Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Whatever. It’s a really cute smile.
“Anyway,” Britney starts to Steve, “it’s nice to meet you. I’m a big fan of your narration.”
He rubs his face with his hand in an ‘are you kidding?’ way. “Um. How is this…? Does everybody just know this? It’s supposed to be…”
“I already said something,” I tell her. “Apparently we’re not supposed to know.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Britney apologizes, then adds, “Why?”
“Why? I dunno. Because mystery is sexy?”
“Oh,” Brit says. “Well, we’re sleuths, so… I mean, you do show up in her webinars and stuff. And it is your voice—”
“Yeah, no, I get it,” he says. “Well, for anyone who doesn’t know, don’t tell them, okay? Let’s just… keep secrets secret.”
I want to ask him why. Why the big secret? Is he embarrassed? Ashamed? He shouldn’t be. He’s really, really good at it. Maybe it’s because he technically works for his sister. I wonder if that’s a sore spot for him. He’s a Heinlein fan. Maybe he doesn’t want his buddies knowing he narrates romance books for a living? We should get into it. Dissect his insecurities about it. That’s something he and I could—oh, my God, what am I doing? I just met him and now I have us dissecting things? They must be pumping ambrosia essence through the air vents or something.
“So,” Steve says, interrupting my… whatever that was, “if anyone asks, the public line is that Tank Watson is retired U.S. military and didn’t want to just sit around doing nothing—you know how those military guys are—so he took up narrating. And fell into romance.”
“You have a whole backstory for a guy who doesn’t exist?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says, with some flippancy. “Character-building is important.”
Oh, my God, he’s right. Character-building is important! Who is this guy?
I should see if he’ll narrate one of my books. Britney says I need to start thinking about putting my stuff on audio. Maybe decorated U.S. military veteran Tank Watson should be my narrator. (I know I added the ‘decorated’ bit, but… character-building.)
“Are your parents here too?” Britney asks, breaking up my sudden and weird ruminating.
“Yeah,” he says with a kind of big sigh.
“Your parents come to your sister’s signings?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says with an even bigger sigh.
“That’s so sweet,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he says again, clipped this time.
“They must be very proud of your sister.”
“Yeah,” he says yet again, again more clipped, “they are. Anyway!” He claps his hands together. “Go get your stuff from that dystopian nightmare masquerading as a hotel and by the time you get back, we’ll have you squared away.”
“Ha!” Britney barks out a laugh.
“What?” I ask.
“‘Dystopian nightmare masquerading as a hotel.’ That’s a paraphrase from Sugar Push. In the book, Choke says about how Sugar grew up that she had a ‘dystopian nightmare masquerading as a childhood.’ I always loved that line. It’s so… specific.”
“It’s a really good line,” I agree.
Steve’s mouth contorts about three different ways before he says, “Yeah. Yeah, Essie’s a… She’s a good writer.” As someone who not more than a few seconds ago had their own bout with an unexpected and fleeting jealousy, I am able to recognize it as a version of the same thing that passes through Steve and I wonder if maybe we’ve hit on a sensitive subject. Is Steve envious of his sister’s success? He doesn’t present as the kind of person who’d be like that, but I’ve known him for all of about five minutes, so who can say?
“But that’s a-MAY-zing, thank you,” Britney says, expelling a relieved breath. “I barely slept at all last night knowing she was over there at that place. I felt terrible.”
“Don’t feel terrible,” I say.
“I gotta tell ya,” Steve offers, “it’s kind of incredible.”
“What is?” I ask.
“That you insisted your friend take the room. Or that we didn’t hear about it.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not… Whaddayou mean?”
“I mean… you’re an author. A really good author. And you’re at… this is your first signing, isn’t it?” Steve asks. I nod. “You’re at your first signing and the reservation gets messed up, and you didn’t turn it into a whole big Krakatoa of a scene? That’s… that’s pretty damn humble and very, very cool. That’s all.”
I bite at my lip and look away. Britney nudges me. “She is cool. The coolest.”
“I’m not,” I say. “Stop it.”
“No, you really are. Or at least, you handled yourself in a cool way. Not everyone would be so chill about something like that.”
“Steve!” The somewhat raspy, somewhat shrill, somewhat nasally (all at the same time) voice draws all of our attention. A woman is approaching us, having just ducked behind a banner and made her way down the ‘backstage’ corridor.
She’s tall. Not as tall as Britney, but still pretty tall. Thin, kind of severe-looking, and she has an expression of real purpose on her face.