Page 19 of Old Flames

“What, then? The divorce?”

Just then, the pack erupted in laughter with Vicky doubling over. July laughed like a piano out of tune. She was performing exuberance. Her true nature was calm. She wasn’t one to belly laugh at jokes. But how did he know this? They were strangers.

“Sometimes I wonder if we’re the hunters or the prey,” Matty muttered.

Leo couldn’t say for sure. Earlier this morning, July had him on his heels. Her beauty stunned him. The round chin and soft cheeks of her early twenties were gone, replaced with sharper angles. Looking into her brown eyes made him uneasy. She looked straight through him, saw the things he kept buried: ego, guilt, pride, shame. He’d felt naked before her, although the opposite was true. She wore practically nothing: bikini top, shorts, sunglasses, and her usual smugness. There, before her, he wasn’t prey. He was the willing sacrifice.

“Am I the only fossil here?”

The tinny voice of Richard Carlisle, once hailed for his Southern Gothic fiction by The Paris Review. He sauntered down the pier in his expensive boat shoes. Well into his sixties, he was the most senior member of the group now that Fox had dropped out.

“I believe I am,” he snickered. “Fox may have had the right idea.”

“Relax, old man,” Matty said good-naturedly. “We’re among friends here.”

“In that case, call me Dick.”

Matty grinned. “If you insist.”

Leo was about to introduce himself when Dick cut him off. “The keynote went to you.”

“It did.”

“Don’t you think they should have gone by order of seniority? Or established legacy?” Dick asked.

“You may want to take that up with management,” Leo replied evenly.

Dick’s watery gaze washed over Leo and Matty. “There’s an erosion of respect for seasoned writers who labor over every word.”

Ah . . . Leo thought. Are we in for a rant?

“And we don’t?” Matty asked.

Dick balked. “You rely on artificial intelligence. Cranking out a book a year . . . You’re not fooling anyone!”

“Hold on!” Matty cried. “Just because you crank out a book per quarter century doesn’t mean we spit plot points into a chat bot and call it a day! We ‘labor’! With varying results, but we put in the work.”

There was no need to get heated. Leo knew Dick’s type. The jockeying for a position increasingly hard to hold because he was, in fact, a one-hit wonder. The man was too insecure to follow up a surprise blockbuster hit with anything that might tarnish the legacy. Now legacy was all he had.

“I may take it up with management,” Dick snapped.

“You do that,” Matty retorted.

Dick walked off, sauntering down the pier in his boat shoes.

“There goes a cautionary tale,” Matty said wistfully.

“I’ll let him have the keynote if he wants it that badly,” Leo said. “I haven’t even started on it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Matty growled. “I don’t care if it’s his dying wish. Let him sit in the audience and eat humble pie.”

“I’d enjoy that,” Leo admitted.

Matty slapped his back. “Good man!” he cried. “Now back to more pressing matters. July and Vicky are extremely close. I suggest we divide and conquer.”

Daphne delivered the gossip on the pier. “All I know is that his ex-wife took him for half, which left him with nothing. Since then, he’s been down on his luck. It’s sad, because he’s a good guy. He’s bad with money, bad at marriage, and maybe bad at life, but he has a good heart. I like him. Always have. That’s why I invited him to join us this year. He could use a break. Leo, on the other hand, is like a brother to me. He never calls or texts, but my actual brother doesn’t, either. I owe him for filling in for Fox and being so gracious about it. He’s single, too. His fiancée kicked him out shortly after they’d moved in together. He’s been on the road since the breakup.”

“It’s settled,” Ayesha announced once they’d boarded the boat. “Big Money trumps No Money. I hate to say it, but Matty is disqualified. A shame, too, because I really do like him.”