Romantic Friction

Embrace the Darkness

“Lift with your knees,” Cooper-Brad says after I end my quick call to Fiona.

“The day my knees sprout opposing thumbs is the day that expression will make sense to me.”

“Writers,” he mutters. “Watch me.”

Cooper-Brad squats and tosses his empty arms out in front of him. He stands. And does it again. It’s like he’s riding an invisible

pogo stick.

“Like this?” I bend my knees an inch.

“Sofie, come on.” He squats. “Like.” Again. “This.” And again. And once more. “If twenty years of oyster farming have shown

me anything, they’ve shown me how to lift with my—”

“Knees, got it.”

He rights himself. “You’re messing with me.”

“You’re right.”

“I deserve it.”

“Right about that too.”

I unlock the tabs of the orange crate, and my lips thin. “This one, really?”

My own face stares back at me. Minus the crow’s feet and haphazard white hairs in my eyebrows. I reach inside and fold over

the end of my banner.

“I didn’t exactly have time to choose the perfect vessel to transport a dead body.”

“She’s not dead.”

“I didn’t know that, then, did I?” Cooper-Brad stages himself at Hartley’s head, gesturing for me to take her feet. We bend

like synchronized criminals. He counts down.

Before he hits three, I say, “You really thought she might be dead?”

He shrugs. “Rosie was cryptic. And your face when you left the room... My surfboard and I met with a shark off Wellfleet

and it was less angry than you. So death? Maybe? Maimed, for sure.”

“And still you came.”

“I came.” He rakes his hand through his curls. “Deal’s a deal, right? All we have is our word.”

The texts from Evil Spawn weigh heavy in my pocket.

I take Hartley’s feet. I restart the count. On three, we heave her off the floor and into the crate. Cooper-Brad’s stronger

than I am, and her head lands inside first with a thunk.

“Cooper-Brad!” I cry.

He cocks his head. “That’s sticking, then?”

“Not now.”

He grabs the aquamarine scarf I dropped on the floor and my heart pinches as he bunches it under Hartley’s head. I settle

her legs in the crate, tucking her feet beneath her because she’s half-giant.

What am I even doing here? This woman is passed out. Probably concussed. And I’m stuffing her in a storage bin? This isn’t real life. This isn’t my life. Especially not here, not now. Not when I’ve just left a room full of arguably my most dedicated fans.

My aching joints creak as I bend beside the crate. This woman wanted success. Success in this wildly glorious and confounding

industry. Just like me. I rub the bump on my ring finger. I may have my grandmother’s engagement ring back, but I gave it

up. Without hesitation. I should be embarrassed to admit it, but it’s who I am. All or nothing. That’s always been me. I didn’t

want one Smurf action figure; I wanted the entire village. Why bother reading one Sweet Valley High if you weren’t going to read them all? If I was going to study for a test, I was going to S-T-U-D-Y. Flash cards and handwritten

notes and highlighters and practice tests. And if I couldn’t have what I wanted—straight A’s or a dozen cookies or the friend

I thought wanted me too—I’d get by without any.

I never wanted to just be an author. I wanted to be the author.

Cooper-Brad begins to lift the lid. “Ever wonder why she picked you?”

“Not until this moment.” I look closely at Hartley. She lacks the lines around her eyes and sagging jowls that usually accompany

a woman’s shift to gray. Her hair is so smooth, so uniformly white, and I scan from the tips to the roots, admiring the sheen.

But the roots... I once again use the flashlight on my phone and press my face too close to hers. Her roots are red. I

remember her standing at ease before Brad in a completely different persona with her hair haphazardly piled above her head

wearing that bomber jacket. Hartley West is an excellent liar.

Her eyes snap open. The shock of it makes me gasp, and a few drops of my spittle fall onto her face.

“Queen Bee,” she says, her voice a little pained but clear.

“Hartley.” I swallow my surprise and hefty amount of guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

She fixes her gaze on me. “Unseat the queen, and you become the queen.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry?”

Hartley touches the back of her head and winces. “You hit me.”

“No, no, you fell. There was a can of soap. Metal and—”

She bites her bottom lip. “Sofie Wilde came at me with a mop. My scream died in my throat. I couldn’t move. I could barely

breathe. And then... everything faded to black.”

“That’s not—”

She smirks. “No one stages a coup of the second-in-command. Take down the best, you become the best. Voila.”

She got one thing right—I am the best. And I’m picking up that goddamned sword.

“Cooper-Brad? Find me an extension cord.”

Wheeling a squirming body in a gigantic book crate down the halls of a sold-out hotel during the largest romance readers’

convention in the world while trying to go unnoticed turns out to be exhilarating. This is how I imagined Callum felt when

kidnapping Torrence the first time. My writing was spot-on. No surprise, after all, considering I am a great author.

I laugh out loud. Suggesting that I may very well be a great author who is losing her marbles from an overdose of adrenaline.

“There. The north elevator bank.” Hartley’s purse bounces against my hip as I direct Cooper-Brad to follow the signs. Fiona said it was the north elevator bank that led to the underground speakeasy—or the south. Grace grumbled in the background, then her voice came over the phone, saying, “North, north, north—details, Fiona, you never pay attention. This is why your settings lack authenticity.” A squabble ensued, with Fiona calling out Grace’s trite character arcs and I hung up the phone.

“Clarice, nine o’clock,” Cooper-Brad says.

I swivel my head to the right.

“Nine o’clock,” he says with urgency.

“Can’t you just say left?” I lower the Read or Bleed hat and peer out from beneath the brim. Clarice’s cheeks match the color

of her red volunteer shirt. Her hands flail as she animatedly speaks into the Bluetooth headset that’s situated in her ear.

“Disappeared, what do you mean disappeared ? It’s the party for her own book. Of all the things Sofie Wilde would do, she’d never abandon her fans.”

My brain seizes on all the things she’d do before shifting to abandon her fans . That’s what they’re going to think, isn’t it? After my pity-fueled tirade, my fans are going to turn against me, aren’t

they?

A thunk comes from inside the crate, and I quickly toss Cooper-Brad my phone. I duck behind a cardboard cutout of a heart

with a Band-Aid across it. Cooper-Brad raises the volume on my phone, and out comes Rosie’s voice. “Not that we needed the boost, considering we’re the top-selling genre across all books in every category.” Cheers from what sounds like a full house. “But, yes, certainly, the pandemic caused people to turn to what we romance authors have been delivering for decades: happy

endings.”

This is our cover for when Hartley thumps the crate. Cooper-Brad and I have been role-playing as such hard-core fans that

we listen to the livestream of the panels while doing our volunteer duties. We (and by “we” I mean Cooper-Brad) stuffed a

washcloth in Hartley’s mouth and tied her hands with my scarf and her feet with the extension cord. But that hasn’t stopped

her from smacking into the crate. A lot.

“Obviously,” Clarice says. “I know that. It’s not going to help us in our argument to get her keynote back.”

Clarice, dear Clarice. I knew you were my biggest—

“Lacey might be posturing. But she’s the publicist to more than a third of our authors. If we don’t get Sofie Wilde that keynote,

and Lacey isn’t bluffing, we can say goodbye to nearly all of our most popular authors next year.”

Oh. Oh.

Well, thank you, Lacey. Whatever it takes, right?

“The timing for all this is horrific,” Clarice says. “Riley Moore’s on her way, and I haven’t even had a chance to make sure

her toilet flushes properly, let alone stock her room with orange Starbursts and peppermint-scented soap.”

And I couldn’t get my hand sanitizer disguised as lotion?

“Let’s do this,” Clarice says. “The flu has been going around. If she doesn’t show in twenty minutes, that’s what we say.

She’s sick. Then we end the launch party and give them passes to cut the line at Hartley West’s Beautiful on the Inside panel

this afternoon.”

Hartley’s Beautiful on the Inside panel?

Cooper-Brad continues on to the north elevators. Clarice is too distracted to question the crate that’s hopping like a jacked-up

car. When the elevator dings, I run despite my attempt at keeping a low profile. Cooper-Brad and the orange crate are positioned

at the back of the elevator behind two readers, probably mid-twenties, dressed as goth vampires—Tara Kara must have a Q&A

or an author talk soon. I slip in, head down, not making eye contact.

A young woman holding two fake fangs beside her leg says, “The hotel next door has a high tea.”

The other, legs covered by black fishnets, responds, “Perfect, I could go for a scone.”

Goth vampires at high tea. Such an unabashed generation, one has to admire it.

Fake Fangs scrolls on her phone. “Wait, what? Vance? Megan, are you seeing this?”

Fishnets says, “Heard it in the bathroom from a woman dressed as Anne Boleyn talking to a woman who I think was supposed to

be Theodosia Burr. Sofie Wilde truly is a brilliant author.”

I feel a smile creeping in.

“Crappy person,” Fishnets adds.

“Megan! She did a crappy thing. That doesn’t mean she’s a crappy person.”

“But it might.”

“It might.”

And just as quickly, my smile fades.

The elevator doors part as we reach the lobby. As the two vampires exit, I sneak a peek at Fake Fangs, who wiggles her phone.

“Apparently Sofie Wilde had to leave her own event. Flu, they think.”

Cooper-Brad steps forward and extends his arm out to stop the doors from closing. “Don’t believe every tweet you read.”

Fake Fangs and Fishnets whirl around as if noticing him for the first time. I face the back of the elevator and cough to cover

Hartley’s whack against the crate.

“Oh, yeah?” one of them says. “And you are?”

Cooper-Brad slaps his chest. “Volunteer.”

“Can you get us tickets to Hartley West’s keynote?”

“Sofie Wilde’s doing the keynote.”

“Not according to this,” says the girl, presumably Fake Fangs with her all-knowing phone.

Cooper-Brad sighs. “What did I just say?”

“No offense,” says the other—Megan. “You’re our elder and everything, but you’re also, like, just one person. Why would I believe you over the hundreds of people posting about this?”

Hundreds are saying I’ve lost my keynote?

Cooper-Brad says, “More people believing a lie doesn’t make it true.”

Fake Fangs says, “Doesn’t make it not true. So, no tickets, then?”

“No,” Cooper Brad says. “Because it’s not Ms. Wilde who’s under the weather. It’s Hartley West.”

The doors close, and I spin back around.

“More than living up to my end of the deal,” he says.

“Long way to go, Cooper-Brad. But it’s a start.”

The elevator sinks to the underground level, an apt metaphor for how low we are now going. But it’s true, this is a start.

One that will give me some breathing room to figure out what comes next. Fake Fangs and Fishnets will spread the news that

Hartley West has the flu, not me, and it will become fact. Her absence at all her events explained without us having to do

anything more. The internet will make her disappear. The same way it made her appear in the first place. The reach of social

media is both terrifying and extraordinary.

I suddenly feel very, very tired. And by tired, I mean old.

I open my texts without reading the new ones from Lacey. I fire off a quick message, instructing her to contact Clarice and

tell her that I had an emergency. I cannot alienate my readers. Not when they have “the next Sofie Wilde’s” book just ready

to be added to their to-be-read lists, and not when I need them to be not only willing but eager to follow me from Jocelyn’s

world to the new stories I want to tell. I text Lacey and offer to buy my entire backlist for everyone at the event if they

wait for me to return in twenty minutes. I suddenly wonder if we should have drilled air holes in the crate.

I hesitate, then angle my phone away from Cooper-Brad.

Me: Headway, Lord of Darkness?

Evil Spawn: Oh, now I’m royalty? To what do I owe this change?

Evil Spawn: Wait, let me guess. Blaire’s burning sage and meditating on this.

Blaire. The Blaire who paid for me to go to my first festival and sends holiday cards on my behalf because she wants to stave off

my carpal tunnel.

Me: Forget it, this is a bad idea.

Evil Spawn: Truthfully, I love sage. And meditating? The lifeblood of my negotiating tactics. Stay the course, Wilde Woman. Hold tight.

What am I doing, like what am I doing ?

“Pantsing” leads to this: unrealistic events and weak characterization.

“A little help, Sofie?” Cooper-Brad says from beyond the open elevator door.

I tuck my phone back in my pocket and position myself behind the other end of the crate. Together, we guide it past ladders

and cans of paint. The construction detritus spreads down the hallway like breadcrumbs. We follow the trail until we reach

the end. A sign reads Pardon Our Appearance While We Work to Bring You a New Clandestine Experience!

Behind streams of yellow tape, an ornate door gleams with fresh varnish. Either the door is original or a well-done replica,

with long cracks and knots that make the wood appear aged.

“Is that—” Cooper-Brad points to a small indentation at chest height “—a bullet hole?”

“Is it wrong that I hope so?” I assess an even larger groove. “Bat?”

“Or a nightstick.”

A muffled cry accompanies a wild thumping from inside the crate. I feel a little bad. And then I remember her taking my hand

and calling me so pathetic .

“So, Sof, how good are you at picking locks?” Cooper-Brad says.

“Not something I’ve had to research, Coop . You?”

He shakes his head. “Not a lot of time for such delicate work during an apocalypse.”

“YouTube?” I reach for my phone.

“Leaves a history.”

Another muffled cry and then “it.”

Cooper-Brad says, “Did you catch that?”

“No. Do you think she’s okay?”

“Pathetic” or not, she can’t stay in there much longer. Though at least she wasn’t bumped along her majesty’s pitted road

and floated across white rapids like Fiona’s potato farmer. Still, it can’t be comfortable.

“What if she swallowed the washcloth?” I say.

Thump, thump, thump.

“I can do it!” Hartley’s voice is both raspy and shrill. “Let me out of here, and I will do it!”

“If she did swallow it, it doesn’t appear to have done any harm.” Cooper-Brad gestures toward the lock. “Well?”

I hug my arms tight to my chest. Common sense says this ends in mug shots no matter what we do. But if we give up now, that happens before I get the chance to stand on the stage as headliner of the Romance US convention—if I get nothing else, I at least want that. I bend to open the crate.

I nearly bite my tongue in surprise. Hartley is a fright. Sweat from her forehead has bled into her mascara, and black rings

line her eyes like a raccoon. Her hair is matted to her head. White fuzz from the washcloth sticks to her lips.

“Rosie Gardens,” she says, kneading my Photoshopped face between her hands. “Why didn’t I choose Rosie Gardens?”

I yank my banner out of her grip. “Yes, why didn’t you?”

Rosie would have never had a viral tantrum. Rosie would have opined a thoughtful and powerful op-ed in the New York Times in defense of art. Rosie wouldn’t have responded to Max Donner’s texts. If Hartley had chosen Rosie, I’d still have my keynote.

If Hartley had chosen Rosie, I wouldn’t be committing a felony. Because even if Rosie had come up with this scheme herself,

I wouldn’t be helping her. Odds are, she wouldn’t have asked.

“Sofie, don’t you see?” Hartley says. “I am both repulsed and in awe. This is exactly why I chose you.”

And then Hartley hawks a glob of snot-filled spit directly into my eye. (The left, in case you were wondering.)