Chapter 9
I pace slowly across the rug as I stare at the manuscript in my hands.
The first forty-two pages are marked up all along the sides—my mystery editor having gone back and doubled, even, the comments on those first sixteen pages where he had critiqued before. In some places text has been sliced through for so long whole paragraphs are missing. At two points in particular he wrote a word and underlined it along with not one, not two, but three exclamation points.
I say “he” because of three clues that, when put together, have confirmed my suspicions.
The pen. The pen used carries a thick black ink to it, almost expensive looking in the way the ink lands on the page. It’s not a thin-tipped pink Sharpie, like Lyla likes to use. It’s not a good enough clue on its own, given I myself like to use a black pen on occasion, but it’s something, at least.
The concise choice of words. Now, I’m no expert, but according to one book I edited a while ago, Communication Between the Sexes, I distinctly recall the statistic that, on average, women use twenty thousand words a day—roughly three times more than men. And while the margins of each page are covered in comments, they tend to be short and to the point—to a fault. Never, ever, have I seen one compliment. It’s like the job is to point out errors, and so he is pointing out errors. Any fluffy compliment is only wasted time.
He told me about his girlfriend. Well, ex.
No man in his right mind would say this. If I had said this to my ex-girlfriend when we first met, she would’ve run.
My index finger stops on the comment, and I pause and look at the passage in question. It’s my leading man’s first words as he stands in the pickup line at the coffee shop and realizes he’s accidentally picked up Cecilia’s cup. I reread the passage:
Renaldo lifted the coffee cup to his lips and enjoyed the smooth, bitter taste of caffeine soothing his weary throat. Ah. Double Americano with just a touch of pumpkin spice. Exactly how he liked it. But as he lowered the cup and moved for the door, something caught his eye. The writing on the cup.
Cecilia.
The word was written in large, flowing script across the coffee cup, and yet . . . He took another sip. This was his drink. His particular drink. He’d recognize it anywhere.
“Mmm.”
He heard the woman murmuring contentedly as she took her own first sip. A young, beautiful woman with untamed curly hair and sparkling hazel eyes to match. And then he saw his own name, Renaldo, printed on her cup.
His eyes lit up. “Well, well, well,” he said, closing the remaining inches between them until their shoulders touched. He smiled down at her, the young, beautiful fawn. “Looks like my lucky day.”
He sounds like a serial killer.
Furthermore, what two people stand there murmuring delightedly about their drinks in the pickup line at a coffee shop? Illogical.
And for the love of all, pick different names. This is not an opera. You can have Renaldo. You can have Cecilia. You cannot have both.
And while my first reaction, which I seem incapable of helping in the face of any and all criticism, is indignation, the second—a bit surprisingly—is a little smile. I reread the passage, seeing it from his fresh angle, and all I can think is, Oh my gosh, he’s right.
Renaldo does sound like a serial killer.
I read halfway down the page and can’t help tittering as Renaldo continues, “I’ve been looking for someone . . . someone exactly like you. Come to my car. I want to show you something.”
And all I can think is, Cecilia, get outta there!
I pause momentarily with the manuscript in my hand as the snow drifts quietly past the stained-glass window, seeing for the first time what my chapter is. Laughing as I feel the anxiety from the past three days ebbing away. Laughing as I feel, for the first time, a sense of hope.
He’s going to help me.
I’m not going to have to do this alone.
When the chuckles stop, I grab my phone from a stack of books serving as a sort of nightstand to the beanbag and snap pictures of the comments in the margins for working through tonight. I don’t dare risk taking the manuscript home in case he decides to pop up here later and find more things to comment about. More issues to address. More problems to note.
It’s almost lunchtime, nearly time to leave, but I can’t help grabbing a pen from the top of the stack I carried to the meeting this morning. Quickly I write below his memo: And what fantastic pickup line did you use on your ex-girlfriend to win her heart, then? Because I’ve got nothing.
I jot a few other notes below his in the margins, until at last the pressure to move back downstairs is too great, and I know it is time to leave. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Lyla on the phone with the doctor, arranging to kidnap me and drag me to their office herself.
I feel myself smiling—a foreign expression for my face given these last few days—as I walk back down to my floor.
But when I reach my office door, Lyla is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, it’s Ferris who is standing beside my desk.
Oh. Right. Is it that time already?
With two fingers tapping on the wood, he’s peering at the picture frames on my desk, deep in his own thoughts. There’s something in his eyes as he looks at the one of Olivia and me. It’s the one we took at my college graduation.
I remember that day clearly. One of our better moments, both of our arms clasped tightly around the other’s waist, bright-eyed grins as Dad said something playful about his beautiful, brilliant girls and snapped the photo. Ferris had his own college graduation that day, as I remember. He missed mine but met up with me later that evening out with friends. And in doing so, like so many other times through our lives, both he and Olivia were ships sailing in the night. How many hundreds, thousands, of times I’ve wondered, How much sooner would we have broken it off had they really gotten to know each other at an earlier point?
Had he joined us during the family beach trip my senior year?
Had he come that Easter when his family traveled to Oklahoma and he almost stayed with us?
Exactly how much heartache and time would’ve been spared, for both of us, had they really gotten to know their soul mates earlier?
I imagine, from the look on his face, he is wondering the same thing now.
He must’ve heard me, because he turns around. His former expression erases, and in its place his face lifts into a smile. If I hadn’t been so certain about what I’d seen before, I’d believe the light in his mahogany eyes. His gentle soul. So quick to try to shield me from unnecessary reminders of the love I had lost and he had gained.
These are the moments when forgiving him is both easier . . . and harder.
“Ready to go, Sav?”
I push the thought away, fight off the swelling in my chest as I watch him standing that way with his hands in both coat pockets, collar popped up, expression just so. I nod. “Where’s Olivia?”
“In the car,” he says. “You’ll want a coat. It’s starting to come down.”
I set down my laptop and stack of papers on the desk and, as I do so, fight the sudden urge to start organizing. How did I not notice before? My desk is an absolute mess. Multiple pens are scattered just about everywhere except actually inside my pen jar. I have a pile of books sitting precariously on one ledge and three old, half-drunk coffee mugs littering the area around half a dozen picture frames of family and friends.
No wonder he left me for her.
Olivia would never leave her life so cluttered.
“You can go on ahead, and I’ll meet you down there,” I say, anxious to get him away from the embarrassment of my workspace. “I have to finish up something really quick anyway.”
Ferris makes a face. “Don’t be silly. I don’t mind waiting.”
So instead of jumping into a pretend task and only elongating his stay, I shrug into my black coat and reach swiftly toward the hook behind the door for my scarf.
I’m just stepping out into the hallway, fumbling to get my phone into my coat pocket while winding the scarf around my neck, when I nearly collide with Will—and his mug of coffee. We’re like magnets of the same pole, and just as his chest comes within two inches of mine, we repel ourselves so far back I knock into Ferris, and Will, along with his coffee mug, bumps into the opposite wall.
Ferris, thankfully, has a quick reaction and grabs beneath my arms before I can do any damage.
But, for a moment, I can’t help myself. It’s been so long since I’ve felt Ferris’s hands, since I’ve been surrounded by the scent of musk and citrus coming off his cologne, since I’ve been so close to his face. For a second I’m lost.
But in the next, I pull myself out of it and return to stable ground.
“Sorry, Ferris. Thanks,” I say, pulling myself off his chest. My scarf is wound around me now like some sort of torture device. In fact, it’s actually doing a fairly good job of choking me. My fingers get to work unwinding it, and as I do so I look over to Will. Coffee has splattered all over his hand, I notice, and he’s moving his mug from one hand to another to quietly shake the remaining droplets off.
“I’m so sorry, Will,” I say, not really certain whether he or I was to blame.
“Hazards of these narrow halls,” he replies. But then he’s shifting his preoccupied gaze from his hand and the still dripping mug to us, and I notice that it stops not at my face but on my middle. And his frown deepens.
It’s only then that I look down and realize Ferris still has his hands around my waist.
“Everyone all right?” Ferris says, seeming a bit dazed himself by all that just happened.
I take a step to the side, and he slides his hands away, putting them smoothly into his coat pockets.
“Fine,” I say and immediately feel like the halls really are as narrow as a cardboard box.
I can’t define it exactly, but I sense an overwhelming desire not to be standing here at this moment. But it’s not just because of Ferris, I’m realizing quietly. It’s not just about feeling dangerously close to exposure with the way my face and my hot, flushed cheeks are betraying me in this moment. My cheeks aren’t flaming merely because of the secret thoughts about Ferris I sometimes can’t help but harbor. It’s something else too. Will is a factor. And I realize I particularly don’t like that he is the one seeing me and my reaction to Ferris in this hallway. I care that he is in this situation and wish he hadn’t been the one to see it.
Why is that?
It’s not, I know deep in my soul, just because he is my boss.
A long, awkward moment passes. “Anyway . . . this is Will Pennington, our new publisher for Pennington Pen,” I say, holding out a hand as if I’m showcasing a new painting. “Will, this is . . .” For but a moment I find myself hesitating, stumbling to explain. This is the first time I’ve ever had to introduce him, I’m realizing suddenly, not as my boyfriend. “Ferris.” I amend this quickly with, “My sister’s fiancé.”
Will’s eyes give a subtle flash of surprise, and I can tell that he’s reassessing the situation under new light.
“Nice to meet you,” Ferris says automatically, as though he hadn’t caught any of that and didn’t care to. “Well, we should be off, then, Savvy. We’ve only got an hour.”
“‘Savvy’?” Will repeats, his brow crinkling. “Is that . . . your preferred name? Because I can—”
“No,” I say hastily, my voice almost cracking. “It’s just a family nickname. No need to start spreading that around.”
“Ah.” There’s the subtlest whisper of a smile on Will’s lips, and I know he has read through the lines. “I see. Well. You enjoy your lunch at . . .”
“The blood bank,” I reply.
“Ah,” Will repeats, the smile growing. “The blood bank. How nice.”
I can practically read through his response, hearing the words he edited out: “Yes, Savvy, you enjoy your date with your sister’s fiancé at the blood bank, because everything about this conversation makes complete sense.”
I feel Ferris’s hand on my waist again, making to nudge us along, but this time I don’t fall under the spell of his touch. Nor do I move on as he’s intending. I stay rooted.
“It’s a family thing,” I say swiftly. “My mom, dad, sister—we all make a date to donate every eight weeks. You know. Get in some quality time while we do something in the community.” I see by Will’s expression I’ve made very little ground and feel compelled to add in a lighthearted tone, “Some families make lunch dates together. The Cade family makes blood dates. Anyway, I’d better be going. I’ll be sure to get that report to you by six. And . . . I really do think Smith’s manuscript has real promise.”
“Yes, well, that’s your bailiwick, so we’ll be leaning on you,” Will replies. Although his tone is all business, I see a slight twitch to his lips.
I feel a blush starting to creep up my neck and loosen my scarf in hopes of concealing it. Before I can think of anything else to say, Will nods in the general direction of us both and turns on his heel.
It’s only halfway down the hall that Ferris mutters, “Bailiwick? Good grief, Savvy, what sort of pretentious prig uses bailiwick in conversation? No wonder these people stress you out.”
* * *
“Oh, and look at this one, dear. I know we’ve been thinking gold china all this time, but wouldn’t some decorative cream plates look so lovely with the peony centerpieces?”
I’m lying back in the farthest chair to the left of a long row, seeing my mother in my periphery trying to clumsily hand off her laptop full of Excel sheets to Olivia in the chair beside her. My eyes aren’t focused on them, though, but on the nurse standing over me, pressing her finger at the largest greenish-blue vein at the crook of my elbow. My hand balls up while my forearm prickles.
No matter how many times I give blood, I still have anxiety.
“Now remember, my veins are deceivingly small,” I blurt out, just as I do every single time I go to the blood clinic. “People always say they look good but then have to use a—”
“Butterfly needle. I know, dear.” The nurse with her hair pulled into a slick ponytail smiles at me as though she’s heard this a thousand times. Which, to be frank, may be the case. But even so, the memory of that one time it took three nurses three torturous attempts on each arm, and the continued phrase, “The vein’s going to blow . . . It’s going to blow . . . Oh no, it blew,” is too etched in my mind for me to ever forget.
The nurse pats my arm. “You’ll be just fine. Just keep giving the ball a squeeze every ten seconds, and I’ll be right back.”
I give the foamy red ball in my hand a big squeeze and start the clock in my head.
One . . . Two . . . Three . . .
Unlike for my mother, father, sister, and Ferris lounging in their chairs beside me, looking more like they are suntanning at the beach, giving blood has never been easy for me. My blood pressure is chronically low. Half the time I come here, the staff make me eat crackers and drink a Coke before I can even start, just in case. And my blood, when they can actually get it, so stubbornly refuses to come out of my body it always takes twice as long. Then, of course, there is the ever-present reminder of that one time I passed out afterward.
Not that any of these things stops me from donating. No, I’m a Cade. We just arrange carpool.
“How are you feeling over there, Savvy?” my father calls out across the room. He’s sitting in a Hawaiian shirt, which he does on every blood day as his own joke, pumping his own ball with one hand while holding a Coke can in the other.
Just then the nurse returns to my side, and my anxiety skyrockets. I smile and manage a thumbs-up with my opposite hand, and my dad lifts his Coke can to cheer me.
“Hey, Sav.”
I’m staring at the enormous needle hovering over my skin as Ferris speaks.
“Savvy, look at me.”
I drag my eyes away and force myself to look at him, my chest thudding. Ferris’s eyes are soft, full of life. Unlike me, who is slowly becoming a corpse. “Remember that time we hosted that murder-mystery Christmas party? Everything went wrong just before it started. The chicken Parmesan burned, and the printer ran out of ink for those character cards you needed to give everyone, and we had that stupid fight over my costume?”
“You were supposed to be Santa, Ferris,” I say, squinting to avoid looking at the hovering needle. “You promised me you’d be Santa. It was kind of a key role.”
His smile widens. “What was it you yelled at me just as the pot boiled over?”
I think back to that night just after college and smile a little as the words come to mind. Begrudgingly, I say them aloud. “‘If you can’t dress up like a holly jolly Santa on the brink of a killing spree, I don’t even know what we’re doing here.’”
I feel the painful prick in my arm. Squeeze my eyes shut.
A moment later, I hear medical tape being ripped off its roll. I open my eyes. “There now,” the nurse says, securing the strip of tape over the needle in my arm.
I exhale for what I’m certain is the first time in a minute and turn back to Ferris. Already I can feel the color coming back to my cheeks, which is ironic as blood is also now dripping into the moving scale on the floor beside me.
To my surprise, though, Ferris’s expression has changed. His eyes are intense, thoughtful as they meet mine. “Whatever happened to those friends?”
“Oh,” I say, taken aback slightly at the turn in conversation. I try to remember who exactly had even come. There were six of us. I remember that clearly because of the character list for the party: one narcissistic Santa, one burnt-out Mrs. Claus, one Rudolf in a midlife crisis, one jealous Dasher, one mischievous elf, and one lonely snowman facing unrequited love with Mrs. Claus. I know Farrah and Michael were one of the couples, because back then we were inseparable. “I don’t know. I guess we all just . . . moved apart.”
“It’s so strange how that happens,” he muses. “One minute you do everything together and the next . . .” He shrugs.
I give the ball a long squeeze. It is odd how that happens sometimes. Farrah and I even still live in Nashville. After graduation we kept up for a while, but then work started to fill up our days, and we both started making friends with our new jobs, and within the year we were texting each other, saying we really had to have coffee soon, loading our texts with heart emojis, but never really pursuing anything. “I guess we just made different friends. I started hanging out with Lyla more. You got close to those guys from your work. I think we just find ‘our people’ as we go along in life.” I pluck a phrase Lyla likes to say for the moment. “Eventually we meet our kindred spirits.”
But Ferris doesn’t look convinced by my words, or like he even mildly agrees with them. Instead he’s thoughtful, almost brooding, and I watch him, waiting for him to pull together his thoughts and respond. For some reason, he cares.
“Look at this, Ferris.” Olivia snaps her fingers in the air. “Mom says we can save ten cents per square foot on the tablecloth if we rent from Enchanted Experiences.”
So, instead of me hearing what he has to say, Ferris eventually gets wrapped up in the wedding conversation as the three of them pass the laptop back and forth. I watch the Hallmark movie on the television stationed on the wall opposite for a while, squeezing my big red ball while trying to gather what’s going on onscreen through lipreading since the volume is so low. But eventually not even the tall blond woman and her candle-shop problems can hold my attention, and my mind wanders.
After all, I have my own mystery to solve. Just who is the mystery editor?
The thought has popped up a few times over the past several days, but always when I’m so busy rushing here and there, doing this or that, that I haven’t had a spare moment to dwell on it. Now, though, stuck in this chair attached to the wobbling blood machine, is the perfect time.
Could it be Yossi?
Nooo. He’s so afraid of doing anything to Ms. Pennington’s disliking he jumps at his own shadow. If he ever opened that filing cabinet, he’d stare at it silently for about half a second, slam the whole thing shut, and never look back again—even if the whole room was glowing.
Rob?
No. He’s much too . . . pleasant. And long-winded. He’d never put such gut-jabbing criticisms on paper. He’s such a people pleaser we have a time getting him to give any real critique for any of his authors. All his authors think they’re geniuses because he’ll go through a whole manuscript leaving only a few tiny comments here and there like, “Well, not to press, but under the normal standards of the English language, it is customary to use a punctuation point at the end of a sentence. In fact, the first recording of a punctuation point, derived from the Latin punctus, was in the middle of the sixteenth century, when . . .” When all he needed to say was, “Missing period.”
Clyve? No. Clyve handles the marketing just fine but can’t make heads or tails of things like “narrative arc.”
Well, that covers everyone at the Pen imprint. It must be someone at Trophy or Arch or Scribe. Unless . . .
For some unknown reason, my stomach flips, the thought alone making me feel a little bit dizzy.
“You’re coming along,” the nurse says reassuringly, observing my blood bag as she walks by.
“Thank you,” I say, still feeling the world spin a little. “But could I get another Coke by chance?”
Her expression turns to sympathy. “Sure thing. Are you starting to feel dizzy, honey?”
At the words, Ferris’s attention breaks from the handful of graphs in his hands, with their corresponding pictures of flower bouquets. “You doing okay, Savvy?”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Just . . . I thought it might be a good idea.”
The nurse nods. “Of course. Let’s get you some sugar just in case. I’ll grab some crackers too,” she adds and drifts off toward the mini fridge across the room.
My cheeks tingle as I feel Ferris’s gaze on me. I hate to be the perennial problem patient.
A buzzer on the machine goes off at the farthest end, and Dad raises his own Coke like he just won a horse race. “That’s me!” he calls.
Ten seconds later, Mom’s buzzes. “Oh darn,” she says. “I was so close this time.”
Leave it to my family to make this into some sort of game.
Fifteen minutes later, and I’m nowhere close to done.
“I told you to stop drinking all that caffeine,” Olivia says to me as the nurse checks my bag and comments on how the blood is slowing down. “You drink all that coffee and expect your blood not to turn into molasses—”
“She had one cup, Olivia,” Ferris says in my defense. “I doubt it made any difference.”
“That’s not what my research says,” Olivia retorts. “I read that caffeine not only blocks your neuroreceptors for adenosine, it has a half-life of three hours, and—”
“I read five,” Dad chimes in.
“Oh, I’m sure it was three, Dad,” Olivia says. “I’m positive.”
“You’re talking about the article in the Washington Post from 2017?” Dad asks. “Because I could almost gamble on the number five.”
And while everyone else in the family engages in a research-driven discussion on blood coagulation, my mind slips back into the single idea pervading my thoughts.
Will Pennington.
Oh my goodness, Will Pennington.
He’s blunt.
He’s no-nonsense.
He’s incredibly intimidating.
The timing works out, really. He’s freshly back from New York City just around the time I get this surprise. But . . . is he really that rude? Really?
How is it possible to know, when nobody you know actually knows him aside from his own mother (and you’d never ask her in a million years)?
I sit on the thought for a solid minute, and then the lightbulb turns on.
Of course.
What better person to ask about how he edits than one of his own authors?
With one arm trapped on the armrest, I tilt my hip and reach into my pocket for my phone. My fingers, not used to doing the typing, fumble the name Trace Green into Amazon’s search bar.
It’s a little industry trick I learned when I started two years ago. Almost every book includes acknowledgments, and while for the typical reader this is just a page to be skipped over, for the nosy author, agent, or editor, it’s gold.
I tap until the acknowledgments page of Green’s most recent book pops up, then skim the page for Will’s name. Green’s publicity team. Green’s fabulous literary agent. Green’s second cousin’s boating companion’s brother, for all his inspiration. Green’s wife, three kids, and two puppies.
Hope ebbs as I read line after line without any mention of William. The farther I go down the list, the more space the people mentioned occupy in Green’s heart. I’m just about to give up entirely after the mention of Green’s Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when my eyes fall on the name. I slow down. Read.
And to Will Pennington, my longsuffering listener, relentless encourager, the one without whom I could do none of this, thank you. You are not only the greatest editor I could ask for but the most selfless, generous human being I aspire to live up to. The next round’s on me, friend.
Will Pennington. Longsuffering listener.
Relentless . . . encourager.
Not just a, but the most generous, selfless human being. On the earth.
Wow. I was pretty pleased when one of my authors called me “smart,” and Will over here is basically getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
And how exactly would I define my mystery editor?
Hmm.
I swipe to my photos and tap on the latest picture I took today of a comment.
If you use “suddenly” one more time, I’m going to die from overexposure. Cut. The. Adverbs.
Yeah.
“Selfless, generous human being” isn’t the vibe coming to mind.
The machine beside me buzzes, and I look up.
“Well, lookee there, Sav,” Ferris says, pausing in his move to stand up, the newest blood-donor T-shirt in one hand. “You finished before Olivia.”
Dad—who has been preoccupied trying to decide whether to take a large or extra-large T-shirt declaring Keep Calm and Give Blood—turns as he sees the nurse coming up to my side and switching off the machine. Olivia, with her half-drunk Nalgene of water in one hand, frowns from her chair.
“How wonderful,” Mom exclaims. She and Dad are gazing at me as though I just declared I’d been made publisher of Pennington. I would roll my eyes but for the real sense of glowing pride hidden deep inside.
Ferris grins. Even he looks proud. “Well. I guess it looks like you were doing something right after all.”