3. Three
THREE
Poe’s Tavern wasn’t what I was expecting. Being familiar with the man’s work, I assumed it would be a macabre showing of blood drinks and crows everywhere. There were some crow decorations. The atmosphere wasn’t nearly as maudlin as I was expecting, however.
“Huh.” I looked around the front of the building. “It’s very … normal.”
She’d pulled her hair back in a clip that looked like a cocktail.
She’d arranged it so a tuft of hair exploded out of the top of the clip, but still looked somehow neat.
I was fascinated by the effort she’d put into her hair, and it didn’t seem to fit the woman I’d grown to know over the last few weeks — the woman who purposely bought a naked statue and dressed it up for holidays to own an HOA — but I didn’t comment.
Brody chuckled at my confusion. “There’s an outdoor area on that side of the building.” He pointed. “We’ll take over that entire area for the event.”
“Which doesn’t start for an hour and a half, correct?” I prodded.
“Yup.” Brody took pity on me, my nervousness obvious. “I would recommend two cocktails if you’re anxious. No more. You don’t want to get drunk. That will just make things worse.”
“I have zero intention of getting drunk,” I assured him, meaning every word. “I’m just a little excitable, I guess.”
“I was, too, when these things first popped up,” he assured me. “You’ll get used to them very fast.”
“You only got used to them because you spent all of your time looking at me that first year,” Bree countered. “You were falling in love, and I calmed your frazzled soul.”
The look Brody shot her was full of adoration. “I was falling in love,” he agreed. “You don’t soothe anything, though, my dear.” His response was cheeky. “You make things more fraught. Apparently, that’s what I was looking for, though.”
“Oh, so cute.” Bree twirled to get closer to him, then caught her sandal on the uneven cobblestones and tripped.
Thankfully, Brody was watching because he managed to catch her before she could fly into a wall or down a flight of stairs.
“Every single time, Bree,” he admonished as she giggled. “You’re going to crack open your head one of these days if you’re not careful.”
“Not if I have you to catch me,” she countered.
The way they stared into one another’s eyes gave me pause. As far as they were concerned, even though we’d come as a group, they were the only two people in the world. It wasn’t obnoxious, the way they looked at one another, but it was intimate, and it made me feel like an outsider.
For a moment — just a brief second, really — I felt an emotion I couldn’t put a name to. Was it yearning? It might have been. It was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, however, and I shook my head.
“You guys are goofy gross,” I offered, meaning every word. “I’m surprised you don’t overdose on all the sugar you throw at each other.”
“Hey.” Bree was obviously reluctant to pull away from Brody, but she gave me her full attention. “We have a kid who gets into everything — and I do mean everything — despite having our house child-proofed. That brings me to a tangent that I feel the need to go down, though.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Back in olden times — we’re talking the Donner Party and Little House on the Prairie times — they didn’t childproof homes, and nobody had a fit about it. Why do we have to do it?”
“Um, Bree, I don’t think the main concern with the Donner Party was child-proofing homes,” Brody offered helpfully. “Heck, if the homes weren’t childproofed, it would have been better for them because an accident meant food.”
I grimaced. “Can we not talk about the Donner Party when we’re about to have burgers?” I asked, horrified at the picture they were painting.
“I’m just saying childproofing is crap,” Bree said.
“As for the other stuff, suck it up.” She shook her head at me.
“You should find a nice girl — maybe a fellow author, because they’re the only ones who are going to understand the lifestyle — and settle down.
You’ll feel better when you’re not so buttoned up. ”
That jibe, despite being delivered with good humor, was like a slap on a naked cheek. “I am not buttoned up,” I complained.
She gave me a challenging look.
“I’m not,” I insisted. “I’m just … pragmatic.”
“Uh-huh.” Bree linked her arm through mine and dragged me toward the door. “You need to loosen up. Unfortunately for you, the only other member of our writer group who is single is a lesbian. I don’t think you’re going to do it for her.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “I don’t need a girlfriend.” Heck, that was the last thing I needed. “Trust me.”
“Actually, I think Bella and Nathan are bringing a new author tonight,” Brody interjected. “It’s someone Bella met at a publisher shindig in New York a few months ago.”
“Oh, you mean that one we managed to get out of because I was still postpartum?”
“Yes.” Brody grinned. “You were very excited to have an appropriate excuse, if I recall.”
“It was glorious,” Bree agreed. “I hate those parties,” she explained for my benefit. “I do remember Bella mentioning that she was subletting her apartment to somebody, though.”
“Do you know who it is?” I asked, hoping to redirect Bree from her quest to get me a girlfriend. That was off the table, no matter what she believed.
“I’m not sure she ever said a name,” Brody replied. “Just that she wrote romance.”
I wrote romance. Yes, you heard that right. The son of Eleanor Ambrose opted to write romance, not science fiction. She’d taken it as an insult, but I’d been strategic when picking my niche.
Romance was the top-selling genre for a reason.
Almost all of the authors were female. Or they were men pretending to be female.
I opted for the opposite. I put my face and real name on every book.
That actually excited the female readers because it was rare.
I’d become something of a sensation in contemporary romance circles, and that had resulted in big advances.
I wasn’t sorry about my choice. I was, however, plotting a pivot to another genre.
I planned to keep writing romance — it was far too lucrative to walk away from — but I was going to use my position as one of my publisher’s buzz-worthy authors to negotiate a second pen name when I was ready.
I just needed to decide what else I wanted to write.
I hadn’t figured that out yet. The only thing I could say with absolute certainty was that it wouldn’t be science fiction.
I would never say this to anybody, especially my mother, but I hated all things starships.
I didn’t get it. Give me a good murder mystery or post-apocalypse story any day of the week. Science fiction, though? Ugh.
“Do you know what subgenre?” I prodded. It wasn’t that I was worried I would be in competition with this woman — I was outselling everybody at present — but I needed to know if she was the type who would try to cozy up to me for a blurb or something. I hated those people.
“I don’t know.” Brody solemnly shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I was just curious.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re already inside,” Bree said. “We’ll find out shortly.”
I followed them up the stairs — it seemed stairs were an issue almost everywhere in Savannah, which brought up questions of accessibility — and kept a polite smile on my face as they explained we were joining a party to the hostess.
We were directed to the right, and when we turned the corner, I lost my breath.
The woman sitting at the table with Bella Oakley and Nathan Cooper, who I recognized from several New York mixers, was breathtaking.
She was skinny, but with a few curves in the exact right places.
She was dressed in black pants with strappy sandals, something I only saw because she was showing something on one of the sandals to Bella.
She had a white camisole on under a long cardigan. It wasn’t a bulky sweater cardigan, however. It was light and flowy, and it sort of fluttered around her as she shifted back and forth from one foot to the other.
Her hair was what really drew me in. It was long, a rich sable brown, and it fell past her shoulders in waves.
It looked silky, and when the light hit it in a specific way, it almost sparkled.
Her face was another showstopper. She had high cheekbones and a soft nose curve.
She wore minimal makeup, and her eyebrows were dark, offsetting her petal pink lips.
She looked up to show off a set of bunny brown eyes, and that’s when I froze. I recognized those eyes. I would have recognized them anywhere.
“Huxley,” she said on a gusty exhale.
I froze at the sound of my own name. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was. “Wylie.”
We stared at one another like gunfighters about to draw. This was the O.K. Corral.
“Uh-oh,” Bree said from my left. She’d obviously tracked that this situation was the exact opposite of normal, and yet she seemed confused as to why. “Who … ?” She focused on Wylie, then looked back at me.
“Crap,” Nathan said. I’d yet to meet him in person, although he obviously knew who I was. He had a reputation for being blunt. If any situation ever required a blunt individual, it was this one. “What are the odds?”
“The odds of what?” Bella asked. She looked like a deer caught in headlights. I recognized her from interviews she’d done with Nathan after they’d fallen in love. People had been tickled by their love story since it followed the plot of a romance novel. She didn’t look particularly lovey-dovey now.
“Hey, guys,” Brody said quietly as he stepped closer to the table. “I don’t think anybody realized that their new friend was not going to get along with their other new friend. Let’s take a breath.”
“What’s happening?” Bella hissed. She wasn’t subtle in the least, although she probably believed that she’d lowered her voice. “I know something very bad has happened, but I don’t know what.”