Chapter 3
“Everything,” Jack says. “Just... everything.”
Jack Sterling’s startlingly green eyes narrow to slits, and for quite some time he just stares at me.
I shrug. “I am trying to find something that is good about this book and coming up short.”
“Nothing. You, very literally, can think of nothing good about this book. Amelia Benedict’s book.”
I shrug again.
Then, just as the cowbell-ringing conference girl leans over us to whisper it’s time to “move along” (a person whom he ignores
entirely), he smiles.
Jack really smiles, for the first time. I’ve finally given him something to smile about.
Then he shakes his head like I pulled a good one over on him. Reaches out his hand fully now and, this time, pretty much grabs
my hand and shakes it. “And let me guess. You could do better.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer.
“Very... unique to meet you, Bryony of Florence. Nice even. You’re plucky. I like that. I hope you and your very large manuscript spend some
quality time together deciding which limbs to cut off. Perhaps I’ll see you next year—if, heaven forbid, I am forced to return
to this place.”
I give up.
If “spend a year chopping up your beloved manuscript and then on the horrible off chance I’m here you can possibly see me at another pitch session” is the best I’m going to get, it’s time to call it. I’m not cut out for Jack Sterling. Or this conference, for that matter. Or clearly writing.
A gust of wind blows through me. This must be the feeling people have when they finally accept their own inevitable death.
The small, very small consolation prize here is the knowledge that I did my best. I fought to the end. And at the very, very
least, I was honest. I will go out with my dignity.
I smile back at him as I take up my folder and rise. “I like all my words, Jack. I don’t think there will be any cutting.
And as for your client’s romance—”
“Amelia Benedict’s?” he adds with the tiniest flicker of “ You know, the Amelia Benedict? ”
“The one,” I continue with a nod. “Objectively speaking here and polite niceties aside, I could do better. For starters, drop the third point of view of the event director’s dog—it’s not cute; it just comes off as weird.
Give the captain a second-in-command position so he has someone actually in charge who has the authority to tell him to cut
the girl. Cut out 70 percent of the ‘supers’ and replace them with meaningful descriptors, and delete all references to Extellilango.
It’s not a real place. It doesn’t sound like a real place. And if you are going to create a fictional place, you should at
least make it sound remotely plausible instead of a location you’d find in Star Wars . But really, if she’s going for somewhere on earth that’s warm with volcanoes, she should just go with Punalu‘u Beach or Mosteiros Beach in the Azores, or Reynisfjara, Iceland.
Personally, I’d go with Reynisfjara.”
He’s looking at me with incredulity again, and I add, “I teach ESL to adult immigrants and refugees—as I tried to explain
with the Why I Wrote My Book page. I’ve learned something about their homes in the past fifteen years.”
Oh dear. The adrenaline that has fueled me the last fifteen minutes is fizzling out to a jittery end, and I find myself anxious to get out of here in the next ten seconds. Because in about ten seconds, I have no doubt that wherever I am, I will be slumping down under the full weight of defeat. Probably crying. Like a wind-up toy crumpled over in the corner.
And I’d really rather not be a slumped-over, weeping toy crumpled on the floor here .
His smile wilts a little as I let go of our shaking hands and pull back. “Anyway, take my card. Better yet, take a handful.”
And like a claw machine game, I reach blindly in my bag and grab a handful of stragglers. Two or three business cards flutter
to the table.
And with impending tears pounding at the doorsteps of my eyes, I give a tight smile and stride away as quickly as my heels
can take me.
Just like all the other recruits here.
Who didn’t make it.
***
“And then what’d you do? Say that last part again. Slowly. You know what? Just start over. I wanna hear the whole thing. Move over, Jerry. I have critical news on the line!”
Never mind that Gloria is elbowing a bunch of lawyers in a hallway during an adjourned court session to hear my story. I’m
sure the lawyers believe it’s genuinely important, too, by the way she’s acting. And in a small way, the unique mix of incredulity
and pride in Gloria’s voice as I run through the details of my defeat four hours prior is at least a little soothing. A little
balm for the soul after spending the past four hours wallowing in self-pity and humiliation as I packed up all the discarded
pencil skirts and rumpled blouses littered around my suitcase and checked in online for my return flight to New York.
I dumped the rest of the business cards in the bin.
Over a hundred of my little faces smiling up at me from the trash can, beside the words in romantic italics: Fiction That Inspires.
What does that even mean?
Apparently, according to Gloria, this is all very, very sad but on the bright side , look at how brave I was! Who cares, according to Gloria, about this manuscript (I corrected her pretty quickly on that one), when just observe this wonderful life lesson! Bryony the Brave!
Bryony, the girl who could go back in time and tell that old group of childhood frenemies that no, she didn’t deserve to be
treated like the punching bag of the group whenever they wanted someone to pick on and, ergo, she would rather play with no
one at all.
Bryony, the girl who couldn’t put her foot down with her roommate at uni and say, “Look, Tiffany , I know you like having Brian over, but I’m right here . On the bottom bunk . And no, I do not want to go elsewhere at three in the morning.”
Even now Bryony, the girl who never quite had the gumption to tell the neighbor at the apartment gym, “Right, well, the thing
is, I don’t want to move over from the treadmill to the elliptical just because you came in. I don’t care that you are training for a 5k. I don’t care that you have ‘5k’ tattooed on your bicep. I’m walking at a snail’s pace on my
thirty-minute jaunt while on chapter 13 of my audiobook, and I like my treadmill.”
A ding rings out from my phone at the same time the elevator announces its arrival, and I look down before the doors open, seeing
the Uber notification that my car’s waiting downstairs.
“Start when you sat down at Jack’s table. No! Start when we got off the phone.”
“Fine.” The doors open and I step into the elevator, staring at my own frowning, impatient, exhausted face in the elevator
mirror along the way. Grimace. I look worse than I thought.
Eyeliner has rubbed off one eye fully and not the other. (Tears always come more fervently on the left side. Is that just a me thing?) Flyaways in my tangled ponytail abound, thanks in large part to the post-episode brisk ten-block walk from the pitch session straight to the hotel. I didn’t finish the conference. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I just left as insignificant and alone as I came. I’m wearing sweatpants, the comfy kind with threads at the knees from the thousand times of going through the washer in the past decade. A thick brown cardigan is wrapped around my T-shirt at the waist—bulky. Ready to beat the chill of the airline air.
Bryony Page. What agent would be crazy not to want this?
“The sad, sad story of Bryony’s life began,” I say, yanking the ponytail elastic out with one hand so I can at least try for a better ponytail in public, “when she sat for six hours with the other conference vultures while other more successful
conference attendees shook their heads with jeering eyes and odious expressions—”
“ Ooooh , she’s going for the rage words,” Gloria says gleefully, knowing how my vocabulary expands when I’m heated up.
“—only to secure, after said six hours, the most eremitic, vainglorious, and least desirable agent of all time—”
“ Vainglorious , I love it,” Gloria interjects.
“—and when time came for the doors to open, she directed herself toward Jack Sterling’s table—”
“Via staring at people’s shoes because she was too embarrassed to look up—”
“Thank you. I’d forgotten that,” I say. “And then eventually at the back of the room she bumped into Jack’s—”
And then something in the mirror catches my eye, and I stop.
Stop dead.
Right there.
As I grip the handle of my suitcase and forget to breathe.
You hear these things about Tennessee. Of bedazzled belt buckles. Of barefoot children carrying around chickens under their
arms like cats.
These are the rumors. Inflated stereotypes.
Except for this moment. At 6:12 p.m. on Saturday evening, January 23, in Nashville in a bedazzled pink elevator in a bedazzled
pink hotel with “Friends in Low Places” playing over the speakers.
Where Jack Sterling’s reflection in the multiple mirrors around us penetrates me with his startlingly green eyes that look
at me from all directions.
It’s a nightmare. A honky-tonk nightmare.
After a small eternity of staring at each other, a tiny smile lifts one side of his face.
“Vainglorious,” he says, breaking the ice. “Well. That’s a new one.”
I think... I’m going to... die now.
Yes. I believe that’s the only possible response in this moment.
“You know, it’s about time, Bryony of Florence. I was two more elevator rides up and down away from banging on your door.
Honestly. I didn’t take you for a person who tends to be late. But”—he waves a hand at my appearance—“then again, I didn’t
take you for being so... athletic either. It’s a good plan, by the way. Much preferable to those stilettos you kept trying to face-plant in.”
“Wh-what?” I stammer. Then look down to the rolling suitcase in his hand and back up again. “What?”
My cell phone is dangling in my palm now, my hand going limp from my ear. Vaguely I can hear Gloria through the line asking
about what’s going on.
The elevator door dings as the doors open on the next floor down.
A mother and her young son stand on the other side. She takes one look at me (and probably my tortured expression), grabs
the shoulder of her son to stop him from stepping on, and the doors shut.
Jack resumes. “Anyway, I like that. ‘The most eremitic, vainglorious, and least desirable agent of all time.’ Snappy. Maybe
I’ll add that to my byline.”
I raise a finger. “How did you—” I pause. Restart. “How did you know—” Pause again. “And you were about to bang on my door?”
It’s no use.
I’m in a dream missing a bunch of crucial bits of information, and there’s just no way to start this conversation.
Jack, for his part, looks like he’s ten pounds lighter than he was four hours ago.
He actually looks like the only thing keeping his feet on the ground are weights in his shoes.
In fact, it’s suspicious.
He’s staring at me right now like this is exactly where he wants to be and I’m exactly the one he wants to be with.
Here. In an elevator.
He nods at me. “Funny. For the chatterbox you were four hours ago, I thought you’d have at least two pages worth of words
to throw at me now. Well, I’ll just take the lead then. I’m talking about the flight we’re about to go on.”
He’s said the word flight as though this should make perfect sense.
“You’re in my elevator,” I say. “At my hotel.” I press my lips together when he doesn’t respond to this. “Are you... staying
at this hotel?”
“Oh no,” he says with a half chuckle as though of course he wouldn’t be caught dead in a place that uses cowboy and cowgirl hats for labeling the restrooms. “No, but you had a lot
of handy information in that folder you gifted me today—”
Accidentally left behind on the table in the whirlwind of adrenaline and extreme disappointment and would rather die than walk back in that room one more time to get it, more like.
“—which made it incredibly easy to spot you now.”
My brows crease. “Track me, you mean.”
“Spot,” he corrects with a raised finger. “I prefer the word spot when you’re finding someone who wants to be found. And you did—at least you did four hours ago—want to be found. If I recall
correctly, you actually tried to staple yourself to my side.”
My nose wrinkles. “It wasn’t that bad—”
“Were it not for the annoying bell girl, I think you would’ve trotted along after me home—”
“That is absolutely false —”
“Probably would’ve moved next door to me if you could—”
“Hang on —”
“Anyway, according to your very organized folder system”—he pulls out the folder and taps the color-coded tags—“I like this
tab system here. It’s handy, even if it smells of desperation. We have a flight to Newark leaving in an hour and forty five—”
“ We ? You’re on the same flight?”
“It took a while to get the flights rearranged, but I am now. Because obviously ”—his hand makes a rolling motion as he elongates this word—“I have a very busy schedule, and I can think of no better way
to start off this relationship than by spending six hours squeezed together on a plane, through two plane rides, a handful
of layovers, at least two airport Starbucks, and one Cinnabon—do you like Cinnabon? You seem like the type of girl who likes
Cinnabon—going over everything. We’re going to hit the ground running, so I hope you don’t mind me assuming—particularly given
your eager, some would say fanatic, display today—that I won’t be holding you up.”
Relationship.
As in, Jack and me.
Tied together in a working relationship that lasts, presumably, far more than fifteen minutes. Because... and then it hits me with a thud... he
liked my book.
I left the folder.
He took the folder.
My chapters were in the story. (Along with pages and pages of character descriptions.)
He read my story.
The image of Jack in his hotel room, leaning back in the hotel chair with his fancy shoes propped up on the executive desk,
sunshine pouring through the window beside him, folder gripped in his hand. Lips moving as he reads. Eyes wide, zeroed in
on each word. The TV is on, but he no longer hears it. Somebody is knocking at the door—food service—but he doesn’t notice.
He is moved.
Moved enough he drops his feet down with a thud and slams the folder on the table with a declaration I had dreamed about happening
over and over (never with him, but it still works): I want this book!
He must want my book . It’s the only logical conclusion.
“I’ll call you back,” I murmur into the phone and hang up amid Gloria’s protests.
I turn fully to Jack now. Face him head-on. “You liked my book?”
And to my surprise, he looks like this question is of little significance. He’s actually waving with one hand like my question
is a fly he’s trying to swipe away.
“Your book. Yes. I read through the forest of trees you chopped down for pages you left me, and yes, once you’re past the
initial thirty pages, you have something. It’s not ready by any stretch of the imagination, but it has potential. And no, I don’t throw that word around like confetti to every wannabe
writer I meet. I don’t tell everyone they have ‘potential.’ But that’s not my proposition here. I have an offer for something
that’s... well... quite frankly, unturndownable. Much, much bigger than your book.”
My stomach drops at his words about my novel—only the passion project that has gripped my heart and soul the past two years—and
the way he so casually tosses it aside.
But however I look he doesn’t seem to notice, because he continues. “I want to see if you’d like”—he pauses momentously, steepling
his hands to his lips for a long moment and then letting go with a flutter of his fingers as if they are needed to accompany
his next grand words—“to be the ghostwriter for Amelia Benedict’s next book.”
My entire body freezes but for the tiny sliver between my brows that creases into a tiny line above my nose.
I stay this way so long that Jack drops his hands. Points vaguely at my head. “See, now, what’s this mean? I’m sorry. I don’t
know you enough yet, so you’ll have to clarify. Are we in shock now? Because, unfortunately, we will have to quite literally
run to the airport in a matter of seconds—”
The elevator dings and flings the doors open. A man steps inside. A couple follows suit. The doors slide shut and down we
go to the final floor.
“I know this is a... unique offer,” Jack continues, his voice lowering.
“I’m thinking,” I say, and this time it’s me waving away his words like a fly.
“Then I’ll help you process,” he continues, not missing a beat. He’s closed the gap between us now. I can actually smell the
this-is-my-special-first-class-seat aftershave on his skin. “Amelia Benedict releases three books a year. Seventeen are out to date. Six more under contract to release through
this year and the end of next.”
“How many ghostwriters are there?”
“Three.”
“Has she written any herself?”
“Just the one. Her first.”
“Was it any good?”
“As a doorstop it’s excellent.”
“Then why did she become a hit?”
He gives an incredulous little screw of his brows. Inches back from me just enough to gaze at me properly. Gives a little
don’t you know? smile as he surveys me. Like I’m some adorable little Girl Scout who just stumbled upon his front door and asked about stock
trading. “Because we’re in publishing, Bryony. We stack the deck.”
But of course. Little Amelia Benedict. Daughter of multimillionaire father in the hotel industry. Celebrity mother in entertainment.
Heiress with money and time to spend how she pleases. I suppose it should come as no surprise that her publisher would pick
her books to soar.
“Anyway,” he continues even more quietly, “one of our writers is midway through a novel set to release next October. One just
took maternity leave. And the last one, the one for the book you previewed yesterday, left recently due to”—he pauses, then
settles on the words—“an incompatible work environment.”
“You dated her.”
“I went on a date,” he counters briskly. “I was just unaware that the conditions of a date with Greta meant I was supposed to become immediately blind to all women henceforth and forevermore.”
“And evidently this situation wasn’t your first time,” I say.
“And evidently you’re very good at lying and pretending not to read other people’s texts.”
The elevator doors slide open to an overwhelmingly pink hotel lobby. We grab our suitcases and stride forward.
“So, as you see, this puts me in a sticky situation,” Jack continues, in step with me. “But lucky for me, your overpowering
presence came along just when I needed it—”
“I prefer to consider myself prepared—”
“—and the really leech-like vibe you gave off—”
“My sister called it a self-respecting use of boldness.”
He throws his hand in the air. “The point is, you’re suited for the job. You have good instincts, and you clearly have no problem using words. So how about it? I’ll have my assistant email you the current manuscript, and you can hack away
at all those supers all you like.” He pauses. “Not to mention, the pay is great.”
He speeds up as we approach and then move through the revolving doors, pulling his trendy suitcase and leather laptop bag
resting on top along. A man is waiting on the other side, exhaust rolling around his gray suit as his hands rest on one another.
Like he’s at a wedding. Or a funeral.
When he sees us, he strides forward, reaching for the suitcases.
Both of our suitcases.
I hesitate on the sidewalk.
A ding sounds on my phone, and I glance over to the beat-up dark blue Corolla with the word Uber slapped across the dented passenger door. The man inside is tapping the wheel impatiently. He’s staring at the revolving
door. Waiting for his rider to come out.
It’s time for my decision.
I can go with the dented Corolla or with the man in the suit, waiting beside a plume of exhaust that actually smells sweet.
Like cinnamon.
Well. It isn’t exactly Sophie’s choice now, is it?
And before I know it, I’m cruising along the interstate beside Jack Sterling in a completely foreign world of crisp black
leather and the lingering scent of cinnamon and even a glass bowl of peppermints on top of a variety of fresh beverages in
the mini fridge across from us.
Me, without any forewarning, having gone from the lowest of lows to this situation in a blink.
Jack is rummaging through his bag and pulling out an official-looking set of papers. “The contract’s a boat, but it’s all
very simple. You get paid for writing this and any forthcoming books, and you don’t tell anybody about it.”
He pulls a pen out of his shirt pocket.
“Or what?”
“Oh,” he says, waving a hand over the insignificant question, “you go to jail for the rest of your life, I don’t know.”
“I go to jail for life ,” I say incredulously, eyeing the pen and papers like they are handcuffs ready to snap on my wrists.
“Are you planning on telling people?” He laughs. “Are you and your Facebook following of twelve people planning to seize the Benedict fortress
by night with pitchforks raised?”
He’s grinning at himself.
He’s actually enjoying his little jokes.
I sniff. “It’s 242 people, thank you very much.”
“Oh. Well, in that case...” He clicks on the pen and hands it over.
I stare at it for a moment. Spin the sleek metallic silver between my fingers.
A plan is forming. A decision.
“I’ll do it on a condition.”
And there it is again. That little spark that lights in Jack’s green eyes as I butt up against him, surprising him with a
challenge. “I can give you fifty thousand on the advance and 15 percent royalties, but that’s the highest they’ll go—”
The numbers quake in my ears. If I were completely honest with myself, I would’ve taken a five-hundred-dollar offer for my manuscript, and Gloria would’ve thrown me a party like I belonged right up there with Stephen King. But this isn’t my manuscript, is it?
This isn’t even about my book.
“Allow me to be clear.”
My chest is banging so hard, my white T-shirt is making little hiccups. Painfully obvious hiccups. To the point his eyes flicker
down.
“I don’t want your money.”
He raises his eyes back to mine, a dubious expression etched on his face. “Is that so?”
“I’ll take no royalties. And I will write this one book for Amelia, and one book only , while you take the time to find a proper replacement moving forward. One you apparently don’t want to date. Maybe just play
it safe and find a man. But what you will give me in exchange for my work is representation. You will take me on as your client, and you will represent me and my manuscript until Water Under the Bridge finds a good publishing home. That’s my deal.”
Jack purses his lips.
His hands steeple together again and he leans back, surveying me for so long I see the sign for the airport out the window.
It’s terrifying, actually.
He’s not breaking eye contact.
And now he’s gone quite immovable. Even at a turn that swings us hard left enough that I grab for the handle, he sits unmoved.
A sense of dread comes over me.
I’ve gone in too strong. In this game of poker I’ve played too hard and said the wrong thing and bargained too high, and now
I’m going to lose it all.
My thoughts are reeling as I think through all the should-haves and could-haves .
Then he throws his head back and laughs. “You know what? I’ll take you and your little book on, Bryony Page, but you’re getting
your fifty thousand and your 15 percent. Actually, what the heck. Just for this book let’s make it twenty.”
“What about fifteen being the highest you could go?”
And then he pats me on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Bryony Page. You are now in the inner world of publishing. Don’t trust
anybody or anything they say. I have a feeling we’re going to have a great time.”