Page 67 of Based on You

"I'm not being cruel, Vi. I'm asking practically." She shifted, forcing me to look at her. "Yes, you made a colossal mess. Yes, things are badly broken right now. But you can't lie in bed for the rest of your life. At some point, you have to decide what happens next."

"I know that! I just—" A sob hitched in my chest. "Can you please give me one night? Can I just have a single night where I don't have to decide who I am?"

She searched my eyes a long moment. "Okay," she relented. "Yes. Come on."

She lugged my suitcase into her spare room. I collapsed onto the mattress without even taking off my street clothes, dragged the heavy duvet over my head, and sobbed until I was hollowed out. Eventually, I was just breathing in jagged pulls in the dark, my face buried in a damp pillow, my chest scraped empty.

That emptiness was the last thing I remembered before sleep finally dragged me under.

A soft knock roused me. The bedroom was pitch dark, the window framing the glittering skyline, telling me the afternoon had slipped away.

Sloane pushed the door open with her hip, balancing two steaming bowls of pasta. She perched on the edge of the mattress and handed me a bowl without a word. I sat up, groggy, and took it.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier," I said, staring at the noodles.

"Don't." She pointed her silver fork at me. "You were allowed to snap."

I took a small bite, then another. The room settled into a comfortable quiet. Outside the glass, the city moved through its evening, impersonal, ongoing, indifferent to the fact that my whole world had come apart on the Upper East Side just hours ago.

"You were right," I finally admitted. "About all of it."

She paused, looking at me, waiting.

"I'm not going to keep crying into this pillow." I gripped the warm bowl. "What's done is done. I have to live with the wreckage I caused, and I have to keep going." I pressed my lips together. "I have to."

"That's a good thing to know," Sloane said.

"The publishing emails." I met her gaze. "What do you honestly think?"

She tilted her head, weighing it. "One of them wants to gently hold your hand and walk you out into the daylight. The other wants to pay you a ridiculous amount of money to stay comfortably in the dark." She locked eyes with me. "Vi. You already know which one you need to take."

I sat with the weight of it. The millions of words I'd poured out, the readers who'd found solace in them, I knew they were real, because they were the only honest thing I'd ever made. The pen name had been a heavy iron door I'd locked myself behind. But the fragile thing I'd been trying to protect behind it, my relationship with Simon, had just been destroyed by my own hands. I had no more reason to disappear.

"If I'm coming out," I said, "my parents have to hear it from me first."

Sloane nodded. "Do you want me to stay in the room?"

"No." I set the empty bowl on the nightstand. "I need to do this part alone."

She slipped out, closing the door behind her. I sat a long moment in the quiet of the guest room, gathering my fractured courage. Then I dialed my mother's number.

She picked up on the fourth ring. "Violet. Well, it's certainly been a while. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine. I have something really important I need to talk to you about."

A beat of silence, then her sharp assumption. "Are you finally going to enroll in that paralegal program?"

"No, Mom. I'm not."

I heard her draw a long, dramatic breath. "Violet, you know how important it is for you to⁠—"

"I need you to just listen to me," I cut in. "Just for one minute. Can you put Dad on speaker, too?"

Silence on the line. Then her muffled voice calling his name. A moment later, his gruff voice filtered through. "He's here. What is it?"

He hadn't even bothered to say hello. I'd spent my whole life noticing small dismissals like that, letting them dictate how small I made myself to fit into their lives. I was done letting it happen.

"I'm a professional romance writer," I said, my voice remarkably steady. "I've been writing for years. I publish under a pen name, V.M. Ashby. I have five million readers. Major publishing houses are offering me print deals. I make a very comfortable living doing exactly this. I just wanted you both to hear it from me before it goes public."