“How about you go have your coffee and I’ll talk to you later after you’ve had a nap or chocolate or something?” Anything. “Then we’ll look at the upcoming schedule.”
“For fuck’s sake, what did you forget this time?”
I really had to stop agreeing with things and telling myself I’d talk to her about it later.
“Caffeinate. You’re kind of grumpy. Bye.” Hanging up before she could have a cow, I mentally shoved aside the notes I should be making about the schedule and the Christmas book and read through the email again.
“Well, you’re polite. You spend too much time online but that’s helpful for me. You know my books.” Whoever my wonderful reader was, they had a lot of admirable qualities. “You seem very patient too because you didn’t even tell me it was a stupid idea.”
But, then again, if they were in my online group, then they already knew I was weird.
And they knew I was easily distracted and slightly messy.
“What else would you know about me?” Oh, they’d know about my dating life, so I wouldn’t have to pretend to have one. “You’ll know about how badly the writing schedule got fucked up.”
But it hadn’t been my fault that Mary had licked me and given me the plague...family was hard but toddlers wereoff the chartsfrightening.
And kind of disgusting.
“I’m not seeing any downsides here.” Worst case scenario, he was a stalker and I’d end up dead. “I wouldn’t have to worry about explaining the editing date fuckup to Lori if they killed me.”
Yep, still no downside.
But how to sound reasonable and professional so it didn’t come across like sex work?
Judging by the number of odd responses I’d gotten, I probably needed to be a bit clearer on that. Oh, but how to say I didn’t want sex without actually saying I didn’t want sex just in case they were sexy? What if they were having erotic fantasies about me? I wouldn’t want to destroy their dreams.
I wasn’t sure I was a good enough writer for this assignment.
What had I been thinking?
“I’m sober now. It’ll be fine.” Taking a deep breath, I had another realization. “They’re not going to expect me to make sense. What am I even worrying about?”
They were in my group.
Duh.
All right, step one. “Hit the reply button. Good job.”
I wasn’t sure if I should put it off until I had some sleep, but that sounded like a good way to forget what I’d been going to do in the first place. I should write it down on my to-do list, but I’d misplaced that and since it might be under the pile of mail on my kitchen table, that was a lost cause.
I’d just need to buy a new table at some point.
“Oh, maybe my new helper could look up furniture deals after they find the bottom of the living room?” That was unfortunately taken over by bubble wrap.
Yes, that was a good plan.
“I’m going to make sure they know they’re very necessary and wanted even if they’re as insane as me. But as long as they can clean and remember stuff, I don’t care if they’re more interesting than average.” Yep, the only requirement was that they be less scatterbrained than me.
Or at the very least their distractibility needed to involve cleaning.
“That’s very reasonable.”
But I was still going to keep my fingers crossed just in case.
“Second step, a greeting and sound like I’ve actually slept.”
This project was starting to get more and more difficult.
