve been lying to myself the whole time. I was never going to be able to keep this place separate from the town I created for Ruby’s book. I did it. I succeeded in my mission. I did exactly what Anne sent me here to do. I created the perfect setting and cast for a small-town romance.
How am I going to hand this proposal to Anne with pride? How could I have been such an idiot?
I look back at my laptop on the counter. This is it. This is the arsenal of information I would need to get a promotion. Anne will eat this up. She’s not an evil person, but I doubt that she would understand the crisis of conscience that I am having about my time here, about Liam. The “think-like-a-reporter” mentality can only go so far. These are people’s lives.
The doorbell snaps me out of my turmoil.
I make my way to the door and stop in the foyer. I freeze mid-step, my socks sliding on the floor in dramatic fashion.
What if it’s Liam? What do I do? What do I say to him?
Nothing. I have to keep my mouth shut. I have to protect his feelings. As far as he knows, I’m recovering from a shitty day yesterday. I can’t make any rash decisions right now.
I continue toward the door and don’t bother looking through the window to see who it is. I whip it open and squeal at the person on the stoop.
“Surprise!” Elle shouts, raising her hands in the air. I stare at her, dumbfounded.
“But… I was just on the phone with you,” I sputter, still standing in the doorway like an alien has just rung my bell instead of my best friend.
“I was on the train!” she exclaims. “Best surprise ever?” She throws her arms around me in excitement, and I allow myself to melt into her embrace. I don’t think I realized how much I missed her until this moment. But boy, am I happy to see her, here, in the flesh.
“I missed you,” I say breathlessly when she finally releases me from her grip. “Did you take a few days off?”
“Yeah, I just got the sense that… I don’t know, maybe you needed me? With Josie and everything, and then I saw your last few insta posts and—”
“And our conversation this morning pretty much cemented the fact that I’m losing it, is that it?” I finish for her.
“I don’t know if I would use those exact words, but yes,” she says, taking more than a step into the house. “Oh man, look at that!” she says with a gasp, her gaze fixed on the back windows. “Look at that view! Look at the water! It’s actually blue, not brown!”
“That it is,” I say, somewhat amused.
“Our standards are pretty low, huh?” Elle jokes. I follow her to the kitchen counter. “Wow, look at this,” she says, finding the mess of papers I left in my wake. She picks up my notebook and glances at my laptop, where my HERO/HEROINE table is front and center. My chart is so perfectly color-coded, it could be in a bullet journal. Her fingers roam over some notes I made earlier in gel-pen. It’s all about the hero. About Liam.
“Is this the motherlode? Are you fully infiltrated?” she says, sarcastically.
“Practically a ninja,” I groan, running a hand through my knotted hair.
“Wow, Lucy,” she mumbles, still flipping through the notebook. “This is… more than I expected.” Elle’s tone is serious as she reads through my notes. She looks up at me and immediately frowns. “What’s wrong?”
I fold my hands behind my head and bite my lip. All of a sudden, I feel so tired I could cry. “Elle, I—” My voice croaks and I can’t finish my sentence. I fall into a chair at the kitchen table and place my head in my hands.
Elle puts down the notebook and sits at the barstool next to me. “What is it?” she asks in a gentle tone.
“There’s so much wrong about all of this. It’s them . It’s him,” I say, rubbing my eyes with my knuckles. “I was here to plan out the series, but I got so caught up in the creativity, I basically outlined an entire book. And—it came out as all the wonderful people I’ve met. I’ve been spying on them. Using each and every one of them. Using him .”
Elle slowly turns her head to evaluate the scene in front of her. I doubt she was expecting this when she chose to surprise me today. I sigh and lay my head against her shoulder, defeated.
Elle sighs heavily. “Lucy, I think you got a lot more than you bargained for, coming here.”
“No shit,” I reply, my voice hoarse. I sit up, rubbing my face like it might actually remove some of the sadness from my head. “I came here with a goal, and I achieved it. It just doesn’t feel good… at all.”
“Maybe you should just tell him. It will be better than wringing yourself in knots like this and wondering what if ,” Elle answers quickly. “You don’t necessarily have to use all of this, but you’re right. You haven’t been honest. And before you can get upset about the ramifications of this,” she says, picking up my notebook again, “you have to see if there is something worth fighting for.”
I let out a loud exhale and lean my head against my hand. I admire my friend, whose Bohemian-chic overalls and wild curly hair look like they belong on a runway or on the streets of Manhattan, not in my dingy rental kitchen. My heart tugs at how happy I am to see her, though. For all the jokes and digs I make about the city, without Manhattan, I wouldn’t have Elle. I grew up watching Friends , thinking that one day if I moved to Manhattan, I’d have the same set of supportive, unbelievably loyal friends who would do anything for me. It took me a while to find them, but I did, in Elle.
I pause, wondering if I can believe what Elle is saying. Something worth fighting for , I repeat in my head. Do Liam and I have something worth fighting for? Of course, I wish that we did. But in reality, how long have I known him for, a month? I’ve been working toward becoming an editor for years . But the real battle I’m having here is with my conscience. Can I live with the fact that once I return to the city—to my real life—I’ll never see these people again, and worse still, I will have used them for a story?
I don’t know if I can answer that question yet.
“I don’t know if I can do that, Elle,” I manage to squeak out. The throb in my throat is threatening to explode. Elle must be able to see that I’m on the verge of tears, which startles her. She wraps her arms around me and squeezes.
“Lucy, take a breath, babe. Everything is going to be okay.”
I wish I could know that for sure.