Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
After the video ended, Tony and I said nothing for a long while. It was hard to look on the bright side of what we’d just seen—especially considering that the video had gained thousands more views in the past minute we’d spent watching it.
I cleared my throat. Forced a smile. “Look, maybe Melanie Joan might have to pause the memoir for a little while,” I said. “But it’s not that big a deal. People have short attention spans, and she’s…like…the Madonna of romance writers. Who is Leila Donnelly in this world?”
Tony stared straight out at the ocean, the sky pink from the setting sun. “The Taylor Swift of romance writers.”
“Oh.”
We both went quiet again. He gazed back down at his screen. I tried one of those yogic breaths. It didn’t work very well.
Tony groaned.
I looked at him.
“I just thought of something even worse,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“The video now has five hundred fifteen thousand views.”
“Yeah? And?”
“What if Melanie Joan is one of them?”
“Oh, no…” I plucked my phone out of my bag and called Spike.
He answered immediately. “Please tell me you’ve found Book Babe,” he said.
“I wish,” I said.
“Shit,” he said.
I cleared my throat. “Has Melanie Joan, uh, seen the latest?”
“What’s the latest?” Spike said.
I exhaled. “I’m hoping and praying I should take that as a no.”
“She’s sleeping,” he said. “She was spiraling, so I convinced her to take an Ambien and lie down.”
“Thank God.” I told Spike about the video in which Leila Donnelly offered a whispery condemnation of Melanie Joan, whom she called an “out-of-touch, elderly pick-me girl who weaponized her privilege against one of the most generous members of the romance community, Book Babe.” The final thirty seconds of the video consisted of a screenshot of Melanie Joan’s notorious ReadAnon comment.
It had been the first time I’d ever seen it in full, and I had to say, it was an eye-popper.
I considered myself pretty worldly, yet there were sex acts described in the comment that made me yearn for a whiskey and one of Melanie Joan’s water pills—just to erase the images from my memory.
“I’ve never seen the comment,” Spike said.
“Consider yourself lucky,” I said.
Spike was silent for a few seconds, taking in all I had told him. “Donnelly really called MJ elderly?” he said.
“Yep.”
“How can we keep her from seeing it?”
“I don’t think we can. But we can at least prolong the inevitable so Tony can be there to deal with her reaction,” I said.
“Thanks a lot,” Tony said.
“You’re the one getting the regular commission,” I said. “Spike, are you in the hotel room with her?”
“Same suite. I’m in the living room.”
“When did she go to sleep?”
“Probably half an hour ago.”
“Anyone else there with you?”
“Harold.”
“Does he still have her phone?”
“I’m pretty sure. Harold, do you have her phone? He does. He just showed it to me.”
“Does she have anything in the room with her? Laptop or tablet?”
“Fuck. We didn’t check.”
I told him we were on the way. Tony and I got into my car. Rosie hopped into the backseat. Spike stayed on the line, his voice shifting over to Bluetooth as I pulled out of the parking lot. “She’s got a tablet in there with her,” he said. “Harold just told me.”
“Can you sneak it out without waking her?”
“I’m going to try.”
I glanced at Tony. His jaw was tight. Both of his hands were balled into fists, that college ring of his glimmering. I’d never seen him this tense. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him tense at all.
“I woke up in L.A. this morning, and everything was fine,” Tony said. “Beautiful sunrise. Perfect weather to go jogging…”
“I hear you,” I said. “Right up until lunch, the most stressful thing on my agenda was dinner at my parents’.”
“Was that what you were talking about on the phone earlier?” Tony asked. “Did Richie have to cancel on dinner?”
I gazed out the window. “To be fair, I gave him very short notice.”
I could feel him watching me. “You want to know the best thing about not being in a relationship?” he said.
“No,” I said. “But I bet you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“You never get disappointed,” he said. “That’s the best thing.”
I turned and looked at him. He had a point, I supposed. But it wasn’t one I wanted to openly agree with. I went back to the window.
Over the Bluetooth, I heard muffled conversation—Spike and Harold. Neither of us had ended the call. “Everything okay over there?” I said.
“Harold just said he heard something in the bedroom,” Spike said.
“Something?”
“A stirring,” Spike said.
“A stirring?” Tony said.
“Harold’s words, not mine.” Spike told us he was going in. “Harold, if you can distract her, I’ll try and sneak the tablet out,” he said. But the end of his sentence was drowned out by a scream so ear-piercing, I nearly swerved into the next lane.
Rosie yelped.
Tony and I looked at each other.
“Guess she saw the video,” Tony said.