CHAPTER NINE
Rosie
I closed my laptop, unable to look at my manuscript for one more second.
Zero out of 2,500 words.
“God, this sucks,” I said into the silent and empty studio apartment.
Because I’d written zero and I’d had to recalculate my daily word goal. Again.
I thought back once again to yesterday’s epic meltdown. To how I’d dumped a crap-load of emotional baloney on Lucas. To how I’d then proceeded to slobber all over his sweatshirt for an indecently large amount of time. And most of all, I thought of Lucas’s calm and careful comfort. Of how he’d stepped in without me asking him to. Without me expecting him to.
And I thought of that hug. A full-body hug. Soothing, healing, intentional—because Lucas hugged like he meant it, like all his focus was on that embrace and that embrace only. A life-altering hug, if something as simple as a hug was ever meant to do that.
All my life, I’ve been the person others relied on. I shared the burden with Dad when my mother walked out on us and left us with a ten-month-old Olly and a ten-year-old me who had to learn how to grow up fast. I carried the weight alone at times when Dad wasn’t there. I’ve been the rock in the middle of the pond for my friends, that person they could count on for a good cry or honest advice. I’ve taken any role I’ve been needed for, always making sure to be there, to keep a tight grip on any situation or any crisis. Always calm, always in control. That was probably why my job as an engineering consultant had been so… fitting, so natural. I’d been paid to plan projects, to provide my expertise, and to advise in the case of a crisis. And that was probably also why quitting that to do what I really loved—something that could be ruled by emotions—had been so… liberating.
Even if it had led me to this. To the meltdown. To Lucas’s immediate reaction, him lending me his strength. Taking over.
I sighed.
Blinding smile, wide shoulders, mad cooking skills, the superpower to give the best full-body hugs in the world, and a big heart.
Life really was unfair sometimes.
“And here I am,” I muttered under my breath. “Thinking about a man instead of writing.”
Not that it would have changed anything; I still couldn’t write.
Pushing the stool back, I strolled to the window and threw it open, welcoming the chilly October breeze. I leaned on the sill, wondering if I should try to call Lina again. Maybe—
My phone buzzed from the other side of the apartment.
“Freaky,” I murmured.
I stalked back to the kitchen island, picked up my phone, and smiled at the name lighting up the screen.
“BESTIIIIIIIIIE!” a voice I knew well screeched. “Why do I have a million missed calls from you? Do you miss me this badly or did you finally spot Sebastian Stan and I totally missed it? Did you two hit it off? Is he as cute in person? If he’s a jerk, don’t tell me. Don’t ruin Seb for me.”
“Lina.” I let out a half sigh, half laugh. “I was just thinking of you. And it wasn’t a million calls, it was just two.”
“Hmm, I’ll take that as no. Poor Seb. It’s really his loss.”
“Ugh, I’ve missed you.” Walking over to the couch, I let myself plop down on it, turned the speaker volume to the max, and placed the phone on the coffee table. “How is everything, Mrs. Martín-Blackford? How is Peru? Is the honeymoon going as planned?”
“Ah, Rosie, I could get used to this. Do you think they’ll miss us at work if we stay a little longer?” She lowered her voice. “Or forever?”
“Well, considering your husband is the division head of an engineering firm in thriving New York City and you are leader of a team in said division, I’d say… probably?”
“Ugh. I should have stayed a consultant,” she said, even though I knew she didn’t mean it. Lina loved her job. “Or, you know, I should have married someone without responsibilities.”
I opened my mouth to tell her how ridiculous that was, considering those two were hardly able to keep their hands off each other, but before I could get a word out, Aaron’s deep voice was distinguishable in the background.
Then, I heard Lina tell him, “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, amor! I was only joking. I’d marry you one hundred times over.”
Some more muffled words were said in the back and a giggle left my best friend. Based on experience, it was the kind of giggle that usually preceded a kiss, a touch, or a hooded-eyed Lina and Aaron.
A pang of jealousy surged through me. The good kind. The kind of longing that made me wonder if I’d ever find what they had. Ironically, this had been the kind of longing that had pushed me to flirt with the idea of writing all that time ago. To bring to life the kind of love that never seemed to happen for me.
Look at me now, though, one book and a half-assed try at a second one later, and not only did the well of inspiration seem empty but I hadn’t managed to find love, either.
“Rosie?” Lina’s voice brought me back. “I was telling you about my honeymoon sexletics, now that my husband left to get empanadas peruanas, but you totally spaced out on me.”
“Sorry, sweetie.”
The line was quiet for a few moments.
“Is everything all right?” Lina finally asked, and gone was her teasing and lighthearted tone. “I was joking about the calls, you know? You can always call me. As many times as you need.”
“I know,” I told her, because I did know that. “But—”
“You won’t burst my bubble,” she finished for me, reminding me why she was such an essential and important person in my life. She knew me inside out. And that was why she knew what to say next to appease me. “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been in my entire life and talking about whatever is going on with you won’t change that.”
I let that sink in, and I didn’t feel jealousy this time, even if healthy, but pure unfiltered joy for her. For them. Aaron and Lina deserved nothing but happiness.
“Actually,” she continued. “It’s you thinking that you can’t count on me that’s breaking my poor, fragile heart. I—”
“Okay, okay.” I breathed out. “You can stop the emotional blackmail. It’s not like I don’t want to talk about it with you. I just…”
“Don’t want to bother me while I’m on my honeymoon with my swoon-worthy husband, I know. But we’ve established that you’re not doing that. So, start talking, bestie.”
Start talking.
There was so much I needed to tell her. To confess, really. Starting with the fact that my apartment was out of commission for the time being. And that I was sharing her studio with her cousin. And that I’d harbored an online crush on said cousin and spending time with him wasn’t making it any better.
And yet, what came out of my mouth was, “I think I might have made a terrible mistake.”
“Okay.” Her tone was careful. “Was that an ‘I added salt to the batter instead of sugar’ mistake, or a ‘honey, remember the zinc phosphide we got for the rat infestation problem, well I’d stop chewing if I were you’ mistake?”
I closed my eyes. “The second one?” I thought about it a little better. “Maybe not exactly the second one but something close to it. Minus the accidental poisoning of my family. Let’s say I was the only one poisoned. And I kind of did it to myself. Let’s say—”
“Rosie?” She stopped me.
“Yeah?”
“I think we took the metaphor too far, and now I don’t know what we’re talking about.”
I released a deep breath. “Quitting my job at InTech. That was the mistake, Lina.”
“What?” She gasped with what I knew was honest shock. “Why would you think that? You’re living your best writer’s life now, no distractions and a book deal in the bag.”
“Yes, only I’m not living my best writer’s life.” I looked up at the ceiling, bringing my fingers to my temples. “I haven’t been writing. I’m less than eight weeks away from my deadline and I’m… I’m nowhere. I’ve been stuck for a long time, and now, I don’t think I’ll make it. I’ve got nothing, Lina. Not a single thing.”
There was silence, and then my best friend said, “Oh, Rosie.”
A tremor rocked my lower lip, the lock on the gates that had busted open less than twenty-four hours ago rattling again. “So there’s that,” I blurted in a strange-sounding voice. “I’m a failure. I haven’t even had my dream yet and I’m already a failure. Do you… Do you think that Aaron will take me back if I ask for my old job?”
“No.”
“Okay, well. I get it. I guess someone else—”
“No,” she repeated. “You’re not asking Aaron for your job.”
“Lina—”
“Shut up and listen. And listen carefully.” My mouth snapped closed, my eyes growing more watery by the moment even though my best friend’s tone was harsh. “You, Rosalyn Graham, are a boss-lady.”
I let out a sound I refused to acknowledge as a hiccup.
“You have an engineering degree. You were promoted to team leader in a top-tier tech company in goddamn New York City.” She paused, letting all that sink in. “You wrote a book—in your free time. A good freaking book, Rosie. A beautiful and epic love story about a war veteran that travels through time and fights to find a place, his place, beside the woman he so helplessly loves in the present day. Do you know that Charo is still calling him ‘My Officer’? The woman has claimed that fictional man as hers and she genuinely gets pissed at people if they so much as mention him.” I knew that. Lina had sent me screenshots from more than a few aggressively enthusiastic messages. “The day she finds out that you are the Rosalyn Sage, she’s going to flip and pester you for the rest of your life.” A pause. “And that’s only because you smashed it. You knocked it out of the park.”
“I didn’t really smash it, Lina. I—”
“That publishing house didn’t offer a deal because of your pretty face.”
“Okay,” I reluctantly agreed. “I guess my first book was okay.”
Lina huffed. “It wasn’t just okay, Rosie. It was laced with crack, I told you. The small albeit enthusiastic part of my family that speaks English adored it.” I heard some ruffling noise in the back, as if she’d just opened a chocolate bar or a snack bag. Both possible options with her. “And on top of all that, you had the balls to quit a job that no longer fulfilled you and pursue a career that did. In writing. Because you’re good at it, Rosie.”
The balls.
That reminded me of Lucas when he’d called me ballsy. Ballsy. Me.
My heart resumed the funny flip-flop business it performed every time I thought of him.
“Am I ballsy, though?” I heard myself ask out loud.
“Yes!” Lina confirmed right away. “This whole thing about you being stuck is your fear talking. You’re terrified to fail, Rosie. I know you. But you need to get out of your head, stop whining about not being able to fix the problem, and start believing that you can.”
“Ouch,” I muttered.
“I’m saying it because I love you.” I could picture her waving a finger at me. “Don’t let the pressure you’re putting on yourself paralyze you. You are the only person limiting yourself, Rosie.”
Her words cut a little deeper than they should have. Not the whining part, but the one about me being the problem. Because I was starting to believe that I was.
“Writer’s block is common,” Lina added. “So, we’ll unblock you.”
“Unblock me?”
“We’ll pop you right open.”
My hands dropped to my sides, my palms resting on the soft fabric of the cushions. “I don’t know, Lina. I don’t… even know what’s wrong with me. I’m just…”
There was a beat of silence. “You’re what?”
“I’m…” I trailed off. “It’s as if there were a hundred million things stopping me from writing and I just flatline when I try.” I shook my head. “I’ve tried everything, even acupuncture, because I read on some blog that it helped releasing endorphins that aided inspiration. It didn’t work.”
The line was silent, then a tentative, “There might be something you could try.”
“And that is…?”
Lina didn’t answer right away, which told me enough about whatever was coming. “Your second book is in the same universe, isn’t it? You told me you wanted to give his best friend his happily ever after.”
“Yes.”
“You mentioned that this time around the story would be a little more… lighthearted. That it would be about him battling modern life and adjusting to how things have changed in the wilderness that is dating nowadays.”
“Yes, I suppose I said that.”
“So,” Lina said very slowly, so much that the two-letter word dragged for a few seconds. “You could do the same. You could get back out there.”
I frowned. “Out where?”
“Dating,” she answered with confidence. “You’ve been holed up for… how long?” she asked, but I wasn’t given the chance to answer. “Too long. Maybe that’s the problem. You’re a romance writer. Trying to write about a man from the 1900s dating in present day. Maybe you should just… do that. If you think about it, you two are not so different. You haven’t dated anyone for at least two years.” A chuckle left her. “You and your hero are two beautiful and old-fashioned fish dumped in the twenty-first-century dating pond.”
A strange sound left my throat. I opened my mouth to tell her all the many and different ways her idea could go sideways, but I stopped myself. Because maybe, just maybe…
“It could work,” Lina said as if she’d just read my mind. “Listen, my first idea had been sex. Orgasms. I was going to suggest you get a new vibrator when you mentioned the endorphins, but I think you need the real thing this time around.”
I blinked, trying to process everything.
“You know I’m not good with hookups and one-night stands,” I replied.
“Exactly,” she answered quickly. “You need to be romanced before getting to the hanky-panky.”
“The hanky-panky?”
She ignored my question. “That’s why I think you should re-download Tinder. Or Bumble. Or whatever app the Zuckerberg of dating software has come up with this week.”
“A dating app.” I could hear the thick skepticism coating my voice. “What about the old-fashioned fish? I think I liked that better. Can we get back to that? Nothing good has ever come out of a dating app. Not for me.”
“Listen.” Lina cleared her throat. “I know you’ve sworn off apps—and men—for a reason, a good one at that. The last man you dated in particular, Assface Number Five, was… well, let’s just say he was lucky I didn’t borrow Aaron’s car and accidentally run him over.”
“Lina!” I gasped. “We’ve talked about you saying stuff like that.”
“Just a soft brush of the bumper against his ass. That’s all I’m saying.”
I shook my head. “You want to run over every man I’ve ever dated.”
Lina laughed but it sounded dark and… bloodthirsty. “Maybe because they’ve all been assfaces.” I closed my eyes, feeling… helpless and tired. Mostly because she was right. “My point is,” Lina continued, “that the long line of idiots you’ve dated is what somehow led you to write that phenomenal debut. And you can’t count on going down to Central Park, dropping a scarf, and hoping the man of your dreams finds it and proceeds to search the city—”
“Yeah,” I cut her off. “I don’t have the time, I get it.”
“You don’t,” she agreed gently. “So maybe, just maybe, downloading a dating app and getting back out there might change something. It might find you some inspiration. Jump-start the whole thing. Or clear your head and have some fun. That can’t be so bad, either.”
I hugged my middle with my arms, not wanting to accept that what she was saying made sense.
“Maybe you could even treat this as…” She trailed off, then continued more enthusiastically, “As research. Field work. As if you were running an experiment. Pick a man and do whatever you need to get those creative juices running. You don’t even need to tell him.”
An experiment.
I didn’t like the last part, though. I didn’t think I had the guts to trick someone into… whatever Lina was implying. Being dishonest had never been my thing.
Although I had lied to Dad for months, I reminded myself. And now I was lying—by omission—to Lina by not telling her that I was living in her apartment while she was away. With her cousin.
“It’s worth the shot,” she encouraged.
“It probably is,” I admitted quietly. “At this point, I’ll try anything if it means I have the chance to get out of this stupid funk.” Pressure returned to the back of my eyes, and I even surprised myself when the next words left my lips. “Who knows, maybe I’ll even manage to find love for once?” The sliver of hope dawning in my chest at the thought faded quickly. “Or if it’s just not in the cards for me, I guess I’m fine daydreaming of the real thing for the rest of my days if I can manage to write about it.”
“Don’t say that, Rosie,” Lina said so softly that I felt my throat close up with… emotions. Lots of messy, intense emotions. God, I am being such a baby lately. “Of course it’s in the cards for you. Who knows, this could become one of those Hallmark movies you love so much.” She lowered her voice and announced, “Romance writer dates in search of inspiration and falls in love. Spoiler alert, it was a bestseller.” She chuckled. “And if you don’t and the guy’s a jerk, then we’ll borrow Aaron’s car, and we will make sure that man never crosses on red ever again.”
God, I loved my best friend. I loved her even if her good-intentioned but violent nature was going to get us in jail any day now.
Once more, my stomach tangled in knots at the reminder of everything I was keeping from her. But just as I opened my mouth, a creaking sound from the entryway caught my attention.
I jolted around, my gaze stumbling upon a large form that I’d have to be blind not to recognize immediately.
Lucas. My roommate. Lina’s cousin.
He was back, and he was standing by the threshold of the door with his shoulders drawn up, and his eyes wider than usual. In fact, he was the image of someone that had been caught doing something bad. Something they shouldn’t have been doing. Something—
Oh God. Oh no.
Just like that, I knew. I knew with a certainty I had trouble processing what he’d been busted doing.
Snooping. Listening.
“Rosie?” my best friend called, her voice coming out the speaker that I’d set to the maximum possible volume when I’d picked up. “You still there?”
“Sorry,” I croaked, my eyes laser focused on his profile. “I’m here but I… I need to go now.”
Because I couldn’t rip my eyes off Lucas, I watched him move as my mind was flooded with chants of Why, Lord, why? Why did he have to overhear this one particular conversation?
Lucas walked in my direction, and my gaze—which was still doing its own thing—decided it was a good time to check him out. To marvel at the way his emerald-green hoodie hugged a chest I knew felt solid against my cheek. To get a little lost in the way a lock of chocolate hair fell over his forehead.
Sexy and disheveled snooper, he could at least have the decency not to look so… distracting.
“Fine, okay,” I heard Lina say, just as Lucas reached me. He sat down on the coffee table, right in front of me, and placed a blue and pink box I hadn’t noticed, right beside my phone. I swallowed, noting how his knees were half an inch away from brushing mine. Lina continued, “I’ll tell Abuela to light a candle and ask for a decent guy that can at least give you one or two orgasms because—”
“Thank you, Lina,” I quickly interrupted, jerking forward and grabbing my phone. I deactivated the speaker and brought it to my ear. “I’ll call you later, okay? I really need to go.”
“All right,” my best friend relented. “I’ll let you off the hook, but just because I love you and only if you promise me to remember that you can do anything.”
I could feel Lucas’s eyes burning holes on the side of my face, but I kept my gaze down. “Love you, too, Lina. Give Aaron a hug and enjoy the rest of the honeymoon, okay?”
Heart in my throat, I ended the call, trying my best not to look like I was scrambling to come up with a plan of action while my mind threw questions right and left. Lucas has heard about the orgasms. But what about the rest? God, how long has he been standing there?
“Hey,” I heard him say so softly that the word set off about a hundred alarms in my head. Yesterday, he’d had to hold me while I lost my ever-loving shit, and today this. “You’re not gonna say hi to me, Rosie?”
“Hi,” I answered, keeping my eyes down. Because if I looked up at him and found the barest trace of pity in his face, I’d be so… sad. Devastated, really. “So, that was Lina on the phone.”
“I noticed.”
My lips pursed. “I didn’t get the chance to tell her that we’re both staying here. Together. Until… you know, I can go back to my place.” I swallowed, keeping my eyes trained on the corner of the coffee table that he wasn’t occupying. If I wanted nothing to seem wrong, I had to act like it. “Anyway, how was your day? Did you go to the free exhibit in the New York Public Library I told you about? Did you like it? Was it as cool as it seemed on their website?”
“Yes,” he said, as if that one word answered all four of my questions. Then added, “I brought you something.”
He moved the blue and pink box toward me, and I did a double take when I noticed the logo on the lid. Something in my chest expanded just like a balloon being pumped with air, and it grew bigger the longer I gawked at that pink and blue cardboard container I recognized.
“You remembered,” I mumbled in a wobbly voice. “Cronuts. From Holy Cronut. Just like I mentioned yesterday.”
I hadn’t just mentioned it. I’d screamed it, right after I’d informed him that I was on my period, and right before I’d covered his sweatshirt in snot.
“I did,” he admitted, the balloon taking all the space in my rib cage. “I got my replacement credit card in the mailbox this morning, so I thought we could celebrate.” He pushed the box in my direction. “If you’ll share because, as I said, these are for you.”
“If I’ll share?” I asked. Because was this man real? Was he actually, really, truly real? I slid my gaze from the blue letters that read Holy Cronut to his knees. “Of course, I’ll share.” A pause. “You got the big box.”
“It was the biggest they sold.”
One of his hands came to rest against his left thigh, and I thought about the piece of tan skin I could see through the rips in his jeans. The urge to reach out and see how that felt under my fingers swarmed me.
“What do you say?” Strong-looking fingers tapped against his leg. As if he’d known I was focused on that exact spot and wanted to get my attention. “Should we have them now, or save them for later? Maybe after dinner?”
Something that sounded a lot like a complaining grunt left me.
“Now it is.” Lucas laughed, and that, his laughter, turned out to be reason enough to make me finally look up. At his face.
“My breakdown must have been of epic proportions,” I murmured, studying the way the corners of his eyes wrinkled with a smile. “Or maybe you’re terrified of me now and you’re just appeasing the ugly crying monster.”
“There’s nothing ugly about you.”
My lips parted, his words echoing in my ears.
As if he hadn’t just said something meant to stay with me forever, he threw the lid open, unveiling the six pastries inside. “Plus, I love being cried on every once in a while.” The box was pushed in my direction again. “It’s good for my skin.”
I shook my head lightly and fished out one sugary and cinnamony crispy piece of heaven. “Thank you, Lucas. You really didn’t have to do this.”
He grabbed one, too, and then cheered his Cronut against mine, as if there was something worth celebrating. “Friends don’t do stuff for friends expecting a thank-you, Rosie.”
Friends.
“Right.” I willed my lips upward and ended up giving him what I knew was the smallest smile in the history of smiles. He frowned, so I felt the need to distract him. “I guess we’ll have to find something to say instead of thank you then.”
His eyes danced with something I liked knowing I had put there. Even after that reminder of us being friends. “Like a code?” he asked. “Just for us?”
“Sure,” I said, loving the idea way more than he did. Far more than I should have. “Something like that.”
Lucas thought about it for a few moments, then waved his pastry-holding hand. “Cronut you. How about that?”
His smile was big, bright, all megawatt power on display.
And I looked at him as he sat there like this was nothing, like he wasn’t wonderful and he wasn’t making it very hard for me not to like him more and more, so much that I had to physically restrain myself from telling him that I believed he was the sweetest man I’d ever met. Sweeter than any pastry he could get me. “Cronut you, Lucas.”
And without another word, we dug in, equally delighted moans leaving our mouths. The contents of the box disappeared in record time. And by the time we’d both finished licking the tips of our fingers, I had successfully managed to forget about almost everything.
“So, Rosie,” Lucas said, pinning me with a look that should have warned me of what was to come. “Will you finally tell me about your writer’s block and this long line of assfaces you’ve dated?”