It might seem fun from the outside, but the industry will eat you alive if you let it.
Cate tries to shrink even farther into her green cardigan, and Sienna wants to take her by the shoulders and tell her to stop making herself small, to take up space, if she’s going to survive.
“Maybe a glass of champagne would help you relax a little?” says Sienna.
“I don’t drink,” says Cate. “But point me to a bar of chocolate, and I’m a goner.”
Sienna laughs as Priscilla hands her Cate’s untouched glass.
Just then Jaxon walks in, wearing a pristine white tank top and sweatpants.
“Ladies,” he says, and Sienna takes a large sip to keep from grimacing. She almost wishes Malcolm were there, just so she’d have someone to share a pointed look with, and is surprised and relieved to catch Priscilla’s gaze instead. The romance writer rolls her eyes behind her pink glasses, and Sienna smiles, glad to have a co-conspirator, if not a friend.
Sienna could use a few more of those—friends, not co-conspirators—since the vast majority of the people in her life are in Malcolm’s too, authors they see three or four times a year on the thriller conference circuit, bonds forged out of a shared passion for the work and a shared frustration with the industry in which they do it. And she’s not actually sure she’d consider any of them actualfriends.
As for meeting people outside of publishing, she’s tried, but it’s hard when your whole life is built around the making and selling of stories. The job is all-consuming, and you’re constantly surrounded by your colleagues, who are also your competition, or by people who hold your future in their hands.
And even if you could find people who aren’t somehow connected to the industry, it’s hard to feign interest in other things, like children’s birthday parties, and stock portfolios, and summer holidays you can’t afford because your husband insisted you live in New York to be closer to “the scene.” On top of that, she can only handle so many well-meaning but ignorant questions about why her books haven’t been turned into movies yet.
So yeah, some more friends would be nice.
But this isn’t the place to make them.
Not when they’re all gunning for the same prize. Then again, who knows, maybe it’ll be the kind of thing they all look back on and laugh about. Sure, one of them is going to win (hopefully her), but that doesn’t mean they have to hate each other. They could meet up at the bar of some big genre con, and toast and say,Remember the island?And when people ask how they all know each other, they’ll share a look, because of course they can’t say anything, thanks to that NDA they had to sign, but maybe they’ll find a way to hide the truth inside a lie, tell everyone it was a chance meeting, a prestigious retreat.
Sienna blinks, dragging her mind back to the kitchen as Kenzo drifts in, a notebook under one arm. He bypasses the champagne and beelines for the fancy espresso maker on the counter. It grinds to life, filling the kitchen with the scent of roasted beans.
“Jet lag?” asks Millie as he throws the espresso back like a shot.
Kenzo blinks. “Huh?” he asks, setting the cup in the sink.
“Oh, nothing, it’s just, if I drank that now, I’d be up all night!”
Kenzo smirks. “That’s when I do my best work.” He lowers his voice. “Under the cover of darkness, while the rest of you sleep.”
“Goose bumps!” announces Millie.
“Creeper,” mutters Jaxon under his breath as he searches the fridge.
“Pretty appropriate for a horror writer,” says Sienna. “After all, things do tend to go bump in the night.”
Kenzo looks at her and smiles, like shegets it, and Sienna smiles back. She didn’t notice before, but he is really good-looking, in a pre-makeover way, like those girls in movies who are supposed to be ugly ducklings but are really just some contacts, a hairbrush, and a cute outfit away from total tens. In fact, now that she’s looking, really looking, she’s pretty sure that if Kenzo swapped out the metal T for a suit, he’d actually be distractingly hot. His jaw is sharp, and his eyes are bright, and his black hair frames his face in messy tendrils, and—Sienna flushes. It’s probably just the bubbles going to her head. That, and the jet lag, both of which have her buzzing faintly, that strange collision of weary and awake, and she wonders absently if she’ll crash the moment her head hits the pillow, or if she’ll have to take one of the Ambiens she set on the nightstand.
She doesn’t like to take the pills, not unless shereallyneeds to.
Malcolm made her get them, during their trip to Italy last year, when she couldn’t seem to adjust her internal clock. She kept falling asleep on tour buses and taking long naps, only to sit up reading all night, and by the third day she was exhausted, and he was in a mood, complaining that he’d planned this whole romantic trip and she was missing it.
Sienna didn’t point out that it was first and foremost a research trip, and she’d done most of the planning, didn’t argue when he shuffled her into a questionable-looking doctor’s office and, in his charming but broken Italian, convinced the man to give her something to help her sleep (clearly forgetting that she’s always been very sensitive to medication). She took the pills, and that night she slept like the dead. The problem was, she felt dead the next day, too. The pills turned the world to syrup, and her thoughts to sand.
But she keeps them in her travel bag, in part to pacify him and in part because sometimes her brain justwon’t shut off.
But that’s fine, she needs it firing on all cylinders this weekend.
“Penny for your thoughts?” asks Kenzo, and Sienna blinks. Millie’s giggling at something Jaxon’s just said, and Priscilla’s peppering Cate with questions about life in Yorkshire, and Kenzo is still looking at her, and instead of saying, “I’m divorcing my husband and really want to win this prize so I can leave him knowing I’m running toward something instead of just away,” she says, “Have you read the pages yet?”
His head bobs once. “They’re good.” But she can see the cogs turning behind his eyes, like he wants to say more, but isn’t sure if he should. They are competing, after all. But Sienna’s dying to talk it through withsomeone.
“Right?” she says, leaning closer and lowering her voice. “And the way Fletch has laid it all out, there are so many ways it could go.”
