Romantic Friction

The Plot Thickens

“You. Come.” I hike my tote higher onto my shoulder and jab a finger at Brad.

Except...

Happy Thanksgiving, Coop!

Her text. “Coop? Did she call you Coop?”

He gives a half bow, half curtsy. “Cooper Armstrong.”

Knew it. Noah, Oliver, Hunter, Cooper, little difference.

We leave the restaurant lounge and exit into the frigid air of late-night Chicago in February. Cooper Armstrong.

“Let me guess,” I say, limping slightly as I lead the way back to our hotel. “Your ancestors were on the Mayflower.”

“And founded Plymouth’s first suburb, living right in Duxbury Harbor, very close to where my farm is now.”

“Your farm. In Duxbury Harbor. What are you? An oyster farmer?”

He tips his chin.

“You’re joking,” I say.

“I never joke . . .”

I roll my eyes.

“About farming or seafood,” he finishes.

“So you and your worms know nothing about the pH of soil.”

“No, but I can tell you the pH of isochrysis galbana algae must be kept at a constant eight.”

“I’m starting to think you either know everything or nothing.”

“One of those is entirely accurate.”

We enter the convention hotel and pass through the lobby on our way to the elevators. Inside, I hit the button for the third

floor where the ballrooms are located. He presses the button for the tenth floor.

“Oh, no,” I say. “You’re sticking with me.” Because Cooper Armstrong, Mr. Wonder Bread himself, just heard me vocalize my

intention to end the career of his craft-fair friend.

To his credit, “Coop” simply nods, and when the elevator opens to the third floor, he follows me out and to the grand ballroom.

Hartley knows me. Perhaps not personally, but she’s read my books and “written” like me. That means she knows how my brain

works. All fiction writers put themselves into their work, no matter if they’re writing about medieval Europe or aliens on

Mars or apocalyptic worms. Our struggles with our mothers, our partners, our fear of failure or small spaces, our love of

mint chocolate chip ice cream—some of “us” seeps into our stories, both on purpose and not. Hartley has the upper hand. I

need the same. I need to read Love and Lawlessness . I don’t care that an AI spit it out. If she truly “edited” it as she says, there have to be pieces of herself in it. I’m

sure there must be a copy leftover from our impromptu signing.

We round the corner, and my legs morph into cement.

“Now that’s gotta hurt,” he says.

“Shut. Up.”

A gaggle of volunteers in red Romance US shirts stands outside the entrance where my banner once hung. They’re constructing

a shape out of books. Letters, specifically. The first is already completed. An H the size of Brad. Vertically stacked using copies of Love and Lawlessness .

The W is about to get under way as a young woman in a I Have a Sleep Disorder: It’s Called “Reading” shirt drags over a ladder. She collects three books, my name on the spine of two of them. Feeling returns to my legs and I

step closer, Brad—I mean, Cooper—on my heels.

“They’re using mine,” I whisper.

Hartley having only one title means there aren’t enough of her books to build two letters the size of human man. So the books

serving as bricks are hers and mine.

“Don’t.” It slips out, raspy, like it’s been dragged over sandpaper.

Before it fully registers, Brad—Cooper, Cooper —is taking off his puffer vest, pressing it into my chest, and marching toward the cluster of volunteers.

His red Romance US shirt marks him as one of them. He uses what he has—height, deep voice, male genitals—to command authority.

I slink back toward the elevators as he informs the volunteers that there has been a change of plan. I don’t hear what that

change is. I don’t particularly care.

The next Sofie Wilde and Sofie Wilde. Together. For how long? My series has ended. The timing fits for that baton to be passed.

Or, more accurately, violently ripped from my death grip.

A wave of nausea sends my hand to the wall. Short rapid breaths make me dizzy, and I bend at the waist.

This is a world of business masquerading as art. Profits drive all. And profits come and go as quickly as a wrongly worded quip online. And what I did was much more than that. Is this how it ends, then? At my own hands? With me unable to do anything except sit back and watch as that velvet rope is drawn, secured, with me on the wrong side, metaphorically the same way it was literally years ago when I first learned of its existence?

Purple it was, a deep royal color, strung across the entrance to a world I thought I had finally become a part of. Back then,

only Rosie was behind it. Grace and Fiona were still fetuses. It was my very first book festival, this one in Texas, a state

I would come to learn regularly sees a tsunami of amazing and dedicated readers pouring into convention centers and bookstores

to meet authors like children gleefully storming a Disney World character breakfast.

My publisher had sent me, or so I thought. I found out years later that Blaire had used her own money to foot the bill and

her powers of persuasion to convince the publisher to include me.

Inside I was a ball of nerves, but outwardly, I projected that same confidence that sold a book about superheroes born from

constellations to shoppers who had come to the holiday fair for penguin candles. Still, I flubbed my author pitch at my first

panel—my only panel. But I was determined to learn. I sat in on every other author talk and panel, prioritizing the writers

from my same publisher, taking notes, memorizing their names and genres and story premises. That night, the publisher was

hosting a dinner for all of its authors attending the festival.

When I arrived at the party, clutching my first traditionally published book, in a navy suit I couldn’t afford, tears pricked

the backs of my eyes. A sign with my publisher’s name and all the divisions in it, including my own romance imprint, hung

on the wall beside an entrance guarded with a purple velvet rope.

“To protect us from going in or them from getting out,” I joked to the woman holding a tablet.

“In,” she said brusquely.

I gave her my name, and she scanned the list, shaking her head. A mistake, it had to be a mistake, because I was so new. I

opened the front cover of my book, pointing to my imprint and publishing house, the same names staring down on us from the

sign behind the velvet rope. I unearthed my wallet, then my ID, from the black leather clutch I’d borrowed from my mother

to prove that I was who I said I was. This book, this publisher, this life, was mine.

The rope remained in place. As if it were protecting a secret algorithm for guaranteed placement on the NYT bestseller list

(which, in retrospect, it essentially was). I thought I belonged there, that I was one of them. Surely, someone on their end

had messed up, and yet I was the one with clammy hands and burning cheeks.

I made a call to Blaire. She made a call, several, I’d learn after the fact. But in that moment, she took the blame, saying

she had neglected to RSVP for me. The hotel had strict room-capacity limits. There was nothing anyone could do.

I was every version of myself in that moment. I was a seven-year-old girl paralyzed by the fear of embarrassing myself in

front of my peers and I was a twenty-year-old college student pretending my heart hadn’t been clawed from my chest and I was

a twenty-five-year-old woman apologizing for not writing “real literature” and slumming it by writing “cheesy romance.” Never

good enough, smart enough, funny enough, likeable enough, talented enough, enough , enough , enough .

Enough.

The pedestal I’d put publishing on was cracked. That was the first step in realizing that this world was no different from the one I left, from any world, really. I wouldn’t be given anything. By the time those cracks revealed themselves to be fault lines, I was well on my way to not expecting anything and simply taking.

“Sofie?” The voice is far away, at the end of a long tunnel. “Is everything okay? Are you in pain?”

He stands before me. Cooper. Brad. Names are so important. They breathe life into a character. You can’t write a hundred pages

and not be emotionally tied to your character’s name. Changing a name that late in the game is like killing a friend. Cooper.

Brad. Cooper-Brad. Cooper-Brad has one arm outstretched as if to steady me. Tucked under his other arm are two books. I’d

recognize the purple spine in my sleep.

“They’re taking it down,” he says. “And if it makes you feel better, it wasn’t sanctioned.”

“They did it on their own?”

“After a variety pack of hard seltzers in Clarice’s room.”

“Clarice?”

“Which begs the question: did the parents know? And what’s worse? Knowing they’d chosen to let their daughter share a name

with a character viciously tormented by the most odious serial killer in all of literature or not knowing?”

“They knew.”

“You’re guessing?”

I shake my head. “Clarice has been the lead volunteer ever since I started coming. She may truly be my biggest fan. At least

she used to be.”

Cooper-Brad’s head hangs down. He shifts the books from the crook of his arm to his hands. One mine, the other Hartley’s.

I grab Love and Lawlessness , drop it in my tote, and point to the first book in my series. “I appreciate it, but I have reached the stage of my career where I actually get more than ten author copies. In fact, I have that in twenty languages, large print, and Braille.”

He lifts his head, blinks those stubby eyelashes. “This one’s for me.”

I introduce Cooper-Brad simply as someone who wants to help and stash him in the corner of Rosie’s suite before marching into

the center of the room to command their attention.

“It’s not being announced until the evening of,” I say, holding up my phone, which is heavy with missed texts from Blaire.

Including a heart-stoppingly cryptic one about my upcoming fifteen-city tour. “So we have two days.”

“You have two days,” Grace says. She angles herself in a leather slingback chair in Rosie’s suite like she’s in a perfume

ad. As a former second-tier model, she can’t let go of posing no matter where she is or how many people stand before her.

It’s like she’s perpetually shilling coconut-scented deodorant and absorbent tampons. Her wide-legged pants are pleather.

Her bra strap’s pink, peeking out of a rainbow-colored tube top at four in the morning. In Chicago. In February.

Fiona, on the other hand, is curled into the sofa in her Outlander pajamas. None of us has yet to reach pajama-level success. Diana Gabaldon is the standard by which we all measure ourselves—and

by all I mean us, our editors, publicists, agents, and everyone else who only makes money when we do. Whether this line of

work is symbiotic or parasitic depends on one’s perspective.

Rosie, the gold tips of her hair askew from sleep, hovers near the coffee maker in yoga pants and a long-sleeved athletic

tee. “Cut it out, Grace. Or should we have all had that attitude when you told that copy editor that she could stick a semicolon

up her skinny tight rump?”

Fiona giggles. Her blonde hair, her actual hair, is clipped tight to her head, making it easier to don her various wigs. I’ve rarely seen her like this—not playing a character from one of her books. “Priceless,” she says, still with a pearl of laughter clinging to her throat.

Rosie opens a creamer and pours a drop into her freshly brewed coffee. “Exactly, Fiona, like the time you called librarians

prudes , and we hit social media to spin it as prunes for culling expert Tbr lists?”

Grace stands. “Whose side are you on, Rosie?”

“Ours. All of ours.” She wraps her hand around her mug and leans against the kitchenette counter. “Sofie hasn’t exactly been

one of us.”

Pointed looks in my direction.

Rosie says, “Not in the way we would have liked.” Surprise makes my brow begin to lift until she adds, “Once upon a time.

Still, she’s here now. She’s asking for our help, something I doubt any of us would be inclined to give it if it were only

for her benefit.” She shrugs at me. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I lie.

Christ , eating raw pigeon would be preferable to this. I despise asking for help. I hate being in the position to have to ask for help. Especially from a group of women who now think I’m responsible for the apocalypse.

“What’s going on here is criminal,” Rosie says, “perhaps not in the legal sense but in that it is an affront to her, her name,

her brand, her person. Copyright issues have been a part of the conversation surrounding AI from the beginning, and everyone

at every level, from the government to our publishers have been too slow to integrate protections. But common sense says if

Hartley used Sofie’s work to create that book, Sofie at the very least deserves credit. Maybe even financial compensation.”

“My agent is pursuing all of that,” I say, my phone tight in my hand.

Blaire: Legal’s on it.

Blaire: If her books infringe on or plagiarize you in any way, we’ll find it. It may take time, but we won’t let it drop.

Blaire: And the keynote? I’ve heard nothing concrete. Just your anxious inner author speaking. Same as Lacey’s fears of the tour

being tweaked. I’m sure it’s A-OK! Positive thinking, lady!

This is even worse than I thought. Blaire knows me well enough to not push positive thinking on me. Or lady . I feel myself starting to sweat.

Rosie, however, remains calm and focused. “I would expect nothing less from Blaire. But two days won’t be enough for her or

legal to make any traction. We could put a spotlight on it, here, together. Especially since my agent says every publisher

is waiting for the other to step up first. They don’t know if they should condemn this or maybe—”

“Maybe what?” Grace says. “Support it? Be okay with it? With machines writing our books?”

“No one is saying that,” Rosie says.

“Yet,” I say. “Think about it. This is an evolution the publishers couldn’t be accused of creating but that would benefit

them the most. Hartley cut out the middlemen, but what if the publishers could eventually cut out Hartley? AI doesn’t require

an advance or royalties. At least not yet.”

The ball on the couch that is Fiona says, “They can’t. We’d rebel.”

“But it wouldn’t matter,” I say. “They wouldn’t need us.”

Fiona shakes her head. “The fans. Readers. They wouldn’t stand for it. Not when it’s more than just Sofie.” She shrugs. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

Though it probably is.

Rosie sips her coffee. “Fiona isn’t entirely wrong. Even now, many readers haven’t embraced this. Some care the way we care,

and they always will, no matter who the author being copied is.”

I address Rosie. “I’m betting the key word there is some .”

“Unfortunately,” Rosie says, ramping up in a way that is truly impressive. “The industry won’t change overnight to embrace

AI, but what’s happening with Sofie and Hartley has shown that a good segment of readers won’t have that same slow reaction

time. Right now, we see readers who appear to be fully accepting of the use of AI. What we don’t yet know is if that acceptance

is unconditional or only because this is a curiosity, which is understandable, to an extent.”

Rosie sets down her mug and gathers her thoughts, and I swear her body shifts into a slight superhero power pose. “What comes

next, how we behave, how our publishers behave, how this convention behaves, can tip the scales. We must control the direction.

Everything that happens now is under scrutiny to see if this is a footnote to history or becomes actual history. If the keynote

is taken from Sofie, Hartley will be on that stage, and we won’t be. The optics alone will send a message that Hartley West

is the future of publishing. It will sanction her actions to writers and readers. Using AI won’t be seen as just acceptable

but laudable. That is a door that will open and never close. Because it’s been blown right off its hinges. Which is why we

have to help.”

Grace tries to cross her legs, but the unforgiving pleather won’t allow it. Instead, she places her hands in her lap. “So we go to the convention directors. We make our case. We have all the leverage. They can’t have a convention without us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say. “How many first-time authors would strike with us? I wouldn’t have given up my shot then.

With the big names gone, I’d see it as a chance to stand out.”

“Of course, you would.” Grace waves her hand, her fingers long and slender, and I wonder if they help her type faster. “Considering this

is a carnival attraction, turned into a spectacle by you.”

I fight the urge to argue. It’s like they all think I asked for Hartley to target me. When the reality is that I was dragged,

full-on kicking and screaming, into this mess.

Grace again tries to adjust her skirt, finally giving up and standing. “This won’t become a thing. The convention coming on

the heels of Hartley’s confession and Sofie’s rant has fueled the buzz. But once the convention is over, the buzz will die

down, and Hartley will be forgotten within a week. Hartley will realize her stunt doesn’t have legs, and she’ll be gone.”

A deep throat clearing from behind me, and Cooper-Brad steps forward. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Grace’s eyes challenge him. “The lurker finally speaks. And you are?”

“Cooper Armstrong,” he says.

“Apocalyptic worms are his specialty,” I say, wryly.

“Don’t forget time-traveling waiters.”

Is this banter? Did we actually just banter? But this is a man-child who is helping to ruin my career. I don my resting bitch

face to ensure he knows his place.

Grace wiggles one of those long fingers at us. “What is this? Is this all some practical joke?”

Cooper-Brad shakes his head. “Not at all. If there’s one thing I know about Hartley West, it’s that she takes this one hundred

percent seriously. She’s in it. Full on. She’s not going anywhere.”

The temperature in the room drops a few degrees, the chilling effect of his words silencing us all. I let Rosie make me a coffee as Cooper-Brad summarizes his role, all the way through to the aborted “H W” tower the volunteers were erecting. He’s a good storyteller. Starts with an inciting incident, identifies his quest, shows his strengths and weaknesses, builds to the moment where he had to make a choice. His sentences have clarity and precision, efficient but not without voice. Blaire might even be impressed. I’m not. I know he’s up to something. He has an ulterior motive for delivering this so eloquently. Older and wiser is a cliché for a reason.

Fiona swings her feet onto the floor. “You’ve known Hartley West a while then?”

Cooper-Brad says, “Not too long.”

“But you’re friends?”

He shrugs. “More like craft-fair friends.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Of course, she doesn’t. Fiona is a publishing unicorn. One of the rare authors who wrote her first book in three months, got

an agent with it in a week, an editor in two, and the support of the entire imprint who invested in advance reader copies

swaddled in cashmere scarves and appearances across the country and advertisements in Times Square that all shot her to the

top of the list. Or so her story goes. She conveniently leaves out the dozens of speaking engagements that preordered thousands

of copies of her book just in time to report to the list thanks to her oil tycoon of a father. She’s not undeserving—no one

stays at the top without talent—but she underplays how well she understood and played the game to get there. And how that’s

too often an unfortunate but necessary component of success in this industry.

Cooper-Brad shuffles his feet, and I remember what this was like: being this close to people who have the thing you’ve always dreamed of.

“Fiona,” I say, “what are you getting at? This isn’t one of your books. We don’t have time for flowery prose that meanders

for a hundred pages just to get to the potato farmer glimpsing the fair maiden seductively washing herself in the river.”

“Once—I did that one time.” Fiona’s voice is curt. “And you won’t let me live it down. Shall we decipher all your tropes?

I mean, what’s more hackneyed than a love triangle?”

“Careful now,” from Rosie.

“Watch it,” from Grace.

Cooper-Brad pulls his hands out of his pockets. “She wants to know if she can trust me.”

“Well, the answer is obvious,” I say. “Of course not.”

The only sound is the drip of the brewing coffee into the waiting mug.

“I don’t trust anyone,” I say, to which Rosie sighs but Grace nods in agreement. “What I do trust is that we all want something.”

Rosie holds up a packet of sugar, and I gesture for two. She rips them open and lets the grains trickle into the hot coffee

before handing it to me. “Relationships as purely transactional? That’s a sad way to go through life, Sofie.”

“My bank account hasn’t noticed,” I say with a completely straight face. I blow on the coffee before taking a tentative sip.

It’s dark as mud and tastes both over-brewed and under-brewed at the same time. I take another sip. “What Cooper-Brad—”

He cocks his head at me in a way Rosie would describe as ambrosial , and Fiona as luscious , and I refuse to acknowledge the unscripted tingle in my traitorous nether regions.

“Right. Cooper. What Cooper wants is a seat at the table. A publishing deal for his apocalyptic worms.”

“Actually, I’ve moved on to killer manatees released by melting Arctic glaciers. The worms were a series back.”

“Manatees in the Arctic?”

“From the woman who wrote about superheroes birthed by constellations?”

“I love Tucana,” Fiona cries.

This unnerves me. That Fiona read my books—and not the more popular Feathers and Stone series but the early ones.

“Access,” I say quickly to keep us focused. “Cooper wants access. Hartley promised it to him. But she has an agent, maybe,

certainly no editor or book deal, and she’s been in this business for, what, five minutes?” I set down my coffee and stick

out my finger, making a show of counting. “Four. There are four of us, each in this business for a decade, if not longer.

Four times ten? Fifteen years? I know authors aren’t good at math, but I’m sure even Cooper can do that calculation.”

Grace sighs. “Fine. He helps us, we help him. And you...” Grace scans everyone in the room, and a smugness that makes me

wary takes over her face. “You help us.” She perches herself on the arm of the sloped chair. “I’ll go first. I want your cover

designer.”

Maddie Li has designed my last eight covers, building on the stock images used on the jackets of books one and two, before

I became Sofie Wilde and could ask for an artist of my choosing. Maddie went to the Rhode Island School of Design and is immensely

talented. She’s also a total badass who, along with two other young women, took down some sleazy tech founder when she was

only a teen. She’s under exclusive contract with me and is paid well for it—part of my advance goes directly to her, ensuring

no other author has a book cover with even the barest echo of mine, a fail-safe I now realize can be dismantled by AI.

I feel my crow’s feet deepening. “One cover.”

“Two,” Grace says.

Unbelievable. “Not in the same year.”

“Acceptable.”

“More than,” I mutter as I sip my coffee, bracing for what’s next.

Fiona’s feathery voice floats through the room. “At least two posts on my next book release. Plus a giveaway. A big one.”

Grace clucks her tongue. “Not enough.”

“We aren’t negotiating,” I say.

“Aren’t we?” Rosie says. “You started this.”

Actually, Cooper-Brad started this, but now doesn’t seem the time for technicalities.

“And a blurb,” Fiona says. “I also want a blurb from the Sofie Wilde.”

I don’t do blurbs. Since keeping my kidney, I’ve learned that readers don’t care. Blurbs don’t equal sales. They’re simply

a way for all of us authors and publishers to try to out-peacock one another. They’re also not to be trusted. A lot of authors

who are asked to blurb don’t even read the books. You can see those a mile away. Every generic “gripping page-turner!” and

“edge of my seat!” equals “my agent/editor/blackmailing frenemy forced me to blurb this.”

I face Fiona. “You do realize I just went viral and not in a good way.”

Fiona kicks her feet out on the couch. “Exactly why I’m asking. Your follower numbers are blowing up.”

“They are?”

Fiona looks at me quizzically. “You aren’t checking? That’s willpower.”

“Lacey won’t let me.”

A snicker from Grace.

Fiona leans in. “Lacey does your socials? Not an assistant? But you do have the login, don’t you?”

“No,” I say, cutting off whatever she’s planning. “No manipulating likes or comments or whatever else you’re scheming.”

She widens her eyes, places her hand to her chest in a “who me?” trope, and I can’t help releasing a little snort. (And the

tiniest dribble of urine because... middle age.)

Cooper-Brad, Grace, Fiona—they’ve all said what they want in return for helping me deal with this mess. Just one blackmail

to go. I slowly turn toward Rosie, meeting her gaze. “I’m over the proverbial barrel, so you might as well take full advantage.”

“I can ask for anything?”

“Within reason. I can’t double your advance or manipulate the list unlike others.”

Fiona clears her throat.

Rosie says, “That’s not what I want.”

A foreboding builds, and whatever it is that Rosie wants, it’s going to cost me. I know it. “Then what do you want?”

“I’ll tell you after.”

“After what?”

“After we stop Hartley.”

“Speaking of, how are we doing that?”

Rosie rests her back against the counter of the kitchenette. “Are you saying you brought us all here without any notion of

how to put an end to this?”

And this is what’s wrong with fully pantsing. Full steam ahead only to crash into a wall.

“I sure hope not,” Fiona says, hugging her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around the pattern of Jamie Fraser on

her pajama bottoms. Beside her, her phone dings and she taps the screen. “Especially since it looks like that keynote isn’t

going to be just a keynote.”

Grace unearths her own phone. “Share it.”

Fiona nods, and we all hear the ding of a notification on Grace’s phone.

“Well, drown me in a bucket with Fiona’s potato farmer,” Grace says.

Rosie’s lips thin. “What is it?”

Part of me doesn’t want to know. I can’t take much more.

Fiona and Grace have a silent debate. It’s Fiona who unfurls herself and says, “It’s from one of the convention organizers,

someone who is seemingly in that camp of never accepting the use of AI. She heard a rumor...”

Grace’s impatience takes over. “Hartley is planning to use her keynote as a call to action. The organizer snuck a peek at

notes Hartley was making in the bar. She wants to level the playing field by encouraging others to use AI to write like their

favorite author, to get more stories out in the world. She’s going to even offer to help.”

Rosie swallows. “You mean Sofie? So there can be a next next Sofie Wilde?”

“No, I mean their favorite,” Grace says. “She’s going to encourage them to write like their favorite author. It could be any

one of us.”

Fiona reaches for the short ends of her blonde hair. “I’m not done being Fiona Finley. I don’t want a next me.”

I set my coffee down too hard, and hot liquid spills over the back of my hand. I bring my thumb to my lips, trying to cool the burnt skin, but I’m too incensed to even exhale a breath. She can’t do this. If she does, every single author at this convention—and outside of it—is going to blame me. They’re going to hate me, will say I gave Hartley the spotlight she needed for this to take off. Their editors—the ones I need if I’m going to establish myself in a new genre—will never want to work with me. Publishers will blacklist me. Book clubs will ban me. This cannot happen. The only “next Sofie Wilde” is the one I become.

Hartley West cannot step onto that stage. No matter what.

I clasp my hands in front of my stomach. “We need to stall. We need to give Blaire time to find a solution legally. We need

to give Lacey time to pull every string and call in every favor she’s owed on my behalf. And if all that fails, we need the

convention directors to have no choice but to proceed with the original plan. We make sure Hartley does not walk onto that

stage.”

“How do we do that?” Fiona asks, still tugging on her hair.

“By kidnapping Hartley West.”