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“Three days will let me get caught up, and I’ll be connected for urgent business. I did request high-speed internet.”
“And I thought that was for chilling in your room with Netflix.”
“Netflix and chill,” he said, waggling his brows.
Daphne laughed. “Oh my God. I was doing research for Edge, following teen blogs to be sure I had the voice down, and I saw what that means for actual teens. The next time Nia used it, I had great fun poking at her.”
“Yeah, in my case it was a teenage cousin who told me. Way to make me feel old.” He considered riffing on “Netflix and chill” and seeing how she responded. But no, he would do nothing to suggest he might be down for a mere hookup. Slow and steady.
He settled in, sipping his beer and smiling as she did the same, an easy silence falling over them. He hated leaving. He had to, of course, and he’d see her again in a few days, but he’d love to find some excuse to invite her back to Vancouver with him.
Hey, maybe you could hang out with Nia. Get a little big-city shopping time in before our trip.
Yeah, the former presumed that Nia wasn’t busy, and the latter suggested that Daphne needed a new wardrobe for the trip. He’d seen how she dressed at their first meeting. She had the wardrobe for this.
He just wanted to bring her home with him. Unfortunately, his apartment was a tiny one-bedroom, which meant no. Not yet.
“So…” He scratched his stubbled chin, which reminded him that he could shave, being between the shoot and the tour. “Since you’re stuck with me tonight, and you’ve done quite enough cooking, and I’d rather not rummage through your cupboards to make dinner for us. Want to go out?”
She smiled. “I’d love to.”
DAPHNE
For the first twenty-four hours after Chris left, Daphne did nothing but clean and catch up—on everything from correspondence to sleep. Sleep most of all.
The problem with sleeping so long and so hard was that by the second night, she wasn’t tired enough, and that unsettled sleep dragged nightmares in its wake.
First came the ones of being on tour. She’d drifted off smiling at the thought of meeting readers. She’d craved that in a way she hadn’t expected. Of course, she wanted them to read it. That was the point of writing it. Entertaining herself, yes, and in this case, her dying mother, but also sharing her story with the world. Entertaining readers the way other writers had entertained her.
Once the advance copies had been out for exactly two weeks—yes, she’d marked it on her calendar—she’d begun haunting Goodreads. Oh, every writer in every writing community cautioned against it. But Daphne was an architect, she was accustomed to criticism, ready to learn and grow where possible, and chalk it up to a personal taste difference where applicable.
The first four reviews had set her heart floating. Three loved it, and one liked it with a few justified quibbles. The week those reviews came in, she’d written ten thousand words on the sequel.
Then came the fifth. She’d only read it once, but could recite it by heart.
Loved Atticus and Finn. Kept hoping Theo would get bitten by a zombie and die. She never stopped whining.
Daphne knew this kind of response was not uncommon. Some readers who fell in love with the guys decided the girl wasn’t worthy of them, as if the protagonist was their romantic rival. That lucky girl had two guys competing for her, and she was such a stuck-up bitch that she didn’t give either of them a chance because she was too busy doing silly things like trying to stay alive. Zombies want to eat me. My family is all dead. I don’t know if I have enough food to get through the winter. Waa-waa. So much whining.
Rationally, Daphne could ignore the review. Instead, she found herself hunched over her manuscript searching for introspection that could be interpreted as whining. She started fretting that she’d made Theo unlikable—too independent, too chilly, too closed off… too much like herself.
She’d stopped reading reviews because as much as she loved the pure joy of seeing a reader connect to her story, the negative ones cut too deeply into her confidence and impeded her ability to write. But now she’d go on tour and meet readers face-to-face, where—she hoped—they’d be less likely to say that they wanted her main character to die.
She fell asleep on that high. Soon she dreamed she was at a signing, happily watching Chris sign while she opened the books and took down name spellings. Then a young woman passed Chris and walked up to her.
“You lied to us,” she said.
Daphne hesitated, sticky note in one hand, marker in the other. “Lied?”
“You said he wrote it.” The girl jabbed a finger at Chris. “You lied. To us. To your readers.”
“It wasn’t like that. It’s just a name.”
“A man’s name. What kind of message does that send to girls like me? Girls who want to write books like this?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant.” The girl slammed the book down on the signing table. “What matters is that you did it.” She turned on her heel and walked away.
