7. Lola
Lola
“Good morning, sis,” Levi greets from the door, and I jerk awake, my back aching. I fell asleep at the computer. My neck is stiff, my face is numb from where it was resting on the desk, and my brain is still racing with the details of the story I was writing.
“Holy shit,” I groan, pushing my mess of tangled hair from one side of my head to the other. “I can’t believe I did that. I haven’t done that since I was in college.”
“Yeah,” Levi says, walking into the room and swinging the belt to his robe around. “You look like you had a worse night than I did.”
“It was bad?” I ask with a frown, sucking in a breath through my teeth. Alec and Levi looked like they were having such a good time when I left.
“Yeah,” he sighs, pouting. “He got me drunk, then brought me home.”
“Okay,” I say, “I’m still waiting for the part where it was bad.”
“We didn’t go back to his place! He wouldn’t even come in the front door here!”
“It was your first date, right?”
“Yes,” Levi says, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t have rights. He even…”
I roll my eyes, standing up and pushing on my lower back to try and stretch it out. Levi’s voice fades into the background as the pain cuts through my body, and I wince at the pressure just above my tailbone. I’m going to need a massage.
“Wait!” I gasp, cutting Levi off. Spinning on my heel, I push my laptop open. Then, I dance around when I see the word count pictured there. “Levi! Ten thousand words!”
“Woah,” he says, his eyes widening. “Didn’t you struggle to write fifty flat last month?”
“Yes,” I breathe, still staring at the word count, not believing that many words came out of me at once. And not just garbage but something I genuinely care about. “This is amazing. You have to tell Alec he’s the best thing to ever happen to us,” I add, brushing past Levi and heading for the bathroom. I desperately need a shower.
“Yeah, I’ll make sure to tell him that, never,” Levi says from behind me, and I stop in my tracks, turning around.
“What?” I poke my head back into the guest bedroom, where Levi has flopped onto the bed. “What did you say?”
“I’m not going out with him again,” Levi says, not looking up from his phone as he talks. “He’s clearly not interested.”
“What—did he text you this morning?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Levi,” I admonish, my voice stern. “You are not ruining it with this one. You are texting him right now, and the three of us are going to get coffee.”
“You like him so much, you date him!” Levi calls after me as I disappear into the bathroom. At his statement, an image of the hockey player from the night before flashes into my head, and I blush.
Sure, I came straight home and spent the night writing a character based on him. One that leaned over the heroine, teased her, and taught her how to ice skate, but that didn’t mean I should be thinking about him now.
I crank the water as hot as it will go, and while brushing my teeth, I pull out my phone. My eyes widen when I see the sheer number of notifications on the home screen. My mouth falls open, and my toothbrush goes limp in my hand.
There are about five thousand comments on my last story, most of them asking when the book will come out.
With a shake of my head, I click over and see person after person DMing me, asking if that’s a story I will publish. I also see a text from Maisie : Hockey romance—gurllll!
I ignore the text and go back to the messages from fans. I’ve gained a bunch of followers overnight, and it looks like my post was trending.
Hey , is your story going to be based on this??? says a message from romancegurlie2.
Attached to the message is a link to a video, so I click on it and watch the moment the puck hit the glass, and I shrank away, screaming. Rewatching it again, I cringe, realizing how unhinged it was for me to scream like that.
And then I watch Devon, zeroing in on him as he notices me, then skates over. I watch him watch me on the screen for a moment before getting my attention and raising his stick to me.
“…little lady.”
I scroll down to the comments, which are full of heart and fire emojis.
Okay, Chambers is a DILF.
I would literally die of second-hand embarrassment if this happened to me.
This is so cute, WTF.
So, the internet has seen the moment, and at least one person identified me as the woman in the video. That’s not great, but what is great is that my story was trending, and people were getting excited about it.
Leaving the water running and my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, I run back to the guest room, which is now free of Levi, and quickly take a picture of the word count on my document before uploading it to my story with a little hockey sticker.
Being an author now doesn’t just mean writing books—it also means building a brand and getting people excited about your books. I walk back to the bathroom, finally remembering to finish brushing my teeth and wondering if I can capture this momentum and hype people up for a sports romance. It’s my chance to re-vamp my brand and save my career.
***
“Okay, so, when they throw the puck—”
“—I wouldn’t use throw, but yes—”
“—across the rink, and it gets to the other side too fast, that’s icing. And then they have to do a face-off again.”
“Yes,” Alec says, “essentially. There’s a bit more to it than that, but you seem to be getting the hang of it.”
“I’m practically a hockey pro,” I say, scribbling down a bit more in my notebook.
“Yeah, sure,” Levi mutters, his head resting heavily on his fist. He’s staring down at his cappuccino. He’s not at all happy that I convinced him to bring Alec out here so I could talk hockey, but he owes me for going to the game in the first place, and I also said that if he ruined my flow now and stifled my creative spark, I would throttle him with my own two hands. “Are we done? My ass hurts from these seats.”
At this point, I’m so annoyed with Levi that I could push him into oncoming traffic, but Alec is staring at my brother with stars in his eyes. With a roll of my eyes, I snap my notebook shut before reaching into my bag and pulling out my laptop.
“You guys are free to go,” I say, waving my hand generally in their direction.
Sure, I wanted more of Alec’s help with the hockey knowledge, but I also knew if I could get Levi out of his head and into Alec’s presence, he would be less likely to throw the prospect of a healthy relationship into the fire and watch it burn.
“Well, uh,” Alec begins, “do you want to grab lunch or something?”
For a terrible second, I think Levi might say no, but then he just shrugs.
“Yeah, I’m hungry,” he says, standing from his chair, which pushes back with a horrible screeching sound. Before he goes, he reaches over and ruffles my hair, which he knows I hate.
“I know what you’re doing,” he whispers, “and it’s not going to work.”
I make a face at him right before he follows Alec out of the coffee shop.
With a moment to myself, I open my document and stretch my fingers, ready to start writing.
Except I don’t.
I sit there and stare at the blinking cursor. Then, I start a sentence, erase it, and try again. I consult my notebook.
Dread starts to build in my chest. No.
I can’t already be losing the inspiration when I only got it yesterday. As it is, I already have several pages ready to go. That should be a foothold. I can’t go back now.
Except I know that’s not true. A few thousand words are nowhere near an entire book, and I’ve abandoned manuscripts with more.
Before I know what I’m doing, I have my browser open, and after a quick search, I click on the Vipers’ website. Is there any chance they’ll be playing in Las Vegas again soon?
Unfortunately, no, there is not. I let out a sigh.
I click back to my document, stare at it for a moment, then make an executive decision. Opening the browser again, I find the right page and click purchase before I can talk myself out of it.