I can’t blame her, either. I sped through this book without putting the care into it that I usually do. Partly because I was running late on meeting my deadline, but there’s another reason, too. A bigger, elephant-sized reason.
That reason has dirty blond hair and honey-brown eyes.
With a sigh, I close my email.
My best friend Annie was supposed to come spend the weekend with me but then she got called to cover a shift for her coworker so now I’m stuck hanging out all by myself with just my loneliness and misery to keep me company. This is not how things were supposed to work.
I was supposed to be happy here in Sterling. I was supposed to be free to write all the novels and gain all the fame and notoriety that comes with being anti-romance. I should have been happy. It should have been easy.
Now I feel even more alone than when I lived just across the hallway from my ex and his new girlfriend. The lake in my back yard isn’t as beautiful when I’m grumpy all day.
This problem with my editor won’t go away no matter how much I ignore it, but a girl’s gotta eat, after all, so I leave the email unanswered and head to Roger’s Diner.
The Saturday lunch crowd packs the place but I arrive just in time to slide into a small two-person table that overlooks the water. The spunky blonde waitress is named Claire, and she’s become one of my very few friends here in Sterling. Probably because I visit almost every day. I can’t help it. The food is too good and too cheap to stay away.
“Is it fun eating your soda and junk food without healthy boy Max here?” she says with a snort when I order a milkshake to go with my cheese fries.
“Oh yes,” I say grinning as I grab a cheesy fry and pop it in my mouth. “I like not having to look at salads.”
She chuckles. “Is he off renovating another house? When will he be back?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
She hovers, like she wants to keep talking. “Wait a minute…” she pulls a pen from the bun on top of her head, scratching something on her order pad. “Are you telling me you let that man leave your house without plans to meet up again?”
“We weren’t really friends,” I say, eating another fry. “We only met because my landlady has no idea how to schedule her tenants correctly.”
“Oh, honey,” Claire says, shaking her head and smacking her lips. “You act like meeting him was some random coincidence.”
“It was?” I lift an eyebrow. What else could it be?
She shakes her head. “No way, lady. The Universe doesn’t just throw things together for the fun of it. You met him on purpose. You’re perfect for him.”
I snort out a laugh. “No, I’m not. I don’t even date. I’m done with men.”
“I know he misses you,” she says with a hint of smirk in her smile.
“All I did was annoy him,” I say, shrugging off her words. “I bet he’s glad to be rid of me.”
“Aww, sweetie.” She picks up my menu, tucking it under her arm. “You don’t believe a word of that.”
I want to argue with her, to tell her that yes of course I believe it because it’s true because Max and I were just temporary roommates and that’s all, and that’s all it’ll ever be because I’m Julie Baskins, the anti-romance author of the best-selling Love Sucks series.
She tears off the paper on her order pad before I can say any of that and places it on the table in front of me. In her loopy handwriting, she’s written the name Max, and then a phone number.
“That’s his business number,” she says, tapping it with a pink fingernail. “That’s how I have it memorized… we call him all the time for fixing stuff around the diner. But he’s the only one who answers that phone so give him a call if you want.” She winks at me before walking away.
I eat my fries and sip my milkshake and look out at the water as if I don’t care one bit about the piece of paper in front of me.
But when a breeze blows across the patio, I reach out quickly and stop it from floating away.
* * *
Annie givesme a puzzled look while she takes a bite of her sandwich. She’s been working a double at the hospital but now that it’s her lunch break we’re video chatting. I just broke the news to her that my editor hates my new manuscript and my life is probably over
“You’re being a little dramatic,” Annie says over a mouthful of food. “I doubt your career isover.”
“She hates it.” I lean back on my couch, letting my hair fan out on the pillow behind me and then blow a raspberry sigh. “She hates it. She didn’t even have any suggestions for how to make it better. She just hates it.”
