Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
They see it at the same time: the tagged picture of the two of them on the most popular publishing gossip account, reposted from @bookish_cassandra.
It’s a little blurry, but it’s unmistakeably Alex and Jess, walking hand in hand.
The caption reads: Well, I guess now we know why Alex Maxwell is too busy to write another book.
‘Busted,’ Jess says, suppressing a snigger.
‘But I’m not too busy to write another book,’ he says. ‘I am writing another book. That picture happened because I’m writing another book.’
‘That’s your first takeaway from this situation?’ Jess is a little miffed. A photo of the two of them, and his first reaction is only about himself.
‘Sorry, sorry, no. Of course not.’ He smiles apologetically. Jess can’t stay even a little bit angry when a dimple like that is on show.
‘I’m glad it’s a nice picture of us.’
Moving the phone closer to her face, Jess inspects the image. He’s not wrong. It is a nice picture. The first one of the two of them. The one that maybe they’ll show their grandchildren someday. Not that she’s getting ahead of herself in any way.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘It is.’
Reluctantly, she hands the phone back. ‘What do you think this means?’
‘In what sense?’
‘Like, what happens now?’
‘We’re not Brad and Jen,’ he says, another not-exactly-bang-on pop culture reference, but she gets the picture. ‘I don’t think this blows up and the paparazzi starts chasing us to our deaths in a Parisian tunnel.’
‘Dark.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Also,’ she points out, ‘a mixed metaphor.’
‘You’ve got me. I’m even more sorry.’
Jess’s stomach does an involuntary flip at the phrase you’ve got me.
‘But maybe Nathan will get wind of it.’
‘Nathan will be delighted. He’s been trying to find me a girlfriend for the last five years.’
Five years? That, perhaps, explains his keenness to ditch what she thinks of as the ice-dancing rule.
It perhaps also explains Nathan’s keenness to get them working together, though she isn’t sure how he could possibly have known that she and Alex would have this insane level of chemistry together.
And she’s determined to prove that she’s not just good for Alex’s love life, but that she’s a great partner creatively, too. And a great author in her own right.
But also: a girlfriend? Is that what she is?
‘So we’re putting labels on it now?’ She bumps him gently with her shoulder.
‘Maybe not just yet,’ he says, and her heart sinks. But he puts his arm around her, and she relaxes into him. He kisses the top of her head.
She stands, leaning into Alex, for what might be five seconds or might be five years. She tries not to think about the implications of what he’s just said. Part of her is tempted to kiss him, but part of her thinks he doesn’t deserve it, not after these mixed messages.
He shuffles against her, and she knows the moment is over. They pull apart and pretend to study the index cards laid out in front of them. Or at least she is pretending. Perhaps he really is studying them.
‘Anyway,’ he says after a while. ‘This is the publicity that Nathan wanted, right? Weren’t you supposed to tease our collab with Instagram posts?’
That had been the plan. But also, what she had with Alex felt too new, too precious, too murky and hard to describe to risk putting a name on it or exposing it to the world. She wants to keep it close to her heart for now.
Her phone lights up on the table.
@allthemanybooks has tagged you in a comment.
Before she taps, she already knows what’s coming.
This you, @Jessandherbookobsession?
She’d met Allie of the All the Many Books blog at London Book Fair one year, in the queue for a talk by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
They’d followed each other for a long time, exchanging book recommendations and mutual eye rolls on the ever-cycling social media discourse – Are audiobooks reading?
Is a three-star rating good or bad? Why is selling advance review copies such a terrible thing to do?
Jess used to earnestly join in – some of her responses, in fact, had gone viral and helped raise her follower count into the six digits a couple of years ago – but now she can’t scroll past the threads fast enough.
Instead, to scratch the itch, she’d DM Allie: Do these people think they are the first person to ever have that thought?
And Allie would respond with similar snark.
She’d thought they were friends, but tagging her like this, so publicly, doesn’t really seem like something a friend would do.
She stuffs the phone in her pocket. Out of sight, out of mind: if she does that, the problem goes away.
At least for now; at least until she next opens her phone and the tags and DMs have bred like proverbial rabbits.
The bookfluencer world in the UK is not all that big.
The number of accounts with more than 100,000 followers is surprisingly small.
Over the years, Jess has had her fair share of slightly passive-aggressive comments, or DMs that state admiration but smack of envy.
She knows many others would love the paid partnerships with publishers, the limited-edition tote bags, the exclusive author events Jess is invited to.
Like many fandoms, Bookstagram is kind and gentle on the surface and gives off a we’re-all-in-it-together kind of vibe.
But, just like with any fandom, there’s competition and jealousy.
More than the free stuff – possibly even more than the opportunities to rub shoulders with the author of the moment – everybody wants to be The Chosen One, the Big Name Fan, and many people would shock themselves with how eagerly they would tread on others to get there.
And, let’s face it: everybody loves gossip.
Everybody loves drama. Including Jess, usually.
It would only be karma if she was at the receiving end of it for once; she knows that, but it still doesn’t feel good.
She can see it already: the speculation she only has a book deal because of whom she’s dating.
The assertions – true, as it turns out, but still – that her follower count was what got her a book deal, and that isn’t fair when there are so many writers out there who are just as talented, maybe more talented, but don’t have the platform and so get overlooked.
She can already see the opinion piece in The Bookseller: When will we start valuing talent over influence?
How the publishing industry lost the plot …
‘I’m not sure our collab needs teasing,’ she says. ‘Your next book is going to fly off the shelves with or without a co-author’s name on the cover. But first we need to write it.’ She shakes her head to free herself of these uncomfortable thoughts. ‘Let’s get back to work.’
‘Okay,’ he says. Relieved, no doubt, to be off the hook on the girlfriend thing for now.