I didn’t say anything.
“Sunny, listen. What you guys think about me is true. But only partly.”
“Which part?”
“The part I can’t say over the phone.”
I took a moment. Thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“Please,” she said. “I’ll come to you. Banners Kitchen & Tap. Five p.m.”
I’d been to Banners. It was a sports bar. Burgers. Beer.Enormous screens. Very public, yet at the same time, the perfect place for a famous romance writer to go unnoticed. I looked at the clock on my desktop. It was three-fifty p.m. “You’re leaving now?”
“Yes.”
“What about Tommy?”
“He’s at my mom’s.”
I was curious about what she had to say to me, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. I looked at the clock on my computer screen, waited for the minute to pass. When it seemed like enough time had elapsed, I responded. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you…for not telling Melanie Joan.”
She hung up.
—
At six p.m., I was nursing a beer at a high-top near the bar at Banners. The Red Sox were playing the Padres on the forty-foot screen. Everyone at the bar was shouting, and everyone on the screen was going wild. Home run for the Sox. The sound system was far too excellent for its own good. Banners annoyed me nearly as much as baseball did.
Leila Donnelly still hadn’t shown. I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t some kind of ill-advised prank. For the third time, I called the number she’d emailed me. Again, the call went straight to voicemail and the mailbox was full. “Okay, Hotmail,” I said. “You had your chance.” I couldn’t even hear my own voice in this place. Fenway was probably quieter.
I took a few more swallows of my beer. Then I started scrolling through my contacts.
I knew more journalists than I’d thought. I figured I’d call my friend Tom Gorman atThe Globefirst—keep things Boston Strong. Then I’d go wide with the story. And what a story it would be: how the Taylor Swift of romance had duped her loyal fans.
The bar crowd quieted down a bit. I prayed nobody would hit another home run, at least until I could pay my tab. I got out my wallet and my phone vibrated. I thought maybe it might be Leila, but no such luck. Tony’s name was on my screen. I’d called him shortly after we returned from Connecticut to tell him about Book Babe’s true identity. He’d been thrilled, of course.Let’s keep this close to the vest for now,he’d said.See how much public groveling we can get out of her.
It was the last I’d spoken with him. I wondered if Leila had decided to talk to Tony rather than to me. If that was the case, I wished she’d told me before I’d wasted a full hour at a sports bar.
As I accepted the call, Bregman stepped up to the plate. Everyone around me started cheering. I’d forgotten my earbuds as usual, so I plugged my left ear in order to hear Tony. “You’ll never guess what I’m watching on the world’s biggest TV right now,” I said. “Seriously. You will not guess.”
“Is she with you?” Tony said.
“Who?” I said.
“Who else?”
I sighed. “We dropped her off at the hotel at about one,” Isaid. “She was planning on sleeping all day, which seemed like a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, it would have been.”
“What?”
“We’ve lost her again,” Tony said.
“Oh, no.”
“She told Harold that she was hitting the sack. He ran out to do a few errands, and when he checked in on her, she was gone. She’d shoved pillows under the covers like a goddamn middle-schooler sneaking out past curfew.”
