Chapter 1
Chapter One
Summer
“It’s been almost three years, Summer.” My boss, Connor Hughes, perches on the edge of the desk, hands folded in his lap, head bowed as he takes a weighted breath.
“I sent chapters last month, Connor,” I cut in quickly, the chair making it impossible to sit with any sort of dignity. I look and feel like I’m in the Principal’s office.
He’s got that pitying smile on his face and there’s a cup of the good coffee steaming away in front of me. It feels like my entire fate is stirred into those premium beans like creamer, and if I just don’t take a sip, things won’t unfold the way I know they’re about to.
“You sent bullet points,” Connor replies flatly.
“I can’t do anything with bullet points, Summer.
I can’t publish vague ideas. It’s been almost three years since you actually wrote anything.
” He finishes the sentence I was trying to stop him from saying, as if I’m not painfully aware of my meager output.
“I’ll have something by the end of the week, I promise.” My voice is pathetic, and I gain another pitying smile that makes my heart sink further into my writhing stomach.
“Summer, we can’t keep covering for you.” He’s firm, the back of my neck prickling with a seasick sort of unease.
“I just need a little more time, Connor. End of the week, I swear.”
“You’ve had more than enough time, and I’ve heard so many promises that they don’t mean anything anymore. Sure, you might send in a chapter by the end of the week, but then it’ll be another three years until I see anything else from you,” he says, not unkindly, just plainly, a sigh in his voice.
I shake my head. “I’ll write out a schedule. I’ll stick to it. I’ll—”
“The readers have moved on, Summer,” he interrupts. “They’ve forgotten all about you, all about the Redwood Sisters. It was the right call not to end your last book on a cliffhanger.”
He's dangling me over the edge right now, but I sense the epilogue before it comes, delivered with the blunt exhaustion of a man who bet on the wrong horse.
“I’m afraid this is the end of the road for us, Summer,” he continues.
“It hasn’t been an easy decision, but your contract with us is hereby cancelled.
There’ll be a grace period of six months, but after that you’ll be expected to start paying back your advance for the fourth book.
Manageable installments,” he adds, as if he understands all too well the tattered state of my finances.
I stare at a little blond hair that’s fallen onto his tweed lapel, so frozen in shock that even the coffee wouldn’t thaw me out.
I’m being fired. Fired from a job that I once would’ve given my soul to keep.
I’ve known for at least two years that I couldn’t perpetually get away with writing nothing, but the days kept passing, and my laptop stayed shut, and I just figured…
the pages would keep waiting until my writer’s block unclogged itself.
Reality, as it always does, has just given me a swift kick in the gut. I’m actually being fired and, worse, I have to pay back money that has already been spent. A long time ago.
What else did I expect?
“Summer?” Connor prompts gently.
I can’t speak. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but sit there with my hands in my lap and my eyes glazing over, as if this will all disappear if I just don’t move a muscle.
“I realize this must be a shock,” he tries again, though I don’t believe him.
Anyone with half a brain cell, in my situation, would’ve known this was long overdue. The only thing that’s actually shocking is that it took three years to get to this inevitable conclusion. Still, I’m no less blindsided.
My head snaps up, my shoulders pulling back.
“Thank you, Connor, for your patience.” I clear my dry throat.
“Thank you for the opportunity and for… our collaboration so far. Thank you for taking a risk on the Redwood Sisters. Of course, I’ll figure out a way to pay you back, and I’m…
uh… I’m sorry that it has come to this.”
“I wish things were different,” he says as he stands from the desk, my trial over, though my humiliation is just beginning.
What will everyone say? What will Mom and Dad think? They’ll be so disappointed, heartbroken that their remaining pride and joy has just royally screwed everything up. How will I even begin to explain this to them?
I rise from the chair, hugging my bag to my stomach, and move slowly toward the office door. Beyond the plate glass, everyone seems so still, as if they’re anticipating my walk of shame. I can practically hear the whispers.
“Maybe we’ll meet again someday,” I tell Connor, with more determination than I feel.
Connor smiles that same, pitying smile. “Sure, someday.”
He doesn’t believe it any more than I do.
Holding back tears, knowing there’s no one to blame but myself, I head out onto the quiet floor of Solaris Publishing and, with my head down, I cling to the last scrap of my dignity and walk to the elevators.
I never even took off my coat.
It’s not until I’m two blocks away in the wrong direction that I finally stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk, much to the vocal and colorful irritation of two women who have to split apart to get past me, and suck in a shaky breath.
The enormity of what has just happened slams into me like a yellow cab on a red crosswalk.
For the first time in a decade, I have no idea what my next step is going to be.
* * *
Turns out, my next step was to walk about twenty thousand of them in a directionless daze around a bitingly cold Manhattan for the better part of the afternoon.
I think I thought it would inspire me somehow, just wandering aimlessly around the streets of a late-winter New York, like the female lead in some cheesy rom-com.
Instead, I’m twice as depressed, twice as lost, and now my feet hurt and my favorite wool coat is soaked through from the icy rain that decided to add insult to injury.
“You smell like wet dog,” someone kindly tells me on the subway to Brooklyn.
I think about telling her that at least it takes the edge off the scent of piss that permeates the subway car, but it’s safer to keep my mouth shut and my head down.
“I don’t care how much it costs, Roland!” another woman, sitting opposite, hisses into her cellphone. “You made promises to me, and if you can’t keep them, then maybe we ought to rethink this.”
She’s about my age, give or take, with a rock on her ring finger and a polished poise that you either have, or you don’t.
Her blonde hair is slicked back in the sort of low ponytail that would make me look like a founding father, her clothes refined but not flashy; someone with a good, high-powered job and most of her ducks in a row.
I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge meeting the ghost of what could’ve been, if I’d taken a different path in life. So many people warned me that you don’t get into writing to be rich, that there’s a good reason for the starving artist cliché, but I was at least comfortable before I messed it all up.
Miserable and increasingly aware of that wet dog smell, I get off at my stop and head for home. At least there, I’ll be able to burrow in and hide from my own humiliation for a while.
Home…
The moment I turn onto the street of brownstones, where the stark branches of the plane trees will soon bud and sprout again, a tiny chunk of weight breaks away from my slumped shoulders.
These aren’t the brownstones that tourists come to take pictures of, belonging to millionaires and celebrities; these are a little more rustic and lived-in, and one small, fourth-floor studio belongs to me.
I pass a young couple walking two Italian greyhounds dressed in puffer jackets; a woman pushing a stroller; three older men speaking in animated Greek who leave the trace of cigarette smoke in the air; and a group of teenagers who blow out plumes of fake mango vapor that makes me feel like I’m on some game show as I walk through it.
This is where I’m happiest. This is where New York doesn’t seem so big. This is where…
There’s a notice on the main door that wasn’t there when I left this morning.
Four of them, actually, slicked on with paste, saying the same thing: Final Notice for All Tenants.
The small print is brutal and to the point, informing me, informing all the people who live here, that we have until February 24th to get out due to the sale of the property as a whole. Twenty-one days from now.
“No… no, that can’t be right,” I mutter, heart racing. “That can’t be legal.”
My mind travels upstairs to the mail I’ve been ignoring, stuffed into a little basket by the door: overdue bills, takeout menus, credit card statements, pleas from my editor when all other modes of communication have failed.
It’s entirely possible that I’ve missed the notices that have come before this one.
Fishing my keys out of the debris at the bottom of my bag, I sprint up the stairs of this sanctuary, all the way to the top floor.
I let myself into the cozy warmth of my studio apartment, the rainy afternoon light making it so heartbreakingly beautiful, and tip the entire contents of the basket onto the floor.
Right there on the welcome mat, I rip the Band-Aid off, tearing into months’ worth of mail like a woman possessed.
There have been four notices about the sale of the property, stretching back to Halloween, which seems fitting. And I’ve missed them all, too afraid of opening my own mail to know that the apartment I love so much, the place I call home, has been rented on borrowed time.
Of course, it’s being taken away. Why wouldn’t I lose my safe haven on the same day I’ve lost everything else? Why not this shitty cherry on top of a cupcake of crap?
The shock of this hits harder than the shock of being kicked out of Connor’s office in shame, and I sit there on the floor, surrounded by a flock of letters all bearing varying degrees of bad news, as if I might never get up again.
They can sell this place with me in it, sitting right here, a statue of misery.
By the time I muster the energy to crawl to the bed that doubles as a couch, and nudge open my laptop, the rain has stopped. If only I’d opened my laptop a few more times over the past three years, maybe my credit card statements and overdue bills wouldn’t be so damning.
“Studio apartment, Brooklyn,” I murmur as I type.
The results are eye-watering. So are the neighborhoods and boroughs I try after.
There are some house shares that I could afford, if the landlord overlooked the credit check and the whole being unemployed thing, but I’m thirty; I can’t live with roommates again, not after living alone these past five years.
It’s not even a matter of pride, but of habit. I’m used to my own space, and I couldn’t imagine having to navigate the quirks of new roommates, of strangers, who’d probably be a whole lot younger than me based on my teeny-tiny budget.
New York doesn’t want me here anymore. The funny thought pops into my head with the certainty of a smoke alarm, warning me that there’s not much time to get out before I’m in an even more dire situation.
Losing my job and my home in one day is a fairly clear statement, as is the discovery of the sickly condition of my finances. According to these property sites, I couldn’t afford to stay even if I wanted to, and I do… desperately.
I close the laptop and stare at the raindrops that are chasing each other down the windowpane, the dreadful truth squeezing a whisper out of my throat, “I have no choice.” I suck in a tense breath. “I have to go home.”