Page 104 of A Bookish Story

“I never hated you. I just needed you to be around. It’s not like I wanted you every minute of the day but a mother needs to be someone you can go to when you do. You’re supposed to stand still and let me orbit around you.”

“I focused on my own pain and not on yours, or Eddie’s. It was easier for me to leave but now I can see, a huge mistake.”

“Maybe not,” I say, and I know I’m being generous. “Timing is important and if you loved Eddie, you might have had to wait around for him to be ready for your second chance.”

“Yes, that’s true.” She smiles, still holding my hand. “He did a lot of dating, but he tells me there was never anyone else for him but me.”

“He’s such a sweet talker.” I chuckle. “But a terrible singer. Just truly awful and I say that as someone who loves him.”

“Please don’t tell him that,” she says with a wink. “I love listening to him. Now, what about you and that handsome man you were having dinner with?”

“My boss. My colleague.”

“It was more than that, I could tell.”

“I didn’t know how he felt until it was too late. Now he’s gone back to Pasadena.”

She cocks her head. “Not perfect, but it’s not that far.”

“That’s what I thought.” I pull out the note from my pocket. “He told me he loved me…in a note.”

I read the note to her because there’s no way she would be able to read Ryan’s handwriting.

Mami blinks. “Ah, not very romantic, is it?”

“He’s not actually a romance writer.”

“But then again, I imagine words are his gift.” She gestures to the note. “And that one part, big declarations of love can be quiet. They can be still. That’s kind of beautiful.”

“Well, he is a writer.” I fold up the note, once again on the verge of tears. “A very good one.”

“Ay, querida,” Mami says. “I think you might just love him.”

For once she’s here when I need her to be and I tell her everything.

And for the first time in over a decade, my mother is here to listen, and hold me, and help me heal my broken heart.

CHAPTER 33

Three months later

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be part of a panel filled with authors I’ve admired and emulated for decades, I would have asked you whether that was your favorite hallucination.

But here I am, at the Southern California Festival of Books, on a panel with bestselling authors short-listed for major literary awards. Our topic of conversation is raising the stakes in fiction, whether genre fiction or upmarket commercial.

Holly bustles across the room, bringing the microphone to a woman who has raised her hand.

She’s here because when we were asked to suggest a moderator I nominated Holly. Since that ugly day at the book signing, we’ve reconciled as two women who want to lift each other up in this whirlwind business called publishing. Holly didn’t take long to reply to my apology-filled email, and responded with some apologies of her own, which I’m not sure I deserved. Hurt and humiliated when she thought I’d snubbed her, she reacted badly. We met at my coffee shop the day before she flew back to Missouri with her husband and children. I couldn’t tell her the truth but I gave her the next best thing. The idea, how I originally hated it, but an agent loved it. How I worked to improve it and eventually grew to love it. All mostly true. She read passages of the sequel I’m writing and gave me valuable feedback. Interestingly, she finds the sequel to be far more of the voice she was accustomed to reading.

Funny.

There’s someone else whose feedback I’d much prefer but I haven’t spoken to him in three months. Three long months in which Mami and I planned a wedding. Three months in which I’ve written the entire first draft of the tentatively titled, The Romantic Rejects. It’s just a placeholder title, but Kate thinks it’s hilarious. In my fictional world, Grayson and Lula eventually wind up together, even if it’s at the last minute, and sail off into the sunset. Literally.

You might wonder if I’ve asked Kate about Ryan. We share an agent, the only connection we still have. I waited until the news came I’d been officially asked to speak at the conference. Then, I called Kate.

“Will he be there?”

No need for her to ask who “he” was.