Love at First Write
This is where I live now. This barstool. This barstool in this mod-glam lounge with ebony wood and brass fixtures and vintage
etched glasses. I signal for another martini and pick up my medium-rare burger without a bun. Yolk drips down my fingers,
and I think adding the sunny-side egg on top might have been a mistake until the salty creaminess coats my tongue, and this
is bliss. Maybe I should forget about Hartley West and become a food critic.
AI can’t take over that too, can it?
My second martini arrives loaded with olives. I wipe my hands on the black napkin given without me even having to ask. No
white fuzz on my black pants. I make a mental note to tip well.
I have a sudden urge to text Roxanne a picture of my drink. My house has a fully stocked wine fridge but little hard alcohol. Roxanne fancies herself an amateur mixologist and I’m her very willing focus group. I begin digging into my tote, which is hanging from a hook beneath the bar top, when I remember that I don’t have my phone. Rosie insisted on taking it from me when I said I was going to the bar.
Hartley must have checked a dozen Mary Poppins suitcases full of her books. At the signing after the impromptu panel, she
certainly wasn’t lacking for copies. Good thing (for her), considering her line of eager fans outnumbered everyone else’s.
You could say it’s because we’ve all been here before, same as the majority of these readers who paid extra to attend the
meet and greet. I recognized at least half. Books signed by us must wallpaper their homes. You could say that. Or you could say something else. Hartley West is on the precipice. A novelty that cannot turn into a sensation.
The last text I received before Rosie took my phone was from Blaire . No news is no news! Hang tight!
Tell that to my banner crammed inside an orange crate somewhere.
The flump of a bag onto the bar to my right sloshes olive juice over the rim of my martini.
“That looks disgusting,” Fiona says, pointing at my crumbled soggy mess of a burger. “Can I have a bite?”
The growling of my stomach begs to be echoed by the same from my lips, but I push the plate toward her. My hips will thank
me. Past the age of forty, you gain weight simply by smell.
“I didn’t eat dinner. Keto,” Fiona adds by way of explanation, grabbing a fork and knife I didn’t think to use. She carefully
crafts a morsel perfectly layered with burger, egg, tomato, and lettuce. “S’just okay.” She creates another little amuse-bouche
for herself, and I want to yank back my plate, but Lacey’s words about being a lone wolf repeat in my head.
Lacey is as sociable as my parents. She doesn’t understand that I can be as animated as I am in front of a crowd and still call myself an introvert. But introverts are like reusable batteries. We need time to recharge. Another reason why I didn’t socialize much at events early on. I’m only realizing now that the other authors might have taken my early lack of engagement as a snub.
“Did you hear?” Fiona says, pushing the long strands of her red wig over her shoulder. “The featured panel, the one they didn’t
ask me to be on, Beautiful on the Inside? Riley Moore’s moderating it. I loved her in that gender-swapped Robin Hood. She
does period so well . You or Rosie, slip in my name, would you?”
I give a noncommittal nod and look past Fiona to where Hartley leans against the wall beside the entrance to the lounge. I
almost don’t recognize her. She seems taller despite wearing the same boots. She’s changed into jeans and a bomber jacket,
her hair piled atop her head in one of those stylishly haphazard top knots. She’s talking to a man nearly equal her height.
With dreamy dark waves.
Wearing a puffer vest.
He turns slightly as he digs into his pocket.
What the—
The “volunteer” handing Tara Kara the index cards.
The “early attendee” who nearly tripped over my banner.
One and the same: Brad.
A perfectly seeded plot twist I didn’t see coming. I scrunch down behind Fiona and watch as Brad places something in Hartley’s
open palm. Drugs? Is it drugs? Let it be drugs. Drugs have to trump the “brainless coward” remark. Though it’d be better if the transaction were going the other way.
I reach for my phone. Which is in Rosie’s purse.
Fiona slides the plate across the bar. She’s left me a perfectly layered bite. I gulp it down followed by half my martini.
“Our editors are pissed,” she says. “Mine’s been blowing up my phone all night.”
“Give it to me,” I snap.
“What?”
“Your phone, give it to—”
Hartley is the definition of smug as she pats Brad’s puffer vest and saunters off.
Dammit.
“They’re all talking,” Fiona says.
“What?” Did Fiona see Hartley talking to someone other than Brad?
“Sofie, are you even listening?” Fiona says. “How many of those have you had?” She gestures for the bartender, slices her
finger in front of her throat, and jerks her head in my direction. “They’ve been talking amongst themselves.”
“Who?”
“Our ed-i-tors ,” she enunciates. “Mine, yours, Rosie’s, Grace’s. They were concerned before, but with Hartley and her AI buddy now directly
threatening their livelihoods, to say nothing of ours, they’re livid. The names my editor is calling my house’s legal department
and CEO and board and everyone else can’t be said in public. She’s been trying to insert contract clauses against our work
being allowed to be used to train AI for years. Ahead of the curve.”
Brad inhales a deep breath, rakes his hand through his hair. He turns. Looks directly at me. And runs.
I snatch my tote and the last olive-laden toothpick from my drink and take off after him.
“Can I finish that then?” Fiona yells after me.
Frostbite, this is how I’m going to die. Lacey would call it fitting, perhaps Roxanne too, if my untimely death were to mirror my somewhat frosty persona. We’re outside the hotel. In February. Neither of us has a coat. Despite my short legs working overtime to catch up to Brad, I’m freezing. He’s nearly at the Bean. At the edge of Millennium Park, a cart sells hats and scarfs and sweatshirts. I grab my wallet out of my tote as I pass. I shove several twenties into the cashier’s hand, jarring her from her phone, and seize an orange Bears sweatshirt, a red beanie, and a Burberry knockoff blanket scarf from the shelves. I’m pulling the sweatshirt over my head as I land two feet in front of the gigantic silver sculpture in the plaza. There’s no sign of Brad.
I pull the beanie low over my ears and drape the scarf around my shoulders. Adrenaline and the extra layers warm me as I search,
eating my olives and pacing around the iconic kidney-shaped installation that still fills me with awe.
I look up. I see him reflected in the Bean. He crosses in front of one of the lights projecting up from the ground. It kills
his night vision, and I beeline for him.
My fistful of his puffer vest surprises him and he lurches back, his heavy winter boot crushing my ballet flat. I squeal,
and a couple strolling the edge of the park glance our way. Not needing any more viral in my life, I tamp down the anguish
in my voice and shout, “Foot cramp.”
Brad holds up a hand to them and rests his other around my waist. “Such a man, I am. Twenty-two years, you’d think I’d be
better at picking up the warning signs. I’ve got her. Come on, darling, back to the hotel.”
My blood boils, but I allow myself to lean into him. I ease the weight off my screaming toes, and the couple waves and continues
on their way. Satisfied, apparently, that self-deprecation is not a would-be assailant’s trait.
“So,” I say, removing Brad’s hand from my waist and turning to face him. “Would you like to tell me what the hell you’re doing
here?”
“Admiring the Bean. It’s actually called Cloud Gate.”
“Really? How fascinating,” I say, feigning interest, as if this man isn’t trying to destroy my life.
“The Bean is just a nickname. The artist hated it at first, but he came around.”
“Well, aren’t you cultured,” I say with sarcasm, immediately followed by a snipe of, “A necessity in your line of work, is
it?”
“I’m a farmhand, so not really.”
“A farmhand? You work on a farm? Like, slaughtering lambs and chickens?”
“Now that’s dark. What about squash? Potatoes? Haricot verts?”
“You grow squash and potatoes and haricot verts?”
“No, but I’m just saying, when you mention a farm, most people don’t immediately think murder.”
I narrow my eyes. “And when you attend a romance novel convention, most people don’t think drug deals.”
“Ooh, is this a game I don’t know about?” He lets go, and I wince as my full weight hits my foot. “So, when you attend a rodeo,
most people don’t think—”
“Enough,” I bark. “I’m serious. I saw you. After the day I’ve had—because of you—I deserve the truth.”
“Everyone deserves the truth. Some people are just better off without it.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“Thank you?”
I breathe. Roxanne always tells me to breathe. But it’s usually followed by her handing me a paloma. “How did you even get
here?”
“Route 3A to 93, on at Braintree, straight shot to the airport tunnel, direct from Logan, I got in about noon. You?”
I’m so flustered that I mumble a “Same.”
He slaps his chest. “Were we on the same flight? We could have carpooled.”
I really, really wish Roxanne and her palomas were here. “This is absurd.”
Brad leans against the polished silver of the Bean, not a single seam visible, and I realize I have no idea how they constructed
it. Brad probably knows.
“You know what’s absurd?” he says. “And a missed opportunity? When they commissioned this, they narrowed it down to two options.
The other was a slide. Ninety feet in the air. Some artist from New York proposed it, but the committee thought it was ostentatious.
To think, a slide, pretentious, but a giant silver kidney’s totally natural.”
I find myself saying, “A slide sounds like a liability nightmare.”
“True. But isn’t a little danger what makes things fun?”
“A philosophy expected of a drug dealer.”
Brad’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Oh, sorry, not that kind of farmer.” He whispers, “Mar-i-ju-ana. I can barely keep a succulent
alive.”
“I saw you. You dropped something into Hartley West’s palm. You’re here, same as you were at Harbor Books.”
He laughs. “So what, you think I’m her drug caddie?”
“Aren’t you?” Disappointment makes my foot hurt even worse. “And if you’re not, then what did you give her and why are you
here and goddammit I need some ice for my foot.”
Brad looks at me. Even though he’s wearing his puffer vest, it’s only over that volunteer long-sleeved red tee, and his cheeks
are flushed from the cold. “Come here.”
“What?”
He takes a step toward me. “Do your books have any declarative statements or are they all questions?”
“Shouldn’t you know, as my biggest fan?”
“Sofie, just give me your foot.”
“Wh—” I stop myself and kick my leg in the air. He catches my ankle and slips off my ballet flat, part of my standard event
uniform because they’re elegant and easy to walk in. (One hundred percent not because bending to put on a sock risks pulling a muscle in my groin.) He presses my foot against the Bean. It’s freezing.
It feels both awful and glorious at the same time. We stay like this, Brad holding my foot, until both sets of our teeth begin
to chatter. I draw my foot back. He lowers it to the ground, gently sliding my shoe back on like Prince Charming. Which he
is. Tall, dark, and handsome, right out of one of Fiona’s books and—
Christ, I’m so naive.
“A room key,” I say. “That’s what you were giving her. You two are a thing. You met after the event at Harbor Books, and she
forgave you for outing her. Of course, she did. Without you she’d have never gotten so much attention and—”
Oh—oh, goddammit.
“Outing her at Harbor Books wasn’t by chance.”
Brad pats the top my foot and stands. “Let’s get you some real ice.”
Every muscle in my body tenses. “The truth. Now.”
“It won’t help. It won’t change anything. It won’t make anything better.”
“And yet...”
He sighs deeply. “No, it wasn’t by chance. None of it was. I was a plant.”