Chapter 1
Bailey
I need a redemption outfit for tonight, and that dress looks like a purple chicken giving birth to a snake baby.
All while fighting against gravity.
Simon holds the dress an inch higher with a cockeyed grin plastered to his face, then he rattles — the man actually rattles — the dress at me.
It jerks back and forth on the hanger as if alive, sending hundreds of tiny sequins into a frenzy and throwing glittery rainbows across the walls of my bedroom.
His eyebrows dance to the beat of the dress, as if two caterpillars are fighting for their lives against the thick rims of his glasses. The red plastic frames match his sweater today — a signature move for him.
I shift my gaze from the caterpillar brows to his eyes, which look like two saucers of medium roast coffee, with one having had just a tad more milk poured in than the other.
Any other day, I’d wear this dress without question. My publicist and best friend, Hollis, who doubles as Simon’s boss, would never steer me wrong, and she’s the one who chose it.
But tonight is not just any other day.
And I can’t go with what Simon is shaking at me because of one reason and one reason only: Hollis’ older brother.
When I approved the dress, I didn’t think he was coming.
So, explaining to Simon that I need to wear something other than that purple feather duster he’s shaking at me would involve me admitting to him that I need to look chic and grown up tonight.
Like really chic and grown up. I have to make up for the last time I saw Rhett Monroe, nearly two years ago, when I’d shown up to another party wearing that horrible, ugly Christmas sweater with the fuzzy, mad cat on the front.
I hadn’t known he’d be there.
Why would I? He hadn’t been back home since leaving for the SEALs, and no one, not even his parents, had expected him home before Christmas that year.
But tonight, I do know he’s coming.
Which means, tonight calls for something that’ll make his jaw drop, but in a good way this time.
There are only two small problems when it comes to navigating this situation: One, Simon is a gossip queen. And two, he has Hollis on speed dial. So, if I explain my need for a better outfit choice because I’m going to be seeing Hollis’ brother tonight, he would immediately tell her.
So, I go for the safer option.
“Simon,” I begin, leaning back in my chair. “I know I approved this look last week, and I know Now magazine is coming to get a photo of me with my new book, but I have another option.” I look from the dress to him with a firm, absolutely not look in my eye.
Simon settles his weight back on his heels and counters my look with a you’re-not-changing-your-mind-now gleam in his.
I glance at my watch.
The party is in one hour.
“Just try it on,” he insists, holding it out.
I shake my head. “You have to see my backup option first.”
“Bailey, this is one of those dresses that looks far better with a body in it than a hanger. You need to go for broke tonight. Trust me.”
“I’d rather go for not broke.”
He laughs. “You know what I mean. This one needs a body to reach her full potential.” He leans in to whisper, “We don’t want to let the dress down before she’s had a chance to express herself.”
He shakes the hanger again.
Although book release parties are usually low-key affairs, even in New York, mine have grown considerably in size since my first book was released seven years ago, so a purple sequin feather number is not completely out of the ordinary.
Right after my first book came out, Hollis scooped me up as her only author client because I’m also her best friend.
But it was more than that. While recklessly ambitious, almost to a fault, Hollis had already projected how my writing career would go before I did, and then she made sure it would happen exactly how she pictured it.
That’s what has made her so successful, and at such a young age.
I remember the day she made New York’s Top Thirty Under Thirty list at just twenty-four years old, while the other twenty-nine people on it were hovering up near their thirties.
My best friend was the youngest on the list by a long shot.
Now that we’re both nearing thirty, Hollis has cemented her place as a legend in business circles around here — while I like to stay hidden and preferably out of purple sequin dresses, if I can.
I’m not a celebrity, like the rest of her clients.
Nor do I pretend to be, or want to be. I’m just someone who likes to write books, making a career out of hiding behind a laptop while hoodwinking an entire generation of hopeless romantics because my stories focus on the one thing I’ve never personally experienced.
Love.
At least when it comes to a two-way, reciprocated type of thing.
I write about the world’s favorite emotion. And I think it would be mine, too, if I could wrangle it.
Meanwhile, readers in exactly thirty-seven different languages call me the Queen of Heartache, known for my brooding male characters and levels of angst that would put most teenage girl fantasies to shame.
Speaking of teenage fantasies . . . there’s a reason I’m so concerned about tonight.
Rhett, Hollis’ older brother, might be coming, but wearing a purple sequin feather duster is not the beginning of a night that ends with the type of happy ending I might include in one of my books.
Simon’s here tonight instead of Hollis since she’s stuck babysitting her biggest meathead client in London on the set of a new film.
I don’t know when she’ll get to come back since the filming schedule is running behind thanks to her client’s legendary temper, but it’s working in my favor.
The fewer eyeballs on me when Rhett walks in the door tonight the better thanks to me having one of those faces that tends to give everything away.
Simon, evidently, has the same issue.
He peers over the top of the fluttering sequins with a look that says it all: Why are you being difficult?
I can’t give him an honest answer.
Last Christmas, when I showed up at his parents’ annual holiday party, Hollis had warned me not to mention the sling her brother still had wrapped around his shoulder, because apparently, mentioning the injury made Rhett a bit salty — a mistake that Hollis had already made before the party was underway.
But he’d come up behind me at the eggnog station, and he meowed behind my back.
I turned just in time to hear him deadpan, “Merry Catmas, kid,” while glancing down at the ugly cat on my chest.
It was hardly the reunion I’d dreamed of having one day.
And now, against all odds, he’s showing up for my book release party for this particular book. The one I started writing ten years ago, and the only one I didn’t want him to see.
I don’t know what inspired me to finally finish this particular story after so many years, nor what inspired me to actually hand it off to my editor.
But now that it’s getting released, I can only describe what I’m feeling as some type of strange buyer’s remorse.
Like I signed the papers for it to be out in the world, though I kind of wish that I hadn’t, and of course, this is the one and only event after six book releases that Rhett decided to change his RSVP from a classic Rhett no to a heart-stopping yes.
While drinking my second cup of morning coffee, two days ago, Rhett was still listed under his own custom RSVP column as Raise a glass without me, Bay!
By happy hour that same day, he’d been moved into a new, Turns out, I’ll be in New York this weekend after all. See you Friday! column.
Seven no’s to seven parties, he’d finally changed one to a yes.
The no was always for a good reason, but Rhett’s declining has become so predictable that it’s become a little tradition: I invite him, and he responds with a very generous, if not overly polite, I can’t come type of reply.
I could recite them all from memory except the one year he hadn’t responded at all.
Book release party #1: Bailey, I’m deploying right now and I have no idea where, otherwise I’d come party it up! Huge congrats, kid!!! I always knew you could do it. Cheering you on from wherever I’ll be!
Book release party #2: Sorry, Bay. Rooting for you from somewhere in the world. So proud of your success!!
Book release party #3: You’re nailing this author thing! Next time, I hope to be there.
Book release party #4: Keep writing so I can make it to one of these. Would rather be partying with you guys. Trust me. Raise hell, kid.
Book release party #5: The year he didn’t respond at all.
Book release party #6: Sorry, can’t.
And book release party #7 (tonight’s invitation): Raise a glass without me, now crossed out and replaced with, See you Friday!
The first time he said no was a letdown. I was releasing my very first book soon after college graduation and wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but especially loud enough for him to take note. No matter where he was in the world.
I rode the high of picturing him reading that invitation for weeks, even if in the end he couldn’t come. That first book proved to me that I could do it, with the unspoken undertone of proving it to him, too.
But after my second book release came and went without Rhett around to high-five me in person, I figured that would be the case each time. He was busy carrying out top-secret operations I’d never know a thing about, while I was busy writing books he might never read.
And I was right.
Until tonight.
Book releases, while they may feel life-or-death to me, are not thought to be by anyone else, but especially by the Navy. They don’t give their SEAL team leave very easily unless it’s a true life-or-death situation back home, and even those are up for negotiation.