Chapter 1 #2
To set the record straight, he was fine… when I let him out the next morning. He had curled up in the children’s section overnight, saying it had the most comfortable of the couches.
I jump to my feet, and take my keys from her. “Sorry, Betsy.”
“Were you busy getting over that writer’s block? Maybe hashing out a steamy sex scene?”
Betsy has a deep seated love for any type of spicy scene in a book.
Why choose, MMFM, cowboy, single dad, billionaire mercenary, she adores them all equally.
Last week, I had to come back to the store for my forgotten bag (yes, I forgot the entire damn bag) and caught her listening to an audiobook over the store speakers.
The fact that she was following along on a physical copy gave me some insight on why the group of very athletic individuals were having sex next to a hockey rink.
If, that is, the cartoon illustrated cover was any indication, it was a hockey romance.
In any case, I did not expect to open the shop door to nearly as many breathy moans as I did. Betsy laughed so hard she almost peed her pants. She hates technology until it lets her listen to filthy sex scenes at full volume. Then, oddly enough, she’s a real fan.
“Not really,” I sigh. “It’s not even writer’s block.
I can write. I can write and write and write.
But it’s all disconnected nonsense. I have no idea what my story is.
I can write a beautiful chapter about my main gal getting a dragon — which is what I spent last night doing — but, now what?
What are she and the dragon going to do?
I have no fucking idea! Before I went to bed, she was riding on the dragon to battle with a giant cat. ”
Betsy laughs and wraps her arm around my shoulders, giving me a squeeze. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Sure, Bits. I’ll figure it out.” I sigh.
Three hours later, Betsy is happily reading her newest smutty adventure behind the counter whilst I move the stock that I’d sorted this morning to the appropriate shelves.
Per usual, soft music plays through the speakers.
I mean, the usual when Bits isn’t listening to a fictional couple reach climax through them, at max volume.
Betsy is sixty, if she’s a day, but will only admit to forty five.
She’s been forty five for the three years I’ve known her.
With a tendency to dress in vibrant (read violent) colors and patterns that clash delightfully, but somehow suit her perfectly; she’s less than five feet tall (hence me affectionately calling her Bits) and built like Tinkerbell.
Her eyes always seem to twinkle with mischief behind the round spectacles perched on her button nose.
Don’t judge her by her cover, though, because she has a laugh like a rusty foghorn, can out drink anyone I have ever met, smokes like a chimney, and has never had any qualms about throwing asshole teenagers out of this store.
She is terrifying and I secretly want to be her when I grow up.
She hired me at Wanderlust when I’d showed up in town with a giant gaping hole where my past should be.
I had juggled the bookstore and enrolled in college for a while, back when I had hoped academia would teach me how to write.
That proved to be a very expensive choice, and after receiving all of the negative feedback from my stuffy professors, I’d dropped out.
Betsy cut back on her own work by hiring me to do…
well, almost everything. She insists that it is exhausting sitting behind that cash register “looking pretty” but it keeps me busy and paid so who am I to judge? Pays me too much, to be honest.
Wanderlust has been my home ever since. We do enough business to keep me writing after a fashion, and to keep Betsy reading some of the smuttiest romances you can find on social media.
Admittedly, business experienced a substantial increase when we opened Wednesday and Friday nights for Buy/Sell/Trade special edition events.
These take place with me running the laptop in the corner to make sure no one gets scammed or pays more than a fair price.
With the influx of book box donations lately, this helps everyone out, especially when not every “box” is to every subscriber’s taste.
This was another hard won victory for me.
Betsy almost had a heart attack when she learned that people were reselling $30 books for over $500.
Thankfully, tonight is Thursday, so all I have to do is survive the day at Wanderlust then go home and try to work on this fucking book.
I sigh deeply, stocking another romance in the already overflowing shelves. Care to guess who did the ordering this week? Hint — it wasn’t me.
Betsy immediately puts her book down and turns to me.
“What’s the matter, pumpkin?”
She always calls me pumpkin like I’m six. I don’t hate it.
“I’m just trying to figure out this story.”
“That one you’re writing?”
“Yes,” I reply, finishing the stack of books in my arms before turning. “The one I’m writing — but I’d use that term loosely.”
“You really have a giant cat in your book?”
I snort. “I did at three AM, but I don’t know if that’s going to survive. Who the hell wants to read a book about a cat the size of a building? That seems oddly… “Clifford the Big Red Dog” of me, doesn’t it?”
Betsy lets loose one of those trademark cackles you can hear a mile away.
“No, because he was clearly a dog and yours is a cat.”
I laugh. “That might be a fair point, but I still don’t think that’s what I’m going for. Who is going to believe there’s tension when you’re battling a kitty cat?”
“Tension is what you make it,” Betsy says with a grin. Abruptly changing the subject. She checks her watch and says “Oh, shit! I have a meeting with my garden club today. I completely forgot. You don’t mind closing up, do ya, pumpkin?”
I shake my head. “When do I ever?”
She bustles around collecting her bag and giving me the never ending list of reminders. “Don’t forget to turn off the coffee pot… oh, and the music. Make sure there aren’t any customers locked inside. Um… oh, and be sure you lock up.”
“I know, Bits,” I wave her off, like all of her warnings aren’t valid, and I don’t have half a million reminders set on my phone for all of those things, and then some.
She comes around the counter and cups my face in her hands.
“There’s no one I know who loves words more than you, sugar.
In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve been fascinated by the magick of language and the fact that every story in the English language is a combination of the same 26 letters. You’re going to get this.”
I lean my forehead against hers and close my eyes. “But, Bits… I can’t nail this battle or war or whatever the fuck it is at this point.”
“Oh, sugar. Why does there have to be a war?”
Exasperated, I throw up my hands and pace away. “There has to be conflict. No one wants to read a book without some sort of fight. Otherwise it’s boring and they don’t finish it! You gonna tell me that that porn you’re reading doesn’t have some fighting and angst in it?”
She lets out that laugh again and hitches her bag more securely over her shoulder.
“Sure they do, pumpkin. But that’s exactly my point, isn’t it?
Conflict doesn’t have to mean some big battle or war.
We got plenty of conflicts going on inside of us every day.
That, I think, is sometimes the scarier battle.
Because it’s you. And ain’t no mastodon cat or whatever is ever gonna be scarier than that. ”
A few days later, my frustration continues.
Despite Betsy’s confidence, I still haven’t fixed the giant cat problem.
In fact, I haven’t written a word. And through a series of unfortunate events, I’m saddled with hosting book club tonight.
Bits has some other engagement — a date — of which I’m only slightly jealous.
I don’t mind book club. The ladies who attend are a fun group, which I appreciate, and it’s always super interesting to hear what they do or don’t like about an author’s choices.
Usually, other than reading out the discussion questions, they require very little of me, which usually leaves me free to take notes and work on my own plot points while they discuss.
It’s like a free brain-storming session for me and I get paid for it. Win-win.
And, of course, that is when Brett walks in.
Fucking Brett.
Brett fucking Frost.
He even looks like a Brett: clean shaven, a flop of expensively highlighted brown hair, big, soulless brown eyes.
His spray tan makes him look too bronze for the early summer weather outside.
He has a strong, chiseled jaw, showcasing a smile that is too even, too straight and too white to be real.
Every time he flashes those overly-pearly whites at me, I vaguely wonder how much he’s spent on whitening treatments.
Well, not him. Technically, his parents.
The real problem with Brett is this — he’s rich, he looks good, and he fucking knows it.
His billionaire father has seen to it. Of course, in Brett’s mind, this makes him a billionaire by proxy.
In other words, he’s a complete fucking douche canoe and counts on women falling at his feet.
I’d rather sit naked on a hot grill than suffer through any more than 30 seconds of conversation with this pompous ass.
Unfortunately, like so many fuck boys before him, he’d decided my lack of interest simply meant that I was playing hard to get and would come around eventually.
I had first met Brett shortly after I was hired at Wanderlust, when I ran into him at the grocery store.
He’d offered to help carry my stuff to the car and appeared immediately annoyed when I declined.
To be fair, I’m not a fucking weakling — I was perfectly capable of getting both my dozen eggs and my bag of pasta home without some creep’s assistance.