Page 52 of The Perfect Rom-Com

But where is my migraine-reducing, face-smoothing red-light treatment mask? Where?

Everyone around me is busy. Penny sits in a chair by the farthest back window, her face screwed up as she painstakingly practices slow loops on sheets of paper. Calligraphy, apparently, is going to be Penny’s homework assignment now because, as Amelia put it, “Your one single task is to write things down, Penny. The least you can do is make it pretty. If I wanted chicken scratch, I would have hired a chicken.”

Garrett, Amelia’s publicity tour manager, sits on the other side of the aisle, arguing in panic-level mode with somebody on the phone over misplaced book orders and declaring that if “we don’t have four hundred copies of The Seven-Year Holiday on that table by four o’clock, somebody is going to get fired.” Possibly (probably?) him.

Electronic equipment litters the table in front of Jack: laptops, phones, some electronic planner to track all the information on his laptops and phone. Even an electric sort of candle warmer to keep his electric-looking coffee mug at a perfect 132 degrees.

Jack is a frenzy of movement, making jumps from one electronic device to another, all with a phone pressed to his ear. I haven’t caught all that’s going on, but from what I can gather, the book of one of his newer clients, Tess Cray, has gone to auction and three publishers are in the game, fighting for it. Even his laptop has some sort of time-bomb clock on it, ticking down. Thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds left. Twenty-one. Twenty. He’s jumping from phone call to phone call, telling publishers, “Schmidt just offered exclusive World English rights on a two-book, 200 a book. Ben, you’re up. What can you do?” and “Pennington just offered 230 each for three books. Where are you?”

I sip my cold coffee and watch him with mild interest.

Every couple minutes he pauses from his mad finger tapping and phone talking to look over at me and wink.

I can’t help it.

He makes me smile despite myself as I watch him living for the adrenaline of this. It’s responsible gambling, that’s what it is. I bet he killed everyone on the block in Monopoly as a kid. He was definitely one of those kids who owned the bank and all the properties and gleefully loaned out money and kept tabs on their growing debts just to keep the game going.

“Look at you,” he says, waving a hand at my stack of books. “Cheer up.”

When I got on the bus earlier, Mona gave me an overly aggressive squeeze on both shoulders and slipped a company card in my hand, saying, “Take this. Spare yourself nothing—I don’t care if it’s a coffee mug or a chandelier in an antique store. You’re a lifesaver to us all.” When I told her I was most certainly not, she said, “Look up that interview from the other night on YouTube. Just . . . look it up. Thank you.”

I was not, ever, going to sit on Amelia’s bus next to her giant face, with her real face in the other room, watching her make a fool out of herself on YouTube. But I got it.

Susanna, in true Susanna form, placed in my arms a stack of books that she stole from the ARC room at the office and said in a small, soft voice, “Farewell.”

As if I was on a brave journey toward certain death.

“You have hours to read.” Jack, in a pause on his call, points to my books. “You like reading. Read.”

“Can’t,” I say with a frown.

“Then write. You say you need to write.”

“Can’t. I have to kill off the boys from this book.” Because, according to Amelia, I can no longer include terrible small human beings who make the world go round.

“Then for goodness’ sake, call your Goody Two-shoes boyfriend,” Jack spits out, waving his hand in the air.

Geez. I must look quite broody.

Jack never goes to such lengths as to mention I actually call the man he’s never met.

“It’s three in the morning in Russia.”

“Then—” Jack’s interrupted by the person on the line. “Bill? Yeah. Just got your email.” His eyes jump to the timer and back. “No, that’s not going to be high enough. We’re going in ten-thousand-dollar increments.”

I take another sip of my coffee and glance around.

Yes, I do need to get to writing. I do have an AMSI (Advanced Marketing and Sales Information) Word document sitting on my laptop about my current work in progress that Susanna begged me to turn in by the end of the week. And yes, I do have a stack of papers from students I need to go over and correct.

And yes, there is a phone call to Gloria I missed.

But the thing that’s been at the forefront of my mind, playing over and over again, is the conversation with Gran. More particularly, how to make that miracle happen pretty much immediately.

It’s an excruciating thing, sitting on a bus worth the cost of a year of programming, working with these magic fingers and yet completely stuck as to how to make them work magic in my own life.

I glance to the countdown clock.

Three minutes and forty-five seconds left.