Page 55 of The Perfect Rom-Com

It’s a nauseating feeling, actually.

The old, familiar sensation of opening that folder. How many times have I opened that folder? Thousands over days. Weeks. Months. Years. And with it the rush of those old, familiar feelings that came coupled with those days, weeks, months, years of waiting for an email back from agents that never came: Longing. Hope. Embarrassment. Shame. Second-guessing.

Oh, so much second-guessing.

Even fewer people knew about my writing then.

Writing was my little plan. My little secret.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike as soon as you feel the pedals beneath your shoes. Well, right now the mouse hovering over the folder is my little jolt back in time, to a cluster of chaotic feelings I’d rather forget.

My mouse slips over to my current WIP and I click it open. Click the “Welcome Back” bubble on the side where it drops me down to the four-thousand-word mark where I was six hours ago.

I highlight the section, a painfully massive 75 percent chunk of the page. Then tap Delete. Watch the whole beautiful section of the two boys disappear. A day’s worth of work. Gone in a blink.

I take a sip of my cold coffee and begin tapping, all while the wheels in my brain begin turning, working to fill the missing dominoes I just deleted to get the story from point B to point D. Shifting the point of view from two parents of two beautiful children to two parents. Single. Painstakingly slashing through meaning to give what Amelia wants.

Fluff.

Still. It’s better than revisiting the old folder and old wounds.

I’ll go back to it.

Edit later.

But right now, it’s time to reach the masses using Amelia’s mighty pen.

Chapter 9

It’s midnight.

Running lights line the length of the bus. Amelia’s room is shut, although even the roaring sound of the ocean from her sound machine can’t drown out her snoring. I’m lying down on the thin mattress, fingers tangling themselves up, fidgeting with the sheets. The whole bus is silent (well, except for me). The bunk beds Jack and I lie on are directly adjacent to the small bathroom. I’m on bottom. Jack’s on top. They’re sailor-ship style, at least as I have imagined, only a couple inches too short and a couple inches too thin.

And I have been trying to sleep. I have.

But every time I turn over, I find myself on the precipice of falling to the floor.

And then there’s the tiny issue of . . . it’s been hours.

And nothing from Jack.

Not one tiny little thing.

We’ve spent the afternoon and all evening riding on this bus, side by side as he shot off emails and made phone calls and gave his pep talks while I drowned out his conversations about “12 percent audio rights” and “fifteen-thousand-copy print run” to focus on slashing through my novel. I’ve effectively cut the kids out of a quarter of what I’d written. It was painful, heart-wrenching success today, made only a little bit better by the fact we dined on some shepherd’s pie with the most incredible bouillabaisse of my life.

So when I hear the tiny swoop of Jack’s email now, here in the dark, I pounce.

Just as I have through every single one of his no doubt normally maddening dings and swoops. (But honestly, what sort of villain keeps his phone on all night long? Who in their right mind doesn’t put their phone on Airplane Mode or, at the very least, on silent? Workaholic literary agents named Jack, apparently.)

“Is it about the book?”

“Oh my gosh, Bryony, go to bed,” Jack whispers tersely in the dark.

“Is it?”

“I quit. I’m sorry, I just can’t be your agent anymore. We’re parting due to personality differences. The difference being, you are annoying and I am not.”

“So it’s a yes? Who was it? Did you nudge Florence too? Oh! Did you tell her you were reaching out to others—that’s what pushed her, isn’t it? She felt the pressure.”