Chapter 18 #3
He paused again, watching a pigeon picking at some crumbs someone had left behind for a few seconds before realizing that would mean dead air in his voicemail message.
“Anyhow,” he rushed on. “I miss you. I already said that, but it’s true. I…I hope we can sort this out. Please call me.”
He ended the call and stared at his phone. He should have told Drew he loved him. He absolutely did love him. He was head over heels for the man, whether it made sense or not. He needed to tell him that.
Before he could get too worked up over that, his phone rang and flashed with an incoming facetime request from Diana, of all people. He definitely needed a friend right then, so he answered enthusiastically.
“Diana. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Uh oh.” Diana’s expression went from smiling and lighthearted to concerned in a flash. “It’s that bad, is it?”
“It’s bad,” Lee sighed.
“I saw the review bombs,” she went on. “And the comments all over social media. I’m surprised you haven’t shut down your accounts yet. I would have.”
“Oh, that?” Lee had almost forgotten about all the abuse. Which just made it more obvious what really mattered in the whole situation.
“Oh, that?” Diana repeated incredulously, looking at him like she was worried he might implode. “Are you really okay, honey?”
Lee let out a shaky, laughing breath. “I feel like I’m in danger of losing the love of my life,” he said.
“Oh.” Diana nodded, an entirely different expression taking the place of her concern. “So you love him.”
It sounded like a simple, obvious statement, but it was far from it. Diana had him pegged. She was his best friend, so of course she did.
“I do,” he admitted. “And right now, I think he’s furious with me.”
“Why would he be furious with you?” Diana frowned.
“Because his agent knows Jerry Turnbridge, who told her that I had signed to write a tell-all book about him. Which I didn’t, by the way.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. In fact, I told Jerry Turnbridge to get stuffed earlier today.”
“Wow, Lee.” Diana’s eyes went wide. “You really are in love.”
“I really am in love,” Lee sighed, sagging against the back of the bench. “And the man I’m in love with is hurting and thinks I was part of causing that hurt.”
“But you weren’t,” Diana argued. “At least, not intentionally.”
“I wasn’t,” Lee agreed. “But he’s not really speaking to me right now.”
“He cut you off?”
Lee winced. “Not entirely. But I’m getting one-word text answers when I check on him.”
Diana hummed, her brow furrowed in thought. “I don’t think the situation is hopeless. He wouldn’t answer you at all if he wanted nothing to do with you anymore.”
“And we kissed before we parted the other night,” Lee added that important bit of information.
Diana brightened at once. “That’s it, then,” she said, looking as though everything was solved.
“It’s far from it,” Lee said, hopelessness settling over him as if he was an old woman in the park to feed crumbs to the pigeons. “I feel like I’m inches away from turning into one of those characters who dresses in their wedding gown and sits by a window for the rest of their lives.”
“Aaw, sweetheart,” Diana said, genuinely sympathetic. “We can’t let that happen. I don’t care who the man is. You love him, and it really does sound like he loves you.”
“I thought he did,” Lee sighed.
“He does, I’m certain of it,” Diana insisted. “And we know how to handle these situations. We’re romance writers, after all.”
That made Lee laugh. “We are that.”
“No, I’m serious.” Diana’s enthusiasm grew by the second. “We know how to handle this. If you were writing a character who was going through this same thing, how would you handle it? What would you do?”
“I don’t know. My hero would probably swoop in on a dragon and whisk his lover away to a magical land for hot sex.”
Diana laughed. “Close, but not quite. You’re almost there.”
“Am I? I don’t have any spare dragons lying around.”
“But you can still make The Grand Gesture,” she said. “You’re at the Dark Night of the Soul moment right now, babe. But as soon as you move on to The Grand Gesture, your love story is bound to have a happy ending.”
“This isn’t a romance novel, Diana,” Lee reminded her.
“But it could be,” she said. “You just need to do something that shows Drew you love him, you’re on his side, and you will help him defeat the antagonist so that the two of you can have an HEA.”
Lee smirked at her through his phone. But she might have also been onto something.
“A grand gesture, eh?” he said, ideas already starting to swirl in his head. “I suppose I could think of something.”
“You can and you will,” Diana assured him.
“Because I can see how much this means to you. I can see that you and Drew Oberlin are meant to be together. And I’ve known you long enough to know that you won’t hold back from reaching for what you want, no matter how things are. You deserve this. You love him.”
He did. There was no getting around that. And if he wanted to have his happily ever after with the man he was meant to be with, he would have to come up with a clever idea and fight to have him. Drew was worth it.