Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
My sister and her adorable belly follow me into the kitchen, where I’ve just pulled open my nightmare of a junk drawer to find a safety pin for the broken zipper pull. I spot the shiny foil corner of a sealed condom and pull it out from beneath an avalanche of paper clips and broken pencils.
This moment feels like a perfect metaphor.
“You keep condoms in your junk drawer?”
“Ask that again,” I say, “and realize how funny it sounds.”
She snorts behind me, and I feel a wave of protectiveness. Alice’s life has never been out of whack for even one second. When she was fifteen, she made a milestone list, complete with goals, ages, sometimes even locations:
… Begin Stanford at eighteen, graduate at twenty-two, medical school at Johns Hopkins, residency in San Diego, marriage at thirty, first baby born at thirty-five…
So far she hasn’t missed a single one except for maid of honor at Fizzy’s wedding at twenty-eight. (She dutifully crossed that one out with a thick black marker a few years ago and we celebrated my book hitting the New York Times list instead.) But pregnancy hasn’t been her favorite experience, and I wonder if she’s feeling even a tiny bit of what I do right now, like she’s facing a future with unknown complexity, wicked blind curves, scary blank spaces.
“Have you ever felt like you’ve lost track of yourself?”
She points to her big, pregnant belly. “This kid isn’t even here yet and I don’t remember who I was six months ago. Did I really used to run every morning? For fun?”
“I’ve been so aimless lately,” I admit, and I’m sure it’s weird for her to hear. “I feel like this show might be a way to get back to myself. Even if it’s a colossal failure, at least it’s something different.”
“I get that,” she says wistfully. “I’ve been having skydiving dreams lately.”
“You?”
She nods. “Sometimes I’m skydiving into an ocean of Oreos. Last night it was beer.”
This makes me laugh, and I turn to wrap my arms around her middle. “Tell me I’m not making a huge mistake doing this.”
“You’re not. In fact, I wrote it on my list, don’t you know? ‘Fizzy does a crazy romance reality show when she’s thirty-seven and has the time of her life.’ ”
eleven FIZZY
An unexpected upside to bringing a Hot DILF to my first signing in months is that readers are much less concerned with when my next book will be published and much more interested in who the giant man lingering in the background is. There were a few murmurs and glances during the Q and A portion of the event, but by the time the signing starts, every person in line is trying to figure out who the six-foot-five piece of ass over there talking to my dad is.
I know this because they’re all breaking their necks trying to keep track of him as the line weaves around bookshelves. Several have come right out and asked me. My answers have ranged from “He’s my security detail” to “He’s my mail-order groom.”
Listen, I get it. Catching sight of the Casual DILF on my doorstep earlier caught me off guard. Gone was the man in the starched shirt sitting in a pristine office. This version of Hot Brit looks more like a hot lumberjack, in a soft faded flannel shirt and worn jeans with much-loved sneakers. His hair falls over his forehead; his eyes seem unbelievably bright for someone standing in the dark corner of a bookstore. In One for the Road, I described the eyes of the hero, Jack Sparling, this way—“illuminated from within,” I think it was—but I’ve never really seen it in person.
Except—
I’m mentally jerked backward, tunneled in reverse to the moment with Jess a couple months ago in the bar when I looked across the room and met eyes with the man in the suit, rumpled hair, jaw like a blade. He’d looked at me like he wanted to meet in the hallway and fuck me into next month.
Is this really the same guy? I can’t believe all this was hiding under that stiff, gelled hair, a bright toothpaste-ad smile, and a crisp black suit.
I look down at my lap, daring the flutter to linger. But it fades out, and I’m dropped back into the present day when the reader in front of me asks me if I’m okay.
“Gas,” I tell her with a grin, and she laughs a familiar oh, Fizzy laugh and takes her signed books. But I’m still feeling the echo of interest in my lower torso. Was the pants flutter because I was thinking about Jack Sparling? His sex scenes were some of the most fun to write, that dirty little rascal.
Or was it… from him? Intrigued, I look up across the room at Connor again.
He’s so taken with my dad he’s barely seemed to register how much mental salivation is being aimed in his direction. I knew he’d get along with the unstoppable Dr. Ming Chen. My father is an objectively charismatic man with a million stories for every situation and has the most infectious laugh you’ve ever heard in your lifetime—it’s this sort of bursting belly laugh that honestly should be recorded and trademarked as Happiness™. But what surprises me is how much talking Connor seems to be doing. I don’t see Dad waxing poetic, telling jokes, doing all the heavy conversational lifting. When I glance over in tiny, furtive glimpses, I see Connor doing much of the chitchatting and Dad is cracking up. Almost like Connor’s got stories.