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)
There is a long pause. I can hear her breathing. Then, after a moment, I hear…
Pound, pound, pound. On the door to the suite.
“Are you—?”
“Open the door.”
“Are you outside—?”
“Open the door.”
I trot to the door and open it to find Britney, still in her dress from the night before, standing there with the phone still at her ear. The two of us, a coupla saucy dames from the 1920s, just waking up from a night out on the town like the hot tomatoes we are.
“What did you do?” she asks.
The words coming out of her mouth land on my ear before the echo of it comes through the phone. I tab end on the call, finish swallowing a bite of muffin, and answer, “What do you mean?”
She moves past me into the suite, looking around. “Is he here?”
“Steve?”
She pauses again to stare at me. “How many guys were you with?”
“That’s—I don’t know why I asked that. No, he went downstairs to help his sister get ready for the panels.”
Britney kind of grunts for some reason. “What’s all this?” she asks, noting the massive spread of food.
“Breakfast. You want any—?”
“There’s something you should know.”
“Okay.” I take another bite and wait for her to tell me what it is I should, apparently, know.
“I think Steve is SS.”
“What?”
“Steve. I think he writes the books. He’s SS. Not his sister. Steve is SS. Master Choke? All that? That’s Steve.”
“… What?” I understand the words she’s saying because she’s speaking a language I also speak and using a familiar and accepted syntax, but I’m having trouble processing the meaning.
She takes me by my shoulders, looks me in the eyes, and says, “Steve. The guy you came back up here with last night. The guy who got you all this”—she points at the food—“that guy… is SS, the number one bestselling author of the Master Choke series and all the other books he’s written. Not his sister. He’s the guy. Not her.”
I wipe a bit of butter from my lips and find myself then immediately biting on the nail of my middle finger. “What are you talking about?”
“I was sitting with Essie and we were a little tipsy—”
“Tipsy?”
“Fine, we were very drunk, and Essie said something that caught my attention.”
“What?”
“So, we were talking about Leslie, right?”
“Leslie? Raylen-Leslie?”
“Yes. And I asked her about the lawsuit back in the day and that whole thing.”
“Right. Okay.”
“And Essie said—and she said it no fewer than three or four times—that Steve wouldn’t steal from anybody. That he’s a really good guy. And that he wouldn’t do that.”
I keep nibbling at my finger as I think about what I want to say. I come up with… “Huh?”
Brit grabs me again by the shoulders and this time starts shaking me, in my opinion, way more emphatically than is necessary. “Are you listening to what I’m saying? I think Steve is a liar! I think he is some kind of, I dunno, conman bro. I think he’s running game, chickee! You hear me? Boy be runnin’ game!”
Pulling away and slapping her hands from my shoulders, I say, “Stop talking like that, and maybe you just misheard her! Or something.”
Britney takes a breath, settles, looks me in the eyes and hits me with, “Leslie confirmed it.”
“You talked to Leslie?”
“Not by choice. She cornered me in the elevator.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she wouldn’t be surprised if Steve is really SS too!” Britney lets that land like she really said something there.
“Okay, but… did she, like, verify it or…?”
“Cord! Are you listening to me? You got seduced by a kappa!”
“The hell’s a kappa?”
“It’s a, like, Japanese creature that steals souls from people’s butts.”
“Where did you hear about that?”
“I dunno! I read it on the internet! But… oh, my God. You didn’t let him—”
“Nobody touched anybody’s butt! Or maybe there was some touching, but—” I turn and run into the other room. Because this is crazy. And I say so. “This is crazy!”
She comes chasing after me. “Listen, just listen, okay? Think about it. He admitted to keeping his whole Tank Watson thing on the DL. What did he say? ‘Let’s just keep secrets secret?’”
“Okay, but—”
“And it is weird that he’s here at all these conventions, don’t you think? Like, he’s kind of a bro. And I don’t mean it in a bad way, but… bro… Why is a bro at a romance convention? You’re telling me it’s just to support his sister?”
“Well, I don’t—”
“And that line.”
“What line?”
“The ‘dystopian nightmare’ thing. It just randomly tripped off his tongue? Like, c’mon.”
I pause to consider the fact that this is all a batshit-crazy fever dream fueled by champagne and lack of sleep on Britney’s part, but also… I hear what she’s saying. And it’s not without merit.
“Well. Okay,” I work out. “Let’s say that’s all true and you’re right. What do you think he’d be keeping a secret for? Like, what’s the big deal?”