Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Kat gasps but Simone waves her hand, silencing her friend.
I nod, bracing.
“One: Are you going to hurt Kat again?”
I shake my head. “Not if I can help it. I’m in this for real.”
Simone nods with satisfaction.
“Two: Are you using this dinner as research for your next book?”
I shake my head. “Not unless I get explicit consent.”
Simone grins, like a shark. “Good. Three: When are you going to tell Kat you’re afraid of the dark?”
I blink, startled. “How did you—”
Kat giggles meanwhile. “Simone! Seriously?”
The blonde girl shrugs, innocent. “Just wanted to make sure your so-called boyfriend isn’t a complete robot.”
I can’t help but laugh, the embarrassment somehow purifying. “Fine. I sleep with a nightlight sometimes. Sue me.”
Simone softens, just a fraction. “Good. That means you’re human. I approve.”
Kat looks at me, then at Simone, then back at me. “You two are unbelievable.”
I lift my glass. “To questionable decisions and the people who love us anyway.”
Simone snorts, but Kat clinks her glass to mine. “To sequels,” she says.
And in that moment, with the taste of sugar and wine and the sound of laughter hanging in the air, I realize that maybe, just maybe, we’re all ready to write a better story this time. Simone gets up and disappears, saying something about meeting up with a professor, before I turn to Kat with a smile.
“That’s your friend?” I ask, black brows raised.
Kat smiles ruefully.
“She’s a handful, isn’t she? But Simone only wants the best for me. Sorry she crashed our date.”
I shake my head.
“No, I’m glad, sweetheart. I’m happy to know you have protectors all around, looking out for your welfare.”
Kat shoots me an arch look.
“But I have more than one protector,” she says.
I look her in the eye.
“Yes of course. Me, sweetheart. I’m always on your side.”
The golden girl shakes her head.
“No, someone else. Are you ready to meet him?”
My mind swirls because there’s another man in Kat’s life? Who? I hope to god it’s her dad or brother because god knows, I’ll kill any man who lays a finger on my beautiful woman. She’s mine. She belongs to me. Kat just hasn’t figured it out yet.
My girlfriend’s invited me to meet her other “protector,” and I have to say I’m not looking forward to this because the situation isn’t great. There’s something diabolical about the way college classrooms smell: cold coffee, melting backpack plastic, and the anxious sweat of two hundred undergrads who know their parents are going into debt so they can tune out on TikTok. I’m sitting in the back row of Emerson 201, a lecture hall designed by a sadist with a protractor and a grudge against the lumbar spine, watching Kat in the front row as she fills a legal pad with notes at 2x speed. Her handwriting is ferocious—tiny, upright, each line a parade of exclamation marks and sarcastic margin comments. I can’t see her face, but every so often I catch the angle of her chin as she turns toward the podium, hair gold in the morning sun, and my chest hurts with a weird, fizzy affection that is at once pride, longing, and the faint terror that she could turn around and catch me staring.
Up front, Professor Avery holds court. He’s a decrepit old man, a full head of frizzy grey hair, with a voice pitched somewhere between “gentle grandfather” and “final boss of a debate team.” He wears the required uniform for his species—tweed jacket, faded oxford, an actual pocket watch on a chain—and as he paces the width of the stage, he speaks in perfectly modulated paragraphs. He never once looks at his notes. If I had to write a character based on him, I’d call it overkill, but real life doesn’t care about clichés.
The subject is “Narrative Ethics: When Does Inspiration Become Theft?” and the whole room is hanging on Avery’s every word. He paces like a caged wolf, gesturing with his spectacles, each step a precise metronome. “Writers,” he intones, “are cannibals. We devour life. The ethical question is: when does our hunger violate the body of another?” He scans the crowd, eyes bright. “When does the homage become an autopsy?”
A girl in a pea-green beanie raises her hand, voice quivering as she asks, “Isn’t everything basically stolen from someone else? Isn’t that the whole point of literature?”
Avery beams, delighted. “Very good. All art is theft, Miss Rodriguez. But there’s theft, and then there’s sacrilege. If I rewrite your life in my own image—if I expose your pain, your desire, your most intimate secrets—do I honor you? Or do I merely take what I want, consequences be damned?”
He lets the question dangle, then gives the faintest of shrugs. “It is the burden of all storytellers. But the best ones know what is theirs to take, and what must remain sacred.”
My eyes drift to Kat. She’s still scribbling, but her hand slows. The words up front aren’t just an academic puzzle to her—they land like pebbles dropped into a well, each one sending out a ripple that hits us both. I’d like to think I’m the only man here arrogant enough to recognize himself in Avery’s lecture, but I know better.