Covering my bottom with my clothing-filled hand, I follow the Willis’s out the front door. Once it’s closed, I watch helplessly as Alfred dumps the food into a rubbish bin on the back of his golf cart.
They stand for a moment watching me as I slide into my own golf cart. “So, that went well, don’t you think?” I ask, then laugh a little at my joke.
Apparently, they’re not into ironic humour because they both just stare, poker-faced.
“You are Mr. Banks’ sister?” Alfred asks.
Nodding, I say, “Yes.”
“I see,” he says. “Perhaps I should bring Mr. Davenport his meals so as to maintain a professional atmosphere.”
“Perfect.” Since I don’t want to ever see His Royal Arsiness again, that suits me just fine.
With that, Alfred starts up his cart and pulls out, leaving me to follow my new neighbours down the trail to the beach, repeating what will become my new mantra: “I love my brother, I owe him everything, and I will do whatever I have to do to save the resort—even if it means being nice to these awful people.”
6
Insert Feet Here (Points to Mouth)
Pierce
“Way to go, Pierce, you gargantuan idiot,” I mutter as I cross the room to the bar. “Have you recently had a growth spurt? I don’t like goat cheese.”
Cringing, I pour two fingers of vodka into a crystal tumbler. Filling the glass with ice from the mini-bar freezer, I then crack open a can of tonic water and add a healthy serving of it to my drink.
The first sip cools my overheated mind, swirling with self-loathing over my inability to hold it together around this woman. Honestly, what is wrong with me today? It’s not like I haven’t been around my share of attractive women. Normally, I have no trouble pulling out the charm, but around her, my attempts at humour came off as high-handed judgment.
So what if she’s pretty? Well, beautiful is a more fitting description—those lips, those athletic curves squeezed into what is clearly no more her uniform than the soap she was using. Stunning really, even without makeup or her hair done. And there’s a feisty edge to her that I’m drawn to like a Kardashian to a camera lens.
Snap out of it, idiot. You have no time for women right now!
I grab a bag of pretzels from the cupboard and head over to the desk to get to work. As soon as I sit down and open my laptop, I’ll forget all about a certain stunning chef and dive straight into the realm of Qadeathas where my characters await.
Yes, by this time tomorrow, I’ll be well on my way to another year on the New York Times Best Seller list.
* * *
So, apparently I have jetlag or something because it’s now almost nine o'clock in the morning and I haven’t written a single word in spite of staying up all night to work. My plan of spending the entire night locked in the frenzy of words has instead been usurped by Ms. Emma Banks, whose face pops into my head every few minutes as I stare at the blank screen of my laptop. And it’s not a sex thing, I promise, so before you go accusing me of being some simpleton who is helplessly led by his umm...pen, allow me to explain.
It's the expression on her face when I exhibited my ill-mannered side that haunts me. She was all defiance and strength when most people crumble in my presence. And for every ounce of strength she showed, I was reduced even more into an awkward, forty-two-year-old gamer who lives in his parents’ basement with his tarantula, Spock, and Sulu, his crested gecko. I found myself with absolutely no hope of stringing three coherent words together. My brain seized up and my tongue continued on with absolutely no direction from my frontal lobes. And now, I can’t stop reliving the horror of it…
I spent the first few hours of the evening waiting for my dinner, secretly hoping she would be the one to bring it so I could attempt to redeem myself. Instead, the older chap appeared, silently setting the tray of piping hot risotto down on the dining table, then disappearing. It was delicious, by the way—creamy and cooked to perfection with prawns that absolutely burst with flavour.
So now, having not slept and not written, I find myself laying on the floor in the living room, tossing a squash ball up in the air in an attempt to have it loop around the rafters and land back in my waiting hand. FYI, I have yet to get it up high enough. Oh, not that way. Believe me, when the moment arrives, I can get it up high enough to suit any woman. I'm referring to the ball.
You may be wondering, why not just go to sleep, Pierce? Because sleep is for people who accomplish something. Since I’m not in that group at the moment, I'm forcing myself to stay awake until I write something. Anything at all.
I’ll let you in on a not-so-little secret (and please don't tell anyone because you're really the only one to know): I have no fucking clue how to end the series. Not even a hint. And each hour that passes without me writing something,anythingreally, is another nail in the coffin of my career. Because the first three novels took more than eighteen months each to write, and I don’t have eighteen months. I have exactly eight weeks until a crew of hired guns will be sitting around a conference table at the NBO offices brainstorming ways to ruin my legacy.
Once they get started, they’ll be able to work much quicker than me becauseI’mwriting the novel on which they should base their script, and scriptwriting is a much faster process. It’s just a matter of listing the setting, the characters in the scene, then bang—action and dialogue, and move on. No flowing descriptive paragraphs. No painstakingly-developed window into the very souls of the fully-fleshed out characters of Qadeathas. No way am I letting this happen to my world.
The truth is, the writers at NBO really won’t give a pebble shit how to finish the series. They just need to have enough content for ten episodes. And if they should beat me to the finish line,theywill win. Their sub-par climax of my epic fantasy will reign supreme because millions of people whowould haveread the book won’t once they know how it ends. Even worse, it will spark huge controversy over what the ‘real ending’ should have been—mine or theirs. Mine, obviously.
But, there’s even more pressure than that on yours truly because if they finish before me, my writing career is over. Done. Finito. My fans will never forgive me. I’llneverget picked up by another publisher again after tanking so publicly and costing Sullivan and Stone tens of millions. I literally will go from being considered one of the most brilliant minds of my generation to being one of the biggest failures. So, it really is do or die for me, the thought of which doesn’t exactly allow me to relax enough to get into a creative mindset.
An image of a group of bearded unkempt writers sitting around a conference table eating crisps springs to mind. One of them gets up and writes “Finish with Bollywood Dance Number” on the whiteboard.
Fuck.
