by Nadia Lee
“I mean tomorrow!” I shrieked. “Now out! I have to work.”
Chapter Nine
Killian
I chuckled and occasionally laughed out loud as I read Emma Grant’s, a.k.a. Emily-next-door’s, book. Out of self-preservation, I quit drinking anything while reading. Snorting whiskey up my nose hurt.
Darth Vader’s theme played on my phone. Not now! I thought. I wanted to let it go to voicemail, as there were only forty-some pages left to read. But it was Mir, and I didn’t want to do that to my baby sister.
“Hey,” I said. “Make it quick.”
“Well, hello to you, too,” Mir said. “How’s everything? Life treating you better now? Writing any new songs?”
I was too engrossed in Emily’s story to react very strongly. “I’m fine. Could be better if I could finish this book without getting interrupted.” Hint, hint.
“A ‘book’? Is that what we call Netflix adaptations these days?” she asked with a laugh. “Oh, wait. Are you watching a foreign film and need to read the subtitles?”
“No, I—”
“No, probably not. Italian porn doesn’t have a lot of dialogue.”
I sighed. She knew my motto was that if a book was any good, it’d be made into a movie or show. I didn’t actually have to read clusters of letters.
“I’m reading, Mir. A novel. Emma Grant’s Holiday with a Grumpy Boss. It’s hilarious, and I’m almost finished with it.”
Silence. Mir finally said, “Okay, so you really are reading reading. What’s happened to you? Should I call a lawyer to help you get started on a will?”
“I do actually read more than utility invoices, you know.”
“I’m shocked. I thought your assistant took care of your invoices.”
“Fine, but I’m just saying I do read, and I’m liking this Emma Grant book. Have you read it? It’s a chick story.”
“It’s called romance. And yes, I read it the day it came out. Emma Grant is one of my absolute faves. I one-click every time she puts out a new book.”
“Huh. I didn’t know you had time to read.” Mir lived to work, or so I’d presumed based on the number of hours she claimed to spend at the office. “I’ll let her know. Maybe that’ll make her more agreeable.”
“Wait, what? Are you hanging out with Emma Grant?”
Hanging out would be fudging it. I mean, Emily had glared at me like I was a fly she couldn’t wait to get rid of. But something about her really got to me. Maybe it was her smile. Her I’m not letting you get away with shit attitude. Whatever it was, she made me curious, hot and interested. Emotions I hadn’t felt since my last breakup a year ago. “Yup. Just so happens she’s the next-door neighbor Grandma liked so much. Remember Emily?”
Mir let out a shriek loud enough to pop my eardrum. I pulled the phone away to save my hearing and career. “Oh my God! Grandma’s Emily is Emma Grant? Oh my… Holy shit!” She started panting.
“Breathe, Mir, breathe. Don’t want you fainting and hitting your head. Concussions hurt.” The intensity of Mir’s fangirling was weird. Emily wasn’t a secret pop star, was she? Or a minor Instagram celebrity? Were authors famous enough to get this kind of reaction?
“Fine, fine. But oh my God. Emma fucking Grant!” Mir let out more shrieks. “Can you ask her to autograph a book for me? Wait. I’m going to order a copy of each of her books off Amazon right now and have them shipped to Kingstree. When they get there, have them autographed. Tell her to make them out to Miriam. Oh, and let her know I am her biggest fan! Oh my God. If I show up, you think she’ll autograph my boobs with a Sharpie?”
I shook my head at the way my sister was going on. Boob autograph, really? Mir was acting like she was about to get a hug from Captain America.
A naked Captain America.
“I don’t know. She’ll probably think you’re a psycho stalker if I tell her about this interaction. Hell, she might flee the country. Who wants a Kathy Bates type coming after them?
“Ha ha, very amusing. I’m a normal, sane fan, thank you very much, although I wouldn’t mind her spending all her time writing, since food and sleep are overrated. Besides, do you think your fans are insane when they scream your name? When they start crying because you looked at them at a concert?”
“That’s different. None of them ever tried to kidnap me and imprison me in a basement. And honestly, you know, I’m flattered that they love my music, but it makes me uncomfortable that they react that way to somebody they don’t even know.” It was something that’d always bothered me. “Anyway, I gotta go. Don’t send any books. She has tons of them lying around. I’ll just buy a copy of each and send them to you for your birthday.” That would take care of birthday gifts for Mir. She was a hard person to buy stuff for.
“You’re the best.”
I laughed, warmth filling me at her bright happiness. As annoying as my baby sister could be, I loved her and liked to do things for her. “I know. Now unless you have something really important to tell me, I want to finish this book.”
“Okay. What little gossip I have can wait. I can’t believe you even answered my call in the first place. I don’t when I’m reading her books.” Mir hung up.
I flipped the book open and read the rest. Emily’s characters were over-the-top funny. Reading the book was an ab workout all by itself.
I wiped the tears beading in the corners of my eyes. I had no idea Emily had such a killer sense of humor. And the three sex scenes were hot as hell, too. I was sad she hadn’t written another one in an epilogue. Every fictional couple deserved to have more sex, especially if I got to read it in explicit detail.
My annoyance with Billy’s Plumbing and All Things Water had completely vanished. I had discovered a new side of my adorably irascible neighbor and scored a free Hop Hop Hooray beer.
I flipped some more pages until I hit her bio. From McLean, Virginia. Graduated from the University of Virginia. Held a corporate job until she went off to Harvard to get an MBA. Upon graduation, she started writing romance. At the end was her website and a list of her social media sites.
Normally, I’d put the book down the second I got to the end of the story. I’d never read beyond the last page of a boring English lit book in high school, that was for sure. But I wanted more. Emily fascinated me. Her sharp tongue, her take-no-prisoners attitude, her I don’t care what you think sense of fashion and behavior.
I still couldn’t quite believe she had no clue who I was. She claimed she didn’t at the supermarket, but I’d eventually decided she only said that to take the ice cream. But when I was drumming, she’d glared at me like she wanted to put a bullet between my eyebrows. And earlier today, she’d been more annoyed than fangirling when I showed up on her doorstep in nothing but a towel.
I’d never had a woman behave that way around me. Even before I’d become famous—much less after—women tended to smile dreamily and let me do whatever I wanted. What would Emily do when she found out who I was?
My gut said, Don’t count on her squealing and fawning all over you.
I picked up my phone and checked out her social media accounts. There were quotes from her books. Several selfies. I squinted. Those couldn’t be her, even though they’d been tagged with her pen name. Where was the messy mane? The glasses? The bare face and annoyed scowl?
Her face was flawlessly made up in the selfies, her hair lying sleek and tidy around it. The eyelashes framing her wide eyes were so curled and thick that I knew they had to be from mascara. Emily had gorgeous green eyes that reminded me of a summer forest, but her lashes weren’t as long as in the picture. And whatever she’d done to her lips made them look fuller, although I liked her nude lips better. That way they’d only taste like her, not lipstick.
And her clothes actually looked nice, like something Mir would wear to work or a nice restaurant. So weird to see Emily with such a public façade.
As put together as she was in these photos, I liked her better all private and casually disheveled. Sh
e would’ve never forgotten a bra when she was dressed to face the world. And she was cuter when she wasn’t wearing makeup. More real. Bet she smelled like herself rather than perfume and cosmetics. I should probably check. Just to establish the truth, not because I harbored an unhealthy fixation with my neighbor who didn’t know who I was and hated my drumming.
I scrolled down. There were more pictures of Emily at some signing event. She still looked virtually unrecognizable in the photos. Too polished. Too dressed up.
Something about them reminded me of my ex, Caitlyn Shaw. Caitlyn wasn’t a writer. She was a social media influencer with half a million followers worldwide. She both recognized me and treated me well…unlike Emily. But everything else had been a lie, a carefully cultivated image and brand. The real Caitlyn was nothing like social media Caitlyn, and I’d been fooled. I’d thought she cared about me and wanted to be with me. But she only wanted what being with me could do for her career.
I’d been such an idiot. Devlin had told me that shit like that happened all the time. Said it’d get better. But even now, the memory of that shit-tastic relationship embarrassed me and pissed me off. Made me more cautious and standoffish because I didn’t want to repeat the experience, even though I knew not every woman in the world was like Caitlyn.
The more photos I saw of Emily as Emma Grant, the more a bitter taste filled my mouth—the same taste as when I’d found out Caitlyn was livestreaming our dinner. My manager had texted me to let me know because he wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted.
It wasn’t. I’d been planning on proposing to her that night. Instead, I broke up with her while her audience watched live. I hoped she’d received thousands of the likes she loved so much. And I’d made sure to like that video myself to show “support,” since that had been what she wanted more than anything else in the world.
Still… It didn’t look like Emily was trying to be an influencer. She only talked about her books and engaged her fans. I shouldn’t judge her for being so different in person. She wasn’t like Caitlyn, who had been image-conscious all the time and puked after meals when she thought I wouldn’t notice, then lied about it when I asked her to seek help. (I’d learned after the breakup that she wanted to tell her followers about all the rich, sumptuous meals she was enjoying while “effortlessly” maintaining a size-two body.) Emily ate ice cream, drank beer, crunched on crackers full of carbs and obviously didn’t care that her body wasn’t anywhere close to a size two. A decent publicist would’ve advised her to clean up before appearing in public so she wouldn’t scare away potential readers.
My eyes landed on framed photos of the family on the fireplace mantel. Grandma was smiling in many of them, looking happy and proud, her arms looped around the younger me and Mir. I was smiling in one, showing my braces and looking slightly dorky, even though I was doing my best to hide that from the world with a confident grin.
Nowadays, that same grin on stage made women scream and throw themselves at me. I was still me—Killian Axelrod—but Killian the Rock Star was very different from Killian the Teenager or Killian the Private Citizen.
I looked back at the photos, at my grandmother. She’d always known I’d make it big, even though some of the more pessimistic people in Kingstree told her most artists never make enough to pay phone bills. “Don’t judge my grandson’s future based on what happened to other people. He’s different. He’ll be a success,” she’d said all the time, in an indomitable tone that told everyone she knew she was right.
I should follow her advice. I shouldn’t judge Emily based on what Caitlyn did. They were different people.
Chapter Ten
Emily
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.”
I did a little shoulder dance as I hit six thousand words for the day. I could finally hear myself think now that the annoying noise had stopped. I blew on my fingers, ’cause they were smokin’!
I checked the time. Nine thirty p.m. My stomach let out a growl, begging for food. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything except some crackers in the morning. But it was hard to remember to get off the couch when I was busy with scenes pouring out of me. I never interrupted my flow when I was on fire.
But now that my belly had gotten my attention, I couldn’t ignore it. I opened the fridge. Beer. More beer. Wine coolers. Ooh, a strawberry one! I pulled it out and put it on the counter. A tub of peach yogurt…ugh. Expired a month earlier and undoubtedly toxic by now.
I rummaged through the freezer. I didn’t even have any Bouncy Bare Monkeys, having consumed the last of it for breakfast yesterday. An unopened bag of frozen halibut filets lay on the bottom. I couldn’t recall why I’d purchased them. I liked seafood but almost never cooked it, generally for lack of time. When I did have time for a relaxing meal after meeting a deadline, I ordered takeout or delivery because usually I couldn’t bother to exert the effort, especially when it was just for one person and I loathed cleaning up afterward.
The two or three diners and takeout places that existed in Kingstree were closed now. That was one disadvantage of living in a small town. But I still had Animal Crackers. They were nutritious enough. They’d sustained me in college and business school, and they could sustain me now.
I opened a new bag and grabbed a few. I bit off the head of a lion first, then washed it down with the wine cooler. After several bites, my stomach quit grumbling so much. I let out a soft sigh of satisfaction. Couldn’t do better than the current combo for a quickie dinner while on a tight deadline.
I’d polished off at least two fistfuls of crackers when my phone rang. Shit. It was Mom. She understood I shouldn’t be bothered when I was on deadline, but she didn’t care when she desperately needed somebody to talk to about family drama, a.k.a. “What did Dad do now?”
It couldn’t be about anything underhanded he was doing to sabotage my career, because we’d already figured out the One-Star Hit Squad. So…was he “working late” again? Did he go home without showering first at a hotel?
Mom wasn’t stupid, just in terrible denial about her marriage. I took another big swig of the wine cooler because it wasn’t the kind of conversation anybody could have while sober.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. My voice sounded flat, even though I was aiming for friendly. Shit.
Instead of saying hello, Mom sobbed. “Oh my God, Emily!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked with all the sympathy I could scrape up, although I already knew. This was her standard greeting every time she caught Dad cheating.
“Your father. His shirt smells like perfume!” She sobbed harder.
All the jubilation at having written six thousand words vanished, and the familiar feeling of resignation and pity settled over me. She just noticed that today? Didn’t he always smell like perfume?
“I was going to do a load of laundry, and…and… It was so strong. I’m devastated,” she continued. The sound of her blowing her nose came through the line.
This was going to be a looong call. “Mom…”
“It wasn’t my perfume!” she yelled like a wounded animal, then cried again.
“Why do you put up with this? With him?” It was the same question I always asked. Futile, of course. She’d only ever given me one answer. But I hoped she would finally open her eyes and see the light, because it was frustrating as hell that she was calling me instead of kicking him out, dumping all his stuff in the front yard and setting it on fire. It was the least he deserved.
“Where would I go? What would I do?” she wailed.
Annoyance welled like poison. It was the same answer she always gave. And I knew exactly what she’d say next.
“A woman’s place in life is next to her husband,” she added, at the same time I muttered it. “Wait, what did you say?”
“Nothing.” It’d only add to her angst if she thought I wasn’t one hundred percent on her side, even though I was. To her, unless I agreed with everything she said, gave her unconditional, boundless sympathy and a shoulder to cry on, I
was against her.
If I’d had a decent meal, I might’ve been more sympathetic. But some Animal Crackers and a wine cooler weren’t enough to fortify me for the endless understanding she wanted when she continued to reject my solution—Divorce Dad. Boom! Problem solved.
So maybe that was why I said, “You forgot to add faithful.”
“What?” Mom said, more confused than ever before.
“A woman’s place in life is next to her faithful husband.”
“You are so judgmental.” Rage vibrated in every syllable, a predictable turn. This was what I called the “Incomprehensible Tantrum” phase, because she was angry with the wrong people. She could criticize Dad for being a cheating asshole, but nobody else could, including me, even when she was the one who’d called to complain about him being a cheating asshole in the first place. “You think everything in the world is like your books.”
“I actually don’t,” I said dryly. I wrote romance because I knew how crappy real-life relationships could be. “If he’s coming home with another woman’s perfume all over him, leave him.” But don’t come here, I added—silently, in case that hadn’t occurred to her yet. I didn’t want to give her any ideas. Staying with me was her typical “revenge” for Dad’s cheating. Usually, I let her, because I couldn’t exactly flee the country to avoid it, even though she drove me crazy by insisting on remaining with Dad. But right now, I couldn’t afford several days of babysitting her hurt feelings. I had a book to finish.
I wondered vaguely if this had been his plan all along—to get caught so Mom would drive down to Kingstree and disrupt my writing. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
“I can’t do that!” Mom wailed. “We love each other, even if he strays from time to time.”
My jaw slackened with shock. Time to time? Dad “strayed” at least every other month. And that was only the times he’d gotten caught. There probably had been a lot more. How could Mom be so blind?
“Besides, he needs me.” She sniffled. “He always comes back.”