Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
How did I get invited here when I only have a couple of books out?
How did I get such good table placement this weekend? Right behind SS’s table?
Who did shoot JFK?
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
“Okay?” repeats Britney.
“What?” Ow. I think I just bit off the tip of my finger.
“Let’s go sign some books, yeah?”
“… Yeah. Yeah. Let’s… Yeah.”
Picking up the rest of my stuff from off the floor, I notice the white cover with the black letters sitting on the nightstand. My book. My unreleased manuscript. The one that Steve read, told me he loved, and is ultimately responsible (I think) for me winding up in here last night.
I scoop it up, hold it close to my chest, protecting it almost, and make my way out of the suite. But not before Britney stops at the private buffet and starts filling up a bowl with fruit and yogurt.
“Essie did say that Steve is a genuinely nice guy, by the way,” Britney says. I nod, listening and not all at once. “You don’t want anything else to eat?”
“No. I’m good,” I say, feeling an inexplicable tightness in my throat.
Almost like I’m being choked.
CHAPTER TEN
Mr. and Mrs. Smith—aka Mom and Dad—are my first point of contact down in the lobby outside the massive signing hall. Since it’s just panel day, and six-thirty a.m., there are only about two dozen people here right now. This same time tomorrow there will be hundreds of bibliophiles already lined up even though the signing won’t start until nine.
Game plans involving seating charts will have been made. Binders with tabbed dividers will be hauled out and poured over. Lists of must-see authors will be swimming through the heads of every fanatical reader.
But today, it’s all pretty chill. Those two dozen people actually work for me and mostly this morning is all about sound checks, chair spacing, and room temperature.
“Ste-eeeeeeve! Steve! Honey, we’re over here!” That’s my mother, calling my name in her shrill voice, from almost a hundred feet away.
Every frickin’ face in this lobby turns to stare at me.
I force that smile as my eyes dart back and forth, because you never know when a BookToker is lurking in the shadows. Then I raise my hand to Mom so she will stop screaming my name. “I see you, Mom.” I mumble this out through clenched teeth as I head that direction.
Then I tone it down. They’re your parents, Steve. You love them. They love you. I think. No, they do. It’s just… they really believe I’m a lazy bum who makes a living mooching off my twin sister.
A guy can only take so much of that.
Still, they are Mom and Dad.
“Hey.” I wave as I approach. “How did you sleep last night? Was the room OK?”
I put them in a suite too, so I know it was fine, but it’s polite to ask and… I really don’t have anything else to say. Which is sad.
Sometimes I wonder if the lies I’ve been telling—and making Essie tell with me—have negatively affected my relationship with my parents.
“Oh, it was lovely, Steve. You should’ve come by yesterday to see it!”
“I have the same room, Mom. It’s nice.”
“That’s not the point.” I shift my attention to Dad so he can have his turn at me. “It’s just… polite, Steve. Essie came to check on us three times.”
That’s because I pay Essie to do that. Which I don’t say out loud, of course, but I really wish I could.
“Mike even called to say goodnight.”
I sigh. My mother loves Mike. Sometimes, I think, more than me. But in his defense, he’s a harmless, eternally optimistic, non-confrontational people-pleaser who really does look like he just walked off the set of a soap opera.
Which, now that I’m kinda thinking about it, is a lot like a romance novel.
Hmm. Never made that connection before.
“Did you hear me, Steve?”
I nod my head at my mother, with no clue what she said.
“He wasn’t listening, Phyllis. As usual. Tell him again.” There’s Dad, always on my side.
But just as she’s about to repeat herself, someone else is calling my name from across the lobby.
“Steeeeve! Oh, Stevie-poo!”
All three of us turn in the direction of the voice. “Who’s that?” my father whispers.
My mother jumps in before I can. “That’s that awful woman who accused Essie of stealing stories, remember that?”
“Oh, right.” My father lets out a long sigh.
I get that Essie’s his daughter and he’s proud and all that shit, but does my dad enjoy coming here? I know my mom does. She loves romance novels. She doesn’t read Essie’s, of course. Too steamy, she says. But she gets in her share of author lines at the signing. My father dutifully follows her around, pulling her little signing-hall-regulation-appropriate book cart filled with all her old paperbacks, as she visits her favorite ex-Harlequin romance writers.