Page 68 of Now That It's You
She broke off there, her eyes filling with tears. Kyle said nothing, not sure what he could say. His mother didn’t know the half of it. She had no idea how awful it really had been. Kyle’s chest ached with regret, and his limbs felt liquid and useless. He reached for his mother’s hand again and gave it a small squeeze. “Let’s talk about something else.”
His mother dabbed at her eyes with the napkin, then gave a tight nod. “Yes. Let’s. Something a little more uplifting than that woman.”
Kyle nodded, biting back the words he could never say. That woman had been the most uplifting part of these last three weeks.
Or maybe the last ten years.
Chapter 12
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Kendall asked as she huffed along beside Meg on Wednesday afternoon, her neon-pink running shorts hitching up on one leg as Kendall reached down to scratch a bug bite.
Meg wiped her brow and kept going, wishing her stride was half as long and elegant as her best friend’s. She pressed on anyway. “I just feel like I need to get in better shape,” she said. “I’ve been feeling a little squishy lately.”
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with bumping uglies with Kyle on Saturday night, would it?”
Meg felt the heat creep into her cheeks, but she chalked it up to the exertion of the run. “Not at all.”
“Liar.”
“Fine. Maybe a little. You try having a man hoist you up and grope you against a wall and not feel?—”
“Hell, yes! Where do I sign up for that?”
“My point is that having a guy try to lift me up off the ground is a good wakeup call that I could stand to lose a pound or two.”
“Please,” Kendall scoffed. “It doesn’t sound like he was exactly repulsed by your figure. Men like a little squish.”
“They like squish in some places. Not all places.”
“So you’re doing this for Kyle?”
“No way,” Meg panted. “I’m doing this for me. I’m not seeing Kyle again. Not like that, anyway.”
“Liar!”
Kendall’s declaration was louder this time, but Meg just shook her head. “Nope. Come on, Kendall. I told you it was a stupid idea for me to sleep with him. His family’s spent the last two years hating me, and now they’re suing me. Can you think of a worse person for me to be fraternizing with right now?”
“Fraternizing, huh? Is that what the kids call it these days?”
“Can we talk about something else?” Or nothing at all. Meg was feeling short of breath, and they hadn’t even gone a mile yet.
“Fine.” Kendall turned off on a narrow path leading toward the river, and Meg’s mind flashed to the last time she’d been here, running through the woods with an imaginary dragon and Kyle with a bag of marshmallows. Had only three weeks passed since then? It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Did I tell you I’m having drinks with my literary agent tomorrow?”
Kendall laughed. “You don’t know how much I love hearing you say ‘my literary agent.’”
“You don’t know how many times I had to practice saying it before it rolled off my tongue.”
“So is she going to tell you how much money you’ve made?”
That was one new development in the situation. When it quickly became clear that Meg’s little self-published cookbook was selling faster than than the print-on-demand service could keep up with, her agent had locked down a contract with a traditional publisher.
It was a win for their ability to keep up with sales, but a loss for Meg’s ability to track sales.
“My agent keeps saying we won’t have hard numbers for a while,” she panted, wiping a sweaty curl off her forehead. “You don’t start seeing checks roll in right away, not even for a bestselling book. Hell, maybe I won’t make much money at all.”
“Please. You’ve been in the number-one slot on The New York Times Bestsellers list for two weeks. Pretty sure that’ll earn you more than a cup of coffee and a donut.”
