Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“You think if I switched the location to Boise instead of Chicago?”
Frannie looks up from her laptop. “Why Boise?” she asks, squinting across the table at Henry. She could sit with her back to the window, but what’s the point of being here at all if she can’t look out at the park?
“Midsize city, still a lot going on, but less known,” he says, gesturing to the pages spread out at his end of the table, where he’s editing by hand.
Just seeing the stack of printed pages makes Frannie’s gut clench. Two weeks have passed since the call with Maribel. And spending every day in Henry’s dining room hasn’t stopped the ache in her chest that lasts from the moment she steps into the building until long after she’s gone home.
She hasn’t gone into her office for more than a minute each day. She printed Henry’s book at the FedEx on Seventy-Second and Broadway rather than sit in the office waiting for it to finish. It cost seventy dollars Henry doesn’t know about.
She hasn’t seen Elsa, or Bridgette, or Michael. She just doesn’t know how to …
Henry’s phone pings and Frannie buries herself back in his email archive. If she focuses on tracking his Hollywood option payments, she doesn’t have to feel anything at all.
She wants to believe that her dream of staying Henry’s assistant was so perfect—such a wonderful fix—that she could pretend she really never wanted to get published in the first place. That across one two-week holiday break, she was able to let go of all her ambition.
But spending two weeks sitting across from Henry … how quickly it’s crept back up.
She wants to—fuck it, she wants to talk to Elsa about it. Wants to hold her hand. Wants to argue with her about musicals and books, and play video games with the kids to avoid the constant, gnawing anxiety of waiting for responses.
She wants her friends back.
“Check your email.”
Frannie looks up again to find Henry staring at her, expectant. “Sorry?”
“Check your personal email, now.”
She clicks to her Gmail account, her whole body tensing up. Spam, LinkedIn, the Wordle—she’s been freaking out at every incoming email for two weeks.
It’s definitely Henry nearly vibrating in place across from her that clues her in, but there’s also something there in her gut. Something clenched and anticipatory and terrified. This time is going to be different.
Because the email subject line from Maribel reads: FIRST OFFER.
That buzzing feeling is back between her ears. This email will actually change her life. Right now. This minute.
“Frannie,” Henry prompts.
She clicks on the email.
FRANNIE—
Please see below, your VERY. FIRST. OFFER.
It’s from Wellesley. They want a two-book deal. We’ll talk parameters and payment schedule later. I think I could get you halves. But. First things first:
CONGRATULATIONS. This is momentous, and, once you see the offer, a harbinger of excellent things to come.
Once you’ve stopped screaming, give me a call, and we’ll talk. With or without Henry, your choice (no matter what he says).
This is only the first, Frannie. So take it in, luxuriate in it, and then prepare for what I think will be an exceedingly intense and exciting few weeks. I’m thinking auction.
Now, go freak out.
Maribel
Frannie stops reading. Her heart literally feels like it’s in her throat. She’s tingly, like Elsa might be there, might be touching her. But she’s not.
It’s just Henry, staring at her like she’s grown a second head.
“Well?”
“I need to read the actual offer,” Frannie mumbles.
“Frannie,” he tsks, impatient.
She can’t really feel her face. Holy shit.
Maribel,
Thank you so very much for allowing me to read IN THE MEANWHILE. It’s everything, and I do mean everything, I’ve been looking for.
We’re willing to offer Frannie $250K right now, for a two-book deal, 2027 and 2028.
I’m free to Zoom or meet with Frannie (as I understand she’s NYC-based) at her convenience anytime this week to discuss my notes and vision for publication.
Waiting eagerly for her response,
Serena
Frannie’s not breathing.
“Frannie?”
She’s really not breathing.
“Frannie,” Henry repeats incredulously.
“Holy fuck,” she whispers. He snorts, but Frannie can’t stop staring at the email.
Never in her very wildest dreams did she ever expect this. She might be hyperventilating. A $250,000 two-book deal. Significant, is the word Publisher’s Marketplace uses.
Her book is Significant.
“Holy Jesus, oh my God,” Frannie hears herself say.
A Pamplemousse La Croix lands next to her hand and Frannie nearly falls off her chair.
“Breathe, Francine,” Henry says.
“Am I awake?” Frannie asks, trying to focus on his face and the ice-cold can of sparkling water, clutching at it until it almost hurts her hand.
“You’re not taking it,” Henry says simply.
Frannie just blinks up at him. “What?”
“That’s just the opening offer, from one publisher. You don’t take the first offer without playing the field.”
“But—but—” What’s there to play? They want to give her more money than—
“If that’s the first offer, others will be higher.
Maribel’s right, this is an auction situation.
You’ll meet with somewhere between four and eight editors, they’re all going to pitch you their vision, and the best will come armed with publicity and marketing plans.
I think it’ll be a circus. We’ll have fun. ”
That fuzzy, dizzy feeling threatens to overwhelm her, and she opens the seltzer on instinct, taking a large enough sip for the bubbles to make her whole head scrunch up.
“I’m going to go check the mail,” Henry says. “Take a few minutes, and then we’ll call Maribel. I’m not missing a second of this.” He pats her shoulder before whistling his way out of the dining room.
Frannie twitches when the door slams behind him. She just sits there. In Henry’s swanky Dakota Building dining room. Looking at the first offer for her debut novel.
She didn’t think having her dream come true would feel like this. It’s almost a disassociated haze, like she’s not really here, not in her body, not in herself. Things like this don’t happen. Not to her.
She stands up abruptly, moving away from the table to pace slowly up and down the dining room in the golden light from the massive windows. Moving helps, just a little. Her face feels less numb, at any rate.
“Holy shit,” she mumbles.
Her voice sounds so loud against the silence.
“Holy shit,” she repeats, some of the shock starting to wear off.
An offer. She has an offer. The first of … several, apparently. Her book is going to auction?
She doesn’t know how any of this works. Because how the hell is she supposed to say, “We’re waiting for other offers” when Wellesley wants to give her $250,000?
She pauses in front of Henry’s rolltop desk, staring down at the pages stacked alongside a few over-full white legal pads, assorted pens, and a mess of her bright pink sticky notes. She’s been looking for those. The thief.
She wrote her book at that desk.
She’s an AUTHOR.
Her cheeks finally start turning up in a smile, her body buzzing. She’s an author. She has an offer from a real editor. She—
She turns toward the living room.
Right.
She has her success, but not the family she thought she was building. She’s not Significant; she’s Impermanent.
“All right?”
She jumps again, glaring at Henry as he comes through the front door.
She doesn’t have time to deal with any of this. With the crushing grief and splitting anger and aching gratitude at war in her head.
“You really are extraordinary,” Henry says, leaning his hip against the edge of the counter, Diet Coke in hand. “You should be inconsolable with joy.”
She really should be. But it’s not that simple, is it?
“Either way, ready for Maribel?”
Frannie nods, because what else can she do?
Henry calls Maribel and leads Frannie back to the table, the two of them sitting down at Frannie’s end, Henry’s phone propped on top of his soda can on speakerphone.
“All right, explain the auction process to us,” Henry says by way of greeting.
“Henry, shut up,” Maribel says. “This is Frannie’s moment.”
Frannie laughs, startled, and relaxes a bit in her chair. Yes, everything has changed. Yes, it feels like someone put her heart through a serrated sausage press. Yes, she’s happier and sadder and madder and more overwhelmed than she’s ever been before.
But Henry is still overbearing and forcing himself into this process, and Maribel is chiding him for it. At least they’re the same as they were twenty minutes ago, and that’s something.
All of this is some hell of a thing, isn’t it?
“Okay, Ghost Girl, see you at ten tomorrow?”
Frannie looks up from where she’s packing her bag to leave for the night.
Ghost Girl? Please, God, no.
“For the ghost hunt?” Henry prompts.
Right. Brad and Gretchen will be here tomorrow to go ghost hunting.
“Yep,” Frannie says, forcing a smile. She feels sick.
“I expect you to be sufficiently hungover.”
“What?”
Henry shakes his head. “Go celebrate, Frannie.”
She nods and picks up her bag, then heads out of his apartment with a quiet, “Thanks, Henry.”
It’s cold on the sidewalk on Seventy-Second Street.
Bracing, and ghost free. Like normal. If normal was last year, before she ever met her ghost friends.
Before she met Elsa. Before she wrote a book that someone wants to buy, about a love affair she didn’t think she’d get to have. And now that she has—
Well, does she really have it, in the end?
The trip back to her apartment passes in a blur of faces and wind chill. Before she knows it, she’s sitting at her desk in her dark little bedroom, her backpack on the floor next to her, still in her jacket and boots.
She has a Zoom on Wednesday with Serena at Wellesley, and Maribel’s already letting all the other publishers know they have one week, until next Tuesday, to read and gather their offers.
Then next Wednesday, they go to auction.
She’ll meet with all the editors beforehand, then the publishers will put in a bid, and … she’ll pick.
This wasn’t what getting everything she ever wanted was supposed to feel like.
“Frannie?”
She turns and finds Gretchen standing in her doorway in one of her new work outfits, an overlarge blazer over black jeans and a stylish turtleneck. She got a cute haircut since Frannie saw her last, shaggy and bob-length. She looks so professional.
Frannie’s a professional now, too, she supposes.
“What’s wrong?” Gretchen asks.
Nothing. Everything. Physics. Ghosts.
“I got a publishing offer,” she says instead.
Gretchen gasps and hurtles into the room, throwing good reporter questions at her left and right.
And though she isn’t sure she wants to celebrate at all, Frannie lets Gretchen manhandle her around her room.
She lets her jabber and shout and get excited.
Lets her drag Frannie out of the apartment twenty minutes later and down to the chill bar on the corner, where Jonathan’s inexplicably already waiting.
Right, it’s his one day off from filming this week.
They pile into the booth in the back corner. Gretchen forces a cider on her, and Jonathan orders every type of French fry on the menu (six, not including the tater tots), and she lets them be excited for her.
She’s excited, too, somewhere deep down, on the knife’s edge of elation and pain.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Jonathan says with a whistle. “What are you gonna do with it?”
Frannie shrugs and shakes her head at the same time. “I have no idea.”
“You could get a car,” Gretchen says.
“For New York? Pass,” Jonathan argues, eyes bright, curly hair flopping into his eyes. He got a faded cut for the movie. He looks happier than she’s seen him in a while. And buffer.
“They’ve really got you working out,” Frannie observes, reaching out to squeeze his bicep.
He grins. “Every morning. My parents got me a three-month trial at a gym for the movie. Oh, you could buy a gym!”
Gretchen puts her hand up to block his face before turning to Frannie. “You should buy a bookstore and make it a café.”
“I don’t know anything about running a business,” Frannie says.
“You run Henry’s business,” Gretchen argues.
“That’s not a business-business. It’s just his author stuff,” Frannie says.
Her body’s starting to feel heavy. Maybe she’s finally able to take deep breaths, crowded close at the back of the bar with her … friends. Her friends.
Sure, her love life is a clusterfuck of epic and immortal proportions. But she has friends. And an offer to publish her debut novel.
“Okay, so it’s a no on the bookstore-slash-café, and on owning what could be a very lucrative gym for actors,” Jonathan says.
“Stop trying to get Frannie to bankroll your career,” Gretchen says, giving him a playful shove.
“She’s helping yours,” Jonathan grumbles, rubbing his arm.
“I’m just along for the ride,” Frannie says, smiling as Gretchen beams over at her. “And you guys are getting ahead of yourselves, anyway. Even if Maribel gets me the best deal possible, I’m getting the money in three payments probably over two books. Not enough to buy anything outright.”
“So maybe a really good investment. What’s the next Apple, you think?” Gretchen asks.
Frannie listens as they start batting tech company names back and forth. She only recognizes a third of them.
She downs the rest of her drink in one fizzy swallow, staring out at the dim bar, barely seeing the milling patrons, the yellow chandeliers. A quarter of a million dollars, after taxes, commissions, and across a few payments, is still a lot of money. Not enough to buy anything big, true.
But it would be enough to rent something for a while.