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I sit down on the couch, propping my feet up on the coffee table in front of me, and rest my tablet on my lap. I power it up and then head straight toward my group, Dirty Lil’ Angels, and start scrolling down all the man candy the girls there post non-stop. There's nothing better to ease a worried mind than half-naked men, right? Except, right now, it isn’t helping; it seems that every man in there reminds me of Aidan, and that just flares up the urge to call him again. Somehow, I stop myself from doing it; I don’t want him to pick up his cellphone and see dozens of missed calls from Miss ‘Stalker’ Abby.
I mean don’t feel that bad for me, babe.
It's easy to pass the time if you know how to.
For example, I’m able to spend almost an hour in Dirty Lil’ Angels, and then I head to Rainforest.com to check on how Big Dick is doing; it's still going strong in the Top 100, although we’ll probably drop from there in the next few weeks. If we had the ad budget, we could have kept it going as strong as we had when we were doing signings.
But we don’t have that kind of money. We’re waiting for our royalty payments now, because I invested most of my liquid cash in this project.
But everything seems to be going great at the end of the day, you know?
What?
Don’t shake your head. On paper, everything is great.
Fine.
I feel it too. There’s something….off.
I don’t know what it is, and it’s probably stupid…so why am I feeling a knot in the pit of my stomach?
Succumbing to that worry, I pick up the phone and call Aidan one more time (my last attempt, I lie to myself). Predictably, he doesn’t pick up, and so I just throw the cellphone onto the couch with an exasperated sigh.
This isn’t like him. Sure, he sometimes misses his calls like a regular human being, but he's never flaked on me without telling me first. So what the hell is going on? My mind is already busy imagining him sprawled on the middle of a busy road, his helmet cracked while his motorcycle lies a few feet away from him in a mess of twisted bent metal.
Okay, Abby, time to hop off of the paranoid train. I take one deep breath, trying to push all of these thoughts away, and start scrolling down my Facebook’s feed in a futile attempt to distract myself. I go through countless videos of babies, cats, and people failing miserably at whatever they’re doing, but none of them grab my attention. But that’s when my heart skips a beat.
Aidan’s Facebook page has just been updated. HUGE COCK - COMING SOON, his post reads, a book cover filling the whole screen of my tablet. The Huge Cock title hangs over a shirtless picture of Aidan against a dark background, his hands seductively diving under the hemline of his unbuttoned jeans.
My name is nowhere to be seen on the cover, but at the bottom there are three words, and each one of them feels like a bullet hitting me in the chest: Bad Boy Publishing.
Aidan’s betrayed me.
Aidan
"I can't do this," CJ says, her eyes sadder than I've ever seen them. They aren't the color of a summer sky anymore, but rather the deepest parts of the ocean—dark like the trenches where only the most secretive fish seem to lurk.
We decided to meet at a café for lunch, which was her idea, and so far, I've watched CJ push her salad around her plate without actually taking a single bite. She spears a cherry tomato with the prongs of her fork, and then quickly flicks it off again.
Something's wrong. That much I know.
"You can't do what exactly anymore?" I ask. I'm tired of the riddles. I just want to cut to the fucking chase.
"This. All of it. I can't work with you," she says, looking down at her plate. She seems to be trying extra hard to avoid my gaze—as if she's gonna turn to fucking stone if she looks into my eyes or something.
But her words hit home. They fucking sting, I'll admit it.
I imagine this is what a quarterback feels like during a football game when a defensive end blindsides him, and he's left staring at the ball that's been knocked out of his hands and it's pathetically flopping around the turf, a brown smear just out of reach.
I wasn't expecting this from CJ. It definitely catches me off guard.
"Wait, back the fuck up. What do you mean?" I ask.
"I quit, Aidan. It's simple. I'm terminating our agreement," she replies, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
"You can't be fucking serious," I say.
I'm having a hard time believing the words tumbling out of her mouth. Her lips are moving but they aren't making sense. CJ's been a stellar fucking PA over the years, and there's no way I'm letting her walk away that easily. What happened to the CJ who just recently was pushing me to write more books?
