Page 77 of Not That Impossible

Did that feel good? I couldn’t tell. I checked my pulse, then folded at the waist when my vision whited out.

This was all perfectly normal, I was sure of it. This was like endorphins.

Well, no.

I was very familiar with endorphins.

This didn’t feel like an orgasm, or the satisfaction of a good lifting session, or a hard run. It didn’t even feel like the satisfaction of writing another Liam Nash fanfic.

This must be whatintellectualendorphins felt like. It was different, that’s all. I’d get used to it.

Feeling queasy, I stood cautiously and tottered to the kitchen. I prepared and ate a healthy salad with skinless grilled chicken breast, chased it down with three Snickers bars from my secret stash because desperate times call for desperate measures, then I went and had a shower.

I turned the shower on hot, climbed in, and stood under the spray until my brain was happily numb and my skin was rosy warm. I pulled on my comfiest sweatpants and t-shirt, climbed into bed, and took a nap.

When I woke up, I found an email notification on my phone. The email was one line long, and it was from Ralph.

It’s at the printers.

“Yay,” I whispered into the silence of my room.

17

The next morning I was scheduled to take a Box Fit class, followed by an Introduction to Weightlifting class. I wasn’t needed at the gym until ten, giving me more than enough time to get my run in, do some stretching because I’d slept in a knot and woken up feeling like I aged a century overnight, and swing by the newsagents.

I stood in front of the shelf where they kept the newspapers. We had quite the eclectic selection here in Chipping Fairford—everything fromThe New York TimesandVanity Fairto theThe Sunand theAngling Times.Tacked on at the end, there was a small stack of theChipping Fairford Inquirer.

I stared at it.

Circulation was low and, according to Ralph, dropping every quarter. He’d said that the print run was at about five thousand copies these days.

I stared at my name. I didn’t love the headline, but it wasn’t like I’d had a chance to workshop it. I vaguely remembered tossing into the subject line of the email in a frenzy of panic.

“Local Handymen Discover Body in Local Murder House,” by J.C. Connolly.

I was glad I’d gone with initials for my byline. I’d die before I told anyone what the middle initial stood for, because it was stupid, but J.C. Connolly looked much more professional than plain old Jasper Connolly, who people knew as a personal trainer from the gym.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, and called Adam.

“Hey,” he said, sounding sleepy.

“Are you still in bed?” I demanded.

“Some of us need more than five hours a night, you know. Some of us need our beauty sleep. What do you want?”

I hadn’t told Adam about the article yet. I hadn’t told anyone, as I hadn’t wanted to get my hopes up only to have Ralph cancel it because something more interesting came along. Or because he read it and thought it was crap.

“Switch to FaceTime,” I said.

“Ugh. No.”

“Come on, Adam. I’ve got something to show you.”

Adam sighed noisily and toggled his camera on. His cheeks were flushed a rosy peach, his coppery hair looked perfectly styled even though I knew that was his version of bedhead, and he was sitting on his sofa in his flat, slumped over a bowl of granola.

“That had better be reduced-sugar granola,” I told him, and didn’t even feel a twinge of guilt about my three Snickers bars.

I’dearnedthem.

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