Page 110 of Fate Fiction

I laughed in reply. “You didn’t have to listen to all that. It’s so fucking embarrassing. I begged him to consider having a conversation about marriage for years and less than six months after we broke up he’s engaged to the woman he cheated on me with. Who the hell does that?”

“It’s not at all embarrassing, you don’t deserve that,” Evan said quietly. “I have time, want to list off everything you hate about him?”

twenty-one

. . .

Thursday, Early December

Abnormally early snow was falling outside of my bay window. Cambridge—with its old houses and windows lit up with fake candles—looked especially magical right now. Between the Christmas season quickly creeping up on me and the gift sitting in my inbox, I was abnormally jolly.

I kept reading the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement in disbelief.

I closed the tab, then reopened it, then closed it again. I knew it was coming, but up until now it wasn’t official. It wasn’t there for the world to see. Dani Grant, soon to be published author.

Andrea, Caroline, and I celebrated last weekend. Maybe it was too early, but we found ourselves cheers-ing in a bar and ordering every dessert on the menu in celebration. Andrea obviously found out at the same time I did, and she texted me as the email from Kimberly landed in my inbox. I lost count of the number of exclamation points she used.

We stumbled home arm in arm, Andrea yelled to every person passing on the street “my best friend is going to be published!” Caroline had to pull her away from rowdy college kid crowds more than once.

It was like a damn Christmas miracle.

This process was unnaturally quick and easy, Kimberly reminded me of this on many occasions. The internet reminded me too. I lurked on social media and Reddit threads, absorbing all I could about the steps, the timeline, the end outcome. There was no right answer, and as someone who craved predictability and black and white binaries about how things worked, it was torture.

The torture was short-lived. I was on a lucky streak, one that had been honed by tears at two in the morning when I was stuck on a scene or suddenly hated a piece of dialogue. I wondered if there was a karmic punishment waiting for me on the other side.

Now I was basking in the outcome of it all. Well-aware that this high might be fleeting, as good things always tended to be.

I half brought up the book to my mom when she had called me a few days before asking some asinine question about problems with “her Facebook,” as if I had a direct line to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Weirdly ashamed and guarded about what should have been the greatest accomplishment of my life, I spewed out the information at the tail end of the call. When she was silent on the other end, I wondered if she only heard gibberish and I could pretend I didn’t say anything.

Then, for a few brief seconds, the conversation went as one would expect such discussions should go between a mother and daughter. There was a pleased hum from her and maybe a mumble of “congratulations.”

She immediately sucked the air from me when she said, “don’t go and quit your real job or anything. Success isn’t guaranteed, Danielle.”

I was acutely aware of this fact.

Most days I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t getting published at all and everyone would change their minds, despite agents and contracts and a paper trail. I checked my email constantly, verifying that the offer stood, that this wonderful thing hadn’t been pulled out from under me.

Hearing my mother say it was a reminder that my imposter syndrome and self doubt seemed to share a voice with her.

She mentioned something about her book club and how maybe once it’s published they can read it together, but spoke as if this book is still some sort of half baked idea that will never come to fruition.

Then she said she was running late to drinks with a friend and promptly ended the call.

I reread the announcement one more time, still in disbelief that it was real. That it featured my name and my book title.

Dani Grant's FIRE ON THE LAKE, a genre-bending debut about a group of friends discovering supernatural forces—and each other—at a wilderness camp, has been sold in a very good deal to Elenor Broadbent at Easterner, in an exclusive submission for publication in September 2027, by Kimberly Cho at Milk Street Literary Agency.

I had a deal. I had a fucking book deal. Some real life editor wanted to pay real life dollars for my words. Kimberly told me I could post the announcement everywhere, I could buy a banner if I wanted to. The next few months would be filled with edits and marketing campaigns and every waking moment centered around this book, but it didn’t matter. The dream I’d been craving had finally been laid out before me in pixels on my laptop.

There were already murmurs—so I’d been told—about this being the traditionally published version of “Ice on the Turret,” despite it being nothing close to the plot of my book. Thorndown and book forums alike were building discourse around it. I’d deleted all of my social media accounts, save for my Instagram with a few hundred followers consisting largely of college friends, colleagues, and Boston micro-influencers who told me what places were new and cool.

And Evan.

I opened my most recent messages with him. This morning he’d asked about some Boston neighborhoods, which led me to believe the movie might begin shooting soon. This afternoon he’d sent a meme of a woman dancing around a fire in a forest with Bigfoot and captioned it “Sue.” I then reminded him of the Bigfoot erotica by re-sending him my highlighted passages.

Evan should know about this before the rest of the world does. We’re friends, it’s only right. With inexplicably trembling hands, I took a screenshot of the announcement and sent it to him.