Chapter 5
Chapter Five
January 2023
T he woman who appeared on the screen of Stella’s computer that foggy afternoon smiled at Stella with an expectation Stella couldn’t fathom. Stella was jittery, wearing a loose sweater her mother had knitted for her, touching her hair too often.
This was Gwen Cottrill, the literary agent.
This was the woman who’d read Stella’s book.
“Hi, Stella! Can you hear me okay?” Gwen Cottrill asked.
“Hi! Yes, I can. How are you?” Stella asked. She hated how her voice wavered.
“Great.” Gwen spread her fingers out and took a deep breath. “I want to tell you. Brief Greek Love floored me. I read it all in one sitting, and then I went back to read it again. My heart broke. I cried and cried..”
Stella’s heart fluttered. “Thank you for saying that.” She thought she might float away.
“Seriously. This book has everything,” Gwen gushed. “It has romance. It has intrigue. It has a road trip. It has European travel. It has questions that plague every single human on the planet.” Gwen sighed again. “I would like to offer to represent you as we get this book into shipshape and send it to editors. How do you feel about that?”
Tears stung Stella’s eyes. She wanted to say, Yes! A million times, yes! But she’d also read on the internet—through her extensive research in the seven months since she’d begun sending this book out to literary agents—that you weren’t supposed to agree to an offer without telling the other literary agents you’d received one. That way, agents could fight over you. They could tell you just how well they would champion your book.
However, in the past seven months, Stella had received more than seventy rejections. Those rejections had taken their toll on her heart. She’d begun to think, Why did I ever write a book in the first place? Nobody wants it.
She’d begun to think, Maybe I’m bad at this.
“I appreciate that,” Stella breathed. “I’ll take the requisite couple of weeks to think about it, if that’s okay?”
Gwen was unflappable. She was a professional. “That’s fine by me. I can’t wait to hear your final decision.”
Gwen and Stella said goodbye and hung up. This left Stella in the shadows of her office, in a house that shifted uneasily in the Nantucket winds. She rubbed her chest and got up, wishing one of her children were here. But as it was a Wednesday in the middle of winter, in the middle of the afternoon, both Chloe and Logan were in school.
In fact, tonight was Logan’s basketball game against Oak Bluffs High School. Stella couldn’t wait to sit with her daughter and Matt and cheer Logan on. Matt had begun bringing his girlfriend Mandy to games, too, which was all right by Stella. Mandy had great taste in snacks and always shared. And it pleased Stella to see Matt so happy. She didn’t want her children to grow up thinking that adults couldn’t be happy after divorce.
Stella was jittery after her call with the literary agent. She had the sensation that all of her dreams were coming true. She had to go talk to someone about it.
So she grabbed her purse, donned her coat, and drove to the Sutton Book Club. Aunt Esme was the woman she needed to see.
Stella entered the Sutton Book Club to find Esme kneeling before a bookshelf, rearranging spy novels and crime thrillers. Esme worked diligently with her brows furrowed. From the speaker system came the music of Genesis. Toward the back of the Sutton Book Club stood Larry at the computer, typing away. They still hadn’t noticed Stella. It was as though they were in their own world, safely there together.
“Aunt Esme?” Stella’s voice wavered.
Esme jumped, then pressed her hand to her chest. “I didn’t hear you come in!” She clambered to her feet and came over to draw Stella into a hug. “My darling Stella. How are you? Let’s get some coffee.”
Stella followed Esme to the coffee machine, where she filled two mugs and pressed one into Stella’s hand. Esme looked at her expectantly.
“You look like you’re bursting with news,” Aunt Esme said.
Stella laughed. “Is it that obvious?” She took a breath. “A literary agent wants to represent me!”
Aunt Esme nearly dropped her coffee. She put it down and threw her arms around Stella. “Larry, did you hear that?” she called. “Stella has a literary agent!”
“That’s fantastic!” Larry hollered back.
Stella blushed and explained she hadn’t said yes, not yet. Aunt Esme nodded and agreed she was taking the right course of action. This was how it went in the publishing world.
“It’s slow as molasses,” Esme agreed. “But tell me. What did the literary agent say about your book?”
Blushing even deeper, Stella translated what Gwen said. Esme nodded along. She’d read the book three times—once in the spring of 2022, right after Stella had finished a first draft, then again in the summer of 2022, and again in autumn when Stella was pulling her hair out after months of looking for an agent. The book is great, Esme had told her in autumn. You just need to find the right agent to champion it.
“I knew you’d find someone,” Esme breathed. “This is great news.”
Stella’s eyes filled with tears that she blinked away. “I can’t believe I wrote the thing, let alone that somebody actually likes it.”
“The book is tremendously heartfelt,” Aunt Esme said. “The world will take note.”
Stella left the Sutton Book Club a little more than an hour later and walked to Nantucket High School to get there in time for Logan’s basketball game. It was snowing lightly, melting on her nose and hair, but she hardly felt the cold. All the way there, she thought about the book she’d written during the dreamy final months of 2021 and early part of 2022—a book that delved into the specifics of her very first romantic love. A romantic love that had nearly shattered her. It was the first time she’d really stared the story in the face.
The experience had been cathartic. A friend had laughed. “Most people mourn their marriage after getting divorced. But your divorce has led you to mourn your first love instead.”
Grief was a strange thing. It came in waves. Sometimes, those waves came decades later.
Stella sat in the basketball gym on a bleacher with her phone in her hand. She emailed the literary agents who still had full copies of her manuscript with the news that she’d received an offer.
Suddenly, the bleacher bowed slightly, creaking with the weight of somebody else. Stella raised her head to find Bruce Tyler opposite her. He spread a book across his thighs and adjusted his glasses, killing time before watching the game. Bruce’s son Simon often played only a few minutes a game, but Bruce was always there, rain or shine. Logan was one of the more athletic guys on the team, which meant the coach threw him in at every opportunity, even when he was exhausted.
Stella didn’t know Bruce well. They were friendly, but she hadn’t known he was a reader.
It was rare to meet readers these days. Everyone was so busy. Everyone was obsessed with their phone.
“Hi, Bruce!” Stella said. She shoved her phone into her purse, realizing she looked like one of those obsessed with their phones.
Bruce looked up from his book. “Hey there.” He didn’t close his book.
“What are you reading?”
“It’s a Knausgaard,” he explained, raising it up to show her how thick it was.
Stella was pretty sure Knausgaard had won a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize. One of the two. But she’d never read him before. She smiled, impressed.
“I’ve heard great things about him,” she said.
Bruce brightened up and slid closer to her on the bleachers.
What am I doing? Stella asked herself. Why am I engaging with Bruce Tyler?
But she knew why. It had been years since she’d flirted with anyone. She felt powerful and strange and new in the wake of her literary agent offer. She wanted things again.
She wanted things more than she had in years.
“Are you a big reader?” Bruce asked her.
“I am,” Stella said. “You must know my Aunt Esme at the Sutton Book Club?”
“That’s right. I forgot you were a Sutton!” he said.
Stella smiled. “I took my maiden name back after the divorce.”
“How does it feel to have it back?”
“It feels like slipping on an old glove. It fits just right,” Stella told him.
Bruce smiled. She wasn’t sure what had happened to Bruce’s wife. One day, she was gone, and Bruce wasn’t the kind to tell anyone his business. That must have been five years ago.
Stella mentioned a few of the books she’d read that year. Bruce recommended a few of his favorites. Their conversation flowed gently.
When Bruce asked her what kind of career she had, and she said copywriting, he asked, “Do you do any creative writing, too?”
Suddenly, Stella found herself gushing about her meeting with the literary agent. Bruce cocked his head with interest.
“That’s incredible,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” Stella blushed. She was embarrassed that she’d told him so much, so quickly.
Bruce adjusted his glasses. It was as though the air between them sizzled.
“Listen, I normally don’t do this. But would you like to get a drink sometime?” Bruce asked.
“I’d like that very much,” Stella agreed.
Just then, the door to the gym burst open to bring in the basketball team for warm-ups. Stella nearly leaped off the bleacher with surprise. Bruce laughed. It was like they’d been caught.
“Let me get your number,” Bruce said.
Stella gave it. Gladly.
Not long after that, Matt, Chloe, and Mandy arrived to take seats by Stella. Bruce remained on the opposite side of the gym, immersed in his book. Stella couldn’t help but notice he glanced over at her frequently as though to check she was still there. Stella met his gaze just once and smiled.
Matt and Mandy were gorgeous together. Stella was the first to admit they “fit” each other better than Matt and Stella ever had. They were both blond and extremely fit from hours of yoga and running, but they were both self-professed foodies and would never deign to eat something out of a microwave. Mandy was talking to Chloe about a new recipe she wanted to try—apparently with Chloe later that week—and Stella had to fight not to feel jealous. It was good that Chloe was getting outside influence. It was good she was learning not to use a microwave all the time!
But when Chloe turned to her mother to ask her how her day was—a funny thing for a fifteen-year-old to ask—Stella couldn’t resist admitting her literary agent news. Matt bolted up to hug her. Mandy raised her cup of diet soda in salute.
And from the gym floor, Logan turned to look at his big, messy family and smiled. It was as though he could feel echoes of their love all the way down there. Stella hoped it gave him power.
Not long after that, Stella emailed Gwen to say she wanted her to be her literary agent. She didn’t really want to bother with anyone else. She had a good feeling about Gwen, and Gwen seemed to have a good feeling about her.
Stella wrote in her diary, Sometimes in life, we have to take risks. We have to jump. And Gwen is willing to jump with me.
It was only late at night that Stella dreamed of how the book might be received in the big, wide world.
Would he see it?
Would he know?
Oh, but she knew he’d built an enormous life. She knew she didn’t factor into it in the slightest.
She was just a blip in his incredible, adventurous story.
She was happy to be a blip.
It had meant she’d gotten to know him when she’d had the chance.