I don’t know. I’m in some kind of mood now.Friends who are girls?What is this—fifth grade? And, as to the interrogation that has become this correspondence—perhaps you haven’t heard,Colin, but I am about to become analmost-millionairethanks to my skillful writing capacity,however misguided its reception might be by the likes of well-bred attorneys such as yourself. So perhaps I was just out celebratingmy awesomeness! Ever thought ofthat?
Men are so dumb sometimes! I am aromancenovelist, not a professional email composer. The fact that he clearly found my scathing reveal of his debauchery amusing only goes to show that I am as charming as I am wealthy. (Or, perhaps, that Colin is as stupid as he is beautiful.) Alas, Iwillwrite back “for real,” if only to elicit more compliments.
TO:Colin Yarmouth ([email protected])
FROM:Grace Landing ([email protected])
RE:Spanish class
Colin,
I was celebrating a business deal with my BFFs from college. I’m a ghostwriter. It’s a very illustrious profession. I can’t tell you any more about it or else I’ll have to kill you. (Kidding, relax.)
Sidebar: I’ve opted out on the whole marriage/kids thing because it feels cliché to me. Like, whodoesn’thave a house in the suburbs and the requisite number of tax-write-off dependents? I prefer to march to the beat of my own drummer. Live life on my own terms. So no big engagement celebrations here, thank you very much.
What about you? I’m sure your wife and children are just lovely. Which New York suburb do you live in: Westchester, Rockland, or Long Island?
Regards,
Grace
Despite my obvious overshare, I hitsendand close the laptop because I can’t sit still.$750,000.This calls for a midafternoon pick-me-up! I head out to—where else?—Starbucks, for a venti decaf caramel whipped cream concoction pretending to be coffee (because Lord knows if I have any more caffeine, my heart may literally implode on itself like a sinkhole), with a single cake pop on the side for good measure. Sure, it’s seven bucks down the drain, but what’s a little frivolity now that there’s real money on the horizon?
Colin
Well, this is unexpected. Grace Landing and I appear to becorresponding via email.
I remember the first time I met her. Sort of. We were lab partners, but then our teacher got hit by a truck or something, so some new guy came along and switched everyone around. I ended up with Alexis.Thatgirl, I remember. She tried to go down on me during a field trip to the Hayden Planetarium. Not in the planetarium itself, but on the school bus. We kept hitting bumps though—likebigbumps—and she bit down by accident during one of them.
I got phantom pains every time I saw her after that, so I did what any reasonable fourteen-year-old boy would do.
I broke up with her.
Grace, on the other hand, never struck me as the type to be daring or promiscuous like that. She had nice hair, and I think she was pretty. On the shy side, if memory serves.
Evidently, I scarred her for life.
She’s funnier than I remember. I can’t believe she called me out on cheating off her in Spanish. I don’t exactly remember doing it, but I’m sure she’s right, because Isuckat foreign languages. I tried to use that app, Duolingo, not too long ago, but I nearly broke my phone when I insistedthatTu madre es una pastel de caballomeantYour mother has gray hair.(Apparently, it does not mean that. Loosely translated, it meansYour mother is a horse cake.)
I don’t try to better myself with that kind of stuff anymore. I stick to things I’m already good at. Running. Working out. Watching television.
I reread her note. Aghostwriter? That’s kind of interesting.
When I was in high school, I didn’t know what a ghostwriter was. I thought it was kind of like the same thing as a secret admirer. NowthatI was familiar with. I used to get crazy love letters, like dating back all the way back to my freshman year. The first one was innocuous enough. It said something like:
Hey Colin,
You’re so hot. I wish you would make out with me.
Love,
Your Secret Admirer
I didn’t pay much attention to it. I figured it was the guys on the team pranking me. They had all kinds of hazing rituals that involved things like shaving heads and toilet-papering houses, but I think the coach told them to take it easy on me since I was so young, so it made sense that they’d start writing me fake love notes.
I kept it though, just in case.
The guys never acted different, and the notes kept coming. Each note was longer than the last and way more descriptive. By the middle of the soccer season, they were looking more like this:
