Chapter Two
“You did what?”
I was sitting opposite Bianca in a crowded bar on Greek Street, my face still pink from having sprinted across Soho, a glass of wine in one hand and the stolen liberated book in the other.
“I couldn’t leave it there, B. The man was a monster who would’ve ripped it up the second I left. I rescued it for the greater good!” I slammed my glass down with rather more force than intended, spilling wine over the table.
“All right, Robin Hood, calm down,” Bianca said, grinning as she topped me up. “Was he really that bad?”
“Worse! He was so patronizing, like I was some airhead schoolgirl in danger of eloping with a seven-foot hairy monster because I’d read Beauty and the Beast. I’ve never met such a sexist, self-important, prejudiced prick.”
“Let me guess: Was he old and wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches? Did he have halitosis?”
“No, that’s the worst part. He was young—early thirties, I’d say—not remotely smelly, and objectively handsome, in an Adam-out-of-The Love Hypothesis kind of way.”
“Ohh, big hands,” Bianca said approvingly. “What a shame he was such an arse; I could see you with a sexy, brooding bookseller.”
“Ugh, I can safely promise you I would never date that man.”
“I wonder what made him hate romance novels so much?”
“My theory is abandoned by the love of his life, or else major mummy issues. Either way, I refused to leave my babies in his huge, evil hands.” I looked down at the copy of Pride and Prejudice, stroking its cover. “It’s all right, my darlings, you’re safe now. The nasty man can’t hurt you anymore.”
Bianca laughed, a wicked cackle that was one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. “He was correct about one thing, though—”
“Nothing that man said was correct,” I muttered.
“Come on, you have to admit that romance novels have given us high expectations of what a boyfriend should be like.”
“My expectations of men have always been on the low to medium side, I’d say.”
“What about that guy in sixth form who you dumped because you said he was a rubbish kisser and every decent book boyfriend is always phenomenal at it?”
“That wasn’t the only reason I dumped him,” I said. “He also left messages on read for three days, which is a massive red flag.”
“And who was that sweet guy from your uni course—the French one who carried a guitar everywhere?” Bianca asked.
“Tomas?”
“He was besotted with you, but you refused to go on a date with him because you said you needed a man who could banter with you like Joshua from The Hating Game.”
“It’s not my fault I find a sarcastic wit attractive,” I said. “Plus, you can’t talk: Remember when we were going through our intense Twilight phase, and Rick Simmons asked you to the school prom and you said you’d only go if he’d cosplay with you?”
Bianca smiled at the memory. “He did it, as well. I still have a photo of us somewhere: me as a smoking-hot Black Bella and him as Edward, with too much talcum powder on his face.”
I laughed. “Yeah, he was an underwhelming vampire.”
“But this is my point, Zo. We’ve always had such perfect book boyfriends that real-life men are only ever going to be a let-down in comparison.”
I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of wine. “I’d say it’s the other way around for me. I’ve always had such shitty real-life men that I’ve come to realize book boyfriends are the only ones who won’t let me down.”
“OK, but however great Xaden Riorson is, he’s not going to make you a baked bean toastie when you’re hungover, is he? And Wes Bennett can’t give you a hug when you’ve had a shitty day at work.”
“I have you for the hugs, and I can make my own toasties, thank you very much.”
Bianca chuckled. “Of course you can, and I’d never suggest you need a man to be happy or complete.
But you once told me that one of the reasons you love romance novels so much—one of the reasons you wanted to write them yourself—was because above all else, you love the promise of a happy-ever-after.
And I don’t think you’ll ever find your own version of that if you’re always comparing every man you meet to Adam Carlsen or Fitzwilliam Darcy. ”
I took another swig of wine. I knew Bianca meant well, but on this one, she was wrong.
Just because I loved a happy-ever-after in a book didn’t mean I expected to have one myself.
Hell, I couldn’t even write a convincing one, which was part of the reason why I’d given up on my dream of being a published author—so how could I ever hope to have one in real life?
“Happy-ever-afters are for novels,” I said, then realized I sounded alarmingly like that grumpy bookseller.
“Anyway, you disprove your own theory. You’ve had dozens of book boyfriends, and yet you still found Steve, who is 100 percent perfect and, unless there’s something you’re not telling me, 100 percent real. ”
“True, he is pretty dreamy,” Bianca said, her face softening at the mention of her fiancé. “Although I wouldn’t go as far as saying he’s perfect. This morning, I walked into the kitchen to find him picking his toenails while eating toast.”
“Ugh, gross! I take it back: Edward Cullen would never do that, so you should marry him instead.”
“Nah, he’s too problematic; I’ll stick with Steve and his toenails.”
“Cheers to that!” I raised my glass, and as we clinked them together, I felt a rush of love for my best friend.
I’d known Bianca since we were two bookish eleven-year-olds who’d bonded over our mutual love of Malorie Blackman.
Since losing both my parents—my mum to cancer and my dad to fuckwittery—Bianca was the closest thing I had to family: the Jane to my Elizabeth Bennet, the peanut butter to my jam, the—
“Whoa, this wine has gone straight to my head,” I said.
“That’ll be the shoplifting. Breaking the law always makes me thirsty too.”
I groaned. “Please don’t remind me. I never want to think about that awful bookshop again.”
“Which one was it?”
“Baskerville Books.”
“Ohh, I know the one. That shop has big dick lit energy. In fact…” Bianca trailed off, and when I glanced up, I saw she was biting her lower lip.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I was just going to say I’m pretty sure that’s where Crispin had his book launch last week.”
At the mention of that name, I felt my heart plummet from my chest cavity down to somewhere around my knees. Crispin Carter, the man I’d dated for four years. The man who’d destroyed my dream of being a writer and then destroyed my heart.
“Sorry, I wanted to tell you in a more delicate way than that,” Bianca said.
“It’s OK. I knew the book was out.”
I knew because it was everywhere I sodding looked: glowing reviews in all the newspapers, an interview on Radio 4—I’d even walked past a giant poster in Camden Town Tube station.
“The voice of a generation,” it had smugly declared, with quotes from Ian McEwan and George Saunders. I’d started taking the bus to avoid it.
“If it’s any consolation, the book launch looked shit,” Bianca said. “Also, I saw photos on Instagram, and he’s grown this stupid little goatee that makes his mouth look like a vulva.”
I snorted into my wine. “Oh God, I can just imagine it. I suppose she was at the launch too?”
She was Petra, the woman Crispin had started dating shortly after he’d dumped me.
I’d never met her, having completely cut Crispin and his friends out of my life, but I may or may not have done some drunken late-night googling, and from what I could tell, Petra had supermodel good looks and strong manic-pixie-dream-girl energy.
“I think she was there,” B said, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “You OK?”
I sighed. “Yeah, fine. I mean, as much as it pains me to say it, Crispin deserves this success. His book may be the dictionary definition of naval-gazing dick lit, but at least it’s well written.”
“It’s only well written because of everything you did to help it. Jesus, if it hadn’t been for you, Crispin would still be sitting in his ratty dressing gown, sobbing over his stupid typewriter.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll mention me in his Booker Prize acceptance speech,” I said, the bitterness thick in my voice.
Because Bianca was right: I had helped Crispin write that book.
I’d spent hundreds of hours talking through the plot with him, reading his endless drafts, and massaging his fragile ego when he got yet another agent rejection.
But when I asked him for feedback on my own writing, all Crispin had ever given me was blunt, derisive criticism, until eventually my confidence had been worn down so low that I stopped writing altogether.
And the thanks I got for it all? A week after Crispin finally signed with an agent, he dumped me and threw me out of his flat.
“Fuck him!” I said graciously. “I hope his book bombs spectacularly and he’s destined to spend the rest of his life going to book signings where only one person attends, and they turn out to be there by accident and drink the free wine but don’t buy a copy of his stupid novel.”
“That’s my girl!” Bianca clinked my glass again, and we downed our drinks.
* * *
We spent the next few hours discussing Bianca’s upcoming engagement party and generally putting the world to rights, and by the time we hugged good night and set off to our respective homes, the streets of Soho were looking pleasantly fuzzy.
I caught the 88 bus at Oxford Circus, took my usual favorite seat at the front of the top deck, and watched the city spin by.
But as the bus wound its way north along the edge of Regent’s Park, I found my thoughts swaying back to what Bianca had said about book boyfriends and unrealistic expectations.
It was true that I had a track record of falling for fictional characters.
My first love was Percy Jackson, who I developed an embarrassingly intense crush on at age nine.
During my awkward teenage years, I spent hours locked in my bedroom, mooning over moody, emotionally stunted types like Heathcliff and Rhysand, and at university, I went through a pretentious phase of only dating men born before 1900 (although, in secret, I had a passionate months-long affair with Atlas from It Ends With Us).
By the time I graduated and moved back to London seven years ago, my tastes had broadened, and since then I’d been wooed by everyone from Anthony Bridgerton to Alex Volkov.
But through it all, there had been one man who stood out above all others.
Someone I’d first been introduced to by my mum, and who’d stuck by me through the good times and the bad, through triumph, tragedy, and heartbreak. Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
At the thought of him, I retrieved the stolen copy of Pride and Prejudice from my bag.
The spine was cracked, and multiple page corners were turned down, as if someone had read and reread it many times before, but the dust on the edges suggested the book had been abandoned long ago.
I flicked to a random page and tried to read the top line, although the letters were slightly blurry, thanks to all the wine I’d consumed tonight.
Still, I recognized the passage and smiled as I started to read about Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance.
It was from chapter ten, the scene at Netherfield where Elizabeth and Darcy verbally spar with each other, and one of my and Mum’s favorites.
“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry…” I read, possibly aloud because, well, wine. “Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.”
God, Darcy was wonderful. Yes, he was proud and judgmental at the start, but he was also honorable and kind, willing to admit when he was wrong and steadfast in his commitment to the woman he loved.
Here was a man who wouldn’t abandon his sick wife and distraught teenage daughter the second life got messy, like my arsehole father had.
And he definitely wouldn’t tell Elizabeth her writing was oversimplistic and unrealistic, then dump her and shack up with a trust-fund-enabled spoken word poet, like Crispin had.
I closed my eyes and wished, for the thousandth time in my life, that Mr. Darcy was real and would save me from the awful, underwhelming, romance-hating men of London.
At which point, I must have dozed off to sleep, because the next thing I knew, I was at Parliament Hill Fields, being shaken awake by the driver complaining about piss-heads on her bus.