I slide off the bed that doubles as my desk and walk to thekitchen, only to stop short when I see Amber and her new boyfriend, Patrick, cooking spaghetti with horny music playing in the background. She dumped Kyle in a loud blaze of glory one morning in September, throwing him out of the house after she discovered another girl in his DMs. This was followed by a month of crying and long runs, and then one day around Thanksgiving she told me about a cute guy from her nursing program named Patrick. I’ve never seen her happier.
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving.” I skirt around them to the pantry and grab a bag of popcorn.
“We have extra!” Amber says as she prods meatballs with a wooden spoon. Patrick stands behind her with his chin on her shoulder and his arms around her waist. The simple intimacy of it makes me ache for something I’ve never had.
“Thanks, but I’m going to my room. I haven’t tried sweet-talking my inbox yet—maybe if I give it compliments it will repay me with good news.”
“It’ll happen! I haven’t read a book in five years, and I read yours in a day. That should tell you something,” she says.
“That you should read more?” I call over my shoulder as I leave them to their honeymoon-stage date night and crawl back under my covers, knocking three books to the floor in the process. I don’t know why I bothered; I’m in the reading slump from hell. I’ve been too anxious to do anything but daydream about seeing Fox and Juniper on the shelves of a Barnes & Noble.
I open my inbox.Refresh. Text West. Scroll Facebook for five minutes.Refresh. Ten minutes on Twitter.Refresh. Five minutes on Instagram.Refresh.Text West again.Re— My fingers pause before they hit the button; my email has refreshed itself, and there’s an unread message sitting in my inbox.
I love the sample pages…your voice jumps off the page…hooked from the very beginning…already in love with Fox…dying to find out what happens…please send the full manuscript…
My body goes numb with shock.
I reply with my full manuscript attached. The send time between her email and mine? One minute. Hopefully she doesn’t think I’m at home on my bed refreshing my email like the obsessed weirdo that I am. My fingers shake as I slide my feet into sandals and grab my keys. “I’m going out!”
Amber takes one look at my stunned expression and my day-five unwashed hair and frowns. “Everything okay?”
The door shuts behind me before I know what to say. I’m jittery the whole mile and a half to West’s apartment. His roommate answers the door with a hand over his gaming mic.
“Is West here?”
“In his room.” He nods for me to step inside.
My stomach flutters with nerves as I knock quietly on West’s door. When he doesn’t answer, I knock again. Unintelligible mumbling filters through the wood.
“It’s me,” I say.
There’s a pause. “Just a sec.” His voice is sharper now. I hear his feet hit the floor, and when he opens the door, he’s shirtless, basketball shorts slung low on his hips. He squints at me.
“Did I wake you up?”
“It’s fine.” He shakes his hair out of his eyes. “What’s up?”
“An agent wants to read my book.”
His lips part in surprise. “What?”
“An agent requested my full manuscript. She might want to represent me.”
“Mars. Holy shit.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me in to his bare chest. I stiffen, too surprised to react. He tugs me into his room and shuts the door behind us, letting his arms drop away from me. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were looking for an agent?”
I pick up a Rubik’s Cube off his dresser and mindlessly rotate it to avoid having to make eye contact. “You’ve had a lot going on.” The bigger truth is that I wasn’t sure if he’d care. He hasn’t expressed interest in so long.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye just in time to see his frustrated expression before he blinks it out of existence.
“Can I read it?” he asks.
“Do you want to?”
He winces before taking a deep breath and looking up at me from under his long, dark lashes. “I want to.”
It feels almost like a dare. I use my phone to forward him the manuscript. “Done.”
“Thanks.” He scratches his nose. “I’m working twelve-hour days this week, so it might take me a while to get through it.”
