Chapter 7
Maggie cannot bring herself to look at her shitty, cheating boyfriend.
How could he do this?
Bryce, still naked, drops to the floor on his knees.
“It was just once,” he says. “I swear, it was only for research.”
“For research?!” Maggie yells. “That’s rich!”
Bryce scrambles up to sit next to her on the bed. She moves out of the way, throwing him his pants.
“Babe, in my book, my protagonist falls for a woman who’s way more successful,” Bryce says. “I just wanted to experience it. It was Method, Maggie!”
Maggie closes her eyes, letting out a guttural cry. That Bryce would call cheating with a more successful woman research is a new torture she never saw coming. She wonders how many years it’ll take to unfuck that in therapy. If she could afford therapy.
“I have to take original and radical risks in real life. How else can I be original and radical on the page?”
“Don’t you make this about art.” She’s trying so hard not to break. “Don’t you dare! This has nothing to do with art. This has to do with you being a self-centered man-whore!”
“I’m the whore? You’re the one who just said you told a stranger to take you to a hotel!”
Maggie’s jaw drops. “That wasn’t real! I was just saying that in bed! For you! It was a fantasy!”
“But you were thinking it! You were playing the story out in your head. Don’t pretend you didn’t get off on it! You were imagining it. That’s what a good writer does. They’re constantly playing out different versions in their head.”
Maggie can’t believe that he has the audacity to bring up being a good writer during this, her most vulnerable moment.
“You wanna know what makes a good writer? Respect for the human condition. Understanding the basic emotions of other people. Knowing not to hurt them because you have the deepest capacity for empathy. Not insulting your readers with your gaslighting. That’s good writing.
It’s not a license to go fuck everyone!”
Bryce crumbles, shrinking into a ball on the bed. “Maybe that’s why I did it. Maybe deep down inside, I know I’m a shitty writer. Maybe I got scared!”
“Oh, now you’re going to dump this all on imposter syndrome.” Maggie snorts. “Why don’t you just say…I am a shitty person?”
Bryce gazes at her with wounded puppy dog eyes.
“I’ll admit I made a bad, human decision,” Bryce finally says.
He says human like it’s just one way to judge someone. Like we should have a whole other category for the Great Artist. And Bryce, by virtue of his completely narcissistic, outlandish behavior, now qualifies as one of them, and Maggie, with her boring, pedestrian view of commitment, does not.
She walks to the door and holds it open for him.
“I hope you and your writing rot.”
Bryce moves slowly, dragging out his time. “Baby, give me another chance,” he says. At the door, his voice hitches as he confesses, “I’m sorry, Maggie. I never meant to hurt you. I just got carried away. I just needed to know where the story ends—”
“It ends here.” She turns her face, holding back the tears in her eyes as she waits for him to walk out. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
Willa walks in after Bryce leaves. Maggie sinks into Willa’s arms.
“What happened?” Willa asks, stroking her hair.
Maggie tells Willa everything as she crumples onto her bed, taking giant gulps of air because her chest physically hurts.
“Banging his teacher for research.” Willa shakes her head. “I can’t wait till his first novel comes out and I put that fun fact up on his page.”
At the mention of his first novel, Maggie feels the wine sour even more in her stomach.
“You know he’s probably in an Uber right now, madly typing in his Notes app,” Maggie whispers to her knees.
He’s probably loving this. Her heartbreak’s probably gold to him.
All of it, material. She glances over at her phone, wondering how long it’ll take before he posts a cryptic poem about their breakup, one that’ll get a thousand likes from all the bartenders he’s been flirting with.
Willa reaches for Maggie’s phone as if reading her mind. Before Maggie can stop her, Willa unfollows Bryce for her.
“No—” Maggie protests, sitting up and reaching for the phone.
She was just going to mute him, like she did the rest of her writer friends from Williams. For two years she hearted all their Just signed with an agent!
Two-book offer! posts, telling herself there was room.
Another person’s success does not take away from hers.
But as her own agent rejections poured in, she couldn’t stand the reminder that whatever they did was enough.
And whatever she did was not. Social media is the worst.
“Nope, you’re unfollowing,” Willa says, handing Maggie back her phone. “You’re the architect of your life, remember?”
Maggie nods, swallowing hard. It’s one of Willa’s favorite mantras that she uses to remind herself of her power while putting herself out there in auditions and on OnlyFans. Willa makes her repeat it.
“I am the architect of my life.”
“And you deserve the world,” Willa continues.
“I deserve the world.”
“At least now you can disregard everything that bitch said about your writing. It wasn’t a true sign.”
Maggie gives Willa a small smile, though a part of her still wonders…Would Estelle have said it anyway? It depresses the hell out of her that she’d even ask herself the question. Maggie lies down on the bed.
“You know the worst part?” Maggie whispers. “I actually felt a lightness after Estelle. Like I got my answer. And yeah, it hurt. But there was also freedom in it.”
“That’s real,” Willa says, hugging a pillow.
“Like, now I can finally stop trying, you know?” Maggie sighs. Willa strokes Maggie’s hair. “I can finally tell my parents, OK, I’m moving on. They’ve sacrificed so much for me.” She turns to look at Willa. “Maybe I don’t get to do what I want in this life…”
“Of course you get to. You just need to change up the order. Get the coin and then do the thing you want to do. It’s why I’m camming.”
Maggie nods. She wishes she had the kind of courage to put herself out there like that.
“Hey, it doesn’t have to be OnlyFans! It could be anything! But you can’t give up on your dream.”
Maggie glances over at the stack of credit card bills on her table, sighing and thinking about the absurd amount of debt she’s taken on for her MFA. Now all that’s fucked because of Bryce. “I wish I hadn’t signed up for that stupid MFA…”
“You know, I bet if you told them what happened, they might give you a…” Willa says, reading her mind.
“A my teacher fucked my boyfriend refund?” Maggie finishes for her. The two of them laugh.
“Maybe that’s your story right there!” Willa tosses out.
“Maybe I could even get Estelle to blurb it!” Maggie deadpans. Then, when the laughter dies down, she hugs her knees. “Maybe my smashed heart will finally connect with somebody…”
“Hey,” Willa says, serious. “Don’t let them take away your fire. You’re a phenomenal writer.”
“I don’t know, Willa,” Maggie answers honestly. “I thought so? But I’m at the part of the candle where it starts to smoke and there’s no scent anymore…all there is left is soot. You know that part?”
Willa reaches over and hugs her.
“There’s still some wick left,” Willa assures her.
—
Sometime between three and four a.m., Maggie’s eyes flutter open. She looks around the room. In her half-conscious, dehydrated, and still-a-little-drunk daze, Maggie reaches for her phone and starts banging out an email to Estelle.
Dear Estelle,
I know what you did. Don’t think that just because I don’t go to the department with it, you got away with it.
It fucking bleeds. I WORSHIPPED you. I read your books growing up.
Your books made me want to write. Made me believe that I can tell stories in my voice, that I don’t have to make all my characters white.
Dared me to imagine a world that was ready for us.
For you to take all that love and hope and crush it in your fist is sickening!
I know I’m not supposed to blame you. I know I should solidly hate Bryce.
But I can’t help it. Precisely because I idolized you, and I never had high expectations for him, I’m so wrecked.
Why’d you have to do it? You already have fame, success, readers…
you even had my boyfriend. Why’d you still have to call my writing hollow?
If this were a novel, I’d write it with neither of us going for Bryce.
He’d come on to you, but you’d see him the way I see him, just a massively boring flirt.
You’d flirt back, not by fucking him but by workshopping my story with me, because the sexiest thing on earth is not dating a hot guy. It’s helping a fellow woman of color.
But alas, that’s not how this story goes. And for that, I hope you always live with my thorny, hollow words.
Maggie
Maggie reads the email back five times. But as the dark sky turns dusty pink, she doesn’t send it. She doesn’t want to give Estelle the opportunity to write back, I honestly really didn’t like your novella.
She knows that even after everything, Estelle can still break her with that sentence.
—
The first thing she does when she wakes up is grab her phone and make sure there’s no email in her Sent folder. Thank God. She did not drunk-email Estelle. There are, however, twenty-five pathetic, horny texts from Bryce.
I’m sorry!
I’m such a jackass.
Baby I miss you.
Please just respond. I know I fucked up. If it’s any consolation, I haven’t been able to write a single word! I’m just sitting here staring at my desk. I think I’m finally experiencing writer’s block!
Maggie rolls her eyes. Oh, finally!
FWIW it was the worst sex of my life. She kept talking about the Tang dynasty.
On and on it goes.
Maggie deletes them all and blocks Bryce.
She glances through the rest of her emails, lips cracking at the reminder from her student loan servicer that her payment’s overdue.
An email from some girl from college she’s muted—she’s coming to LA to meet with film agents about her new book, which Penguin Random House is publishing, and would Maggie like to get coffee? DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.
The final one is from her mom.
Hi Maggie,
What happened with your Zoom? Why you not call me back? I call RightNowPassport and they say you not working there anymore! Are you ok??
We very worried about you. We talk to our friends about your situation.
Everyone agree MFA is not good degree. Waste of money.
They say you should get MBA, like Kimberly Liu, Auntie Patty’s daughter.
She got MBA from Sloan. She working in Fortune 500 company—she has good health insurance, with DENTAL!
Speaking of dental, I really need to talk to you. The fake dentist I went to was no good. I still cannot eat anything, and now my gums look like balloons. What should I do? Call me!
Love,
Mom
The guilt tightens in her chest as she reads Mom’s email.
She wishes she could write Don’t worry, Mom, just go to a real dentist, I’ll pay for it!
like a good immigrant daughter. The kind of daughter her parents came to America for, someone who has good health insurance, with dental.
Instead, she doesn’t have a job, is staring at $62,000 in student loans, and has no way to help her parents pay for even the fake dentist.
She should have convinced her parents to stay in Las Vegas, where at least they were a whole state away and she could compartmentalize their problems as theirs. But even thinking that, she feels shitty.
She closes her eyes, and her mind goes to when she was nine. Her mom driving her up to the church near their apartment in Las Vegas. There was a donation bin behind the church filled with clothes. “You don’t have to get out,” her mom offered.
“What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to ask if they have any sweatshirts for girls.”
“That’s so embarrassing, Mom,” Maggie said in a tiny voice.
“You want a new hoodie or not?” Mom asked.
Maggie watched as her mom marched up the steps, shedding all her dignity as she admitted to the white ladies that she couldn’t afford to clothe her daughter.
Maggie opens her eyes. She knows she can’t categorize her parents’ problems as theirs the way Willa can.
It’s just not how it works. She starts pulling out her calculator, trying to figure out how much more credit card debt she can take on to help her parents, when a new email pops up from Willa.
It’s a job ad from the ICA Joblist, a weekly Hollywood job list that Willa subscribes to for auditions:
Executive Assistant, Special Project
Seeking an LA-based highly organized and detail-oriented person to serve as an Executive Assistant on a Special Project.
Discretion and confidentiality are essential.
You must have strong organizational and communication skills, excellent attention to detail, and superb follow-through.
You’ll be working directly with a prominent producer to execute a one-of-a-kind project.
This is a work-from-home position with flexible hours.
Bachelor’s degree required. BIPOC preferred.
Contact: producerspecialasst@. If you are selected for an interview, you must sign an NDA.
The promise of flexible hours catches Maggie’s eye, but it’s the preference for BIPOC that makes her sit up. Rarely does a job offering the chance to work directly with a prominent producer ever go to a BIPOC person.
Maggie clicks on the email link immediately.