8. Eight #2
Margot Corning, who wrote contemporary romcoms with absolutely no humor.
They were a pet peeve of mine. Romcoms were supposed to be funny.
It was right in the name. Romantic comedy.
Margot’s romcoms were traumatic, however.
They involved things like childhood hunger and abandonment.
There was mental illness and physical abuse throughout her books. How the hell was that funny?
“We’re thankful that Huxley was around to take her place,” Casey offered.
Her attention was solely on her phone. “We lucked out.” She shook her head as she read something she didn’t like.
“They’re setting up your signing table wrong.
I have to fix it. You guys stay out of sight for another 15 minutes. Then we’ll be good to go.”
She was gone before I could lodge my opinion on any of this. “Great,” I muttered.
Huxley didn’t immediately say anything. He didn’t even meet my gaze. He was too focused on my hair.
“Yes, I had a candy wrapper in my hair,” I snapped. “It’s not my fault. Lucy stole my diffuser dryer — and broke it — so I had to sit in front of the fan to dry my hair. I didn’t realize there were Smarties wrappers on my pillow.”
“Of course not.” He grinned, then shook his head. “I’m sorry but …” He reached over and pulled another wrapper from my hair. “I don’t want you going in front of the readers with plastic in your hair.”
“No.” I took the wrapper from him and grimaced. “I’m messy enough as it is.”
He didn’t say anything, but when I finally got the courage to look up at him, he was frowning. “Who told you that?”
I was surprised by his vehemence. “Who told me what?”
“That you’re messy.”
“Um … everybody I’ve ever met.” I paused a beat. “Including you.”
I swear, for a moment, it was as if he’d been punched in the gut. His shoulders jerked, and his eyes went to the window. When he focused on me again, he looked determined.
“If I ever said that, I’m sorry,” he started. “I was a teenager when we last spent any solid time together. The little meet-and-greets when we were in college don’t count because they were 15 minutes at the most. Teenagers are little jerks.”
“I was never a jerk.”
“No, you were an angel.” He looked momentarily rueful. “I hated that my mother was fonder of you than she was of me.”
I almost jerked myself right out of my shoes. “That’s not true.”
“It is, and I hated it.” He held out his hands. “I was doing that typical jock thing where I thought I was too good for the convention stuff. They were all geeks, right? I’d been seeing them for the bulk of my life, and I was determined that they were all losers.
“That’s not on you, though,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have called you messy. That was mean.”
“I was messy, though,” I replied. “I still am.”
“Wylie —”
I vehemently shook my head. “It’s true. I can’t even put my foot down with Lucy. Do you know that she hasn’t held down a job for more than three months for her entire life? Like, that’s not even an exaggeration.”
The conversational shift clearly threw Huxley, and he took a moment to collect himself.
“Well, knee-kicking aside — which I’m still not over — perhaps she doesn’t know what she wants to do.
I went through a period like that where I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
Writing didn’t seem like a good fit because I knew everybody would assume I was just following in my mother’s footsteps. ”
“Is that why you decided to write romance?”
He shrugged. “I knew I had a good gimmick with the romance. I don’t mind writing it.
Anything else I did was going to be scrutinized.
Like, if I wrote high fantasy, that was too sci-fi adjacent.
Mysteries and thrillers were too far removed, but there was at least some crossover with readership.
The only way I knew I wouldn’t get any crossover was with romance. ”
It made a strange sort of sense. His plan was smart. He was obviously a gifted writer, too, because nobody could top the charts as many times as he’d done if he wasn’t.
“You don’t have to try to make me feel better,” I offered. “I know I’m messy. Savannah was supposed to be my big chance to start over. I was going to not be messy right from the start.”
“But Lucy,” he guessed.
“Lucy,” I agreed grimly. “I love her, but Mom and I ruined her.”
“How?”
“She’s spoiled rotten.”
“Ah.” He smirked. “Have you considered the tough love approach?”
“Last time we did that, she hitchhiked through multiple states. I mean, who hitchhikes in this day and age? It wasn’t even safe to hitchhike back when everybody was hitchhiking.”
He chuckled. “Do you think it’s possible she did that to send a message?”
“Oh, most definitely. She doesn’t see beyond that message, though.
She just wants her own way.” Why I was complaining to him was beyond me, but he was the only one in town who knew Lucy.
I had to complain to somebody. “She won’t get a job.
She goes out partying every night. She stole the money for the laundry delivery.
” I definitely hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.
“Kick her out,” he ordered.
“Excuse me?” I laughed as if he’d said the funniest joke in the world.
“Kick her out,” he repeated. “You’re not her mother, Wylie. It’s not your job to raise her. Your mother should have raised her.”
“My mother was too old to be Lucy’s mother,” I said before realizing I was going to say it. “That’s not Lucy’s fault. Mom just didn’t have enough energy for her.”
“It’s funny, because your mother had enough energy for Mick.”
I knew he regretted the words the second they were out of his mouth because he looked as if he was trying to make himself smaller. That did nothing to dissipate my temper, however.
“Let it go,” I growled. “Stop bringing up Mick.”
“How can I? Mick is the reason we all ended up in this situation. Well, your mother and Mick.”
“Oh, as if your mother didn’t have a hand in it,” I fired back.
“Excuse me?” Huxley’s eyebrows moved toward his hairline. “How is this my mother’s fault?”
“You know.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know,” I growled. He was getting on my nerves. Or, well, actually there was no “getting” to it. He was definitely on my nerves and even gnawing them like a rat.
“I said I don’t know,” he snapped back. “If you have something to say, then say it.”
Before I could respond, Casey appeared. Her eyes moved between us — there was a wariness there — but she kept her voice chipper. “Are you guys ready? The readers certainly are. We don’t want to upset them.”
I pulled away from Huxley. We’d somehow ended up closer to one another, although I didn’t know how it had happened.
It was like we were magnets or something, which made me even more uncomfortable than I had been.
“I’m ready,” I replied, forcing a bright smile that was completely unnecessary as long as we were hidden from the readers.
“I’m ready too,” Huxley said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Great. That’s the spirit,” Casey drawled. She looked down at her phone, then back up at him. “Okay, we have two hours. Let’s be calm and professional, huh? Whatever is going on with you, once the event is over, you’re free to duke it out.”
“Nothing is going on between us,” I replied. “We don’t even know one another. Everything is fine.”
“It’s great,” Huxley agreed. “In fact, my life has never been better.”
“Great.” Casey bobbed her head. “Let’s do this.”