12
Woke up in the early afternoon, face glued to the pillow and my head full of warm bread crumbs.
Sunlight pushed through the window with the persistence of a door-to-door salesman, and I felt like I'd just stepped out of an emotional spin cycle.
I didn’t remember much about the night before—except that I could not handle alcohol. Never could. Never claimed otherwise. And those two gin and tonics at Spice, taken back-to-back with all the grace of a cheerleader under pressure, had launched me straight into orbit.
But one thing I did remember. Oh, I remembered it vividly.
The rapture.
The exact moment I got home, ignored the desperate cries of my bladder, and lunged for my Olivetti like God Himself was calling me.
I couldn’t remember how long I’d written.
I couldn’t even remember how many pages I’d cranked out .
But I remembered exactly how it felt.
It felt—drunk or not—like the truest, most right thing I’d ever written.
Yeah, okay. I always said that when starting something new. It was my motivational mantra: “This time it’s different.” But usually, it was just a single step above the last book.
This time, though? This was a whole flight of stairs.
A gin-fueled epiphany, sure. But a powerful one.
Because yes—the truest thing I’d ever written, at that moment, was about a slightly unhinged roommate who, after reading a Victorian-era seduction manual, decides to seduce the most famous rockstar on the planet as if it were some sort of guided spiritual cleanse.
And yet—and here’s the paradox—it felt more real than anything I’d ever written under the banner of “serious literature.”
I don’t know. Maybe it was just the gin. Or maybe it was truth, slipping through the lines. At least that’s what I believed last night, as I wrote like a woman possessed, heart ablaze, bladder screaming.
Then, at some point, I must have dropped everything. Run to the bathroom. Come back. Collapsed onto the bed like a sack of potatoes with a literary calling. And passed out instantly.
I wondered: would I still think those pages were brilliant now?
Now that I was sober. Cynical. Back in full Bea mode.
A part of me was afraid to find out. I fidgeted under the covers. Rolled to one side. Then the other. Grabbed my phone. Put it back. Pretended I was just looking for a comfortable position, when really I was just hiding from myself.
I was disgusted. Truly.
“Pull yourself together, for God’s sake,” I muttered, like that would somehow shake me out of it.
I got up. Went to the bathroom. Peed. Splashed my face with cold water—the kind that makes you regret being born but also snaps you back to life.
Back in my room, I opened the blinds: Manhattan glittered in the distance like a hyperactive mirage made of glass, metal, and possibility.
I wondered what Mr. Bronson was doing right then.
Probably reading some overly ambitious manuscript filled with words like “ oneiric ” and “ symbolic dissonance .” I wondered if he ever thought about me.
If anyone else had ever stormed into his office and shouted in his face that they deserved to be read.
Enough stalling, I thought.
It was time.
I sat down at my desk .
Stared at the stack of pages—face down, carefully aligned, with just a pinch of superstition—next to the Olivetti, like it was asleep too.
There had to be at least a dozen. Maybe more.
I sighed.
Reached for the stack. Flipped it over.
And started to read.
I tried to be as critical as possible. Cynical. Ruthless, like a talent-show judge with the flu.
But the truth?
That story kicked ass.
I found myself laughing out loud more than once.
Yeah, I know… laughing at your own jokes is basically a crime punishable by wine confiscation at any dinner party. But that wasn’t the point. The point was—I was having fun.
I was writing, and I liked it. Not just the result. The act itself.
I’d found my spark again.
That rare, precious thing that, once lost, can slide under a couch and stay there for years.
Then, like a pebble cracking a windshield, one not-so-minor detail slammed back into my brain:
Next month, no more money from Mom and Dad.
How was I supposed to pay rent?
Utilities?
Buy food ?
I looked around. Considered selling the rug for a second.
Three weeks.
That’s all I had.
And right now, in Vivienne Blaze’s messy little saga—the literary alter ego of Tess Martini—I was still knee-deep in Act One.
But if I kept writing each night with the same frantic fire I’d had yesterday… if Tess kept diving into her romantic delusions with that same dramatic flair… If the universe cut me just a little slack—both financially and creatively…
I could do it.
I’d print that manuscript. I’d get a meeting with Mr. Bronson. I’d walk back into that office, this time with my head held high, and slam it on his desk like a pie to the face.
“See if this pops off the page, you pompous twit.”
I realized, with some alarm, that I was starting to sound like Tess. That same unhinged tone, full of fate and signs from the universe and the holy power of one’s own ideas.
I’d become a hopeless dreamer.
Only I didn’t have the sex appeal. I had… publishing. And publishing, spoiler alert, has never seduced a soul.
Besides, Bronson didn’t even rep romance novels.
But mine wasn’t just any romance, dammit! It wasn’t Salted Caramel Hearts , or Two Roommates and a Cabin , or Love on Holiday (seriously, who comes up with these titles?).
No. Mine was another planet.
A rom-com that made you laugh, sure—but then hit you with that gut punch. The kind that makes you laugh while realizing there’s actually nothing funny at all.
Forget the Great American Novel.
This was the story of a girl clinging to her dignity by her fingernails. Who wanted a place in the world, even if she wasn’t sure where it was.
Rom-com?
Chick lit?
Ridiculous little tale?
Who cares.
It was a story. Period.
And I had three weeks to live it and write it. I’d reach the end exhausted, overdrawn, maybe even evicted. But the beauty of it was, my Olivetti didn’t need electricity. If I had to, I’d finish that damned book sitting on the curb. I swear I would.
This wasn’t over, Mr. Bronson. Not even close. And I’d prove it to you—I would prove it.
But enough wallowing. It was time to throw on my investigative journalist hat, grab my notebook, and find out exactly what my main character was scheming next.