Page 77 of A Storybook Wedding

I have a new message in my inbox. My heart races, but only for a split second. I see it’s from Alice Devereaux and assume it has to do with the following day’s workshop. Except, wait a second. The subject line reads Congratulations.

I click to open it, and my eyes skim the page.

“Holy shit. Pen, you won’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I won that thing!”

“What thing?”

“The contest thing. Listen to this! ‘Dear Cecily Jane Allerton. On behalf of the MUMFA selection committee, I am pleased to inform you that your submission to the Rising Star Program has received the award for Best New Fiction. We hope you are as excited about this accomplishment as we are. As you know, the award comes with a stipend of one hundred dollars, which will be mailed to you at the address in your application. It also comes with publication in our literary journal, The Isle, as well as a special reading at our MUMFA graduation ceremony on January third. More details will follow shortly. In the meantime, congratulations on this esteemed accomplishment. Yours, Professor Alice Devereaux, Selection Committee Chair, MUMFA Rising Star Program.’”

“Babe! That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you!”

There’s that word again. Mmm. It gives me the chills. It’s been so long since anyone’s called me by a nickname like that. I shake my shoulders. “Oof,” I say. “I really needed a win. This is good.”

He gives me a hug from behind. I can smell the now familiar ingredients he uses to create a scent that is uniquely Nate, and it warms my insides. He feels like home in the best possible way. “So you’ll be reading at graduation tomorrow then. That’s awesome. I can’t wait.”

“Thank you,” I say, grinning. “And now I’ll have a very particular accolade to put on my next batch of query letters.”

“You see? That’s why you’re supposed to send them out in batches. Because things happen, and you never know when you might want to change them.”

“You’re so smart. I’m definitely glad that I married a PEN Award winner who’s been down this treacherous road before.”

He kisses my neck, and I discover I’ve found an antidote for my querying jitters. Sex with Nate seems to get my mind off things.

Good to know.

The following day, my morning workshop is a lecture covering what to expect when your manuscript goes out on submission—a nice hopeful change from the therapy session Alice Devereaux should have led for when we’re in the query trenches. Of course, I am the only student at Matthias who’s actively in the process of looking for an agent. Nate says I’m a unicorn. I think maybe I’m just the village idiot, and everyone’s having a grand old time watching me flail about like a cartoon character that somebody’s inadvertently lit on fire.

People act funny when they’re jealous, Nate tells me.

After workshop, we have lunch, and there’s an interesting energy in the air. This is our last full day of residency. Tomorrow, we leave the island. Students and faculty are tired; it’s a lot to constantly be “on” for twelve-plus hours every day for over a week, but there’s also the buzz of excitement about the graduation ceremony. Friends and family members of the grads will be there, and there’s a champagne toast afterward in the same area of the main house where the New Year’s Eve thing was held. The faculty members are waning from seven days of teaching and lecturing. Everyone is eager to see who will be matched with whom for mentorship this semester. The list will be up on my old friend, the Whiteboard, tomorrow morning. The entire lot of us are walking around kind of like a bunch of children on Christmas Eve—all sugared up from too many of Santa’s cookies and ready to crash but trying to stay up to catch the big guy coming out of a chimney.

Of course, in my house in Queens, there was no chimney. Mom used to leave a window cracked and told us that Santa knew to just reach in and open it all the way—and that he would close it up on his way out. Not going to lie, between our strange rituals and the annual viewing of Home Alone, I used to have recurring nightmares about getting robbed every December.

It’s a funny thing that I remember that little tidbit as I’m getting dressed for graduation. No cap and gown for me, of course. I’m not a grad yet. But Nate has to don academic regalia, and I adore how cute he looks in it all.

“You nervous?” he asks me as I straighten my dress in the mirror.

I shrug. “It should be fine. I mean, I’m not psyched about reading, but I have to get used to it, right? Like Dillon Norway said, I have to be willing to immerse myself in this world, and reading my work aloud to strangers is definitely a part of it.”

“You’re immersing, that’s for sure. How many followers are you up to?”

“I haven’t checked since lunch. I don’t want to become one of those people who’s always on my phone. It was very much on purpose that I never had it before this.”

“Time suck, right?”

“Yup. I mean, just yesterday alone, I was on there for over three hours when all was said and done.”

“How do you know?”

“I logged it.”

Pen smiles at me and gives me a soft kiss on my temple. “Of course you did.”

“I’m going to try and keep myself to two sessions a day—one in the morning and one at night, no more than twenty minutes per session.”

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