Chapter 10
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Spare me the sob stories.
Crisis
I hate my characters for all the ways they look like me. I hate my plot for all the ways I plucked it out of the cesspool of my knowledge on what sells these days . I hate the rough lines and choppy sentences. I hate everything about every motivation behind what I’m doing right now.
Yet I continue to hate, and I continue to type, because it’s my job to make a book, not judge it.
Except, of course, that isn’t my job at all.
My job is to sort emails, organize schedules, feed a grown man, and handle his accounts so he can make a book, because that’s his job.
Writing is the hobby I fuel in the after work hours because I love it.
I love writing.
I love words, and sentences, and stories. I love keeping lists of all the interesting vocabulary I might find places for in my next jaunt through fantasy. I love building Canva Whiteboards with picture collages of settings and characters. I love getting everything —just everything —out of my skull and onto a page, where it can’t hurt me anymore .
Because it’s gone. Forgotten. Lost in a sea of letters, drowning in the endless narrative.
I don’t have to think about whether or not anyone will like what I’m putting down. I just have to get. it. out. Because maybe then it will stop feeling like acid in my veins, wearing a hole in my heart.
It sucks.
I know that.
It’s just plain bad writing.
There’s so little good about it that a kind man, who has never said a rude word to me in the two years I’ve personally known him, couldn’t find a single nice thing to say about it.
Try again. From the start. Redo everything. The characters. The plot. The very style itself. And then try again, even. Also, your fifteenth draft reads like a first .
Cheers.
It hurts to swallow.
Rage burns in my chest, sawing at my lungs with every breath.
What’s wrong with me?
What’s wrong with me?
What’s wrong with me?
What’s wrong with you? Are you serious right now, Crisis? What’s wrong with you? That is hilarious. You should do stand up. They can put you on right after the lady who gives the motivational thought. What’s wrong with me is very clear, very obvious, very blatant.
I am the kind of woman who gets a bad email, yeets everything out of her life in order to research becoming a personal assistant, hunts down a man she’s decided inexcusably wronged her, and commits to becoming his worst nightmare.
That’s what’s wrong with me .
I am mental.
Absolutely mental.
And everyone growing up could tell , and that’s why I was a walking crisis no one wanted to be around. That’s why all the kids berated me, constantly, running from me, picking on me, calling me names, hurting me.
There was a whole semester that went by where the children made a game of my infamous personality quirk.
The game was called who can hurt Crisis the most without getting in trouble?
Thumbtacks in my chair, needles worked into my locker handle, “accidentally” tripping me—down stairs .
The torment was endless.
Endless .
And the teachers did nothing about it, because mysterious, untraceable things were always happening around me, and I couldn’t try to get the other kids in trouble just because they weren’t very kind .
That’s not how you make friends, Crisis , one teacher had the gall to say to me.
I didn’t want to make friends , though. I gave that up so, so early in my childhood. I don’t even remember when I stopped caring about human connection. I didn’t want friends… I just wanted survival to be less…painful.
It is shocking that the streaming service with the movie Luck —a story about a lonely orphan who never had anything good happen to her on account of her bad luck—did not contact me to ask if I was okay for the eight thousand times I watched it the year it came out.
I was a full-grown adult, sobbing over a child’s cartoon, every. day. for nothing short of a full calendar year.
So…what’s wrong with me?
Ha.
What a joke .
I was made broken and whoever’s in charge hates me with a vehemence similar to the one I possess.
I wish I were more lovable. I wish I were still loving.
I used to be.
I used to be so, so loving.
Back when I believed in a world that would care about me if I could just find the people in it who knew how to reach for my hand. If I could just put these bleeding words out into the void, maybe someone would hear them scream I’m here, are you like me, are you alone, just like me?
A cuss slips into my head as tears bead in my eyes. They burn in my throat as I fight them, breathing deep to resist. I don’t know how long Viktor’s morning motivational thought for the baby writers is going to take. It wasn’t all that long after breakfast yesterday, but who knows what Little Red Riding Hood’s bravery prompted in the other dreamers.
Maybe they’re all crowding him by now, demanding wisdom he seems all too willing to give—to others.
“You are inconsequential,” I whisper as my character’s guardian echoes the words and throws her out into the yard with the chickens and the cattle. Horribly abused, homegirl does not yet know that she’s the chosen one in this story.
She will, soon, but I’m not there yet. And getting there depends on my mood entirely.
Maybe my writing sucks because I’m willing to spend the first fifteen chapters delineating all the things I’ve had sketched into my skin from the moment I knew what an insult was.
The worlds of Viktor Bachelor kept me alive. Something in them resonated with the deep, bone-chilling loneliness that plagued me as a child. He’s why I wanted to become an author. He’s why I thought there were people like me in this unholy wasteland we call earth .
I believed in him.
I believed in him so much …sometimes…I even found the strength to believe in myself.
And then, in barely four paragraphs, he took all of that away.
Right when I sniffle, the door opens.
My muscles pinch as my fingers freeze.
I feel, with horror, a single unwelcome tear coast down my cheek in the exact same moment Viktor’s eyes lift to find mine.
Swallowing hard, I hold my breath and pray his eyesight is as bad as my comments concerning his age would imply.
I should really know better by now than to ever believe I’d be so lucky.
The door latches behind him as he closes it, then he approaches.
Lightning fast, I remove all evidence of a word document being open without so much as turning my gaze from him.
“Crisis…” he says, voice a low murmur, raking across my skin. “…is everything all right?”
My mouth opens; nothing escapes my tongue.
I need a reason to be crying. I need a lie . A believable, untraceable lie.
Despite the vast, detailed fantasy world I was just exhaling into the nothingness, my mind is quite useless in falsifying a reason for tears. It closes all its tabs. A tumbleweed blows through the wrinkles, which are being moisturized away.
Head empty.
No thoughts.
Smooth brain.
Lotioned .
Slippery.
Like a fish .
“My…fish,” I blurt, recalling that if you get pulled over, you’re supposed to cry and apologize and say your dog just died. People deaths can be fact checked. Pets, not so much.
I do not have a dog. I have a fish .
Or as far as Viktor gets to know now, I had a fish.
Every muscle in Viktor’s body winds. Panic shoots through his eyes. “No,” he whispers, viscerally unwell. “Please.”
Um. What?
Why, pray tell, does this man care about my fish so much? I’ve mentioned Potato once in two years. It’s, also, a fish. You know. The least sympathy-inducing of all the pets?
Will I cry and contemplate throwing myself into traffic once my time with Potato is up? Yes. Do I expect more than an awkward shoulder pat from even Crimson? No.
Viktor looks like he’s about to throw up.
Suddenly, it seems the wrong kind of cruel to continue with a my fish is dead plan, so I choke back my emotions, dry my eyes, and murmur, “He wasn’t eating. Crimson just texted to let me know it only took him a second to get used to her, and he’s okay now.”
Do I know what I’m saying?
No.
Puffers are so vicious they will slay most things with very little prompting. Potato sees his blood worms and spaghettis them before I get a chance to coo how cute he is.
Viktor’s palpable relief washes over me like an ocean. His eyes close as his entire being sags. “Oh, thank goodness…”
I don’t know what to say. Kaleb has an elaborate and lavish koi pond that I visit regularly, but Viktor has never professed to be all that interested in the fish. I, obviously, love them and was chatting with them when I discovered that Kaleb wasn’t just a gardener but rather the Bachelors’ fifth, secret brother. To my knowledge Viktor has never even visited Kaleb’s koi. He cannot be a fish guy. “Are you all right?” I ask while thoughts and reason continue to escape my lotioned brain.
Swiping a hand up his trim stubble toward the pale scar that cuts down his right brow, he nods, sinks into the chair at his desk, and opens his laptop.
He’s not really looking all right to me.
“Your neck is feeling better?” I ask as he puts on his reading glasses.
“Yes,” he states, clears his throat, murmurs, “You must…really love your fish.”
Yeah, duh. It’s my fish. What I want to know is why you really love my fish.
I think I almost witnessed a breakdown five seconds ago.
Clearing my own throat, I open up Viktor’s email, then begin sorting. “Well, you know,” I offer, detached, “his name’s Potato.”
And he’s never once said a mean thing to me—in person or via email.
Viktor tracks where he left off in his printed outline while bringing up his document. “Right, yes. You’ve said so. It’s a very cute name.”
“Thanks.” Stiff silence. It’s…weird. Given that Viktor and I spend most of our time together marinating in the silence, I shouldn’t think anything of it now. Yet I am suffocating. “He’s a boy.”
“Oh?” Viktor glances at me. “You…sexed your fish?”
Is that not normal? I’m positive that’s normal. Therefore, with utmost confidence, I say, “Yes?”
Viktor blinks. “That’s…”
Weird? Strange? Creepy? Unique? Quirky? Come on. Hit me with the adjective. I’ve heard everything.
“…dedicated.”
I don’t think I’ve heard that one.
I ramble, “Well, pea puffers aren’t exactly a low-maintenance fish, but I was desperate to have one, so I did a lot of research before I brought Potato home from the pet store. I really like the pet store in Sunset. It takes great care of their animals.”
“I wouldn’t rent to anyone who didn’t,” he notes.
Oh. Yeah. Right. I forgot. The Bachelor family carefully curates every business in Sunset, and the leases are hefty documents with so many rules that make eviction at any point in time easily accessible if you break them. It’s different here than where I grew up. One of the biggest hurdles in my plan to become Viktor’s assistant was being cleared to live here. Getting on the waiting list was one of the first steps in my scheme, because it can take years for a house to open up, then months of follow-up testing.
Truly a shock I passed the mental health assessments. Who knew spite fueled acting skills?
Sunset is perfect by design. People can visit, if they pass the entry checkpoints and pay a fee, but beyond that? No. Waiting list. Tests. Assessments. Four of the five Bachelor brothers are celebrities, and Sunset is their perfect safe haven.
Which is why what I’ve done might be the greatest con in history.
The strange silence sweeps in again, making me fight for every breath as I robotically sort emails, forward emails, put emails I can’t handle on Viktor’s docket to take care of later. In the stillness, it feels like I’m waiting on something to snap.
I just don’t know what.
“Crisis.”
Sickness erupts in the back of my throat. “Yes?”
“Are you interested in the archery later?” he asks.
Am I interested in shooting at things with pointy sticks? One hundred percent yes. “Yes?”
His chest fills with air, and he doesn’t look at me as he positions his fingers over his keyboard. “Would you like…to do it together?”
What is happening?
My brows lower. “Um.” I blink. “Sure?”
Who else would I do it with? I don’t know anyone else here, and I’ve yet to respect any of these whimsical fools enough to pretend to be amicable, much less archery buddies .
Viktor nods, once, affirmative, then begins typing. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Oh-kay, man. Sounds good.
Trying to shake the niggling sensation of something being very, very off , I get back to work.