Page 56 of The Perfect Rom-Com

“Do you realize you are the most annoying author in the world? None of my other authors badger me like you do.”

“None of your other authors share sailor beds.” I kick above me. “So tell me. Who was it? Was it a yes or a no? Or a maybe? But could you push it along? Did you send the whole manuscript? Honestly, should I just take over? Hand me your phone.”

I reach up like a gremlin for his exposed elbow and grab it, scrambling down his arm toward his wrist.

“Bryony, stop it!” he cries out, fighting to pull his body back. He wriggles away and suddenly he’s gone, no doubt cramming himself up against the wall. “You little creeper,” he hisses. “You’re going to give me nightmares.”

“The Things Desperate Authors Do When Left with Their Agents,” I hiss back. “Thriller. Coming next March.”

Somebody in the distance gives a loud stop-it-you-are-waking-us-all-up-and-we-can-all-hear-you-except-for-Amelia-in-her-bloody-castle cough.

“Is that a yes?” I whisper.

“Does it sound like it’s a yes?” he whispers back. “Do you think we editors and agents like to stay up after midnight just chatting about books? We have lives. It could be about anything.” Five seconds pass. “Huh.”

I push up on my elbows, alert. “What’s the ‘huh’ about? What’s happening? It was about my book, wasn’t it?”

There’s a long silence.

Long enough I kick at the ceiling of my bunk.

“This is Amelia’s bus,” he hisses below.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what? Yes, that was about my book?”

“Yes.”

I purse my lips. Push myself as close as I can get to sitting. “And?”

“It’s not the answer I wanted.”

Someone passed.

My head drops back onto the pillow. It’s the phrase they all give. Every last one of them.

A generic “I’m sorry, but unfortunately, we’re going to have to pass” statement. And I ask, who? And why exactly do they have to? Why don’t you just sneak this one through the doors, huh? Let it become a raving success and you can say, “See? No harm, no foul.”

Several minutes go by and I stare at the top bunk, eyes peeled open.

My own phone has dinged over a dozen times today, students missing me in class, Gloria asking for updates. Like the rumor mill at The Bridge, word has picked up that I’ll be out for a couple weeks and has morphed itself into a widespread rumor that I’m deeply ill. With pneumonia and strep simultaneously no less.

In the span of the day, my phone has become littered with messages from students recommending everything from rubbing my feet with onions and wrapping them in warm cloths (made of linen, not cotton) to cold showers and ice baths to reduce inflammation, to hot showers and hot tea to open the airways and release the phlegm. I have with grateful heart turned away offers of two homemade tinctures made from Icelandic and lemme sea moss, three actually very delicious-sounding soups, two loaves of rosemary bread, and a little homemade essential oil mixture of wild bark, frankincense, and myrrh.

Even Phuong offered to bring me a fresh meal. Phuong, whose apartment I wandered into once when I gave her a lift home and discovered she currently had no electricity.

All these extremely thoughtful well-wishes for my recovery today fill me up more than usual with a heavy, achy heart. Painful reminders of the world that is so big and so unbalanced.

I stare at the ceiling, thinking of them. Of Gran, who’s back on the road despite her dire warning to me, quietly revealing how hopeful she’ll be to the end. She put up a big talk about giving up, and yet not twenty-four hours later, Gloria told me Gran—at the age of seventy-six—was driving through the night to scout an opportunity in DC.

Thoughts stir like a pot of soup inside me, piping hot and unable to settle to a simmer. I can’t sleep. I feel like I downed two shots of espresso, and now everything is whirring within me, my internal body humming with the humming of the bus as it drifts along the interstate. And yet, I have to. We have three events I’ll be tugged along to like a rag doll during this forced “luxury vacation.”

I’ll be up in less than six hours. And if I’m lucky, on this thin mattress, I’ll get four.

I force my eyes shut.