Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
But we can’t. I don’t need ground rules to know the game with Hazel has already changed. It changed in the bar car when we agreed to write together again.
There’s even more at stake now. We can’t disappoint our readers twice.
And if we fall into anything more than a brief train-trip fling, the two of us will blow up again. We just will.
After we clean up, and get into bed, I draw a deep breath, and begin another confession. “You know that photo of Max and that woman at the nightclub?”
The picture that broke them up.
She knows the pic. Knows I was in it, toasting with my writer bud, Vince Caine.
“Yeah?”
“I told Vince to take it. Then I told him to post it. I wanted you to see what Max had been doing, and I couldn’t stand it anymore, the way he was cheating. I couldn’t tell you face-to-face, so I engineered that picture.”
She props her head in her hand, looking perplexed. “You did?”
“Yeah,” I say, wincing. It felt noble at the time. Now it just sounds manipulative. But she deserves the truth. “I probably sound like a bigger prick now.”
Shaking her head, she smiles softly, then presses a hand to my chest. “No. You don’t. You sound like you were looking out for me. Like you were still my friend.”
She’s right. “I cared about you. I did, and I do, Hazel.”
No sarcasm, no teasing. Just the truth I’ve always owed her. Night by night, I peel back a little more. But I still keep my fountain wish in a cage. That won’t ever come free.
Hazel leans in and presses the most gentle kiss to my lips. It’s too tender, it’s too sweet.
It’s too dangerous because it nearly unlocks me.
But I can’t serve up the rest of my heart. She’s told me time and time again that she missed me as a friend. As a writer. As a creative partner. She’s made it crystal clear she likes my dick. But she’s never once even hinted she suffers from terrible things like feelings. I’ll just keep these wretched things to myself. Don’t want to lose her again now that I’ve got her back.
We need to be friends for a long time. The corollary is we can’t be lovers beyond this trip. It’ll fuck up everything. Most of all, me. “So this is the get-it-out-of-our-system trope? The trip-only trope, right? Those are the ground rules?” Someone has to say it.
For a few seconds, she’s quiet. Pensive. But a touch sad too. Then her expression shifts. She’s resolute. Or, as she’d say, resolute-ish. “Yes. Don’t you think?”
I think I want all of you. But I also know we could damage our careers now that we’ve publicly committed to finishing the final book in Ten Park Avenue. We have unfinished business at the computer, and that means we’ll have to finish our business in bed after a few more nights.
“I do,” I answer. Then I give her space to not cuddle.
Turns out she told another lie. Soon after she falls asleep, she wraps her lithe body around mine and stays like that, koalaing me all night long.
I don’t care for cuddling, but I will miss this.
I will miss her.
I wake in the morning to a text from my agent.
Mason: Normally, I’d give you a hard time for not telling me first, but when it’s news this good, even I can’t give hard times.
He links to the Book Besties’ posts from last night. The comments go on forever. Wow. I park a hand behind my head as I read them. It’s humbling. I still can’t quite believe anyone wants to read my words—or in this case, our words—let alone all these people.
But there it is. In black and white on the Internet.
And for one of the first times in a long time, I don’t have to picture anyone naked to navigate past this putting-myself-out-there feeling.
That’s a welcome change.
28
TWO TICKETS
Hazel
You can’t go wrong with a night in Paris.
Words I’ve lived by ever since I fell in love with this city when I first visited it with my mom. I’ve traveled here with friends a few times over the years, falling a little harder each time. That’s why I set The I Do Redo here.
Naturally, I was excited when Aaron and Cady sent the trip agenda a few weeks ago and Paris was the one stop where we’d disembark from the train and spend a whole day and night.
But now that I’m here, taking a shuttle bus with the group from a late breakfast in Le Marais to our hotel in the Eighth Arrondissement, I don’t feel excited. I feel a strange sort of dread.
As the van rumbles past the Louvre, my stomach lurches, and it’s not from the quick stop at the light as pedestrians from all over the world cross, heading toward the famous museum.