“Too late for that, my friend. What does she want you to do?”
“Present the Romance Author of the Year award to my ex-boyfriend-slash-archnemesis.” I’m not really sure if he can be my archnemesis without knowing he is my archnemesis, but Josie gets the point.
“Oof. That’s rough.”
“Tell me about it. Any chance Morgan won’t give me the time off?” I flip the sign on the front door to Closed and begin counting out the register.
“Doubt it.”
The owner of the coffee shop, Morgan, is completely supportive of our aspirational careers. She’s come to all ofmy book launches and shares photos of my books on the shop’s Instagram page all the time.
“I might have to fake some kind of life-threatening injury.”
“Or”—Josie pauses her sweeping, leaning against the broom like she’s about to waltz across the floor with it—“alternative plan: Show up looking incredible and let him know exactly what he’s missing.”
I shoot her a finger gun. “You might be on to something, my friend.”
When I get back to my apartment an hour later, I open my laptop. Though instead of working on my manuscript—or even attempting to—as I should be, I spend the rest of the night searching for the perfect revenge dress.
Since I will be wearing said revenge dress to a publishing event, it totally counts as writing.
Chapter Two
Nick
One of those hideous red cups, printed with snowflakes and confetti, with a handwritten note to have a “happiest of holidays” lands on my desk, pulling me out of my writer’s-block-induced haze. I only grimace slightly, mostly because I need the caffeine and I don’t care much what kind of capitalistic bullshit it’s encased in, though if I had my choice, I would never see a Christmas-themed coffee cup ever again.
I fucking hate Christmas.
I push my glasses on top of my forehead, rubbing at my screen-tired eyes while inhaling at least a third of my black coffee in one long swallow.
It’s only after I’ve set the cup down that my assistant, Hilary, sits in the chair in front of my desk, iPad at the ready. “Looks like you needed that.”
“I pretty much always need that.”
“I know.” Hence why she delivers me fresh coffee at regularly scheduled intervals throughout the day. “How are the new pages coming?”
I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. “They’re not.”
Hilary has been with me two years and knows me better than my closest friends, not that I have many of those. She handles my moods with just the right balance of indulgence and intolerance. “You’ll get there. It just takes some time for the ideas to flow.”
“Unfortunately, time is one thing I’m running short on.” The first draft of my next book is due as soon as my editor is back from her holiday break, which means I only have about a month left.
Normally a month would be plenty of time for me to finish up a draft. If that draft had already been started. Which this one has not. The strict schedule I’ve kept ever since writing my first contracted book has been thrown out the window, buried in a pile of the ever-present garbage on the city’s streets, and confiscated by a family of rats to use as insulation for their little rat house.
I’ve been staring at a blank computer screen every day, for hours a day, for the past two months, and have nothing to show for it. My eye doctor is going to kill me.
“Maybe you need to take a real break, Nick. Sitting in front of the computer all day is clearly not working for you.” Hilary runs a hand through the long side of her hair, the other side buzzed in an undercut. Her pale cheeks have turned a bright pink, which means it must have been cold outside when she went on the coffee run.
Her words irritate me, even though I just thought a similar version of them myself. “This is my process, Hilary. I sit down and I write. It has worked for me for every book I’ve ever written.”
She shrugs, her fingers stabbing at the screen of the iPad as she answers emails or responds to DMs or solvesworld hunger. “Well, it’s not working for this one. And you do know the definition ofinsanity, right?”
I lean back in my ergonomic chair. It cost a fortune and was one of my first splurges after my advance check cleared. “So what do you suggest, I just not write for a while?” The thought is almost unfathomable. Ever since I decided I wanted to be a professional author, I have always been working on something. If I’m not editing, I’m drafting. Sometimes I’m doing both. Writing has been the one constant in my life for almost as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, it was my shield from a family I never quite fit in with, an escape. Now as an adult, my success is justification for leaving behind the family business I was supposed to join, which might account for the frenzied pace at which I write and publish my books.
Some might say I struggle with work/life balance, but for me, even though it’s now become my job, writing remains that escape. It’s the way I work out my frustrations and deal with my problems—by burying myself in my characters’ issues instead of my own. Theirs are much easier to solve.
My therapist tells me I should work on that, which might explain why I haven’t reached out to her in a while.
