“Absolutely,” Katie said. “My god, I can’t believe this. Yes, of course. How do you write your books? How do you plan?”
Meredith took a long sip of her wine. From underneath the table, she pulled out... a salad bowl? Yes, it was a salad bowl. Looked expensive too. Hand-painted, probably from Europe. And it was teeming with rolled-up pieces of paper.
“Pinot usually does the honors,” she said.
“What?” I said. “Who’s Pinot?”
Meredith looked right at me, head tilted ever so slightly as the sun gleamed into her eyes. Her face, otherwise, perfectly plain and reasonable as she nudged the animal awake.
“The cat?” I said. Out loud. Sorry, but this was too much. The fucking cat? The bestselling author of her generation, and her cat picked her novel’s beats? No wonder I never got a book published. The industry was broken. The system, a joke. And this woman was just sitting there, not writing her own books, day drunk and getting richer by the minute, all while a bloated Persian in a lavender collar determined what seven million American women were going to read next summer? It was all too much.
“Yes, Tyler,” Meredith said. “The cat.”
“Hi, baby!” Katie said, squealing as she outstretched her handto scratch between his ears. He squinted with delight, offered her a soft purr and a raised paw, then wandered into the middle of the table—he walked through the salmon; he walked through the tomato slices—and dipped his face into the bowl. Katie, cheeks flushed, giggled and poured herself another glass of wine. I tried not to wail.
Pinot bit into a paper ball and spat it into my hands. I wished I was making this up. I wasn’t, though. I should have delivered for Grubhub or held out for a tutoring gig.
“Well,” Meredith said to me. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I cringed—the ball was a little damp. From the cat.
“Grumpy sunshine?”
“Oh! My favorite!” Katie said as Pinot, without prompting, face-planted into the bowl and fished out another trope. He spat it at me again.
“Local boy in the way?”
Meredith nodded in approval. Katie, who was officially sloshed, started writing things down in a notebook she’d pulled out of her bag. One of her trusty feather pens, it seemed, had also made the trip.
Pinot and I rinsed and repeated.
“Will they or won’t they.”
“Too-convenient displacement.”
“Forced proximity.”
“Broken in some way.”
“Forbidden love.”
“Kissing in the rain.”
“The groveling hero.”
“Secrets and lies.”
“Irrationally time-sensitive inn renovation.”
“Second-chance romance.”
“Tortured poet on a nightmare-induced tangent.”
Katie squealed again. “Aw, Tyler! You’re in the book.”
I smiled—what else was there to do but play along? These women were deranged. The cat too.
“Two more, Pinot, please,” Meredith said.
