Chapter 2
We so appreciate your interest and your support, but…
Penny pulled her eyes away from the letter. She knew the beautifully written rejection letter verbatim, but her eyes kept straying to it. But no matter how well written, it still stung. She’d invested time reaching out to authors and their publicists hoping to have Get Lost added to their book tours. Author visits brought exposure and additional revenue to the store.
“Penny? Pen? You still there?” Tanya asked.
“Yes, sorry. So, where did you and Mr. This-Week go to dinner? Let me live vicariously. Please,” she begged. Penny turned her back on the letter and focused on her friend’s words. Tanya was an excellent storyteller. Penny had told her for years to write her own stories instead of working as an editor at the medium-sized publishing house she’d started at, or technically, they’d started at. Tanya’s story dropped Penny into a day-in-the-life-of a single-woman in New York City. She sighed.
“Do you want me to stop?” Tanya asked.
“No, keep going. I’ll wallow in my would’ves, could’ves, should’ves when we’re done.”
“You know, it might not be too late. We’ve always got overflow. I could pitch you as a contractor, and you could do the job remotely.”
“That’s the reason right there. I don’t want to work remote, and each manuscript would remind me I am.”
“I wish you were here, too. But at least you still get to work with books,” Tanya said. But for how long, Penny wondered. She waved her hand toward the corkboard and all the other rejection letters moved to the side. Holding them in place, she used her other hand to guide the newest rejection letter toward the others. It quivered in place before Penny flicked her finger and stabbed it to the board with a unicorn push pin. Stabbing it felt good even as the guilt nibbled at her, like it always did.
Aunt Elspeth didn’t allow magic in the bookstore or in their office. She didn’t want to risk a customer seeing something they shouldn’t. But instead of encouraging discretion and caution, she’d banned it. Another sore point she and Elspeth didn’t agree on, but as the minority partner, Penny held her tongue and refrained from using magic. Unless she was alone in the office with the door closed.
“I do, but I’d enjoy it more if I had a solid plan moving into Q-four. All my ideas have fizzled and every time I bring it up to Elspeth, she brushes off my concerns as if we’ll have a great season just because she wishes it so.”
“How great does it need to be?” Tanya asked.
“October thru December are always the critical months for us, but this year it feels a bit more important.”
“Probably feels that way with a month-long European vacation looming in your future,” Tanya said, and Penny could almost see her friend rolling her eyes.
“Visiting family in Scotland in March is hardly a vacation.”
“But it won’t be a hardship, either. You’ll have a great time, you know you will, and once that’s done, you’ll have your two weeks in the south of France. Now that’s a vacation, even if the weather might be iffy.”
The only iffy part is the cost.Penny hadn’t shared with anyone that Get Lost was on shaky financial ground. The first nine months of the year were always lackluster, but until this year, they’d always broken even each month. The cold and record snow last winter had kept people at home and there were some days the only activity they saw was the book clubs they sponsored.
Spring sales had been mediocre, and although summer was better than she’d forecasted, they hadn’t made up for losing the winter months. And if Penny didn’t come up with some stellar marketing to drive people into the store for their holiday shopping, she could kiss goodbye her two weeks of hiking and biking and staying at that cute villa surrounded by lavender fields.
“You’re right. It will be a lovely vacation. Speaking of, any plans to come visit your long forgotten friend. It’s your turn.”
“Not that you’re keeping score or anything.” Tanya laughed. “I’m out of PTO, but the boss mentioned something about comp time for that huge project last month, so maybe?”
Penny asked Tanya about the new neighbors, the ones that should have been hers, and the little bodega down the street. Tanya caught her up on all the office-gossip, and the industry news that didn’t make the papers. Each snippet reminded Penny of all that she missed, but like a masochist, she settled into the worn office chair—putting her phone on speaker mode—and encouraged Tanya to tell her everything.
Penny’s watch vibrated, and she bolted upright, grateful that she’d set an alarm in case her day got derailed. She crossed the small office and locked the door before slipping off her shrug and pulling her dress over her head. She kicked off her sandals and tugged on her biking shorts.
“Penny, are you okay? You sound out of breath.”
“Stupid bike shorts. Why do they have to be so tight?” Penny dropped to the chair and grabbed her socks. “I’m fine, but I need to cut this short. Maggie and I are meeting Cal and his two roommates for a hike in about five minutes, and I’m trying to get ready.”
“Ooh, hiking with football players sounds like a much better way to end the day than riding home in the subway like a sardine.”
“I’ll let you know.” Penny hoped Tanya was right. A male-type diversion might be exactly what she needed to get out of her funk. But it would be a short-term diversion, because Penny had never met a man more interesting than a book.
Bash tugged his Tetons ball cap further down his face. Several locals had already approached the three men, and while signing autographs came with the job, Bash didn’t have the energy for it. Not today. The last time he’d been this nervous had been right before appearing live on Ian Banks’s televised sports show. But the stakes were higher now. He wanted this to work, and he didn’t want to embarrass Cal in front of his sisters.
He hadn’t met Cal before moving in, and he hadn’t seen Lucas since their early days playing. But Lucas had reached out and convinced him to share the house with them. Cal’s parents had recently remodeled the ranch-style house in a neighborhood near the stadium. The rooms were large and the ceilings were high. It was perfect for three oversized men.
He’d always chosen to live alone, but so far it was the best housing situation he’d had in his career. Cal and Lucas were the easy, extroverted types, and Lucas would talk his ear off if Bash let him, but he liked these men and he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of them. Today needed to be a success.
“Assuming I pass today’s test with your sisters, what’s next in Operation Tin Man?” Cal and Lucas looked at him, baffled. “That was my childhood nickname,” Bash explained, shrugging.
“You’re not heartless, you’re reserved. Kids can be so stupid,” Lucas said, sounding disgusted. Bash refrained from telling them his mom had started it. He’d played the role for his sixth-grade spring play, and she’d said it was perfect for him. Even back then, he’d sucked at connecting with people. He had a heart. He knew he did, because if he didn’t, why would he go to all this effort trying to connect? Bash knew he couldn’t go through life alone. People were useful.
“Still water and all that crap,” Cal said. “Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone was as talkative as Chatty-Cathy Lucas here?” Cal dodged as Lucas tried to knock off his cap.
“And you tend to hang back and watch people. You need to stop studying them and start interacting with them. You’re an interesting person. You need to get comfortable sharing.” Bash cringed at the thought, but he nodded so Lucas knew he’d heard him. A therapist had shared that golden nugget for successful interactions, and Bash used it often.
Cal went back to his phone and Lucas resumed his hallway stakeout. Bash didn’t know what the man was looking for, but he seemed intent on finding it. They stood in the wide hallway between Get Lost bookstore, the store Cal said his aunt owned, and Brewster’s, the coffee shop his sister Maggie managed. Large double-doors flanked both ends. One led to the parking lot next to Tumble Falls, a popular tourist destination, and the other to a busy street.
The original version was so much better, he thought, looking at the cover of a sci-fi novel. The new cover had the movie’s hero and heroine on it, and when he flipped it over, a picture of the alien warship. So, predictable, he sneered. Bash’s eyes traveled over the large display, and he stepped back to get the full feel of it. While the revised sci-fi cover was disappointing, the display of books that had inspired recent summer movie blockbusters and binge-worthy series wasn’t.
It was eye catching and effective, based on the number of people who’d stopped to look and the few who’d carried books into the store. More lookers than buyers, and Bash wondered how many lookers turned into a buyer and, on average, how many books did someone look at before buying? Dad should know, Bash thought, making a mental note to ask the CEO of Vander Vetter Publishing.
The family-owned publishing house had started in Amsterdam in the 1850s, but had moved to New York City when the Vander Vetter family immigrated shortly before World War I. VV Pub also had offices in London, Melbourne, New Delhi, and Curacao, but Bash preferred their New York City office.
They expected him to take over from his father when he retired, but lately his dad had made noises about wanting Bash to join sooner. Bash didn’t know if his dad was burned out and truly needed the help, or if he wanted to escape and shed his responsibilities. John Vander Vetter would rather be on a golf course or sailing than stuck in an office. Dislike of an office and a love of books were about the only things they had in common. And their love for Gloria Sebastian, Bash’s mother, John’s wife, and an internationally best-selling author of crime procedurals and thrillers.
Bash thumbed through the interior pages to see the layout as he felt Cal lean over his shoulder. “What do you think?”
That they did a hatchet job on the original book and the author must have signed away all his rights to the movie’s producers. But he couldn’t say that. From what he’d seen, neither Cal nor Lucas were recreational readers, and no one associated with the NFL, other than team lawyers, knew his true identity thanks to a mix-up in college.
The person who’d ordered the jerseys hadn’t understood Bash’s full last name and, seeing the freedom in a new identity, Bash hadn’t pushed for a correction. He lived most of his life under his professional name, and it usually worked for him. With it, he could escape his family responsibilities and niggling guilt, and leave Sebastian Vander Vetter to deal with them in the future.
“Eh, the movie’s always better,” Bash said, dropping the book.