Page 14 of The Write Track
“Maybe. I guess I’m just braced for it to go badly. He’s been a real shit since I broke up with him. He keeps calling and calling. Then I change my number, and a few months later someone gives it to him. He’s obnoxious on the phone but doesn’t do anything that could get him in trouble.”
“You realize that’s stalking, right?” I was offended on her behalf.
“Not according to the cops Rose talked to.”
“Rose talked to them?”
Now she hesitated. “I didn’t want to make a thing out of it. Rose didn’t have that problem.”
I managed a smile. “No, she’s good that way.” I gestured forward. “Come on. He’s gone. You really should get to know us if we’re going to be hanging out at the retreat together. Plus, we’re not all that bad. I’m the best of all of us, so you lucked out there, but the others are worth knowing too.”
A giggle escaped, and she looked five times lighter than she had only moments before. “I guess I could eat. I saw a steak on the menu that looked good.”
“Ah, a fellow beef lover.” I gave her a sage nod. “A woman after my own heart. We’re going to get along fine.”
She paused with her hand halfway to the door. “You really did me a favor when you stepped in that way. I was kind of frozen. I appreciate it.”
“It’s no big deal. It was honestly just instinct. I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him.”
“You have good instincts, then. It takes most people a lot longer than that to figure out who he really is.”
I wanted to ask her who he really was, but she was just beginning to settle down. Roiling her up again seemed like a mistake. “Well, it will be fine. You can tell everybody at the table I’m already your favorite, and we’ll go from there.”
Her lips swished back and forth. “You’re kind of full of yourself,” she said finally.
“You’re just figuring that out? I’m way full of myself.”
“I like a man who admits his faults.”
“Then you’re going to love me. I have nothing but faults.”
4
FOUR
Seeing Preston had been bad, but it hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected. The anticipation was always somehow worse, something I needed to remind myself of more often.
The next two weeks were spent getting to know Bree and Hayley. They adopted me without prompting, gave me tours of Savannah, and took me to the best restaurants. Neither of them asked about Preston, even though they were clearly curious.
That changed the day we went shopping for clothes. We had a better picture of what we’d be dealing with this summer, and I had no idea how I was supposed to dress for mingling with authors and readers on a regular basis.
“So the retreat thing is new?” I asked as we perused a boho shop with wild leggings and themed shirts.
“Yup.” Bree nodded. “Last year, we just had a bar event every two weeks. It went well.”
“Except Bree picked up two stalkers,” Hayley offered matter-of-factly.
I frowned at Bree. We hadn’t had a chance to discuss this before Preston interrupted the night we met. “Stalkers?”
“It’s not as bad as she makes it out to be,” Bree assured me.
“How was it not bad?” Hayley gave Bree a hard look. “One guy kept showing up to sexually harass you week after week, and a woman went to your house because she was jealous of your relationship with Brody. She wanted to kill you.”
“She didn’t really want to kill me.” Bree vehemently shook her head. “She was just having a rough time of it.”
I blinked, multiple times, as I absorbed this information. Finally, when I spoke, my words came with a softness I hadn’t expected. “You seem pretty upbeat for somebody who was stalked multiple times.”
She laughed at my response. “The guy who kept showing up didn’t technically sexually harass me.”
