“I was looking at the schedule.I’m sorry, I needed—”
“You’re doing your one-on-one,” the man said with a nod, as though that decided it.“You’re nervous.”
“My one-on-one?”
“He’s not in our group,” Karen shouted.“He can’t have any pizza.”
“He doesn’t want any pizza,” the man in the pink glasses shouted back.“He’s about to do his one-on-one.He’s too nervous to eat.He’d probably throw up.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d throw up—” I tried.
“Who are you meeting with?”That question came from a tall, thin woman with a mane of hair down to her waist.
A heavyset man with aCastlevaniaT-shirt said, “What’s your book about?”
I had a vague memory of registering for the conference and being given the option to purchase a one-on-one meeting with an author or agent.I’d chosen not to—mostly because having to talk about my writing with a stranger sounded like yet another personal nightmare.
“When are the one-on-ones?”I asked.
“At seven,” the man with theCastlevaniaT-shirt said—clearly under the assumption that I was an idiot.“Didn’t you look at the schedule?”
“Who are you meeting with?”asked the tall, thin woman again.
“Is there a master list somewhere?”I said.“A way to check who was meeting with whom?”
The man in the pink glasses frowned.“No.”
“It’s a one-on-one,” Karen said.“You don’t need to be nervous.Come on, have some pizza.We’ve got plenty.”
“You don’t want to do your one-on-one on an empty stomach,” the man in the pink glasses said.
“You’re going to do great!”the tall woman said—she even did jazz hands to show me how great I was going to do.“You can practice on us!”
By that point, fortunately, Vivienne was on the move again.“Thank you so much,” I said.“But I don’t want to be late.”
A chorus of cheers and good wishes followed me, which is proof that we writers might be weird and awkward and grumpy and protective of our pizza, but we’re also good at supporting each other.And that’s pretty cool.
I lost Vivienne around a corner, and when I made the turn, there was Julian.
“Dash, perfect timing—”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said as I slipped past him.“I’ll catch up with you later.”
Ahead of me, a wall of glass gave a view of Arcadia College’s campus, which was quickly disappearing into the evening’s gloom.Vivienne exited through a pair of doors, and I picked up the pace.On the other side of the windows, a veranda overlooked Quick Creek, which separated the conference center from the main campus.A few people stood outside, clustered together in conversation or, in a few cases, alone, almost all of them holding drinks from the bar.Vivienne moved toward the far side of the veranda.
When I stepped outside, the air was purple and hazy and already cooler than it had been even a short time ago.The faint smell of clove cigarettes hung in the air.Murmured conversations drifted around me as I worked my way down the veranda, doing my best to keep to the thicker shadows at the edge of the lights.
Vivienne had settled into a seat at a two-top patio table.Across from her sat a petite woman with her dark hair in a bun, a hint of curls pulling loose at her nape.She had yellow eyes and the kind of nails that meant she never had to open a jar of pickles.Right then, those nails were tensed against the metalwork of the table.
Of course, as soon as I started eavesdropping, the volume of the other conversations swelled.A man brayed with laughter.A woman screamed, “You’re joking!You’re joking!”Someone got to the most exciting part of what sounded like a long story about a boat.
I couldn’t get any closer to Vivienne’s table without sitting in her lap (a big no-no for me ever since the devastating truth about Santa Claus), and all I could catch were fragments.
“—threaten me—” the petite woman said.
Vivienne smiled and said something that ended with “—always sensible.”
The petite woman stood.Those pretty nails glittered as she grabbed her bag.She leaned down, but if the move was meant to threaten Vivienne, Vivienne held her ground—she didn’t pull back, she didn’t flinch.The petite woman said something low, pulled the bag up her arm again, and finished, “—what you deserve.”
