Page 43 of Loathing My Boss
My eyes roll, but I’m still smiling, and I can’t stop, and I wantthis. So badly. Someone to be stupid with, unashamed. I want the giggles and the wiggles and her beautiful smile and her mischievous eyes. I wantthis. I wanther. I swipe past the front matter. “Chapter one: This can’t be happening. I can’t be an alien warrior’s mate.” I settle in, ignoring the way Crisis’s eyes widen as her smile teeters on the edge of delirium and shock that I’m actually plowing ahead. I skim the next paragraph before I dare to read it, then I hum. “Crisis.”
“Yes?”
“This is immediately graphic. Do you still want me to read it to you?”
A becoming slice of red deepens the shade of her cheeks. “You should, definitely. Also, add commentary.”
“Commentary?” I turn the page, see that absolutely nothing in this first scene slows down any time soon. “What kind of commentary do you want me to add to…this?” I blink at…whatever is happening here. “It seems fairly exhaustive on its own.”
“Critique the writing.”
What an odd request. I turn another page. And another. When I’m on my fifth page without any hope of reaching an end to the tunnel, I say, “It’s grotesquely appealing to a market that is very much entirely not me. The language is tired, reused, scattered with surplus adverbs and repeating adjectives. In the first five pages, there’s not a single thingabout the characters that makes them stand out as real people. My disbelief remains. Even though it’s clear the purpose of this book is smut fantasy, I’m entirely unsure that it is even half decent smut fantasy.”
She holds out her hand, so I pass her my phone.
When she returns the device, a different book is on my screen. Something more tame. Still sci-fi, if alien romance falls beneath that genre category. I skim the walls of text that make up the first few pages. “The author seems enamored with themself and their broad vocabulary. The writing doesn’t move. It’s front heavy with told descriptions that could have been woven into action or plot more effectively than it has been. Given that there are no characters introduced amid the history, I can’t relate to anyone. I’m bored, strongly considering that reading a dictionary might prove more engaging.”
This time, Crisis takes my phone. Another book appears when she sets it back in my hand. A romcom this time. Pink. Sweet. “Juvenile. Immediately, I recognize that the author intends to be writing to an adult market, but something about the style says preteen.”
Crisis sits up, pushes herself closer, and picks another book, at random. I skim a few chapters, then I provide my notes. The cycle repeats four times, then she takes my phone, types something in that I can’t see, swipes, and holds the screen out toward me on a chapter from the middle of a book. Seems high fantasy. My genre. “Clinical,” I say. “The writing lacks all heart.” I swipe to the next page. “The author seems to be constructing a story from a tired, overdone template.”
“Shut up…” Stunned, she lowers my phone and stares at me.
“What’s wrong?” I offer her a small, tentative smile. “This is fun, isn’t it?”
Shesays, “This…is your book. You wrote this.”
My brows rise. “Did I?”
Her head dips twice, nodding.
“That makes sense.”
Confusion darkens her eyes.
I elaborate, “I write by template according to a pattern. I keep the pattern shuffled so what I’m doing is not as obvious and the flow of sentences doesn’t turn long-winded or choppy, but every line is calculated without emotion.”
Her lashes flutter as her lips hang, parted. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a job. I follow the system that gets words on the page.” Slipping the phone from her fingers, I go back a few books, to the alien one, since it’s the most outrageous. Pulling up its sales page on Amazon, I show her the rank. “This book had a hundred sales or downloads today alone. I don’t need to write anything profound. I just need to know what the market expects, and deliver on that promise.”
Her hand lifts to push a strand of hair back behind her ear, failing to latch it. The chestnut wave returns to where it was against her cheek, and she doesn’t opt to try again. “You…don’t like writing?”
“It’s tolerable enough, but it doesn’t really matter to me, no.”
“Why do youdoit?” she asks, incredulous now. “You’re rich. You have thousands of sources of income. You don’t need to publish books to make a living. Even if you never wrote anything else, your backlist…” Her breaths tighten, turning rapid. “Your backlist could support you all on its own. Why are you writing, every day, when you don’tcare?”
Because, once, my parents made medoes not sound like the kind of response a thirty-five-year-old is allowed to have—especially not when those parents have been gonefor years. I know they played a part in why I’m stuck on this routine, but the longer they’re out of my life, the more I’m finding my own reasons to act.
Why am I publishing, still, when the people who once made me are gone and I know I don’t have to?
“Because—” I lock my phone and set it on the nightstand beside my glasses case. “—I’m human.” Taking my glasses off, I close the arms down against the lenses. “I get emails every day from people thanking me for the books I write. I don’t care about the words I line up, but I do care about them. As long as what I’m doing means something to them, it’s okay. It’s not that bad to press on. I’d rather not leave them hanging or let them down.”
“What about you?” Her fists grip against the comforter. “What about what you want?”
What I want is her. Curled up. In my arms.
She’s all I’ve ever really let myself want other than a safe place to sleep and peace for my brothers.
