Chapter 57
Gabriella sipped her Americano and looked out of the window onto the street from the table she was sitting at. There were snowflakes in the air tonight, floating slowly, melting into invisibility the second they touched anything – a coated shoulder, the roof of a taxi, Cheyenne’s hair…
Gabriella watched her publicist come in, shaking the weather out of her hair and shrugging herself out of her coat as she entered the eatery. It was time to start facing the truth and that began with fixing what she had done with Zero Fucks Given.
‘What’s happened?’ Cheyenne asked, rushing to the table like she rushed through her whole life.
‘I’ve been trying to call you all day. I have a million things to go through.
There’s another three bookstores all wanting to squeeze in a signing with you in the time you have left and you’ve been asked to cut the ribbon on a new Christmas train that’s going to take tourists around the city. ’
‘Sit down, Cheyenne. Take a breath.’
‘Did you hear what I said, Gabriella?’
‘No, honestly, I heard noise and stress.’
‘That’s because it seems you’re not in tune with opportunity and the need to deliver at the right place and the right time for prime benefit. I’m not sure you’ve been on board with that since we arrived.’
‘Are you going to sit down?’ Gabriella asked, calmly. ‘Because I’ve ordered two burgers. And that espresso martini there is for you.’
‘Burgers? We don’t eat meat like that in public, remember? We only eat wholegrains and lean protein in line with the healthy body, healthy mind section of the book.’
‘Please, Cheyenne, please, just…’ She wanted to say ‘shut the fuck up’ so badly but this was too important to let her anger speak instead of her heart. ‘Please, sit down with me.’ She took a breath. ‘We are going to have an honest conversation and I’m going to eat a burger.’
Cheyenne huffed out a breath and pulled out a chair. She eyed up the cocktail in front of her and then she picked up the glass and took a sip.
‘OK, so, first of all, I want you to know that I am going to commit to the agreed engagements for the rest of the New York visit. That’s the bookstore signing at Rizzolo Books and the fashion show. But, that’s it, nothing else.’
‘Gabriella, that isn’t your call to make,’ Cheyenne said immediately.
‘It’s my job to find as many openings as possible while we are here.
We have a limited time and it’s the run up to Christmas – peak book gifting season – and the Kindle edition has a daily deal on the twenty-third, alongside a global BookBub promotion, remember? ’
‘I remember,’ Gabriella answered. ‘But I mean what I said. And if you don’t choose to accept it I just won’t turn up and then it will be embarrassing and you will look bad and I will look bad and All Chapters will look bad and that will damage the book’s reputation anyway.
Cancelling or not confirming anything else will be a much better outcome. ’
‘May I remind you that the book is due to be put forward for quarterly Prime selection soon. But there are other authors we could get behind instead.’
Gabriella shook her head of this nonsense game-playing. ‘Secondly,’ she continued. ‘At the bookstore signing, I want to be interviewed. It’s an evening event, closed doors, people who have bought tickets. No pre-agreed questions from All Chapters or you. I want an intimate environment.’
Cheyenne’s eyes lit up. ‘No pre-agreed questions? Well, who do you want to interview you? Because it would have to be someone who—’
‘I have someone in mind. You don’t need to worry about that.’
Cheyenne pulled a face now, disgruntled, disagreeable verging on disgusted. ‘This isn’t how things are usually done.’
‘Good,’ Gabriella stated, taking a sip of her drink. ‘It makes me happy to hear that.’ She put her glass down again. ‘The other thing is… there aren’t going to be any more books.’
Cheyenne was mid-sip of her cocktail and she began coughing like she’d inhaled a mouthful of the snowflakes outside and they had all turned into ice blocks in her throat. ‘Whhaaaat?’
‘Have some water,’ Gabriella said, rapidly pouring a glass full from the jug on the table and pushing it towards Cheyenne.
‘I don’t want water,’ Cheyenne said, breath and words definitely catching in her throat. ‘You… don’t know what you’re saying. There have to be more books.’
‘Well, that’s not strictly true. I only signed a contract for one book and the only other clause relating to future work was for All Chapters to have the first look at anything else I write in a similar genre. And I won’t be writing anything else.’
‘Gabriella, this is ridiculous talk. I don’t know what’s happened since we’ve been here in New York but I thought we were all on the same page as to what we all wanted from the future.’
‘Mmm,’ Gabriella said, her index finger running around the rim of her cocktail glass.
‘The thing is, Cheyenne, sadly the page I was on, perhaps the same page as you, wasn’t the page I should have been on.
Because the pages, and the chapters, and the words were made up of half-truths, truths hidden and not enough actual factual content.
In fact, when you took out my sister’s poetry and her artwork, all that was left was editorial bullshit.
Not my words, the words of someone who was trying to sell a lifestyle off the back of a family’s tragedy.
And these new books… I’m sorry but no one gets to make my sister’s life and how it ended into clickbait. ’
There was no stopping now.
‘But, Cheyenne, you were right. My sister’s death wasn’t an accident.
And, Lulu, she wasn’t a frail, up-and-coming artist who lit up a room and was a friend to everyone,’ Gabriella said.
‘She was a twenty-nine-year-old single mother who battled depression and found the world complicated to navigate. She hated socialising as much as she loved it and no two days with her were the same. She didn’t drink matcha.
She thought she was allergic to exercise because her skin turned red when she did it.
She would buy anything if it was pink. And, despite all that, or maybe even because of it, I adored her and I miss her.
’ She sighed. ‘I thought that writing Zero Fucks Given was going to keep me closer to her and help people like her, but I missed the whole point.’ She took a breath.
‘People shouldn’t be told what to do. Especially if they’re vulnerable.
People should be, I don’t know, asked how they are.
Twice at least. Because the first time everyone lies that they’re fine, right?
And then they should be supported and comforted and encouraged, not told that how they’re feeling is wrong or what they’re doing isn’t enough.
Because sometimes just surviving is exhausting.
’ She took a stronger breath. ‘We shouldn’t be giving people a ten-point bullet list of a daily routine, we should be making sure there are more places people can go when they’re not feeling OK.
Places where people will listen. We shouldn’t be trying to better people. We should try to be better people.’
And as Gabriella delivered that last line, she didn’t look to see Cheyenne’s reaction, didn’t care for it, she gazed out into the night sky, up at the stars and watched as they danced just for her.