6
Meredith looked up every
time someone walked into the café, expecting Eric. She wondered why he was late
and found herself making up stories why he might be. Perhaps he’d had a burst
of creative energy last night, or maybe a date that had gone well…or maybe he
was just on a relaxed schedule like all writers and just got up whenever he
felt like it. Must have been nice.
Business
was slow and she’d restocked the coffee for sale, refilled the magazine rack,
and wiped the tables down after the breakfast crew left already. She was the
only person working till two. During the quiet time, she had nothing to do but
think. And her mind kept drifting back to The
Hard Woman.
After reading
the sex scene she’d gone back to the beginning of the book and read it cover to
cover. It really was good, better than the three-and-a-half stars she’d doled
out when reviewing it the first time. She considered revising her score on all
the websites but that didn’t seem right. If she did it for Hanlon, she would
have to do it for everybody else and she couldn’t go back and reread all three
hundred books she’d formally reviewed in the last few years.
Besides,
Hanlon might have been a good writer but he was kind of a jerk. Even during his
awkward apology, he’d managed to be short and had ended up impatiently waving
his hand in her face. She didn’t want to
give the guy a better score because of how he’d acted. Maybe that wasn’t fair
of her, but then again, dicks didn’t deserve to be successful. Only nice people
did.
Rather than
revise her rating, she’d emailed him last night. Which she was now regretting.
All writers had enormous egos. There was no other group of people in the world
that took eighty plus thousand words to tell a story and then expected to be
paid for it.
She loved
stories but authors were annoying. She’d gotten so many angry emails in
response to her honest reviews over the years that she knew what they were
really all like.
“Where’s
your boyfriend?” Alana asked.
Meredith
looked up from the counter. She hadn’t even heard her friend approaching.
“Who?”
Alana gave
her the look.
“He’s not
my boyfriend.”
Alana held the look.
“How old
are you?”
“Did you go
back and read one of his sex scenes?” Alana asked.
Meredith
felt her face grow warm. “No.”
“I do.”
Alana smiled. “And I did.”
“You did?”
Meredith didn’t know why she was shocked. Alana was just as voracious a reader
as she was, and she was not prudish.
“Was it any good?”
“It was
okay. A little tame for my tastes.”
“Not everybody
is into bondage.”
“Bondage? That’s tame.”
Meredith
chuckled. “You have a one-track mind.”
“Two
tracks: books and sex.”
Meredith
shook her head.
Alana said,
“Seriously, where is he?”
“How would
I know?”
“You
haven’t seen him today?”
Meredith
shook her head.
“I hope you
didn’t scare him off, like you do everybody else.”
“What is
that supposed to mean?”
“You know
what it means.”
“That
happened once.”
“Twice.”
“You can’t
count the guy that was yelling into his cell phone.”
“Actually,
I wasn’t. So that’s three times.”
“Wait—”
“Take it
easy, I’m just half-kidding. But, seriously, if you see him, could you shoot me
a text?”
Meredith
looked at her friend suspiciously. Alana was forever trying to set her up, and
Meredith feared she would try to do just that with Eric Hanlon. Another writer.
“Why?”
Alana
batted her eyelashes. “Why do you think?”
“Alana, I’m
not interested.”
Alana burst
into laughter. “Not for you! I’ve given up trying to set you up.”
Now
Meredith was really confused. “So why would you—”
Alana said,
“I could show him a thing or two in the bedroom and then maybe he could write
about me. That would be hot.”
“Alana…you
can’t date Eric Hanlon.”
Alana
frowned. “Who said anything about dating?”
“No, I
mean, you can’t…whatever with this
guy.”
Alana
smirked. “And why not, Meredith?”
“Gross. I
don’t want to date him. I mean because he’s a jerk.”
“You don’t
even know him.”
“I’ve seen
him every day for the last two weeks, so I know a little about him. And
yesterday he was a dick to me.”
“Oh yeah, I
heard about that. He was just asking for something other than coffee and you
insulted his French pronunciation.”
“Who the
hell—I’m going to kill Lindsey.”
Alana
smiled. “And so what if he’s a dick? Most guys are.”
“I don’t
get you sometimes.”
“I don’t
get you most of the time.”
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