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“I know. The Zoe Mona ones! I have some at the beach house. Eloisa likes to read them when she and Oscar come to visit.”Oh boy. The Navarro family has read about me getting fucked. Fun.I’ll have to deal with that reality later.“Did you want your copies back?”
“No. Um, not what I meant.”
Avery frowns.
“I wrote them.”
My best friend stares at me, a cloak of emptiness covering her face. A beat passes, then another. I’m concerned I’ve stepped in a sinking sand patch from how small I feel next to her.
“What?” Avery finally speaks.
“Yeah, they’re mine. I started a blog and over the years, it became popular. The novellas came shortly after we moved to New York together. But listen, Ave.” I grasp her limp hand in mine. “I wanted to tell you so many times. There was just never a right moment. Keeping this whole other identity from you was torturous until, honestly, it wasn’t, and then so much time passed, I…”
“A blog?”
“Yes. The night I ended things with Chuck, I made my first post. It was reckless. A plan to make sure I spent my twenties never being humiliated by another man again. It’s almost embarrassing. I made up these silly rules for how I’d avoid getting hurt, and eventually, it became an outlet for my writing, like an online journal.”
The truth comes out easily, but the reality of hearing it out loud hurts more than I expected. For the past ten years, I spent every single romantic interactionprovingsomething or simply seeking vindication for the girl I was when I was eighteen. It’s pathetic.
“Now I don’t even want to write any of it anymore,” I say. “The past month, I haven’t picked up my laptop or chased the takedown of a slimy jerk all summer.”
Avery stares at me again. “Does anyone else know?”
My hand tightens around hers. “Nico figured it out a few weeks into our trip.”
“Okay.”
Alright, I definitely wanted her to get mad or yell at me. Anything would be better than the blank expression in her eyes. My blood screeches in my veins as though I’m helpless while stuck in a rogue elevator, dropping from the hundredth floor.
“Look, the novellas were some extra income to help pay for school, and all of it would’ve just remained buried if I hadn’tsomehowwritten an international bestseller, but my shithead professor plagiarized my work, and now there may be a lawsuit. I also have enough money to finish my degree full-time, and it’s all just a lot—”
“A bestseller?”
Of course, that’s what she pulled out of my incoherent ramble.
“Yeah. The book is calledCoastal Fling. I wrote it in Montauk last summer. It’s about Nico. Don’t tell him I just admitted that. He’ll never let me live it down.” I try for a smile. She doesn’t imitate it.
“My best friend is a bestselling author?”
I nod. “Are you mad?”
“I—I’m mad—”
“Avery, I’m so sorry.”
“How could I not figure it out sooner?Are you kidding me?” Her voice pitches up the way it does when she gets overwhelmed.“Nico pieced it together before I did? We lived together foryears,and I never thought anything of it. I just assumed you were obsessed with Zoe Mona the way I was obsessed with ORO.”
A hearty sound comes from the depths of her stomach.
She’s okay.
“You’re not mad?”
“Oh, Lily, I could never, ever be mad at you. If I had an awful first love like Chuck, I’d do something much worse than start a blog to help me get a semblance of myself back.”
“I’m not even sure what to think anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Avery runs her hand over my shoulder, bringing me back to the present.
