Chapter 10
We haven’t spoken for six days when I get the email.
I’m vaguely annoyed. I knew I would be. I feel ghosted. It’s ridiculous. Technology is obnoxious.
I’ve unpacked my boxes. I’ve hung up some photos and art.
I took down a picture of me and my father from when I was a child, which was hanging in the bathroom.
I organized my bookshelf and closet, color coordinating the clothes and novels that I had shoved quickly into their appropriate areas earlier in the week.
And I thought about Reed. About how when you google him, his podcast company Oh Brother Audio comes up, and his personal Instagram, which is private. Not his books. Not any acting.
When I google Derek Roosevelt, an outdated author website comes up, but it has no pictures. This man compartmentalizes his life in such a fascinating, unconventional, bad-for-branding way. He must act under another, completely different, name.
I’m making dinner alone in the kitchen when my phone pings.
I have broccoli in the oven and pasta on the stove.
I swipe my cell from the counter.
—
Subject: Been feeling inspired. Had some fun.
Reed Tyler August 3
Link
—
What in the fuck.
There’s nothing in the email but a link that says link. He couldn’t name it something else to make it look less suspicious? Is this spam?
It can’t be. He asked for my email. This is the email. I glare down at the link, anticipation mounting in my gut.
Well, I have to know what it is. I can’t not click the link. And I can’t text him to ask about the link because then he’ll know I’m clicking the link mere seconds after it arrived in my inbox.
My thumb juts out to tap it.
Google Drive opens on my phone.
I wait for the doc to load.
Tyler-Romona | Message in a Bottle
Chapter 1 | First Date
Reed
She was wearing UGGs, she had my suitcase, and she was making a run for it.
I throw my phone across the kitchen counter onto the couch. It bounces off and clatters onto the carpet.
“Oh my god.”
I gape at the phone lying on the floor halfway across the room for fifteen seconds before I run over, snatch it up, and reopen the doc. Without reading, I thumb through. Page, after page, after page—there are thirty pages.
The last one reads:
Chapter 2 | Then
Rikki (Renee?)
My stomach folds up and slides down my colon. I thumb up to the end of chapter one.
Her attention is all-consuming, she has a certain je ne sais quoi. That kind you look for when you’re casting the lead in a film. She has the power to hold you rapt, no matter what the topic is.
I throw the phone down on the counter. This man is blowing smoke up my ass via a book retelling of our date.
I stare at my lock screen for ten seconds before I open it up again.
I can’t not see her again. I can’t stop feeling the heat of her pressed against me in the water.
Can’t stop replaying the way she read me out by the lake like I was an open book when I thought I was a goddamn fortress.
I can’t stop wondering, thinking back to those two book reviews in The New York Minute that saw right through me.
Saw the good and the bad so clearly, it scared the shit out of me all those years ago.
I can’t stop wondering if I’m sitting next to Renee Granger.
My eyes flit to my first published review, now hanging proudly among my photos over the couch in the living room. My heart is pounding. My breaths feel stifled.
Something hisses and pops behind me. Shit. The pasta’s overflowing. I lunge to switch off the stove. While I’m at it, I turn off the oven.
Phone in hand, I sprint for the door. Throw it open. Run down the hall and pound on Jordyn’s apartment. She and Micah have a date night scheduled, but it’s five and their reservation isn’t till eight.
Jordyn throws the door open. “What! What’s wrong? Is someone in trouble? Are you okay? Did you set something else on fire?”
I’m heaving in breaths like a dying woman who just climbed a hundred flights of stairs. Fuck. Calm down.
I can’t. I can’t calm down. The guy I’ve been obsessing over all week sent me the opening chapter of a romance novel retelling of our one spectacular during-someone-else’s-wedding date, left the second chapter open for me, and he somehow knows I’m the one who reviewed his books in The Minute despite never having gotten around to telling him.
“Email,” I gasp to Jordyn. I bend over, bracing an arm against my thigh. Suck in a breath, counting to four. Blow it out, counting to four.
“Email? Are you joking. This is a reaction to an email? I thought you were legitimately dying, Rikki.”
“I am figuratively dying.” I stumble in past Jordyn, who’s in sweats and a T-shirt, and fall onto her champagne-colored sectional, holding out my phone. “He. Emailed. Read it.”
“It only took him six days.” Jordyn walks over and sits next to me.
“I need you to read it and tell me about it, please!”
Jordyn puts a hand on my shoulder and rubs it up and down. “Do you want a weed gummy?”
“I’m fine! I’m calming!” I concentrate on inhaling and blowing out another slow breath. She still hasn’t taken the phone. “He wrote a chapter.”
“A chapter?”
“He wrote a chapter about the other night!” I belt it out in one breath, and Jordyn rips the phone out of my hand.
I fall forward, hanging my head between my legs.
“Renee?” she yelps. “He knows?”
“Please read it from the beginning and play-by-play anything important as you go!”