Chapter 8
eight
INDIGO
Romance is normally my escape. When the world is heavy, when I feel alone, when the weight of my parents’ fame presses down on me and makes it hard to breathe, I open my laptop and create a new world.
One where the heroine experiences the same crushing realities as I do—as most women do—but fate inevitably intervenes, and she finds a love that overshadows everything else. She finds her happy ending.
Ever since my run-in with Sebastian, words are a struggle.
The story is at its midpoint, which is typically where I hit a wall, but that’s not all it is this time.
This time, my head is full of hockey players, unrequited love, and broken dreams. In my current work in progress, my heroine is fake dating the town’s most eligible doctor, and despite her best efforts, she’s falling for him.
In my actual life, I’m just trying not to fall into a million jagged pieces and overanalyze every text Sebastian sends.
Not that he’s sent many. I don’t know what I was hoping for. That he’d text me twenty times a day and bare his soul in each of them?
Instead, he sends me good morning texts and asks my plans for the day. The heroine in my book would seize the opportunity and reconnect with Bash. Me? I’m paralyzed by confusion, and I send him short, three-word answers that don’t open things up to further conversation.
“If you keep making that face, it’s going to freeze that way.”
I startle when Lola plops into the seat across from me at the coffee shop, which she finds hilarious. “What the hell?”
“Girl, I said your name three times. It’s not my fault you’re off in your own little world.” She arches one dark eyebrow and smirks. She loves giving me shit, so she’s enjoying the fact that I’m still clutching my chest in surprise.
“I was thinking.”
“About your book or about a certain dark-haired goalie who has been texting you for the last two days?” Lola thinks the whole running-into-Sebastian thing is amazing.
She’d been pestering me to call him since the moment she came home with groceries and his number, and even though she understood why I couldn’t—Lola is much bolder than I am—in her eyes, I was making a huge mistake.
I roll my eyes. “My book.”
“Liar.”
Sagging in my slightly uncomfortable cafe chair, I sigh. “Fine. Yes, I’m a liar and I was thinking about Sebastian.”
“You’re not considering backing out of your date, are you?”
“It’s not a date.”
She tilts her head. “Oh, no?”
“Of course not. It’s simply two old friends catching up.”
“Right. Two old friends. You’re either completely aware that you’re full of shit, or you’re hilariously unaware for someone who writes romance novels for a living.
” She tries to hide her smirk by taking a sip of her coffee, but it doesn’t work.
Hell, I’d know she’s smirking, even if I couldn’t see her expression.
We’ve been best friends long enough that I always know.
“Speaking of novels, how’s it going? Still on track? I know you’ve been distracted because of all the parental shit.”
I have been. My parents are the bulk of the problem, but now there’s a hockey player-sized one in the mix too. “It’s fine. I’m on track. And luckily, my publisher is understanding. They know things have been…out of the norm lately.”
I’m lucky, and I know it. My publisher is well aware of who my parents are.
They weren’t when they first expressed interest in my work, thanks to my pen name and my agent’s discretion, but when someone is paying you, they need your legal name to cut the checks.
One condition I had for publishing with them was anonymity.
I’d work under my pen name only, and there would be no author photos, no meet and greets, no book tours.
And that had been fine by them when I was an unknown writer with a solid manuscript but no real following.
I’ve written and released four books with them now, and each new release has grown my fan base into something I’m really proud of.
It’s not New York Times bestseller status, but I’ve made the USA Today list twice, and my publisher gets quite a few requests for me to take part in conventions and events.
They’ve been making a push to get me to go public, but I have no desire to taint my pen name and the work I’ve done with my parents’ mess.
“Are they still pressuring you to reveal your identity?” Lola rests her elbows on the table and props her chin in her hands.
“A bit.”
She stares at me thoughtfully, her lips twisting to the side as she ponders. “You’ve released four books under this pen name, and all of them have done really well. If you wanted to claim your work publicly, I don’t think people would write you off.”
“Maybe not.” But that’s always been my worry. Nepotism is accepted and common in Hollywood. And I get it. If you’re born with a leg up, why do things the hard way?
But I’ve always hated the attention that comes from being my parents’ daughter. It’s been invasive, cruel, and unflattering. I never wanted my work or the opportunities I’ve fought so hard for to be attributed to my family connections. Or worse, for people to discount my stories because of them.
I know what the world thinks of Indigo Rose Bloom. She’s too fat, talentless, too much of a disappointment. The daughter of extraordinary people who is all too often the butt of cruel jokes because she’s so painfully, exceptionally ordinary.
But Violet Quinn? Violet Quinn doesn’t exist under the thousand-foot shadow of famous parents.
She doesn’t need to be tall and modelesque.
She’ll never have people questioning whether she’s qualified to write about love because she’s always the one being dumped, if men show her attention at all.
No one can claim that Violet Quinn was handed fame because her parents bought it for her.
She’s everything I wish I could be in real life, and I won’t let anyone or anything steal that from me.
“Inds, I’m serious. Your books speak to people. I know you’re afraid your readers will see you differently if they find out who you are, but you need to have faith in them. And yourself.”
Lola and I have this conversation at least once a year. She means well. She’s my biggest cheerleader, and she wants me to get my flowers. But I’m not as confident as she is.
Lola doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of her. If someone doesn’t like her, that’s their loss. But she’s never had millions of strangers judge her for every pimple, every awkward photo, every pound she’s gained or relationship that’s ended in disappointment.
Maybe I could have been as confident if I’d had the freedom to go through my most awkward moments in blissful anonymity. But I didn’t. Which is why I value the anonymity of my pen name so highly.
“I’m just not ready,” I tell her.
“Okay. I get it.” Her expression betrays her disappointment, but she’s quick to shake it off. “Now, let’s talk about your goalie.”
“He’s not my goalie.”
“He ate ice the other week because he was so distracted after seeing you. Pretty sure he’s your goalie.”
“He wasn’t my goalie ten years ago, and he’s not mine now. He was surprised to see me, is all.” And that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself because I need that to be true.
“Babe, are you sure he wasn’t yours ten years ago? Because when I ran into him at the grocery store, he was pretty desperate to get your number. You never actually talked to him about what happened at the bonfire that night, right?”
A familiar tightness grips my chest. “What was there to talk about? I saw him with some girl’s tongue down his throat.”
“I’m simply saying that things aren’t always as they seem.”
“What does it matter? We’re almost thirty.
We live in different states in different worlds.
He’s successful and sought-after, and I’m just me.
He probably has a million-dollar house, and I live in a cottage on my parents’ estate.
He dates models, Lols. He didn’t choose me then. Why would he choose me now?”
“You know what? That’s fucking bullshit, Indigo Bloom.
I’m sick and tired of listening to you talk about yourself like you’re not a talented, beautiful woman who deserves love.
Fuck your parents for not protecting you better, and fuck every single person who wrote mean stuff about you on the internet when you were a literal child.
“But did you ever stop to think that maybe those experiences colored how you saw things that night? Girl, you ran and blocked his number without a word. But from everything you told me and everything I’ve seen from my interactions with him, none of it makes sense.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” At one point, I’d thought Sebastian had feelings for me too. But people show you who they are and how they feel in the moments they don’t think you’re paying attention. And when they do? Believe them.
Sebastian Navarro didn’t love me then, and he won’t love me now. I can’t even let myself consider it.
My phone buzzes on the table.
Sebastian
I’ve been thinking about where to take you tomorrow. There are some great Somali places in the Twin Cities. Want to give one a try?
Lola’s eyebrows kiss her hairline when she sees the text. “Right. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He only wants to catch up. As a friend. There’s no way Bash considers this a date.” No matter how much a part of me wishes he did.
“All I’m asking is that you give the man a chance. You’ve been in love with him since you were fourteen. You deserve to let yourself see where this goes.”
“It won’t go anywhere, Lola.” I’m not the same girl I was when I was a teenager, and I doubt he’s the same boy. We’re different people who live very different lives.
There’s no way he was in love with me then, and there’s even less of a chance he’d fall in love with me now.
Happy endings are for the fictional characters I write. Not for me.