Chapter 5 #2
At the thought of a horrified Harper reading my proposal, I leaped out of bed and checked my sent folder, hoping against reason that the dreaded email to Harper had gotten stuck in my outbox. No such luck.
“Mommy,” Lucy said as she padded into my room, “can I have maple oatmeal?”
“Please. Can I have maple oatmeal, please,” I corrected her automatically.
“You can have some, too. But only two bites cuz I’m extra hungry,” Lucy said.
I wasn’t sure whether she’d missed my point entirely or she was already smart enough to cover her manners lapse with a well-timed joke. Either way, I was too distressed to pursue it.
The kitchen in our guesthouse was so small it always made me feel like I was living in a dollhouse and role-playing American Girl: Single Mommy.
I ripped open the instant oatmeal packet and dumped the contents in a bowl.
I eyeballed the correct water amount and popped the bowl into the microwave.
“Sweetie, go pick out your princess outfit while I cook your oatmeal.” A generous use of the active voice, but I did push the “Add Minute” button twice.
“Mommy needs to check one thing on her computer.”
As Lucy skipped off to her bedroom, I went back to my laptop.
No response from Harper. Maybe she had a breakfast meeting and hadn’t read my proposal yet.
For kicks, I typed into the search bar: Take back email already sent?
TL;DR answer: You’re a silly dope. Frannie should develop an app for this.
She’d make a fortune off insecure writers alone.
I started at the microwave beeping, and forced myself to consider the possibility that Harper had read the email first thing this morning and was waiting an appropriate amount of time after the sun rose in the West before she reached out to politely inquire as to my mental state.
If your agent lost faith in your sanity, was there any coming back from that?
Then again, given my reason for refusing to sell Call of the Void, that ship may have already sailed.
Again, the microwave beeped. “Mommeeeee! You’re done cooking my oatmeal!” Lucy said, interrupting her “Part of Your World” solo from The Little Mermaid.
I was handing Lucy a spoon when Harper called.
With a wistful glance at my still-dormant coffee maker, I considered procrastinating the inevitable.
But like a Brazilian, once the wax had been applied, there was no way out but through.
“Hi, Harper. So before you say anything, can we pretend that email never happened?”
Harper laughed warmly. “I don’t think we need to go that far, Thea. You’ve definitely taken me by surprise, though. Romance?”
“I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s a departure from your previous work, and that can be risky. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It could be fun. And if this is the book you need to write to get over your fear of publishing again, then I’ll do my best to sell it.”
“Wow, really? You don’t hate it?” Am I seriously doing this?
“No, not at all,” she assured me. “But can we agree up front that this book will be more romantic than erotic? I do have my limits.”
I stepped into my bedroom and lowered my voice. “Don’t worry. At this point I barely remember how sex works.” Not that I wouldn’t like to refresh my memory. It’d been a long dry road. If I was being honest, I had been feeling a bit thirsty lately, notwithstanding the off-putting date with “bruh.”
Harper’s laugh rang out and my shoulders relaxed a bit.
“I’m glad to hear we’re on the same page. Now, I have two more notes, and then I’ll let you get on with your morning.” Harper paused. “One, I want your word that after this book is published, we’ll have another conversation about Call of the Void.”
I wanted to argue, but it wasn’t like we were signing an enforceable contract, so I held my tongue and waited for her next note.
“Two, you absolutely cannot make the dashing hero a tennis player. It’s too autobiographical,” she said. “And too mundane. Your hero needs to be larger than life. Like a movie star or something like that. If you’re going to write a happily-ever-after fantasy, really sell it.”
I fought the urge to feel insulted on Sam’s behalf. Mundane? Hardly. But she did have a point about the autobiographical issue if I wanted to fly under the radar. “So, just to confirm, other than those conditions, the ultimatum is off the table?”
“Yes,” she said, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I still had an agent. Until she added, “But I’d like to see a draft inside of six months. Saying you’ll write a book is one thing. Writing it is another. Now, go and do it. And remember, I believe in you.”
The call disconnected and my mouth went dry.
My recent years of celibacy had proven I could live without throbbing members or heaving bosoms. I could even agree to another conversation regarding the manuscript-that-would-never-see-the-light-of-day.
After all, it was not as though I’d promised Harper a different outcome.
But it was her last note that had me stumped.
How on earth could I write a book about Sam without any tennis in it? Would it even be a story about Sam?