Slow Burn
The elevator doors close, and I flop against the back wall.
“Oh, okay, cool.”
That’s what I said. The words fumbled out before I could stop them. This is exactly why I prefer to live in the worlds in
my head. Real life offers zero opportunity for revision.
Cooper-Brad was being Cooper-Brad. Trying to manipulate me. Angry static buzzes inside my head because despite how very much
I see right through him, I let him see a piece of me. Revealed a little of my own truth. This is what getting close to people
does: it gives them ammunition. It’ll be used against me if he gets the chance. He’s doing this because it’s an adrenaline
shot to his career. And maybe a little because he’s a writer and understands what it would feel like to have his work stolen.
Nothing more. Which is good. Great. I don’t need more.
I dig out my phone and open my favorites. Blaire, Lacey, my carpal tunnel massage therapist, my chiropractor, my local wine
store, Roxanne, Mom, Dad. In that order.
The elevator opens onto the fifth floor. I casually saunter out, wait for the doors to close, then immediately press the button to go down. The time this will take is worth the risk of not being seen coming up from the basement.
As I step into the next elevator, I scan Lacey’s most recent text, listing five more ways to keep #SweetSofie going. But the
best way to do that is to get on stage and put a stop to Love and Lawlessness before it becomes anything more than a novelty.
With a soft ding, I arrive at the ballroom floor. As my ballet flats burn a hole in the carpet, I hike my tote higher on my
shoulder and double-check my messages. Nothing new from Blaire. Logically I know that if she’d made progress on reclaiming
the keynote she’d have been in touch. But still, a part of me needs to hear her voice, maybe even hear her give a positive
spin on the situation, so I tap her name and call. It goes straight to voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message because
there’s nothing I can say that won’t make her feel worse than she likely already does. Yet the silence speaks volumes, and
the voice in my head whispers one thing and one thing only: Max Donner.
If I said yes, this could all end now. As Hartley’s agent, Max could use his leverage over her to stop her from issuing that
absurd call to action, here or anywhere. She wants success. She wouldn’t risk losing Max for some publicity stunt. Besides,
she wouldn’t even need that stunt with Max behind her. We could release her, let her join me on stage for the keynote (part
of it, an introduction, maybe?), perhaps even spin it so I came to her rescue with some mega-strength cough syrup or all-natural
echinacea-elderberry-ginger-hemp remedy. Help me attract some of the Goop crowd. But achieving all of that comes at a cost:
Blaire.
I lengthen my stride, the Advil having done its job and dulled my foot pain. Blaire has always believed in me. The same hasn’t necessarily been true in return. I’ve questioned her confidence—not in me but in herself. In her own power as a negotiator, in her restraint in making demands other agents would make in a heartbeat, in putting courtesy and respect above all else. Maybe that’s fine for some authors. But publishing doesn’t know what it wants until you tell it what it wants. And then you make it think it came up with the idea in the first place. That’s never been Blaire.
She’s not out there promising to have the convention director’s car hand-washed or threatening to have her authors boycott
this event for eternity like Lacey’s surely doing. I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s still playing the good cop. But what
if this is something that can only be fixed by a bad cop?
“Sofie,” Rosie says as I enter the green room. “We were just talking about you.”
I tug on my ear. “And here I thought I was coming down with an ear infection.”
Rosie laughs heartily and the other Beautiful on the Inside panelists, which include Tara Kara and Lake Nolan, appear confused.
They’ve never really seen us (mainly me) engage in this kind of lighthearted banter before.
Kara finishes her can of sparkling water—not something I would have advised, unless she wants to learn the dangers of overhydrating
before a panel the hard way.
“Your video wasn’t bad,” Kara says.
“Not bad?” Tara says with the enthusiasm of a cocker spaniel on speed. She pumps a hand in the air, miming something I can’t
quite make out until she adds, “Nailed it! Woot! Woot!”
The disdain on Lake Nolan’s face is impressive, which is saying something coming from me. Born in a small town in South Carolina
where she still lives, Lake is a warhorse in this industry. Her books covered my nightstand as a kid. They were the first
romance books I ever read, starting at way too young of an age. But my mom read Lake Nolan, so I wanted to read Lake Nolan.
Tara checks her teeth in the mirror beside the coatrack. “With any luck, it starts trending and the keynote falls right back in your lap!”
Lake doesn’t look up from her knitting. “What happened to Sofie’s keynote?”
“Lake! Where have you been!” Tara cries. “It’s all over the socials. They’re pulling it and giving it to Hartley West. Because
of the whole...” Tara now flings her hand out in front of her, presumably imitating me sweeping the bestsellers off the
table in Harbor Books. “Ten bucks says Riley asks her about it on the panel.”
Christ, she probably will.
“I remain blissfully ignorant of all of this.” Lake’s metal knitting needles scrape against one another until she finishes
her row. “Sure as rain and my children fighting over my will at my funeral, I know you kids don’t want to hear what an old
lady has to say, but—”
“Kids?” Kara says. “Sofie’s nearly sixty!”
I grind my teeth, knowing if I get through this, I’m definitely going to need that mouthguard my dentist has been trying to
force on me for years. “I’m forty-nine.”
“Really?” Tara Kara say at the same time.
Rosie stands beside me. “I’m fifty-three.”
Huh. I make a mental note to ask Rosie for her brand of skin cream.
“Infants, you all are,” Lake says. “Still, even with your spry metabolisms and robust bone densities, I wouldn’t want to be
young now. The internet’s good for one thing and one thing only: Ina Garten recipes. Cauliflower toast, trust me.”
“No disrespect, Lake,” Kara says, “but not understanding how something works doesn’t make it inherently bad.”
“Who said I don’t understand it? Twitter, Instagram, even TikTok. I understand them all, better than you.”
“Sure,” Kara says, flippantly.
“Here, answer me this,” Lake says. “Any idea why I’m still around?”
“Cryogenics,” Kara says.
“Ooh, I was going with hologram,” Tara says.
They high-five, and a piece of my soul dies. The more creative answer would have been an ancient publishing contract that
has no term limits like the Supreme Court.
Lake simply says, “Typewriters. I have never written on anything but an old clickety-clack.”
Kara screws up her face. “Not very environmentally friendly. All that paper.”
Tara taps her chin. “But no electricity. Probably comes out even.”
Lake picks up her knitting, which is either a tan heart or a set of breasts. “Never mind, then.”
Rosie catches my eye. We only have a few minutes before the panel, and we need to circle up on Hartley. And yet neither of
us wants to see Lake’s feelings hurt. If I opened the door for most of these authors, there’s no denying that Lake opened
it for me. I give Rosie a nod and a subtle thumbs-up to indicate we are solid, or as solid as one can be in a kidnapping.
“Tell me,” I say, crossing the room to sit at the table with Lake.
Lake glances at me over her reading glasses. “Tell you what?”
“Typewriters. Why are they the reason you’re here.”
Her knitting needles scrape faster. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
“Sympathy? Have you met me?”
She laughs. “Dammit, girl, you made me slip a stitch.” She wiggles the point of her needle into the row below, and like a
magician, extracts a single thread of yarn that she weaves back into place. “You really want to know?”
“We all do,” Rosie says, with sincerity, claiming the chair beside me. “Please, Lake, you truly are an inspiration. I learned what gyrating meant from your books.”
“Buttering me up like a slice of whole wheat, aren’t you?”
“I’m serious,” Rosie says. “My mom tucked your books under her mattress after she finished them. It wasn’t until I was thirty
with my first novel published that I confessed to sneaking in and stealing them.”
I don’t realize I’m smiling until Lake says, “You too?”
Rosie turns to me.
“Same on gyrating ,” I say. “And engorged .”
“Oh, yes, that too.” Rosie laughs. “And how is it that I’m suddenly as self-conscious as I was at thirteen?”
Lake lights up. “Sofie, were you a thief too?”
I shake my head. “My mom just started handing me the longest books we had in the house. She got tired of taking me to the
library twice a week.”
“Three here,” Rosie says.
“First step in becoming a writer,” Lake says. “You two should be on a poster.”
I watch Rosie’s face shift.
We were on a poster once. At that event where no one came. The bookstore had gone all out. They asked if we wanted to take
it, and I said no, I hadn’t wanted a reminder.
“So, clickety-clack?” Kara says, and I refocus on Lake.
Lake huffs but sets down her knitting needles. “One word: precision . Something you kids don’t even think about. You strike those little buttons and vomit onto the page without taking the time to think through what you want to say. You write and delete and write and delete and spend so much time rewriting that you could be spending writing something new. If only you slowed down and put some brainpower into it.” She taps her temple. “The mantra I live by: I write while standing up and I type while sitting down.”
“Well,” Rosie says. “Fifty books over forty years. You must be onto something.”
“And all without any socials .” Lake clucks her tongue. “Only encourages the fast fingers. Fire off a tweet you don’t like? Delete it. An Instagram post
with a typo? Click edit .”
Kara’s eyebrows lift in surprise.
“Told you I understand it,” Lake says. “Understand it enough to know it’s toxic. Why do you think you’re all at odds? Maybe
because you can’t keep your damn eyes on your own damn paper? And how could you, what with this one gushing about this deal
at auction and that one flashing a pretty picture announcing their fifteen-city tour. No offense,” she says to me.
I shrug. Technically, Lacey posted it, not me.
“You all are inundated with each other’s successes. You all hide your failures. This is a business where someone’s always
at the top. Ergo, someone has to be at the bottom. No one wants to be at the bottom. Me included. But in my day, we didn’t
really know how anyone else was doing—or how they appeared to be doing. We met at these events and dressed up like maidens
and queens and borrowed each other’s corsets and drank too much whiskey and skinny-dipped in the pool at midnight. We had
fun. All these best-of-this and best-of-that lists and this many followers and that many likes can make you dizzy. You only
win when others lose, and that’s not a world I want any part of. And so... clickety-clack.”
Lake slides her knitting needles between her fingers and picks up where she left off. Tara pulls out a lipstick, and Kara retrieves another sparkling water, both trying not to admit the loud ring of truth in Lake’s words. Rosie looks at me and we hold each other’s gaze. We haven’t been doing this as long as Lake, but we’ve seen the changes. We’ve been part of the changes. Or at least I have. Authors pulling at one another like pieces of a Jenga, not wanting to be the one to fall. Maybe Lake’s right. Maybe we are all just little shits out to prove we’re better than someone else.
I look more closely at Lake’s knitting. “What is that you’re making, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She holds up the swathe of knitted yarn that I now see are two ball-shaped sacks. “Modeled after my husband of forty-five
years. Wrinkles are the hardest part to get right.”
I laugh, picturing Lacey trying to turn this into swag. “You’re a lucky woman.”
“That I am.”
Kara cracks open her water as she heads toward us. “Hey, Sofie,” she says, looking at her phone. “Aren’t you heading to St.
Louis after this?”
Lacey texts me my travel information the morning of. I can’t keep every real-life detail and every fictional one in my head
at the same time. “Maybe?”
“Love Me Some Books? Cutest store.”
The shelves are heart-shaped. The register a pair of red lips. A mural of romance heroines adorns the back wall. Lacey loves
it for Instagram. Maybe I should tell Roxanne to check it out. “Sounds right. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.” But she passes her phone to Tara.
“Hand it over,” I say. She hesitates and I add, “And a tip for you: bathroom, now, or you’ll regret it.”
Kara opens her mouth for some quip, but Tara takes her phone and says, “She’s right. Go.” As Kara hurries to the bathroom,
Tara sets the device in my hand. Her eyes linger on the dark sunspots on my skin as if she’s making a mental note to wear
more sunscreen. “Remember what they say about the messenger.”
The letters on the screen are as tiny as a flea. I pinch my fingers across the glass to zoom in. It’s an email from Tara Kara’s publicist asking if they might be able to fill in last minute at an event at Love Me Some Books after the convention. There’s no mention of me. That it’s my event. That they’d be taking my place.
My tour. Lacey’s tour. One we built together after years of making contacts and currying favor with booksellers and showing
them how many fans my events could draw. It is being “tweaked.” If Blaire thinks she can sell me being replaced as simply a “tweak,” she has no business being my agent.
My heart drums in my ears as I set Kara’s phone on the table. Heat flushes my body like a feral hot flash. Social media did
this. Social media will undo this. Lacey said to kill it. To smother the internet trolls. I am #SweetSofie. And I am ready
to pick up a goddamned metaphorical pillow.
The door to the green room opens, and Clarice calls us to the panel. She sweeps her eyes around the room, “Lake? Is that?”
“A scrotum, you betcha.” Lake nudges my shoulder. “This one’s not the only one that brings a little life to this party.”
I give my #SweetSofie smile.
Clarice bites her bottom lip. “Well, let’s not bring that particular party to the panel? The drama here is matching that of
your books.”
Tara squeals. “Drama, what drama?”
Lake shakes her head.
The tablet in Clarice’s hands shakes as she says, “Riley Moore’s airport pickup didn’t show. Max Donner, on the other hand,
just arrived at the hotel unannounced and is demanding a suite. We’re nearly sold out of Sofie’s books. And—” she sucks in
a breath “—Hartley West is missing.”