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It was a great morning.
“Sorry not sorry,” I said and handed each of my friends a hardback copy of my book.
“Oh, man. This is awesome.” Jude flipped it over in his hands, admiring it. “I thought it didn’t come out until next week.”
“Author copies,” I said by way of explanation.
Dylan pointed to the back flap. “Got your face on it and everything.”
“Sign it.” Jude thrust his back to me, but I didn’t have a pen.
“You got something to write with?” I asked, and he shook his head. I didn’t even bother asking Dylan. “If Kennedy were here, she’d have four different markers in her Mary Poppins bag.”
It got bigger and bigger every week.
I was sure she’d be yanking out lamps from it soon.
“Well, you can sign it another time,” Jude said, thumping his fist against my arm. “But this is very cool. My friend wrote a whole book.”
“Yeah,” Dylan agreed. “Congrats.”
“I don’t expect you guys to read it or anything.”
Jude flicked through a few pages. “No, I want to. I’m going to.”
Dylan shrugged. “I probably won’t, but Gen’s got me into audiobooks lately. You gonna have an audiobook?”
“Um, not sure,” I said and sipped from my coffee, but curiosity got the better of me. “What kinds of books do you listen to?”
He tugged on the bill of his baseball cap and turned his head side to side, as if making sure no one would hear. “We listen to them together, and we’re in the middle of this fantasy series with these fairies and wars and whatever.” He leaned his elbows on his knees and angled in closer to us. “Which was fine, but then they got, like, spicy.”
Jude tipped his head to the side as I laughed into my fist. “Spicy?”
“Yeah, man. They were soul mates, she made him soup, and all of a sudden, they were…” He mouthed the rest. “Fucking.”
Jude raised his brow. “You listen to romance books?”
“I mean, they’re not full romance, but yeah. We’re not done with this series yet. They’re about to have a big battle.” He sat back and shrugged. “I like them.”
“Kennedy reads romance. She sends me portions to read…” I deliberately inclined my head. “Sometimes she’ll read them out loud to me.” I lifted a shoulder. “They’re hot.”
Jude toggled his gaze between Dylan and me. “You’re telling me you’re both into romance books?”
“Smutty romance books,” Dylan said, but I held up my hand.
“I think that’s a derogatory term.”
Dylan waved his hand to where Scarlett and Amelia were playing, or rather, appearing like they were tussling over a fake hair dryer. “Hey, girls. Share.” Then he turned back to me. “Genevieve calls it smut.”
I considered this, my hand already on my cell phone to text Kennedy for her opinion. “Maybe it’s one of those things where they reclaimed the word?”
Jude blinked a few times, his voice low so only we could hear him. “I can’t believe you guys read your porn.”
“Give it a shot,” I said. “You might like it.”
He swatted away the idea. “I have no one to read it with.”
“You want someone to read it with?” Dylan asked, and Jude shook his head, quickly changing the subject by elbowing me.
