Chapter 31 Book Club Boyfriend
Book Club Boyfriend
One day later
The text came the same time his old ones used to, when Blair was sitting out back eating dinner.
Jack: Hi.
She’d been wondering if she was going to hear from him tonight. She’d overnighted Green Light to him the same evening she’d gotten American Crow. She grinned as she set down her book and picked up her phone.
Blair: Hi.
Jack: Your script is amazing.
Blair laughed, and cried a little, too. He was back. She’d been so afraid she’d lost him forever.
Blair: A writer I respect once told me the word “amazing” was generic.
Jack: Also, I’m sorry.
Blair: I’m sorry, too.
Jack: My dad was the leak.
Blair: What?!
Blair: I didn’t see that one coming.
Jack: Neither did I, but I should have.
Blair: But how did he even do it?
Jack: I have a crazy proposition. What if we don’t have this conversation over text?
Blair FaceTimed him.
He answered with audio only, which was a bit disappointing. “Hi.”
But oh, his voice. Something lurched in her chest. She had missed him so. “Hi.”
“I’d like to say that while I paddled over to my dad’s that night, the night you left Allie’s, I came to my senses and figured out that you were right about everything.”
She pushed her plate away and leaned back in her chair, enjoying the familiar unkinking of her insides that he always inspired. “But?”
“But I just went over there and tried to calm him down. Tried to calm myself down. Acted like I always did with him—deferential.” He blew out a breath. “Until he told me he was the one who’d leaked the pages.”
“That is wild. Why did he even tell you?”
“He held it up as an example of him doing something on my behalf. He knew better, and he was doing it for my own good. He was trying to make an analogy between having done that, which I guess he thought I would appreciate or at least not mind, given that it made American Crow better, and defending the fact that he never told me about Ed’s death.
And of course between that and the fact that he ‘rescued’ me from you. ”
“How did he even get the pages to leak them?”
“He was at my place last fall for a brief visit. He saw the file open on my computer while I was in the bathroom and e-mailed it to himself. He thought the pages were bad and that I was on the wrong track.”
“So instead of telling you that, he leaked them? What a monster.”
“Right. But that was always true. Why did it take that for me to finally see it? Why did I take everything out on you and let you leave just because you said some things I didn’t want to hear?”
“Why did I do the same to you?”
“Because you were scared. Because sometimes confronting the truth is too much, and your brain shuts down and you lash out.”
That was exactly right. That was what had happened to her, before Christmas, and what had happened to him. “I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered that your dad thought I was enough of a threat that he needed to save you from me.”
“Flattered, I think. He knew how powerful you were.”
“Why didn’t you text me? Not that I’m complaining about the book.”
“Because that’s what we always do, isn’t it? We text. We smooth things over. Then we…”
“Have sex and yell at each other?”
“Right. I didn’t want to do that again.”
“Which is why you wanted to talk on the phone this time.”
“No.” The gate on the side of the house beeped. “I wanted to see you.”
Wait. Was he here? Blair tried to push back from the table, but her limbs weren’t working.
She gave up and slumped in her chair.
And there he was, doing his James Dean lean against the fence. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Your Green Light script was peachy.”
“American Crow was peachy,” she croaked. She was getting emotional.
“I spent the whole flight here trying to figure out a way to tell you what I need to tell you. Initially, I thought it wouldn’t be that hard.
I am a writer, right? In the end, I’m not sure I was able to find the right words.
Maybe you can help me.” He pushed off the fence and started toward her. “I like you.”
Blair grinned. Was this going where she thought it was? Where she hoped it was? She pushed herself to standing. “I hold you in high regard.”
“I esteem you.” He was still coming toward her.
“I am fond of you,” she countered.
He’d reached her. He was standing in front of her, gazing at her with warmth in his eyes as he closed off the game. “I love you.”
She burst into tears.
“Yeah, well, I kind of expected that reaction. I always knew you were smart.”
She lunged for him. He caught her, and then they were hugging. And then they were kissing. Realizing she hadn’t said anything back, she pulled away, slugged him in the shoulder, and said, “I love you, too, you fool.”
They stared at each other, grinning.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I was thinking on the way here that LA isn’t so bad. I wrote a proposal, and it was accepted. So now I have to write book number three.” He looked around the patio, raising his eyebrows in exaggerated fashion.
“Do you… want to write it here?”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes twinkling in a way that conveyed that maybe meant yes. “And then I was thinking that you’ll be in Minnesota a lot next summer, right?”
She was smiling so hard, she felt like her face was going to crack. “So…”
“We’ve established that we love each other, and that we are going to spend a lot of time together in the coming weeks and months.”
“Jack Branksome, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”
He dropped the smiley, jokey manner and said, “Yes.”
She picked up her phone and scrolled back quite a way in her text chain with Esme until she found an iteration of the question Esme was always asking.
Esme: Is Jack your boyfriend?
Blair held her finger down on the text until the reply option came up. Turned the phone to Jack so he could see as she typed Yes.
“Blair Kellermoon and novelist Jack Branksome spotted at music festival”
Page Six, April 21, 2026
While power producer Blair Kellermoon and her daughter, Esme Johnston, have long been Coachella regulars, the pair was joined yesterday by a shadowy figure that turned out to be none other than Kellermoon’s onetime nemesis, novelist Jack Branksome.
News that Kellermoon has optioned Branksome’s latest book suggests the pair underwent a professional reconciliation at some point.
Holding hands while taking in a Coldplay set in the desert with Kellermoon’s daughter looking on suggests the pair has also undergone a personal reconciliation. We love to see it.