Chapter 4
Two years later
“Oh, the inspiration for The Seven-Year Holiday was a fun one. Every winter my family has this sweet little tradition of heading to a tiny town in the mountains of Vermont,
also called Stowe—”
“It’s Woodstock, Maine,” I murmur under my breath.
“And”—Amelia throws out a hand—“of course you know where this is going.” She has a lilt in her voice, as though she’s sharing
a cute little secret with the crowd. “There’s the most charming little café in this community—”
“It’s a bookshop,” I growl-whisper.
“Where everyone gathers around, just like every day after a long day of skiing, and it’s surrounded by these people who become
like family after so many years of wintering together. The Barnhartts. The fabulous Donohues. And... and everybody else. That’s when
you realize what it’s all about. That this— ” Amelia’s shiny blonde hair and shiny blue eyes and shiny white teeth practically shimmer as she draws herself up even farther
off her chair and gives a commanding pause. Those in the room collectively hold their breath.
Eighty people in the eighty folding chairs of the crammed bookstore grip The Seven-Year Holiday hardback in their hands as they lean forward, waiting for her never-before-heard wisdom and never-before-heard words.
I clench my teeth from my perch in the back.
I also clench my book. Clenching so tightly that the shiny, slippery cover is tugging off and crumpling in my hands.
She lets the silence sit for an eternity. Like she’s waiting until she actually can , in fact, hear a pin drop. Her eyes peer through the bookstore windows behind us, as if she is actually expecting every taxi
in New York to come screeching to a halt so we can all hear her very important point.
Finally Amelia’s animated face opens even further as she spreads out her hands. “That this,” she repeats with a high and attention-demanding
tremor, “is... what it’s all about.”
A hum of awe goes around the room.
“ What is she even saying ?” I hiss. “ This is what this is all about?!”
Her hands rise slightly toward the heavens, and she bows her head with a humble smile, and it’s at this exact moment the room
goes mad. People are clicking their cameras madly, fingers tapping on the little red circle on their phones twice as fast
as they were before. People drop down to their notebooks, hastily scribbling her words in their journals with heavy-handed
exclamation points. Somebody to my left circles the words “ This is what this is all about” in red pen at least five times.
Oh my gosh .
Could there be any fewer brain cells in these people’s heads? They’re mindlessly following along! Mindless, I tell you!
The cover of the book twists in my hands like it’s made of tissue paper. A low squeak escapes through my clenched lips. I’m
a teakettle about to explode.
I see Amelia’s publicist’s eyes shoot to me from her station at the front, then watch her discreetly send a text on her phone.
Jack’s phone dings.
And suddenly, I’m enveloped as he wraps his arm around me. Gently taking hold of the book with his free hand, Jack whispers
in my ear, “Ooookay, Bryony. Let’s remember why we are here, shall we?”
“I don’t know why we are here,” I snap. I look like a little turtle underneath Jack’s wing. An angry little turtle that some
kid keeps as a pet and shows other kids, saying, “Look at Gus! Isn’t he adorable?”
I am not adorable.
“In the spirit of comradery ,” Jack supplies, completely unfazed by my temper tantrum. “We’re here to prove how well we can work together after the incident .”
(So I threw Amelia’s cup of lemonade in the trash can a little “aggressively.” And in the aggression, the lemonade flew on
her face. And I laughed. But to be fair, she told me to put her lemonade in the trash can because there, and I quote, “weren’t enough fresh lemons in it.”)
“Let’s go over this again,” Jack whispers. “What is Amelia’s job?”
He moves to pull the book out of my hands, but I cling to it like a stubborn child.
“Being the stupid face,” I whisper.
“And what are you?” He ignores my jab.
“The big brain inside the stupid face,” I sputter.
Mona, Amelia’s publicist, is blinking furiously at the both of us now, and despite the warning code from his coworkers and
how “serious” he’s supposed to be at this “serious” event, the side of Jack’s mouth has slipped up into a sideways smile.
“Fascinating.” The interviewer beside Amelia nods like a trained seagull with her poised head bouncing in time with her poised
bouncing heel. “That’s a point that’s right on target with what I said in my own novel Make Way Through Havana’s Scarlet Wind in the Quick of Night .” She flashes a hopeful look at the audience. A look that screams, “ Are you going to buy? Are any of you going to buy my book now? ”
“So tell me,” the interviewer continues, “in case there is anyone here who is possibly the last person on earth to read your latest”—she pauses to laugh at her own joke, and a couple of good
souls chime in around the room—“how would you sum up your book? What would you say is the heart of this story?”
“Oh, goodness.” Amelia laughs as if this is the first time this question—the question that has been asked approximately three hundred times at the last three hundred stops on this tour—is completely out of left field.
She pulls back several strands of her shiny hair. “I don’t think I could sum up this book even if I tried. There’s just so much . You know? But you know what? Why don’t I hear from you ? I hear myself all the time, but I would love to hear firsthand from my fans.”
“ The Seven-Year Holiday is a heartwarming rom-com,” I whisper furiously, “about two people who run into each other in a café bookshop on summer holiday,
exchange life-changing advice, and agree to meet every year—without ever talking in between—to give and receive life-changing
advice all over again. It’s about laughter and love and healing wrapped in the powerful bond of trust between two people who come to rely on each other more than anyone else in the world.
Not about ‘holidaying with my rich besties’ and that ‘THIS’ INEFFABLE ‘THIS’ IS WHAT IT’S ABOUT.”
Mona’s making wild Morse code at Jack with her blinks now, her brows shooting up and down in a mechanical motion.
“Okey dokey,” Jack whispers. “Time to go.”
I can feel Jack’s chest shuddering with silent chuckles while he grips me tighter and pulls me to standing. It’s not a choice
here. He’s got me in a vise grip and I’m moving. Not that I would choose to stay.
I’m still clenching my book to my chest as I whisper, “And another thing!” when his hand covers my mouth as he wheels me around.
He waves over his shoulder to Mona—who looks like she’s about to keel over that moment—and pulls me through the doors into
the sweltering heat of an evening in June in the middle of Somewhere, Manhattan.
The air is thick and sticky, with both the smell of macarons from the pastry shop next door and the scent of gasoline from a city slick with sweat in the midst of an unusually hot summer. It’s crowded and loud, painfully loud, as it always is on a Wednesday night when half the city is on their way to dinner and the other half of the city is serving it. And my ears, the ears of a Florence citizen unaccustomed to being in the center of the City That Never Sleeps, pound with the sudden onslaught of honks and sirens and conversations in passing.
Jack, meanwhile, is oblivious to it all as he swivels me around outside the door. “Are we done? Are you proud of yourself?”
“Mildly.”
“Now you’re going to be all over the news.”
“Right.” I cross the book over my chest protectively. “The group that said she was ‘a generational role model’ after she went
over her morning makeup routine is really going to put two and two together. They’d blindly follow her off a cliff.”
“Hence why you two are the perfect team.” Jack grins down at me while I stand there frowning at him, clutching the half-torn
international bestseller that’s actually quite meaningful and has been on the bestseller list for twenty-three weeks and running. “She’s got the magnetic personality—a certain...”
He pauses, thinking of words. “Merry cultlike air, if you will, and you are very”—he halts—“smart.”
My frown deepens.
“And spritely.”
My frown deepens even more.
“But mostly very, very smart. A woman of wits. The trendsetter of our literary time.”
It’s targeted flattery. A shallow pass for forgiveness. But still, this mollifies me. As he knew it would. As it always does.
Not entirely. Not even 50 percent of the way. But enough that my shoulders defrost enough for him to take a step forward.
“There we go,” he says, patting me on the head. “That’s a girl. So. We’ll just cross the signing off our to-do list. Terrific
job collaborating; you really gave it a C-minus, D-plus effort. And now it’s off to dinner.”
He slips his arm behind my back and redirects us toward the car waiting at the curb. “Now, what’ll it be? Cibo e Vino or that
little shack of yours with all the box televisions and questionably sourced meat?”
“Gok-Oguz,” I reply promptly.
“Of course it is,” he says, not missing a beat. He holds the door open for me. “Hop in. Bob, take us to Florence, please.”
“I want to talk about my email.” I slip into my seat.
“And I want to talk about mine.” He waits at the open door.
“I mean it,” I say with a serious expression.
“Back at you. Now move.” He unceremoniously nudges me over.
I glance at the glowing little bookshop as the car begins to move.
The deep green one-story brick building with greenery bordering its doors is nestled between towering complexes, even more
festive given the great multitude visible through the glowing windows for the sold-out event. People are milling around the
sidewalk, craning their necks to look around the rows of window stickers announcing Amelia’s new book. Phones out. Cameras
snapping.
One person keeps pacing around a life-size foam board of Amelia Benedict, looking like she’s going to make a break for it.
This is what Amelia’s events do to perfectly normal citizens. Turn them into fanatics who stand outside sold-out bookshop
events, trying to steal foam posters.
This, for the record, is what my life has become saturated with the past two years. My whole life. One massive conversation
around one single name: Amelia Benedict.
Day and night. Amelia. Benedict.
It started with leaving that writer’s conference and taking a mostly euphoric six-hour flight with Jack as the reality of
representation for my book sank in. I was indeed going to be a writer. I was indeed going to have the book that took my heart
and soul and give it the wings to fly. Jack Sterling of The Foundry Literary Agency was going to represent me and my book
and take it places so that I could use the profits and awareness via publication to save my struggling workplace and my grandmother’s
greatest legacy—on that one condition, of course.
That I rewrite that sham of a book for Amelia.
So I settled in and hunkered down for six months of a rewrite of somebody else’s novel. Which surprised everyone by blowing up beyond anything they’d ever seen.
Which turned into my writing a quick book called Smuggler’s Paradise after the other ghostwriters couldn’t keep up the hype .
And by the time of that release, I was already three chapters into A Room for Rose.
I was a workhorse, and somewhere in there, the conversation shifted away from Water Under the Bridge to whatever Amelia’s book should be next.
Soon enough, I—or rather Amelia—was landing on bestseller lists for unprecedented months that stretched into an eternity.
The first three books were optioned to movies six months before they even released, and before I knew it, the other ghostwriters
were long out of the picture. It was just me and Amelia. Amelia and me.
Stuck together by Gorilla-glued dollar bills.
I was able to move apartments. Get a place of my own with a view of rosebushes instead of the back side of buildings out the
kitchen window. Walk barefoot around my own freshly restored hardwood living room.
I became an anonymous monthly donor to The Bridge—although, admittedly, I had deeply underestimated the depths of their financial
straits. Turns out the operating budget of a twelve-thousand-square-foot rented building with twenty-two employees that serves
340 immigrants per year was much, much higher than my donations. And with government budget cuts cutting The Bridge’s services
at the knees two weeks ago, the reality is that my donations were enough to bide a little time on a boat that was already
sinking, but now time is up.
Now is the moment of reckoning.
“Ah! Teacher Bryony! Buna ziua !” the owner of Gok-Oguz says when we pull up twenty minutes later, clasping my hands warmly. “I thought you would be coming! You are in for a good game. Three minutes to halftime. Come in.” The longest pause in history occurs, and then he turns to Jack and says, “Jack.”
“Serghei.” Jack nods.
Serghei gives the briefest nod to Jack through such deeply slit eyes, you’d think he had closed them entirely. But then I
cough and they open up, big, brown, friendly eyes around his tanned, deeply lined, highly spirited face. He walks us to a
little table crammed into one corner of the small Moldovan restaurant, surrounded on all sides by eager Spanish soccer fans.
“What’s going on this week?” Jack’s eyes slide over the row of TV screens.
“UEFA Conference League Final,” I say without missing a beat, eyes running down the menu.
These are not facts I wish to know.
These are not facts I seek out.
But Gok-Oguz is a staple in town, not because the food knocks it out of the park (although it is good), not because the sticky,
bleach water–smelling laminated tables are particularly nice, but because Serghei is a gem in the community. Larger-than-life
personality. The kind of guy you meet once and he sees you. Really sees you. And remembers you. Makes you feel like you are important to him and, ergo, the world. Like your presence is something that makes his day brighter. Like you matter.
And that trumps sticky tables.
He was one of my earlier students (thirteen years ago?), which is funny because at the time I was nineteen and he was fifty,
and while I helped him get through English classes specifically directed toward helping him get his GED, he always called
me Teacher Bryony. For the first few rounds of students who went through my class, I tried to get them to call me Bryony.
I was so young. I was so ignorant, really. They were the ones who had much, much more life experience. All I was doing was
teaching them how to write a check for a test and on fun occasions throw in an idiom of the day.
But everybody called me Teacher Bryony.
Everybody around the world who differed in every way possible seemed to be in agreement on one thing: I was a teacher and a teacher gets respect. Permanently.
So here I am. Hundreds of students later and still known all around town as Teacher Bryony.
Or here, Teacher Bryony with, cue tiny growl, Jack .
“Half-and-half sweet tea for Teacher Bryony with extra lemon,” Serghei says, beaming down at me as he slides the tea my way.
It’s stuffed to the brim with lemon slices, which I note with an appreciative grin.
“Thank you, Serghei.” I take a sip to show my gratitude.
“And Jack ,” he says.
A cup of water drops on the table in front of Jack. Water droplets sprinkle onto the laminate of Jack’s menu.
Jack looks at it dubiously. “I believe I asked for bottled.”
“Bottled water.” Serghei waves a hand at the cup. “Opened for you.”
“Ah. Wonderful.” Jack eyes the cup of water that looks pretty much like lukewarm lake water. “Do you think you could add some
ice cubes?”
“Fresh out,” he says, and turns toward the kitchen.
“I’ll take a Coke too!” Jack calls out as the kitchen doors swing in Serghei’s wake. He looks at me. “Do you think he got
that?”
“I think you’re getting toilet water until you die,” I answer, halfway into spooning ice cubes and lemon slices into his cup
from my own.
“You think he’d forgive me eventually.” He takes a paper napkin from the dispenser and wipes up the water from his menu.
“You think you’d have remembered not to stand me up.” I set the spoon back on my napkin.
“I forgot to come out here to Timbuktu—”
“—thirty-two minutes by train—”
“—for dinner two years ago—”
“You didn’t forget.” I smile as I snap open the menu and scroll over the options. “You knew perfectly well you were supposed to meet me here to go over Amelia’s notes and conveniently forgot when that new acquisitions editor said, ‘Oh golly gee, Mr. Sterling, I’m new to the city and have absolutely no idea how to
walk into a restaurant and order food in this great big place all alone. It’s just soooo different from Orlando.’”
“I liked you better when you were in awe of me. Where’s the simpering, leechy Bryony who loved me? Can we bring her back?”
“Ship’s long sailed.”
A ref blows a whistle across one of the many screens, and a unanimous moan runs through the room.
Silence hovers between us.
“So.” I flick up the menu and let my eyes drift over it. “How’s Claire?”
“Fine,” he says promptly, scanning his own menu. “How’s Parker?”
“Fine.”
There. We got that little bit of courtesy out of the way.
Every time we end up at dinner together, I approach the subject, just to clarify our terms. We are agent and client. Friend
and friend. And look here! We’ve established that openly, again, just to make it absolutely, perfectly clear should it come
up in conversation with our significant others.
I finish spinning the little gold band on the ring finger of my right hand. The ring Parker gave me just before he left for
Auckland, Russia. The one he told me belonged to his mother at one time. It didn’t signify that we were engaged obviously (I mean, we had only been dating four blissful months before he left to teach ESL across the globe), but in his words, “I’m
leaving something priceless behind, and I promise I will return for it.”
I exhale, recalling distantly the moment precisely twenty-seven months ago.
At the time it was supposed to be twelve, and that twelve turned into sixteen, which turned into eighteen, and now here we
are, twenty-seven months later.
I’m not actually sure how significant things are with Claire. In fact, I’m not even totally sure that’s her name. But I don’t care, really. The point is, in case
Parker brings it up, it’s been written down and recorded. At precisely 7:12 p.m., I brought Parker up at a work date with
my agent and friend. See? You can pull it up on the (very likely broken) camera perched in the upper corner of this restaurant
if you like.
Not that Parker has ever brought it up.
No, for the last few months in particular, our troubles seem to lie elsewhere. For us it’s more of a challenge of figuring
out how to simply connect when our time zones are quite literally polar opposite.
“Is that her name?” I say, glancing up.
“Who?” Jack says.
“Claire.”
“Oh.” Jack pauses. His brows screw up like he’s thinking hard. “No,” he says finally. “I think it’s Chloe.”
“Huh,” I say mildly.
“Mmm,” he returns, and gazes at the menu.
A few minutes later Serghei returns, arms loaded down with dinner plates alongside a platter of his famous round braided bread.
“And for the Teacher?” Serghei pauses at our table.
“I think I’ll go with chiftele cu piure again.”
“Good choice,” he says. “Fresh delivery of pork today.”
“I’ll take that too,” Jack says.
Serghei drops the plates on the table beside us and walks again through the swinging doors.
Jack turns to me. “I think he’s starting to warm up to me.”
“I think it’s wise you’ve finally given up and just started ordering whatever I get. It’s what he always gets you anyway.”
“Does it make me look less pathetic here?”
“A millimeter less so, yes.”
“Terrific.”
Cheers go round the room over a goal, and for a moment we watch the screens.
“I wanna talk about the email.”
“What was her name?” Jack says suddenly.
“Who?”
“The editor.”
“Let’s not sidetrack. The email.”
Jack sighs. Sits back in his chair. Crosses his arms over his chest in a way that says, “ I knew we’d end up here, but I still don’t like it .” “Can we at least get some cabbage rolls first? They’ll go well with my tap water.”
“It’s been six months.” I hate the frustration in my voice, the way I’ve taken to stirring the straw around my lemon tea at
a rate that’s created a little whirlpool. But it’s been six months since Jack had a conversation with Florence Peters and she got back with a request for the manuscript . Six months in the hands of a real editor at a real publishing house who has all the power in just her tiny index finger to type the word
yes. All the power in her one finger to change my life, Gran’s life, and hopefully The Bridge’s life, forever.
I’m allowed to be anxious here. I’m allowed to be frustrated, especially considering that once Florence Peters was someone
from Pennington Publishing. Hathaway & Root. Laury & Co.
It’s been one painfully long revolving door spinning possibilities in over and over. Two years ago I thought the conference
weekend was an unbearable emotional roller coaster that fried the nerves. Little did I realize that no, this is just publishing.
In general.
Jack sighs. He hates when we have these conversations. But I can’t help it. It used to be that I directed our conversation
toward Water Under the Bridge at the tail end of every phone conversation. Then slowly, over time, the conversation tapered off as Amelia’s books became
more in demand and everyone around me invested in this ghostwriting secret became more successful.
The conversation shifted to making more books. To praises for the rom-coms I wrote. To praises for how well they were selling. How I resonate with people in the rom-com market in a way that’s special, that’s powerful. And would I be a dear and squeak in another book, real quick, to make the most of a charged moment? And how would I like another 2 percent royalty? And a nice big fruit basket to boot?
“Bryony.” Jack rubs a hand down his face. “Do you think I enjoy making money?”
“Yes.” I purse my lips. “But—”
“Do you think I send out manuscripts to people who have the power to send me back six- and seven-figure offers just so I can
deny them?”
I inhale a tense breath. “No. Of course not.”
“Do you think I have a filing cabinet somewhere just for very special books that would be international bestsellers that I keep hidden, just so I can feel the thrill of knowing no one will see them except for me?”
Jack waves his hand in the air. “That perhaps I go down to my secret filing cabinet, on lonely nights under a milky moon,
to read and laugh sadistically?”
My nostrils flare. I hate when he does this. “No.”
“Then don’t you think the second I got word from Florence, I’d be telling you? Just like I have every other time I’ve gotten any news about anything ?”
I exhale through my nose much like a bull steaming down after a fight. “Yes. I know. It’s just, it’s been six months —”
“A drop in the water of time in publishing, particularly for someone trying to get her foot in the door. Give it another seventy
years. Maybe eighty—”
“We should have heard by now,” I press, ignoring him. “If it’s this ‘potential international bestseller,’ then it should’ve
been picked up by now. Shouldn’t it? Seriously, Jack. Really ?” The chip in my voice gives away the depth of my insecurity, and for a moment Jack regards me.
He reaches over. Puts his hand over mine. Pointedly ignores Serghei in the distance crossing his beefy arms over one another,
tapping the butcher knife against one bicep. “The market is oversaturated, Bryony.”
“I know,” I say more quietly, because Jack’s given me this talk before.
“You are competing with quite literally millions of other books.”
I nod. Just as I nod every other time.
“And part of my job, part of you trusting me to do my job, is to know when to pounce for the sake of your career. Right now
isn’t it.”
My chest tightens. “But you just said you sent it to Baker. Are you saying they won’t get back with us?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying I’ve sent it around because you keep pestering me to do so. But the fact is, and you know
this, I think the book could use some slashing. And you’re still an unknown author, with zero platform of your own—” He puts
up a finger to stop me from interjecting. “Despite how incredibly frustrating it is to in reality be writing under Amelia’s
name—”
“And we can’t—” I interject all the same.
“No.”
“And there’s no way to just, you know, let people wink-wink know—”
“No. I’m not going up against the Benedicts. No. Not unless we wanted matching orange jumpsuits, no.”
I grind my teeth and let him continue. This is maddening. The secret is maddening.
“The reality is, you’ve written an obscure—albeit talented—tale that’s approximately 30 percent too long for the traditional
market with approximately four too many genres Vitamixed together. To add a cherry on top, we’re in an election year and the
two politicians everybody’s eyes are on right now have decided to hire a little ghostwriter of their own and throw some ink
on the page for a boost.”
Jack squeezes my hand. “Let me be clear, Bryony. I think you are a brilliant writer— everyone in the world , whether they know it or not, thinks you’re a brilliant writer—but your time just hasn’t come. Yet.” His eyes hold mine and
he sighs. “Don’t look at me like that. I hate it when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I draw back and plunk into the back of my chair, my hopes deflating.
“Like I’ve crushed your dreams. And can you do something about this?” Jack gestures at Serghei, who is eyeing him now, elbows
on the cash register, still with knife in hand. “Can you please... you know... laugh or something before this takes
a tragic turn?”
I purse my lips defiantly.
Wait.
Throw out an exaggerated “Ha-ha-ha.”
And I know what Jack’s doing, how he’s using himself as a distraction to ease my unyielding disappointment and continued anxiety
over waiting on my manuscript. It’s a funny thing, writing books that turn the world’s head but at the same time being unable
to tell the world, “But look, look at this one!”
It’s an impossible-to-explain feeling, enjoying with quiet pride that you have done a good job at your work, but at the same
time enduring incredible frustration in being unable to prove to publishers that you really do have what it takes . I may not have a million followers on a glowing platform. I may not have six books under my name with glowing sales and a
strong readership to give them a sense of security. But I am Amelia Benedict. I wrote Smuggler’s Paradise , the novel set on the beach that sat on the New York Times bestseller list for a whopping fifty-six weeks . I made people laugh and cry at the end of A Leap of Faith and flock to the internet begging for more.
If only anyone could know the truth.
“Honestly, Bryony, what I don’t grasp is how you can’t just be happy ,” Jack continues. “You have achieved the goal of every writer who has ever existed. You are successful and you get to claim anonymity. You aren’t receiving death threats. You don’t have to squeeze into all those dresses you say you hate in your closet for all those interviews. You don’t have to worry about smiling all the time. You just get to hole up in that apartment of yours and write to your heart’s content. And ,” he says, raising a finger, “let’s not forget the little point that you are making sixty —not six —times the amount with this little ‘side hobby’ you don’t appreciate than you are going to get for your literary–magical realism–historical
fiction–nonfiction memoir with a dash of mystery. You are the writer for Amelia now. The one. With a higher salary than any ghostwriter on the planet now. Thanks to me. So how about we just drink to that and not
worry about anything else? I’ll let you know the second someone jumps on board with your book. But in the meantime, let’s
just enjoy what we’re building up for you here. Now. My turn. On to my email. I know you saw it.”
This isn’t the answer I want.
It’s never the answer I want.
But we’ve talked about it enough that it’s enough to live on. Crumbs to keep me going another day.
Enough hope to subsist for a little while longer.
Serghei sets our dinners on the table, and after the typical back-and-forth between Jack and him, we dig in. Honestly, I think
they both kind of like it.
“Do you think you can get it in by August?” Jack says, fork punching into a meatball.
I frown as I dip a meatball into my mashed potatoes. There’s that exhausting pressure again. “I don’t know, Jack...”
“Two weeks earlier. Just two weeks.” Jack makes an inch motion with his fingers, as if what he’s saying is the easiest thing
to do in the world. Just like the time I turned in A Room for Rose and he read it over and suggested casually that I should write it again from a different point of view.
No biggie.
Just casually make the story come from the perspective of an entirely different person in time.
Better yet, turn it back in in ten days. Why not?
“The thirtieth?”
“The twenty-fourth.” He throws his hands out. “So. On the other end of the two-week spectrum—”
“As in three weeks. Three. Weeks.”
“Which, if you think about it, is great. You won’t be wanting to work over your family beach trip again. In a way, I’m saving you. From yourself.”
“ You were the one blasting my phone with messages last time,” I retort.
“And you were the one keeping your phone on replying to them. We’re both addicted to work. I’m the only one who can admit it. So, obviously,
that means I’m a step ahead of you in the program.”
I roll my eyes at him but do recall the horror of spending my last vacation holed up in the little rental house’s bathroom,
sitting on a pink frilled toilet seat with my laptop, trying to ignore the clammer of thirty extended family members crammed
into a two-thousand-square-foot seaside cottage having dinner, all while I finished up the last of a revision that was, according
to Jack’s endless messages, “absolutely urgent.”
I consider through a few bites, then shake my head.
This has become the cycle since The Foundry Literary dropped the other ghostwriters. After the other ghostwriter’s book came
out, five months after my own Sunset over Santorini ’s explosive entrance, there was disappointment on the publisher’s end. On the critics’ end. On the world’s end. Sales weren’t
thriving, even though this was the “same” author. Critical reviews started to come in, slamming Amelia for being too rushed
and tempted by quick money and throwing together a sloppy book. Reviews came in calling the much-anticipated novel a flop.
Saying the plot was one-dimensional and riddled with holes. The characters lacked depth. The language lacked depth. The takeaway
message was nothing beyond “Life’s short, so by golly, buy an extra pair of shoes!”
(A message that critics noted was in direct contradiction to my own message just one book prior.)
And when the third ghostwriter’s book released shortly after that, the whole publishing team exploded when it was met with the same results.
One flop and fine. That’s life.
Two books and that’s a pattern that needs to be nipped in the bud immediately.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise to me when they gave the ghostwriters the boot. It was, however, a surprise that after a few
further failed ghostwriters’ attempts, they came to me with the offer: 22 percent royalties. Two books a year. And the “honor”
(secret honor) of being the exclusive ghostwriter for Amelia Benedict.
I countered with one every ten months because the thing is, I didn’t even want the job. Not exactly. Not this job. But the reality, as I kept reminding Gloria, was Jack was my agent. He was the only one who could get my book, mine , through the door. Get my name through the door.
And call it people pleasing or using standard logic, but I couldn’t risk losing his, or the agency’s, favor.
After all, I literally had nothing to convince another agency to pick me up.
I had no other options here.
They countered with one every seven.
I countered with one every nine.
They countered with every eight and a really nice espresso machine. I’m talking nice. The kind that could keep me awake for weeks.
(They really are my dealer, aren’t they?)
And eventually we landed exactly where they wanted, with one book every six months. Two books a year. And an espresso machine.
I said yes, despite not wanting to go beyond the first book. Despite the fact I still worked at The Bridge full time with absolutely no desire to retire from teaching—even if it did pay peanuts
(and yes, I guess technically I was volunteering given the fact I was the Anonymous Donor). Despite the fact my life could barely sustain squeezing in the time to write one book in a year for somebody else, much less two.
So here I go, carrying a surrogate pregnancy and delivery of a book for somebody else every six months. Nursing the pains
of creating life on the page through many sleepless nights only to deliver my work into the hands of somebody else.
Which is fine .
I’m a tiny bit bitter, but it’s fine.
And it might truly be fine, except that this is what I get every few weeks. Emails asking if I can push up the deadline just a smidge, because “we really need to get it
in before the holidays.” Calls saying, “You know, if you could make it by April so we can get the line editor we want locked
in, then that would be just so, so great.”
I get told frequently that I, Bryony Page, am just so, so great.
The last book they managed to weasel out of me in five months and thirteen days.
I cave every time.
Despite myself.
“Fine. But no earlier .” I stab a meatball. “Not a millisecond earlier than August twenty-fourth. You tell them that.”
“Absolutely,” Jack says, flashing a grin.
I fully anticipate him to flip his phone over and type it in, informing somebody or other on the publishing side the good
news, and wait expectantly.
He continues eating, and when it’s clear I haven’t budged, he looks up. Eyes the meatball held in midair on my fork. “What?”
“Are you going to tell them?”
His grin widens. “I did this afternoon.”
My brows crease, and I pause while a round of cheering goes around the room. “You told them... what exactly? You told them I agreed to turn in the manuscript in August?”
“No, I told them that last week. I told Susanna five minutes ago that August 24 was your final word and that you wouldn’t want another demand for the deadline being pushed up a millisecond earlier.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t write millisecond ,” I counter.
And to this he slides his phone over to my side of the table. Sure enough, his email reads:
Hey all,
Note that Bryony is prepared to give you the ms August 24, and to use her words: “not a millisecond earlier.”
Also to note: stop sending her plaques. She doesn’t like plaques. She’s not a plaque person. The last plaque I saw with the
vague “To Bryony Page, for a job well done” was not only a bit taunting (given my client Amelia just publicly posted your
gift to her of the Cartier 18-karat rose gold watch with exuberant praise), but it was being used as a doorstop to her backyard. Gifts
of flower bulbs are a better choice. I am told she likes them from random human beings’ backyards on Etsy. There’s also a
home goods shop in Brooklyn called The Six Bells with a particular mug dotted with sheep she has been eyeing . They direct ship.
I laugh with incredulity. “How did you— I mean, Jack. Down to the millisecond—”
His smile screams he is incredibly proud of himself. “It’s my job to know my clients. Just like it’s my job to eat flat meatballs
in the middle of this jungle—”
“Florence has thirty thousand residents. It’s hardly a jungle— ”
“—while Serghei threatens me with knives. I’ll take that.” He lifts his hand for the bill a waiter drops beside us. Flourishes
the company credit card. Slides it into the black folder on the edge of the table.
“I do want that sheep mug.”
“And the sheep plates. And the whole happy sheep set. As I’ve heard. Approximately one hundred times.”
“All right, do it. If you’re so good, tell me what Cadwell is thinking right now.” I throw out another one of his clients.
“Simple. He’s thinking, Oh , how grateful I am to have Jack in my corner, and which character’s life can I possibly traumatize enough to make into an
eighteenth book in this dying series? ”
I grin. “Fine. He’s a dead giveaway. I could’ve said that. Ann?”
“‘Oh, how grateful I am to have Jack in my corner, and I can’t wait to retire next July.’”
My brows collapse into a straight line. “She’s in her sixties. She won’t retire.”
“She will. July thirteenth, the day after she finishes her contract. She’ll book a cruise to the Bahamas, and I’ll never hear
from her again. Wait and see.”
The thing is, the moment he says it, I can actually see it. See Ann dropping off the side of the earth and never returning.
And I’m amazed at Jack’s intuitiveness. Just a begrudging bit.
“Now.” He weaves his fingers together on the table and looks at me seriously. “Back to business. I have something deathly
important to say.”
Nobody else could see it, probably, but there’s a mirth in Jack’s eyes, and I can see a little game is afoot. He’s quietly
asking me to ease up, to shift topics, to take the foot off the gas pedal of our serious conversation and let him move from
Agent Jack to Friend Jack, to let me shift from Pestering Client Bryony Page to the girl who ignores him as she hauls a giant
tub of animal crackers into his perfectly detailed vehicle and force-feeds him elephants dipped in chocolate on the interstate
despite his protests.
To shape-shift away from the man I’ve been having the power struggle with to the man who lets me sleep on his couch after late nights in the city, just so I can pound on his bedroom door and hear his growly “unearthly-hour-of-the-day-Bryony” and we can skip downtown in the morning light with pastries in hand, watching all the stores open up one by one.
I twine my fingers together as he does, press my elbows on the table, and lean forward, chin on my hands. “Okay. Shoot.”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”
“I’m ready.”
“And I need your full support on this.”
I wait. My phone between us rings, Parker’s name lighting up the screen.
Jack’s eyes dart to mine.
A wordless pause lingers in the moment, a choice, and I make it. I tap the silent button on my phone and flip it over.
A whisper of approval flickers in his eyes.
“We need to rename our bowling team. I’m going to walk in there and pitch, and I need you to back me up.”
My brow tweaks. “You don’t like Pin Pals?”
“I hate Pin Pals.”
“You don’t think Pin Pals has enough swagger?”
“The swagger is significantly lacking.”
“Counterproposal?”
“Rolling Thunder.”
“Willing to compromise with Gutterly Ridiculous?”
He gives a sharp head shake. “No.”
“Spare Me the Details?”
“Afraid not.”
“How about Bearly Trying? How cute would that be? Little bears in hats for T-shirts has some real potential.”
“I’ll quit on the spot.”
I sit back in my chair. Rub my nose. Sniff. “Buy a round of onion rings and drinks for the team tonight. Wait precisely five
minutes and twelve seconds before pitching. I’ll see what I can do.”
Jack flashes a full grin and we move to stand. “That’s my girl,” he says, and I feel a trill, light hummingbird wings against my chest, as he pushes my chair behind me and nudges me forward by the small of my back.
“Good night, Serghei,” Jack calls loudly—and totally unnecessarily—over his shoulder.
Serghei grunts gruffly from the kitchen door, looking not totally displeased by the attention.
“Oop. Mustn’t forget this.” Jack snatches up the phone I’d left on the table. Sets it in my hand.
Oh right.
I’d forgotten.