I started laughing and splashed him. “Yeah ... Retribution is tough!”
He laughed and splashed me back. “What you’re doing here looks quite a bit like swimming.”
“Swim team captain, all-state team, 2012and2013.”
He still hadn’t let me go. I didn’t want him to. His skin felt so good on mine.
As we both treaded water, our faces extremely close, Grady looked into my eyes. Hadn’t the last few weeks been leading up to this one inevitable moment? I had to wonder if all this publishing drama had been orchestrated so that Grady and I could meet, so that we could find each other.
My heart pounded. I could lean forward just a few inches and ...
Before I could decide, a boat came by, going way too fast in what was supposed to be a no-wake zone, creating a hugewave that smacked us both in the face. “Hey!” Grady yelled, as if that was going to do any good.
We hoisted ourselves out of the water, laughing, but something had shifted. A door had been cracked that I wanted to walk through. But did he?
Standing on the dock, dripping wet, Grady looked at me seriously. “Hey, I have to tell you something.”
I nodded, feeling my breath quicken. This was it. This was the moment.
“I can’t be your agent.”
And, just like that, the fantasy of Grady and me washed away with the tide.
I had wanted to be a writer. I had wanted to explore these feelings with Grady. It seemed like I was coming up short everywhere these days. Maybe it was time to give up on these dreams. Which was easier said than done for a girl who was raised on wide-open spaces and fairy tales.
Chapter 8
Falling in Love Again
Elizabeth
You know what’s great about me?” I asked Lila, who, despite all my plans, I had really come to adore over the past two months of working together day in and day out. With a pace of two thousand words a day, taking Sundays off, our first draft was complete. Of course, we still had plenty of editing to do.
“Oh, gosh,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “The list is so long!”
“What I love about me,” I said, “is that I have been so laid back about this entire ghostwriting process.”
Lila laughed. No. Not laughed.Guffawed.“I’m sorry. Is that what you would call it, Lizzy?”
I loved my new nickname now that I’d had time to adjust to it. She handed me a stack of paper, and I gestured as if to saycase in point. “Well, yes. I let you write these last three chaptersalone.”
She put her hand to her heart. “It’s amazing, really,” Lila said. “Me, a published author, who had written the previous thirty-six chapters with someone snapping over her shoulderNo! Not that word!andShe should toss her hair here!managed to produce three solo chapters!”
“Oh, the sarcasm,” I said. I held the pages to my chest and grinned at her.
She smiled back. “It’s good, isn’t it? The book.”
“Oh, it’s good. Great, actually. We make an excellent team.”
“I have to go to the coffee shop, but let’s discuss the ending this afternoon after you’ve had time to digest it. I emailed a copy to you too.”
After Lila left, I sat down on my couch, pulling a chunky white cotton throw over my lap, and prepared to fall into these last three chapters. I had to admit that I was hoping that, somewhere in this process, I would find my writing groove again. Unfortunately, I had not. I had been able to offer plenty of suggestions, but I still hadn’t written one stark word. It was disappointing, to say the least. But Grady was going to ask Lila if she would ghostwrite my next book, too, which seemed a better solution than giving back the advance or never putting out another novel.
I noticed that he hadn’t been coming around much while she was here these past few weeks, and I wondered what that meant. Was he just busy? Or had the spark fizzled? Either way, I knew what I had seen had been real. And it made me happy that Grady’s heart had thawed a little, at least temporarily.
I began reading, and right off the bat, something felt different. Something felt off. “No, no, no,” I said, then sighed. “Give her an inch, and she’ll take a mile.”
I hurried off to the office, knowing that this would never do—and knowing how to fix it. I logged into the laptop, opened my email and the document. I pushed Lila’s final three chapters down with my enter key and began to type.
