She sees, now, the urgency, the pressure. To get another book out. To satisfy the hungry masses. It’s impossible, she knows, to fully do so – a ravenous reader can get through a book in a day, and that same book might take an author three years to write. But most reasonable readers know this. And that’s why they’ve waited, some of them for years, before politely enquiring. Or nagging. Or harassing.
‘Wow,’ she says again, bumping his body back the way he did with hers. ‘We’d better get them this book quickly. Seems like some of them are pretty desperate.’
‘I told you,’ he says, his dimple popping. ‘Fans. Lots of fans.’
‘I never doubted it,’ she says.
She’s about to hand the phone back to him when a notification lights up the screen.You have been tagged in a post. Reflexively, she taps it.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘That could be personal.’
‘That’s why you should never hand over your phone to another person.’
‘Fair.’
They see it at the same time: the tagged picture of the two of them on the most popular publishing gossip account, reposted from @bookish_cassandra. It’s a little blurry, but it’s unmistakeably Alex and Jess, walking hand in hand. The caption reads:Well, I guess now we know why Alex Maxwell is too busy to write another book.
‘Busted,’ Jess says, suppressing a snigger.
‘But I’m not too busy to write another book,’ he says. ‘Iamwriting another book. That picture happenedbecauseI’m writing another book.’
‘That’s your first takeaway from this situation?’ Jess is a little miffed. A photo of the two of them, and his first reaction is only about himself.
‘Sorry, sorry, no. Of course not.’ He smiles apologetically. Jess can’t stay even a little bit angry when a dimple like that is on show.
‘I’m glad it’s a nice picture of us.’
Moving the phone closer to her face, Jess inspects theimage. He’s not wrong. It is a nice picture. The first one of the two of them. The one that maybe they’ll show their grandchildren someday. Not that she’s getting ahead of herself in any way.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘It is.’
Reluctantly, she hands the phone back. ‘What do you think this means?’
‘In what sense?’
‘Like, what happens now?’
‘We’re not Brad and Jen,’ he says, another not-exactly-bang-on pop culture reference, but she gets the picture. ‘I don’t think this blows up and the paparazzi starts chasing us to our deaths in a Parisian tunnel.’
‘Dark.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Also,’ she points out, ‘a mixed metaphor.’
‘You’ve got me. I’m even more sorry.’
Jess’s stomach does an involuntary flip at the phraseyou’ve got me.
‘But maybe Nathan will get wind of it.’
‘Nathan will be delighted. He’s been trying to find me a girlfriend for the last five years.’
Five years? That, perhaps, explains his keenness to ditch what she thinks of as the ice-dancing rule. It perhaps also explains Nathan’s keenness to get them working together, though she isn’t sure how he could possibly have known that she and Alex would have this insane level of chemistry together. And she’s determined to prove that she’s not just good for Alex’s love life, but that she’s a great partner creatively, too. And a great author in her own right.
But also: a girlfriend? Is that what she is?
‘So we’re putting labels on it now?’ She bumps him gently with her shoulder.
