Chapter 38
I endlessly swiped as I lay in my dark room.
Rejection after rejection. I knew which face I was waiting for.
He had come up time and again whenever I’d redownloaded the apps for the last three years.
He would come up now and it would be a sign that I was supposed to message him, forgive him.
After all, he’d only known a week before I had.
And he had tried to tell me in the car and in the silo and now that I thought about it, when he was drunk too.
I hadn’t let him. I needed to get over myself.
Our meet-cute was these damn dating apps.
They’d thrown us together in the beginning and they’d throw us together again now.
Only he wasn’t coming up. It felt like my finger had crossed my screen more than a hundred times. The screen was smudged at this point and it was harder to swipe away each denial, my palms clammy. Maybe this was the actual sign.
I exed out of the app and set my alarm for eight o’clock the next morning. I had work to do. Now wasn’t the time to get sidetracked with the drama my life had turned into.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Kari said.
The living room was dark. Sloane had paused Promising Young Woman when my phone rang and we both saw Kari Cross’s name on the screen.
It had been another long day full of quitting a job I’d only worked one day at.
Apologizing profusely to Cheryl about how I hoped this wouldn’t reflect poorly on her (she understood and said it wouldn’t).
Presenting a PowerPoint to my parents, who were both delighted to hand over the asked-for sum with assurances about how proud of me they were.
I was sure my mom felt guilty about how the showdown in Audrey’s backyard had gone, but I wasn’t going to question the change of heart.
It was now nine P.M. Not too late, but too late for Kari Cross to be calling me. It was eleven P.M. her time.
“You’ll do what?” I asked Kari, confused. “Is this about the videos I sent? Did they come through okay?”
“They were amazing. Everything I needed and more. You went above and beyond.”
“Thank you. I had fun.”
“I could tell. I need to pay you. Will you send me your e-pay info?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
“But that’s not why I called. These videos along with the latest notes you sent and how genuinely invested you are in my career is why I’d like you to be my agent.”
I stood up and the popcorn bowl that was in my lap crashed to the floor, hitting the coffee table on the way down and spewing popcorn all over the carpet.
“What was that?” Kari asked. “Are you okay?”
“I have a contract” was all I managed to get out. “Rob will sue me.”
She laughed for what felt like a full minute. “Margot, Rob can’t sue you. I came to you. And besides, Rob will get a percentage of the royalties on all my books he sold forever. Don’t worry about Rob. Do you not want me as a client? You don’t think you can sell my AI book?”
“I will sell the hell out of your AI book,” I said, even though I actually wasn’t sure I could. I loved it, though, and I could think of two editors off the top of my head who would love it too. “I might need to add a robot to my website.”
“In the messy bed behind Oliver,” Sloane whispered.
My eyes went wide. That little punk knew it was Oliver all along. Forgetting I was mad at Oliver for one moment, I mouthed, Don’t you dare tell him .
She zipped her lips with a smile.
“What do you think?” Kari said. “Will you draw up a contract and get to work? I’m going to have this book done by the end of the week.”
“Absolutely. Thank you.” I excitedly ran in place, crunching popcorn under my toes, but not caring. “I look forward to working with you.”
“We’ve been working together for years, Margot. This will be fun.” The phone went dead.
Sloane jumped up and crushed me into a hug. “Your first client is Kari freakin’ Cross!”
“I can’t believe it!” My high slowly teetered on the edge of a cliff as I thought about how complicated this was. “Kari must’ve said something to Rob. That’s why he was convinced. He’s going to kill me.”
“Thank goodness you slept with him. He’ll slink away quietly. He knows what he has to lose.”
I shook my head but smiled. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. He has zero ethics and this is his own fault.”
“True.”
“How does Kari’s book end, anyway? As terribly as you imagined?”
“Yes. It’s definitely horror. Ana kills Alan per the AI’s instructions, but she’s very happy, just like the AI told her she would be. And there is no punishment since the town has vowed to live by the AI’s rules. It’s super creepy, and honestly, I kind of loved it.”
Sloane gave an ironic laugh. “I’m sorry Oliver broke you.”
“He didn’t. God, he’d be so excited about Kari becoming my first client.” My mood immediately dropped. I picked up the empty popcorn bowl and started scooping handfuls from the carpet back into it.
“You should tell him. He did take a weekend out of his life to help you with the videos.”
“He got plenty of payment for that,” I muttered.
“You’re really not going to forgive him?”
I plopped the popcorn bowl on the table and sat on the floor. “Even if I wanted to hear him out, Sloane, it’s complicated. Audrey and I may be fighting but I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Why would this hurt her so bad? I’m having a hard time understanding.”
“Because…” I tried to think of reasons to fill in after that word but was coming up blank. “I guess because he was hers at some point in the past.”
Her eyebrows popped up as if to say exactly .
“For six months,” I said. “Eight years ago.”
“That was a tiny amount of time in the grand scheme of things.”
“And yet she still thinks she has some sort of claim on him.”
“But…” she said, seeming to know there was more.
“But I’ve known Oliver for over three years. She can’t hold him hostage over a six- month relationship. He’s mine to call dibs on, not hers.”
“Damn straight he is.”
“I guess I need to talk to her. Tell her how I feel. And then give Oliver the chance to explain himself.”
“How do you feel?” she asked.
I picked up a stray kernel of popcorn from beneath the coffee table and turned it slowly in my fingers before depositing it into the bowl. Then I met her expectant stare. “I love him.”
She smiled and let out a small squeal.
“But love doesn’t always conquer all,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You can no longer rep romance.”
“In romance books, everything works out. In real life, I’m not so sure.”
“How many editors have you heard back from?” Sloane asked several days later. I had met her at her office so we could go to lunch together. Apparently, these were things I did now that I was in charge of my own schedule: lunched at restaurants near Sloane’s work.
“They’ve only had it for one day,” I said. The first two days after Kari had announced she wanted to be my client had been spent creating and signing contracts and putting together a list. Kari had lots of opinions about both.
“I know it’s only been one day, but this is Kari Cross we’re talking about.
Nobody has said anything ?” She looked nervous, like she thought Rob had called all the editors at every publishing house and instructed them not to touch me with a ten-foot pole.
Okay, that was my nightmare. I was projecting.
“I’ve had one response. It was something like, Kari Cross is writing what now ?”
She cringed.
“I know.” I picked up a crystal paperweight with a video camera etched into the side and raised my eyebrows at her.
“Like I said, I have nothing in this office I would save in a fire.”
I set it back down and she grabbed her purse off the chair. “You ready?”
“Yes, I’m so hungry.”
“Are you worried at all?” she asked.
“About selling Kari’s book?”
She nodded.
“No, you know how slow publishing can move.”
“Almost as slow as Hollywood,” she responded.
“Exactly. It’s going to happen. Like you said, this is Kari Cross.”
She waved to a coworker near the front as we headed outside. “And what about that other thing we talked about? What are you going to do about that?”
“What other thing?”
“That tiny revelation you had about being in love?”
I wanted to talk to Oliver. I was hoping with everything in me that what he had to say would be enough for me to get over the hurt that still lingered over the lies he told.
And maybe that thought was why I was stalling.
As much as I missed him, I worried that it wouldn’t be enough.
That no matter what he said, I wouldn’t be able to trust him again.
And that thought broke my heart all over again. “I don’t know.”
The rest of the week I counted in messages. Every day something new from someone new.
Audrey: Maggie, I’m sorry. I realized I never said that. But I am. And I am a judgmental bitch. Please answer my calls.
Margot,
I adore Kari Cross and if she writes another romance, please send it my way. But horror is not my specialty or interest. I’m going to pass…
Rob: I’m consulting a lawyer. It’s not too late to make this right.
Hey Margot,
We’d love for you to come to our romance con. Please see attached itinerary and let us know if the proposed panels work for you.
Margot,
I like to keep my horror acquisitions pure. I don’t think I can get behind something so convoluted. Thanks for thinking of me…
Kari: Rob’s an ass, he has no ground to stand on. Please don’t worry about any threats he might make. Just focus on selling my book.
Ms. Hart,
Attached is the full manuscript of my rom-com you requested. I hope you love it and look forward to hearing from you soon…
Oliver: Margot, I know you aren’t speaking to me, but when you get clients, if you want me to add them to your website, let me know. I didn’t teach you how to change things. I should’ve taught you how to change things. I should’ve done so many things. I’m sorry… Also, I miss you.
Margot,
We love Kari Cross, we don’t love this idea…
“Shit,” I said as I read the most recent rejection in my inbox. “I can’t fail.” I was home alone, talking to nobody, yet still felt the need to say it out loud.
I had actually gotten dressed that morning, in a pair of slacks and a blouse.
Work clothes. Because even though my apartment was too small to have a dedicated office space, Oliver had been right, I needed something to mark my work hours from the rest of my day.
Otherwise it all blended together in a big continuous stream of time.
Speaking of Oliver, I’d read the text he sent that morning at least a dozen times.
Soaking in each sentence, analyzing every word choice, second-guessing every meaning.
When you get clients , he’d said. When. He believed in me.
And yet I didn’t respond. At this point, I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for.
Maybe I was waiting for my brain to turn off and my feelings to take over.
Something I wasn’t used to. And the fact that it wasn’t happening worried me more than anything.