Page 84 of The Perfect Rom-Com

“No . . .” Her eyes drift away from me again, searching for him, and I have a sinking feeling in my chest. “I think I would remember anything from Jack. He has such talented authors”—she throws a hand out at me, as if offering up a consolation prize—“no doubt such as you. Are you published?”

“I—” I feel a growing sickness coming over me I don’t understand. “No, well, a bit . . .”

How does she have no recollection of any conversation about me?

I’ve talked with Jack a hundred times over the past year about his conversations with Florence Peters. A hundred times. How could her memory of something so vastly important to me amount to nothing?

“What’s your genre?” she continues kindly.

“It’s—um—” But I’m finding it hard to answer. Not only because saying, “It’s magical realistic, semi-biographical women’s fiction,” is incredibly confusing, but also because the conversation isn’t anything like I imagined. This isn’t how this conversation is supposed to go.

This is why I have an agent. He is the one with the talent who understands how to pitch.

“I’m just, I have to say, very surprised. Are you . . . are you quite sure you haven’t gotten anything from him?” I tiptoe with my words.

“Maybe it was another editor at Brooks.” Her eyes are even softer in pity. In fact, she’s going off and filling the glass I’ve been holding numbly in my hands with water. Somebody draws her attention from the corner of her eye, and she gives me a little I’m sorry about this smile. “I’ll be sure not to forget this conversation though. Have Jack email me. I’ll look forward to your—well—whatever it is you write,” she says with a light laugh. “It’ll be a little surprise!”

She turns and moves off into the crowd.

And I continue to stand there at the table, dumbfounded, so long that someone asks me to move aside so they can get in.

People are chatting around me.

The hum of people laughing gayly in their shiny sequins with their hair in clips.

Someone in a conversation to my right is stoking Amelia’s ego with gushing compliments about how The Seven-Year Holiday helped her get through her reading slump.

Amelia is responding with shock and thanks as though nobody has ever said anything nice to her in her life, leading to a sudden onslaught of a dozen women throwing compliments.

But one thing sticks out in all of this.

One thing that sticks me to this spot, unable to move.

Unable to think.

Jack never emailed Florence Peters.

Never.

And slowly, painfully, I’m watching the columns crash around me and dust kick up into the air, considering the domino effect on my life of that one, oh so important fact.

If Jack never emailed Florence Peters, maybe . . . Jack has never pitched my book.

Chapter 17

I don’t have a solid plan.

Nothing makes sense, except for one fact that is abundantly clear in all of this: I’m leaving the second this boat docks in the harbor and the event is over.

I’m leaving all this madness behind, and I’m never turning back.

Jack is good with words.

Dangerously good.

It’s why people want him on their side, doing things like representing their books to those in publishing. He is a professional at winning people over to his side.

Which he will try to do with me.