Chapter 24
Andi
I know that what’s happened has nothing to do with raw talent. It’s pure dumb luck. It’s about striking gold, writing what people want to read at the right time, and being privileged enough to get the visibility.
After years of struggling to hit readership in the four figures, despite endless hours on social media, trying to connect with readers, making elaborate promo graphics, always being behind the eight ball on marketing trends, I’d always assumed it was me.
Maybe people didn’t connect with my writing.
Maybe I simply didn’t have the talent. Because of the self-doubt, I used my day job as a scapegoat.
An excuse not to write anymore. What was the point in breaking my back, finding time to write books hardly anyone read?
But I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong.
My DMs and emails are out of control to the point where I can’t even keep up, let alone respond. Most are positive: people begging for a sequel, saying they binge-read it in one sitting. So I’m taking Nolan’s advice and embracing the only positive to come out of this shitstorm.
It’s encouraging, at the very least. Ever since I met Nolan, my creativity has sparked to a level that I can’t ignore or neglect any longer.
But now that so many new readers are finding my books, it’s like a fire hose, ideas coming at me before I can make an excuse not to do anything with them.
I’m even coming up with lines and dialogue in my head while at work, all of which I furiously record in my notes app for when I can spin them into magic late at night.
Of course, life finds ways to keep me humble. The AC in my apartment stopped working for unknown reasons and I had to sleep two nights nude, with a fan on full blast, until my landlord finally decided to send an HVAC guy to fix it.
“I’m going to Laine and Hunter’s wedding in Mexico, by the way,” I tell Amanda casually.
“Shut up! You are not!” she yells, to the horror of the woman in downward dog next to us. Hot yoga isn’t exactly my first choice of activity on a Saturday morning, especially when my apartment has been a sauna the past few days. But I’m willing to suck it up for my sister.
“Yup. It’s the third week of August.”
“Why are you flying to Mexico for them?” she asks, annoyed on my behalf.
“Because I’m happy for Laine and I want to support her,” I say truthfully. “And because Mexico might be fun.”
“Um, only if you have someone to hang out with. I volunteer as tribute!”
“Well, about that. I actually have a date.” My face involuntarily softens into a giddy smile when I say it.
She springs up, catching my smile before I can force it back to neutrality. “A date? I thought you were ‘too busy to date’?” She makes air quotes.
“I am. He’s just a friend from work,” I inform with a casual wave of my hand, even though it’s starting to feel anything but casual.
The Redblacks game confirmed the worst. Something I’ve been scared to admit since Squamish, or even the first night we met: that I have a crush.
A crush. On a man who’d rather eat glass than stay in this city much longer.
Not that it matters, because he doesn’t see me that way.
In fact, he specifically said he appreciates our “friendship” because we can talk about anything, which is true.
I’ve opened up to him more than I’ve ever opened up to anyone.
And maybe that’s a normal thing friends do.
Maybe I’ve been so starved for friendship all these years since Laine and Hunter, I can no longer tell the difference between a reciprocal friendship based on a solid foundation of trust, and a romantic relationship.
That must be it. Either way, I need to get my feelings in check, quick.
Amanda slow-blinks and gives me her Are you for real? head tilt. “Ands, you don’t have friends, last I checked. And Laine doesn’t count, even if she did pity-invite you to her wedding.”
I give her a swift kick in the thigh with the ball of my foot. Damn her for being entirely correct. “You think it’s a pity invite?”
She nods. “A hundred percent. She still has lingering guilt over breaking girl code, which is why she’s kept you strung along all these years.”
“Well, that’s harsh,” I note, scratching my head in thought.
Is that really what Laine has been doing?
Maintaining a thread of friendship because she feels bad for me?
Not because she still enjoys my company from time to time?
Not because she still cares about me as a person?
“I don’t think she’s been stringing me along.
We’ve each been taking turns reaching out to catch up. ”
Amanda doesn’t look so sure. “All I’m saying is, it’s okay to admit that your friendship has…
expired. You don’t need to have some epic argument for a friendship to end.
Some really amazing friendships just fade away with time, without any rhyme or reason.
And that’s not a bad thing. It means you’re evolving, changing. ”
Evolving. Changing. “I’m not so sure. I’ve felt stagnant the past three years,” I point out. The only time I don’t feel stagnant is when I’m writing.
“You have been,” Amanda agrees. “But I mean you and Laine specifically. You two are in entirely different places than you were when you first met, and I don’t just mean Hunter.
” She’s right. I’ve gone through a whole relationship and gotten my job with Gretchen, which has taken over my life.
Laine is equally busy working her way up the ranks at PCO… and now getting married.
“Yeah. Maybe,” I say, mostly to appease her.
Truthfully, what she’s saying rings true.
Laine and I have little to nothing in common anymore, aside from Hunter.
At the same time, she was my best friend.
All those days working side by side, laughing over our cubicle walls.
The late-night takeout at the office when we were slammed with data entry and cold-calling.
She was the first true best friend I really had.
It’s hard to come to terms with leaving her in the rearview entirely.
I care about her and I still want her in my life, even peripherally, even if it means I have to put up with Hunter from time to time. And fly to Mexico.
“And she’s asking a lot of you with this wedding,” Amanda says, reading my mind. “Going to Mexico for three days isn’t exactly cheap. Not to mention, that’s three days of awkwardness, pretending to be happy for them.”
“I am happy for them,” I point out. “Laine deserves happiness. And Hunter…he isn’t my favorite person. Do I wish for someone better for Laine? Of course. But he makes her happy and that’s the most important thing. Besides, it won’t be as awkward with Nolan.”
I make the grave mistake of inadvertently smiling when I say his name, which causes Amanda’s jaw to drop. “Are you two fucking?” she asks straight up. That’s the thing about Amanda—she doesn’t have a filter, even around Mom and Dave’s crusty family.
“No! Just hanging out. Platonically.” I consider explaining our arrangement and why we’ve been spending so much time together, but telling her we sometimes pretend to be in love in front of colleagues would only add fuel to the nonexistent fire.
“And he wants to go all the way to Mexico with you, for a wedding of total strangers, to hang out with you platonically?”
“Neither of us wants a relationship. He’s not planning on staying for long.”
“It’s not a relationship I think he’s after,” she says knowingly, stretching her leg back so far, my body hurts just looking at her.
“He wanted to support me because he knew it was going to be a weird situation. Trust me, he’s a really good guy.”
Her eyes flatten into slits. “I’m sure he is. Doesn’t mean he isn’t hoping to hook up with you after a few too many glasses of champagne at the reception.”
“He’s leaps and bounds out of my league,” I assure, second-guessing myself as it comes out.
Is it possible he does want to hook up? We did have that moment in our hotel room in Squamish where it felt like he did—until he put a stop to it.
I pull up the photos Gretchen took of me and him in Squamish and scroll to my favorite one before handing my phone to Amanda, who’s now transitioned to cobra pose.
I’m smiling into the camera while Nolan is looking at me with an open-mouthed smile, like he’s amused by something I’ve done or said.
I like it because it doesn’t look too posed, even though the whole thing was heavily orchestrated.
At a single glance, she throws my phone back onto the yoga mat like it’s coated with infectious bacteria. “Holy shit. Why didn’t you tell me he looked like that? I deserved some fair warning!” she screams, chin hitting the mat.
“I basically just did!” I holler back, matching her volume, to the horror of our fellow yogis.
“Why are we screaming?!”
“You started it,” I note, reverting back to my indoor voice before whispering, “Sorry, I’m, um, new to yoga.”
She sits up on her knees. “I didn’t expect him to look like Jack Ryan.”
“My point exactly. He could probably sleep with anyone he wants. Why would he want to hook up with me? I look like a librarian.”
“Librarians are hot, Ands. Shushing people with authority? Punishments for overdue books? Some people are into that. Besides, it’s always the serious ones who have a wild side.”
I work through a violent cough. I am not having this conversation with my little sister. “Anyway, Nolan is coming with me as moral support.”
“If you say so,” she says knowingly, clapping her hands together. “I can’t wait to know what Hunter is gonna wear for the ceremony. How much do you want to bet he’ll be in a vest?”
“What’s wrong with a vest?” I ask innocently to rile her up.
“Oh, nothing if you’re a fifty-year-old man on the brink of collecting that sweet pension.
” She was never a fan of Hunter, even while I was dating him.
She thought he was a smarmy, power-hungry social climber.
“Mark my words. He’s gonna look like that guy from Peaky Blinders, but the cheap knockoff version from Shein. ”
I let out a loud snort, earning a warning look from the instructor at the front of the room.
By the end of class, I find out about the new guy she’s hanging out with, Geo. They met on Hinge and she has a theory he’s lying to her about his career.
“He says he’s a pilot,” she tells me. “But his friend told me he actually works at the Booster Juice in the airport.”
“That’s…a really odd thing to lie about. Like…you could find out really easily.”
She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to her. And it probably doesn’t. “I figure he’ll tell me when he’s ready to. Hey, by the way, did I tell you I’m probably heading to BC with Hannah in the fall?”
“The girl who used to live in a storage space?” I confirm.
Amanda has so many friends of all varieties, it’s hard to keep track.
Whenever I talk to her, I’m reminded how remarkably boring my life is in comparison.
We get together around once a month, and every time, she has new friends, probably a new gig, and a new place to live.
She’s always in motion. Meanwhile, I’ve had the same apartment, job, and general routine for over three years.
She nods. “Yup. She has a really nice studio off Rideau I was going to move into, but it might have roaches and a poltergeist, so we decided to break the lease and go to BC for a couple months.”
“BC, interesting,” I say.
“I’ve actually been talking to Dad about it,” she says nonchalantly.
“You have?” I haven’t talked to him in a while, though he does text me every so often with funny anecdotes and dad jokes he thinks I’ll like.
“Yeah. He’s living in the Interior right now. I was thinking of seeing if I could stay with him for a few days. We haven’t seen him in, what, almost two years?”
“At least,” I say. It makes me sad that it’s been that long.
Her posture stiffens. “You won’t tell Mom, right?”
“Why would I tell Mom, of all people?” In fact, I’ve been dodging her uncharacteristically frequent calls the last few weeks.
She leaves long-winded voicemails every time someone new (of societal importance) asks whether I’m a mistress or whether I wrote The Prime Minister & Me.
The latter of which is somehow worse in her mind.
“I don’t know. You talk to her more than I do. She came to visit you at Thanksgiving.”
I snort. We used to be closer before she remarried, before I moved to Ottawa, back when I was desperate for her approval.
“Yeah, she came for, like, an hour. She complained the entire time about the homeless people outside my apartment. Went on a tirade about how one person was wearing a Columbia coat that looked expensive. Because apparently you must wear rags as a poor person. She basically threatened not to visit until I move.”
Amanda frowns. “God. She really is delusional, isn’t she? I told you. She completely forgot that used to be us. Erased it from her memory entirely.”
“I think it’s the opposite. She remembers it so much, she’s desperate to put herself as far away from it as possible.”
“It’s kind of sad, really,” she decides. “Imagine being so insecure that all you care about is what people think.”
I work down a swallow. “Really sad,” I agree, even though I understand it a little more than I’d like.