Chapter 1 #2
There’s no time to back out of it, though.
The editor is booked and paid for, and several contracts are relying on it being in its final form in a couple of weeks.
Somehow, someway, this is going to have to pull together—and I needed it done yesterday.
I’ll just have to pull extra hours to get more words on paper—whenever the hell I figure out what those words are, that is.
If I fuck this up . . . then it’s back to living with my parents so I can afford to finish grad school.
“Mina,” Joyce says with a sigh. “Take a break. You’ve been going at it for hours. Go for a walk, or grab a drink or something.”
Fuck no. I have too much shit to do: work, cleaning, more work, more laundry.
I push my glasses up my nose. “Come with me?” What’s five minutes anyway? It’s not like I’ve written more than a sentence in the past two hours.
She holds up her tablet. “I’m almost three weeks behind on all my commissions, and I still haven’t even started rendering your cover. I barely have time to go to the bathroom.”
There goes my excuse to procrastinate.
Tugging on my sleeve, I chew the inside of my cheek. “I really don’t mind finding someone else to design my cover.” Not that I can afford it. “You don’t—”
“Every client I lose makes my mother smile. That bitch doesn’t get to keep ruining my life.”
I grunt. At least one of us is proving their parents wrong. “Mom called yesterday and asked if I’m still making as little in sales as last month.”
She winces. “Mine asked me if I’m bored of my hobby yet.”
I blow out a breath. I’ve heard that one before.
It’s no surprise our moms are best friends.
“Are you still covering at the bar tonight?” I ask, sneaking a look at my phone. God, Leo looks good as my background.
Scowling, she nods. “Yay.”
“The things we do to keep a roof over our heads,” I mutter.
Joyce picks up shifts at a nearby bar every once in a while to get extra cash flow in case shit hits the fan. The last thing we want to do is go crawling back to our families and concede defeat. Because despite all the jabs and light degradation, we put up with it.
Our Filipino parents wanted us to stay far away from anything remotely artsy.
Telling our parents to shove it where the sun don’t shine isn’t something that’s in our vocabulary.
They’re far too religious to be remotely receptive to the type of shit I write, or the raunchy drawings Joyce does, and hiding it ended up impossible, so I’m fairly certain they’re praying for our downfall.
If either of our businesses fails, we’ll both be hearing a condescending “I told you so” and be pushed back toward the closest college.
Every interaction with them involves sitting in silence as they make subtle digs at us under the guise that they’re doing it in our best interest. Then we spend a week recovering from the trauma of their existence.
The silver lining? At least we’re riding our parents’ health insurance.
I should quit. I don’t think writing is for me.
The words are blurring into a garbled mess of black and white.
Listening to music for inspiration, scrolling Pinterest, and watching videos on how to structure a book have not gotten me any closer to figuring out where to go from here.
It’s not like this is my debut novel, but I think it’s time to accept that my parents were right: I’m not made to be an author.
It might be just paying the bills now, but it was a stupid idea to drop out of college to pursue writing. I was doing fine a year ago. Even better the year before. But every book that I’ve released seems to do worse than the last. This is my last chance.
In the past six hours, I’ve only managed to get down eight hundred words that I’ll probably delete tomorrow, and fuck, my uterus might kill me before I get the chance.
Leaning my elbows on the desk, I massage my temples, fighting the urge to see if Leo or any of his friends has posted something about tonight’s major win.
They’re probably out celebrating. He’s probably finding the closest girl to take her back to his—
My phone vibrates on the desk.
My eyes snap open as I whip my head toward the device. It’s just past midnight. Who’s messaging me at this hour?
It vibrates three more times. I glance at the front door to check if Joyce might have left her keys on the hook before heading to work, but the only thing I can see is the fluffy emo rabbit hanging off my keychain.
The sixth notification has me snatching my phone off the charger and clicking the pop-up without reading it.
Over and over, my phone vibrates with incoming messages. My throat tightens, waiting for the screen to load. One by one, the messages appear, and I frown, rereading them because there’s no way . . .
My blood runs cold.
The phone clatters onto the table as my breath tears a roaring path up my lungs.
Panic sinks its claws into me, plastering a bleary film over my vision.
I stumble out of my chair, putting as much distance as I can between myself and the device.
My fingers tremble as I clasp my hand over my mouth, tasting bile.
No.
No.
My phone keeps vibrating. Over and over and over. I—fuck. Why can’t Joyce be here? What do I do? How do I make it stop?
I inch closer, hoping and praying that my imagination is playing tricks on me. Maybe my phone is glitching. Maybe I’m imagining the messages.
Violent tremors shake my body as I read through the group chat I’ve been added to. The first thing I see is a picture of a phone with the message I sent Leo on the screen, followed by a NSFW post from one of my books. The things Leo’s teammates are saying have my heart sticking in my throat.
Jack Norton: I bet you’re into some kinky shit.
Simon Bradon: Girls like u are so easy
Galvin Doyle: How desperate are you? LOL
Messages keep rolling in from men I don’t recognize.
There have to be at least fifteen guys in this group chat.
Every single one of them is joining in on the fun; they’re making comments about my appearance, and mocking my books and the explicit content in them.
But there’s next to nothing about the message I sent to Leo.
I clutch my chest, shaking my head. It’s not real. It can’t be. This is not happening to me.
Where the fuck is Leo in all this? How did they get that?
I can handle ignorance. I can understand rejection. But sharing my message with his friends? Letting them go through my profile and say these disgusting things to me?
Blake is better than this. Leo is meant to be better than this. He’s meant to be my knight in shining armor who stops the world from getting to me. No, this doesn’t make sense.
Where the fuck is he?
Leo never even responded to me. How dare he treat me like this? After everything I’ve done? I was nice and professional toward him. I watched from afar. Shit, I’ve all but created a fucking shrine for him, and he turns around and does this? Whatever the fuck this is.
My phone trembles in my hands. My glasses fog up as tears burn down my cheeks.
Through blurry vision, I watch the little icons pop up at the bottom of the screen of all the profiles reading the message.
Leo’s co-workers and friends. All distinctly male.
The profiles keep appearing, silently laughing at me when images from my personal profile are sent into the chat.
Pictures of my life that I’ve kept totally separate from writing.
It’s the clean version of me that my family sees.
The side that I’ve kept under lock and key to avoid this very thing from happening.
They’re going to dox me.
Panic claws at my throat. Jack sends a picture of me on my first day of college, standing proudly in front of the welcome sign.
Jack Norton: You look cute here.
Joyce and I took that photo a week before we finally took a stance against our parents and moved out of their homes, kissed med school goodbye—not that either of us got in—and started the arts degree neither of us completed.
One right after the other, more photos are shared: selfies, family reunions, pictures taken from holidays I went on with Joyce.
How the fuck did he find them? My personal account is private—completely different from my pseudonym. I didn’t want anyone else from my normal life to know about what I do or the type of things I write.
But now Leo, Jack, and every single one of their friends knows my name, what I look like, and what city I live in. I shouldn’t feel shame over what I write, but society is far from accepting.
The walls are closing in. I can’t breathe. The fissures in my composure feel like another score in their books. Another mark against my name. It’s like they’re winning.
I scrub my hand over my face, then rub it up and down my thigh to try to get ahold of myself enough to think clearly. I haven’t been bullied since I was in high school, and I refuse to be the victim again—I’m enough of one around my own blood.
My pulse thunders as I type my response and press Send before I can change my mind.
Mina: Leave me the fuck alone, you creeps.
Galvin Doyle: Ain’t that your type lmao
Simon Bradon: U should have messaged me instead of Leo. Our boy is a little busy right now
A photo comes through.
I should look away. Turn my phone off. Or better yet, delete the app so I’ll never have to see the evidence of this night again.
Then I can shove him and everything about him out of my mind, and deprive myself of any information about the man who has done nothing but occupy my thoughts for the past two months.
Still, I click on the picture they send because the dagger has already pierced my heart, so twisting it won’t make it hurt any less.
I relish the pain. Let it fuel the inferno raging in me because I was stupid to think that Leo would fall into the imaginary steps I laid for him when I was living my life thinking he wasn’t aware I existed.
I know what the photo will be before it loads, but I still look because it’s a reminder that he doesn’t care about me. He never has, and never will.
And fuck, I still want to change that. I fucking love him. Loved. Past tense, current. I don’t know.
The screen loads, and my stomach sinks at the photo of a man whose face is blocked by the head of a brunette woman.
Even with my fogged-up glasses, I know with every fiber of my being that it’s Leo.
If I were a mile away, I could pick him out by stature alone.
I’ve memorized every tattoo on his body.
The freckles on his back. The birthmark by his knee.
Even the little scar on the inside of his wrist and the dot by his right ear.
It’s him.
With another woman.
She has legs for days and the shortest bedazzled dress that those kinds of guys drool over. She’s his type—the Pilates girl with a closet and vanity that will make her look better than any guy she stands beside.
His hand is on her hip. Hers is on his chest or around the back of his neck—I can’t tell. It’s intimate in a way that I’ll only experience in my dreams. If the camera were angled differently, I’m sure I’d see his lips on hers.
Why can’t that be me? Why am I the one who has to be tormented?
So much time wasted on him—on my fucking Blake.
A sob rips from my throat. I was so stupid. He’s too busy spending time with her to realize his team is tearing me apart over a single message sent during a moment of weakness. And he’s just . . . he’s letting them.
My phone keeps vibrating with notifications from his teammates and other guys I don’t know.
They comment on my photos and videos, drowning my feed in hate, saying things that make my skin crawl.
Most only comment once or twice. Except Jack Norton.
He either likes or comments on every single post on my profile.
It’s sad that you think you could ever have a chance.
Are you more of a screamer or the silent type?
I think you owe me a good time. He’ll never look at you twice once I’m done.
You’ll never be good enough for him.
Everything Jack says makes me sick to my stomach. I have to stop myself from buckling over when a wave of nausea hits me. This is the part of the job that I hate—when men welcome themselves into a space meant for women.
Calling the cops won’t do anything. It might antagonize them, and it’ll end up hurting me more than them.
My fingers fly across the screen, blocking each person who messaged or commented. I wrestle back shuddering sobs to get rid of the evidence of their perversions before they permanently stain my soul.
My phone vibrates again.
One last message to end the night.
Leo Duval: I’m sorry.