by Katy Cannon
“Does she really think that the event will be a success or failure based on the availability of half a fish finger and some potatoes in a paper cone?” Drew asked, shoving another chair into line.
“She just doesn’t want anything to go wrong.” I pushed another stack of chairs towards him. “And neither do I.”
“I’m not exactly rooting for disaster here either, you realize.” Drew glanced up at me, one eyebrow raised, and I saw a tension in his face I’d never seen before. Normally, he was so laid back he was almost horizontal. But this, tonight, he honestly seemed to care about.
Which was good. Because it was going to take all of us working together to pull this off.
“OK, we’re going to have to make do with what we have,” Rachel said, hanging up the phone. “So Tilly, Drew, we’ll wait until the end to eat, OK? We can have whatever’s left. I’ve already got food put aside in the staff room for Juanita and her publicist, so they’re fine. Are you two OK out here if I go and check on them again?”
“Yeah, OK,” I said. To be honest, my stomach was already churning with nerves at the prospect of doing a Q&A with one of my author heroes. Knowing she was in the staff room (our temporary green room for the night) right now wasn’t helping matters any.
“Heads up.” Drew jerked his head towards the door of the hall, where a few teenagers were peering through the glass panel. “Incoming.”
Rachel’s eyes widened, and she pasted on a much too-broad smile. “Time to put on a show, kids!”
Rachel, concerned that there wouldn’t be enough to entertain people for the full two hours she’d scheduled, had insisted on some extra entertainment to keep people busy during the in-between times. So as the first audience members wandered in, Drew took their tickets and their coats, and I handed out quiz sheets, sold raffle tickets and directed them towards the waiting canapés in the smaller room next to the main hall.
The event wasn’t scheduled to start until seven, so we had another half an hour to get everyone seated before the stage door behind us opened at last, and Rachel swept in, followed by a petite Latina woman I’d have instantly recognized from the back of her book covers, even if we hadn’t all been waiting for her.
Juanita Cabrera.
Wow.
It was weird. I’d figured that, since I lived with a world-famous, best-selling author, one more wouldn’t really phase me. I was wrong.
Drew and I both stared in stunned silence as Rachel led Juanita up the steps at the side of the stage.
“Oh God.” My legs felt suddenly wobbly and I grabbed the edge of the ticket desk for support. “We have to do a Q&A with Juanita Cabrera.”
“You’re just realizing this now, Frost?” Drew asked, but he sounded kind of faint, rather than his usual brand of sarcastic, so I figured he was just as freaked as I was underneath it all.
“Tilly, Drew.” Rachel swept back again, dragged us over to the edge of the stage and proceeded to make introductions – during which Drew and I nodded dumbly and just kept smiling. And then, before we knew it, we were sitting up on the stage under the bright, white lights, two hundred pairs of eyes staring at us – and one amused, dark pair smiling from the chair opposite us, and it was time to start.
I glanced at Drew, who gave me a small, tight smile. I gripped the piece of paper with our list of questions on it a little harder, crumpling the edges with my fingers, and prepared to ask my first question.
“I can’t believe I asked her why Henri and Isabella don’t get together in Hallowed Ground.” I shoved a tempura prawn into my mouth and shuffled closer to the display board I was hiding behind backstage.
Back in the main hall, I could hear the audience asking Juanita Cabrera the many, many questions they had that we hadn’t covered. But here, in our hiding spot, it was cool and secret and at least a bit quieter. And Drew had brought me canapés, when I refused to head out front of stage.
Drew finished chewing an olive and swallowed. “Yeah, that one definitely wasn’t on our list,” he murmured, keeping his voice down so we could still hear the discussion in the main hall.
“I’m sorry,” I wailed softly. “I don’t know what happened. I just looked at her and realized that the one thing I’d always wanted to know was why Henri didn’t get his Happy Ever After. And before I could think about it, I’d already asked.”
Juanita Cabrera had looked slightly taken aback, but then she’d smiled, and said in her smooth, soft voice, “Well, I suppose I don’t believe that everything always works out for the best in real life. And I like my books to reflect that.”
But why? I’d wanted to ask but didn’t. I mean, I understood her point and I even enjoyed books that didn’t always have happy endings. Sometimes. It was just … if you could create your own world, dream up these characters who you came to love as you wrote them, why wouldn’t you want them to be happy? Why wouldn’t you want to give them what you couldn’t give your loved ones in the real world?
(OK, maybe this was why I wrote romance.)
Luckily for me, Drew had then taken over for the next question (What themes are your favourite to write about, or do you find yourself writing again and again?) and by the time she’d finished answering I’d managed to compose myself enough to stick to the script for the rest of the session.
After that, things had gone smoothly enough until, at the end of the hour, Rachel had opened the floor up to questions, and Drew and I had disappeared backstage.
“It went fine,” Drew said, more dismissive than reassuring, but it worked all the same. “Stop worrying about it.”
“Yeah, this is going to be giving me nightmares for decades,” I told him. “I’ll wake up screaming from dreams where I’m interviewing Juanita Cabrera in my underwear and I ask her about someone else’s book or something.”
Drew didn’t answer, just picking up another sausage roll and shoving it in his mouth instead.
I followed suit and listened as someone in the audience asked Juanita where she got her ideas from. (Answer: everywhere.)
“They’re running out of questions,” Drew observed. “Rachel will want to mark the quiz and do the raffle soon.”
I nodded my agreement. “We should get back out there.”
I balanced my plate on the edge of a table and brushed the crumbs off my top.
“Hang on.” Drew leaned in a little closer, and suddenly our hiding place didn’t feel cool and quiet. It felt downright hot.
He raised his hand and brushed it against my cheek. “You had … there was a bit of sauce…”
He trailed off but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t listening, anyway. I was too busy staring into his eyes and wondering how I’d never noticed before that they were blue. They were so dark, I’d have assumed grey or brown. But no. They were so very blue, in fact, that it was like wading into the sea. Like I could be lost at sea for days and never even notice, just looking into Drew Farrow’s eyes.
Oh hell. What was I doing? Why wasn’t he moving away?
I needed to speak. Or move. Or something. Anything.
Anything except lean in as Drew moved closer, his gaze fixed on mine.
But that’s exactly what I did do.
My eyes fluttered closed as his lips touched mine, and suddenly, I couldn’t think about anything else. The only thing I could concentrate on was that this was the first kiss I’d always dreamed of. The kiss I’d been waiting for – hoping for – with Zach. The kiss that made me feel warm and tingly and a bit like I might be floating. The kiss that explained everything I needed to know about romance.
And I was having it with Drew Farrow.
Realization – and reality – swept over me, and I pulled back, hating the coldness I felt once my lips were alone again. But what else could I do?
This wasn’t a story, wasn’t a precurser to a Happy Ever After.
This was my real life.
“I have a boyfriend.” The words blurted out of me before I even knew I was going to say them.
Dr
ew’s gaze never left mine. Then he gave a slow nod, acknowledging reality the same way I had.
“We should … I mean, we need to … um, we need to get back out there anyway,” he said, his voice soft and raspy, as he stood up.
The sound of applause broke through the bubble of the moment and I hurried to get to my feet before Juanita Cabrera left.
(Even though, to be honest, a few moments before the whole school could have emptied out and been locked up around us and I wouldn’t have noticed. In fact, the building could have fallen down and it would have taken a brick to the head to get my attention.)
(No, seriously, how had I got to the age of nearly seventeen without knowing kissing could be that good?)
“I—” I stalled as I realized I had no idea what I planned to say next. Part of me wanted to apologize but I didn’t even know what for. (Another part of me wanted to ask him to kiss me again but I was ignoring that part.) I hadn’t planned this conversation out, like I did with Zach. I hadn’t even imagined this conversation could ever be necessary.
“Come on.” Drew turned away and headed back down the stairs into the main hall.
After a moment, I followed. Even though I couldn’t shake one persistent, horrible thought.
What if I never experienced a kiss as good as that one ever again?
I was lost, between the mirror land and my own, between my mind and my heart, between reality and all the lies I’d been told.
How do you find true north when your compass never points the same way twice?
Looking Glass (2018), Morgan Black
I spent the next two weeks, over the Easter holidays, trying to forget the kiss. Both kisses, in fact. Fortunately for me, Zach had gone away with his family to some Tuscan villa with no internet or phone signal, so hadn’t even noticed I was avoiding him. Which helped. And I figured that if I just stayed in my house, there was absolutely no chance of bumping into Drew.
I couldn’t do much to help Anja and Rohan out either, since Anja’s training schedule was ridiculous, leading up to some big competition up in the north during the second week of the holidays, and Rohan was off to stay with his grandparents in Wales for most of the break. Besides, every time I tried to talk to either one of them about it, they disappeared with some lame excuse, like a waiting swimming coach or lack of signal in the mountains.
Normally, I’d miss my friends – and definitely my boyfriend. But under the circumstances, I decided that this could be an opportunity. Staying home alone would give me the perfect chance to really get to work on the book – and to talk to Gran about what happened next with it, too. Which would have been a great plan, except every time I sat down with my characters dancing around in my head, every time I needed to feel the romance of the story … I remembered the feeling of Drew’s lips on mine and the way the world had stopped around me.
Clearly, I was screwed.
One advantage of being so focused on my fictional world was that it gave me an excuse to try to block out everything and everyone else, while I concentrated on getting the job done. OK, I couldn’t block out absolutely everything. I still had to babysit the twins while Mum and Dad had their monthly Date Night, and I still had to sit down to family dinner three times a week and pretend my head wasn’t living in a fictional land. (I did, however, finally persuade Mum to put a lock on my door so the twins couldn’t break in, after the night they learned to climb out of their cots and managed to break through my existing barricade to plunder and pillage my bedroom in their matching pirate pyjamas. I just had to promise to always leave the door open when Zach came round.)
The point was, until I could type ‘The End’ on my Happy Ever After, I wasn’t in the right place to help Anja and Rohan with their confused attempts at romance, and I couldn’t deal with Edward and Gran debating the casting for Aurora Season Three. And I definitely couldn’t deal with figuring out what to tell Zach about what happened with Drew.
I was just going to write and then I’d figure everything else out when I was done.
The plan lasted three days.
Three days in which I tried to write Will and Eva’s story but ended up writing mine instead, every time. Eva started kissing the scriptwriter instead of the leading actor and beating herself up about it afterwards. (On the plus side, I managed to write what I thought was a pretty smoking-hot kiss scene. On the downside, it was totally based on Drew’s kiss, not Zach’s.)
Eventually, I gave up. On the Monday, I printed out the pages I already had and took them to Gran to talk through the book.
“Yes?” Gran called as I knocked on her study door.
“It’s just me.” I let myself in, making my way over to my usual chair. “What are you working on?”
Gran clicked away from her email and on to a blank document instead. “Oh, you know, just catching up on things. Getting down some new ideas.”
“Great,” I said, trying not to look at the empty page on the screen. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the book.”
“Book?” Gran’s expression was as blank as the document she clearly wasn’t working on. “What book?”
“The one you asked me to write?” Still nothing. “You do remember, don’t you?”
Something clicked in her eyes. “Of course!” she said, laughing. “Sorry, drifted off into my own world there. So, how’s it going? Have you had any good ideas yet?”
“I think so … remember, you read the first couple of chapters and the outline a few weeks ago? You liked the idea of the TV show setting and the two actors getting together?”
“Yes, yes. But since then? How’s it going?”
I sighed. “Well. To be honest? Not great. What do you do when your characters don’t do what you tell them to?”
“The same thing I do in real life when people don’t do as I ask – make them.” Gran’s grin was fierce. The smile I returned didn’t feel nearly so confident.
“Gran, I think I need you to take the book back.” I’d been thinking about it for weeks now. With every disastrous date, my confidence in romance had sunk a little lower. And now, with all the mess of the wrong kisses … I didn’t know what to think, let alone write.
If I was working on this story for myself, that would be one thing. But it was for the Beas, and for Gran, and I couldn’t screw it up for them. Gran’s name on the cover wasn’t enough – it had to be good enough to be a real Bea Frost story. And I just wasn’t sure I could pull that off.
Besides, we’d said at the beginning that I’d write three chapters. I’d done more than that already, so really, I’d kept my end of the bargain.
But the horror in Gran’s eyes said different.
“No, Tilly, darling. Really, I think you should keep going! The only way to get through these difficulties is to keep writing. You need to build up your stamina. Maybe some more writing exercises—” She broke off to search her bookcase for some writing book or another, and I knew. I knew, for the first time, for certain, that there was something wrong here. Something was going on – and I needed to know what it was.
“Why did you really ask me to start writing this book for you?” I asked.
Gran froze at the bookcase. “I told you, darling. I thought it would be an interesting challenge for you. And a chance for you to really get more involved in my books.”
“You said the first three chapters, though. That was the original deal.” Before she changed the game on me and told me to finish the book. “I’ve already written six. I’ve been challenged. So why won’t you take it over?”
“A book is a very personal thing, Tilly, you know that.” She still wasn’t looking at me. “Taking it over now, well, it might ruin the flow.”
“So you were actually asking me to write the whole book all along? When you said three chapters, you knew you weren’t going to write the rest, even then?”
“Found it!” Gran spun round and smiled broadly, book in her hand. “And darling, if you think you can write the whole book, well, I think that�
�s a marvellous idea.”
“That’s not what I said—”
“Just think of the experience! And the possibilities for the future! And—”
“Gran!” I shouted, and she stopped. “Why don’t you want to write this book?” I asked, more softly.
She seemed to deflate at my question, sinking back down into her desk chair before she answered.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Tilly… I can’t.”
“Of course you can! You’ve written literally more than a hundred books before. Why is this one any different?”
“I don’t know,” Gran admitted. “But it is. Ever since I was sick … I’ve had … I can’t…” She trailed off.
“What is it, Gran?” I took her hand between mine, amazed at how fragile it felt. Gran stared down at our two hands together for a moment, making my worry deepen. What if something was seriously wrong? Was she still ill? Dying, even?
Then she shook her head a little and met my gaze. “I’ve had the most awful writer’s block,” she said, and the air in my lungs whooshed out in relief. Which was crazy, really. The last time Gran had suffered from writer’s block, she’d made life at home miserable for all of us for weeks. There’d been all-night movie marathons to help her ‘get a feel for story again’, an excessive (even for Gran) hat-buying binge, and even a thing where she brought some psychic woman over to cleanse her creative aura with some burning herbs that stunk out the kitchen for days. But I’d take any of that, twice, happily if it meant Gran wasn’t getting sick again.
“I just can’t write.” Gran waved a hand at the empty document on the computer. “I’m trying – I mean, I sit up here for at least an hour each day, willing myself to write but nothing comes.”
“I’m sorry, Gran.”
“So really, if you could keep going with the book, only for a little while longer.” She squeezed my hand, tight.
“I suppose I could try…”
“That would be marvellous!” Gran clapped her hands together. “Just until I find my Muse again.”