Chapter 15
The following week is one dizzying event after another. Days of traveling from one palm-tree town to another, slightly different
palm-tree town. Feeding lines to Amelia through the earpiece while she tosses back champagne. Jumping back on the bus to peel
off dresses for sweatpants and ride along the interstate again.
Jack and I, meanwhile, have been in a state of bliss, keeping our new state of things to ourselves as we sneak off for nightly
adventures and steal kisses when no one’s around. Which is, for the record, virtually never.
“I really don’t like to say hate , Jack. It’s an unkind word.”
“Mm-hmm.” His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his light gray slacks. He leans against a car. Whose car? I don’t know.
But he’s been standing here, with me, the past twenty minutes. “But...”
“But you know what? I just—I just—” I start pacing. Again.
In my long black dress.
More specifically a long black gala-suitable dress.
I borrowed Penny’s wretchedly high heels from her last night, just after we’d come back from our third group outing of the
week.
As it turns out, the poor girl’s nerves are completely shot. But like me, she carries on. Her reasons are different. She stays
because, as she says, on repeat, and usually while tracing cursive letters into ketchup on her plate (because Amelia has broken
her, and now she practices her calligraphy on everything from food to shaving cream on the bathroom mirror), “I just need
to make it to a year of working under her. A year is respectable.”
Penny repeats that phrase often to herself. A year is respectable.
She’s under the delusion that everyone will come rushing to her offering employment in publishing if they see “Personal Assistant
to Amelia Benedict” on her résumé.
Of course, she also would need to garner a positive recommendation from Amelia. Which itself would be a miracle.
It’s been a week since Amelia told me to cut down my chapter in her Darth Vader’s bride getup.
A week of visiting bookstores and helping out at signings and eating more lobster bisque and crab cakes than I have in my
entire life, of drinking champagne and taking evening walks and sneaking little kisses with Jack—and yes, becoming quite fond
of Penny and our little trio sneak-outs—but I still can’t get what Amelia did out of my mind. The whole thing still boils
me up.
“For goodness’ sake, Bryony.” Jack rubs the back of his neck and gazes up to the night sky. “ Keep the page. It’s not like she’s going to read it.”
He fails to see my struggle.
Which comes down to two facts. One, Amelia is really quite evil. And two, she has decided to zero in on me and make my life
miserable.
It was tolerable before. Now, it’s just beyond.
Of course, I don’t believe Jack has seen the full wrath of Amelia Benedict. And to be fair, he’s sort of in the business of
managing fussy authors.
I honestly think he’s a little immune to it.
To some extent, that’s what makes him a good literary agent. He doesn’t take entitled behavior to heart. It’s like he wears
an invisible shield of armor, and anything slung at him just slides right off.
Me, on the other hand...
I can’t help it.
“It’s not about whether she reads it or not.” My pacing speeds up to match my rising anxiety. I’m getting myself worked up too much. I know. But it feels necessary . “I just... I just don’t know how much longer I can take doing this. I can’t for the life of me imagine doing ten more books for this woman.”
“And our goal is that you won’t.”
I rub my forehead as I pace. “I know that. It’s just...”
“Waiting is the cross in publishing we all have to bear. Nobody likes it, Bryony. It’s not for the faint of heart. And most
people, to be brutally honest, can’t take it. That’s what kills them off in the end. That’s what separates the wheat from the chaff. Not the roller coaster of book sales going
up and down. Not the rejections. It’s the waiting that’ll get you. But—” I swing back in front of him, and he reaches out
suddenly and grabs my hand, halting me. I look up at him and feel the shift from the wobbly vision of cars and telephone poles
to the steadiness of his clear green eyes.
He takes a breath, then resumes in a measured calm. “But things are looking up for you. I have a feeling it won’t be too much
longer.”
My heart skips a beat. “You heard back from Florence?”
He hesitates. Then shakes his head slightly.
“Anybody else?”
His eyes shift to my shoulders drooping further and further by the moment. “I did have some positive conversations.”
“With who—”
“And I think it won’t be too much longer until I have them convinced. Patience, Bryony.”
He leans in, kissing my temple as though to smooth away the tension throbbing in my head. “Rest assured, I have you top of
mind in everything I’m doing.”
“I bet you say that to all your authors,” I mumble.
“And you have every right to be frustrated. About everything. But... what if we got on the boat instead of hanging out here in the parking lot, considering they leave in ten minutes and I’ve promised to keep your
plate loaded down with hush puppies and Amelia on the opposite side of the boat the whole night?”
I chew my bottom lip. “The whole night?”
“Whole night.”
I eye the cruise boat waiting just on the other side of the little boardwalk.
It’s a beautiful boat, and a beautiful evening in Charleston.
Sailboats bob everywhere in the water, bells dinging from them as they pass by. The riverboat floats large and proud, gleaming
white with a giant red wheel at its stern. Lights are strung along the front of the boat, where people are already gathered.
Mingling.
It’s the first event that isn’t just about Amelia in the spotlight. The first event where Amelia is sharing the limelight with two other well-known authors for
a sunset book-themed cruise.
My stomach growls. “I suppose I can table this conversation until after we try out their lobster bisque.”
“ More lobster bisque?” He grins slightly as he takes my arm. We turn toward the gangway.
“It’s an obsession at this point. I feel compelled to try it in every restaurant we end up at. Do you think it’s possible
to poison yourself from too much lobster?”
“Compared to your previous life of eating too many ramen noodles? I think you’ll make it another week.”
And as we step onto the riverboat, a lightness comes over me. It’s very possible I over-romanticize my life, treating the
dialogues of my day like I do on the page, but there’s something symbolic to what he says as we finish our words on the subject
of my struggles and move on to the festivities around us. I can make it another week.
That’s all I have to do here with this launch.
Amelia may be out to ruin my happiness. Amelia may be exhausting my patience. But as often happens in life, the greatest joys and greatest struggles tend to be delivered to your doorstep in the same basket. And it’s up to you to dissect the two and embrace the good without letting the bad overcome. That’s been a hard-won lesson after losing my mother and getting a front-row seat to the true hardships my students face every day.
And honestly, if everything that has happened with Jack only would have happened if I lived with Amelia, then I would move
into this bus all over again. Sure, I might be tempted to kill her. But I’d make the move.