Page 13 of Love is an Open Book
“I’m brainstorming,” I tell her, even though all I’ve been doing is scrolling through my latest attempt at act one.
The first chapter shows Sydney reading submissions in her home office. She’s a literary agent—the career I envisioned for my main character back when I was a college student living in sweatpants and scrunchies, dreaming of a walk-in closet with cashmere and blazers for fancy lunch meetings with editors, a brown-paper-wrapped manuscript lying on the white tablecloth.
I found out soon enough that no one mails printouts to publishers anymore and my own agent told me she wears sweatpants as much as I do, but four books in, Sydney still has a killer wardrobe.
She’s humming along productively in the first scene, combing through query letters for a unique premise, when she gets a voice memo from her best friend, Victor, who hopes to one day become a sought-after narrator. He’s sent her a sample for the latest audiobook he’s been hired to narrate, a business manual, except he’s done each sentence in an impression of a different actor. The twist is he doesn’t realize he’s accidentally uploaded the recording to social media as well.
The scene encompasses everything readers and viewers have loved about their friendship—Sydney even-keeled and great in a crisis, Victor enthusiastic and intuitive, the dreamer. They’ve supported their friends through career changes and big moves and finding love, all the while showing up for each other when plus-ones are no-shows and relationships sour. Good or bad, they’ll be there for each other because there’s no secret yearning wedged between them.
The opening scene is full of banter and energy, but there’s no reason for their relationship to change. Unlike other characters, I can’t bring myself to introduce conflict into their relationship. I don’t want to shove them past the safety zone of friendship into the shaky unknown of passion.
“What’s got you stuck?” Evie takes a noisy slurp of her green tea, and the middle-aged guy at the table next to us makes a big show of putting his headphones on. “Is it a sex scene?” she asks, in a louder voice, side-eyeing the grumpy man, who lets out an affronted huff.
Usually talking through plot problems is a sure way to get me unstuck, but I can’t do that without explaining how personal the story feels. How every time I’ve tried to build a love story from a friendship, it crumbles.
Ted was the first, but there was also Stewart, an aspiring mystery author I met through social media back when I was unpublished. He cheered me on through rejections and rewrites and was there—in spirit—to celebrate my first book deal. Our friendship shifted from online to IRL when he moved to Chicago for his day job. For a year or so we met up sporadically at bookstores and author events.
Then one day he asked me out. I hadn’t felt a spark but figured that might be because I’d closed myself off to the idea of friendship turning into romance. But I didn’t feel any chemistry after our first kiss, or our second. The dates felt like all the other times we hung out—enjoyable, but not enough to build a future on. So I explained how highly I thought of him, but said things weren’t working out. Asked if we could go back to being friends. That’s when he revealed he hadn’t moved to Chicago for work after all, but for me.
It felt like a betrayal. Like all along he’d been dissatisfied with what we had, only hanging out with me in the hopes of more. Maybe I overreacted, but in any case, he didn’t want to “settle” for friendship. Didn’t want me in his life unless there was a possibility we’d be together. When a book I was excited to launch tanked on release day, I’d scrolled to his contact, looking for someone to commiserate with, only to remember he wasn’t in my phone anymore. It stung, even though years had passed.
If that ever happened with Gavin, not being able to celebrate with him after fixing a tricky plot hole, not giggling at his commentary during awards season when I host watch parties for the outfits alone, not getting a call when his dad is driving him up the wall or a client insists he move the tree he just planted in their backyard to the front because they want a sight line from their formal living room—that would wreck me.
That’s why I can’t go on this date with him. Not even once. Not even for pretend.
But Evie is the queen of intricate plots. Maybe she could help me find a way out of this predicament without me revealing the mess Gavin and I got ourselves into.
Trusting her not to kill me if she finds out the truth, I say, “I’m wrestling with how to get Sydney and Victor to go on a date.”
“That’s a tough one,” she says. “What obstacle would make that a feasible choice?” Like always, she cuts to the heart of motivation, a key element of fiction structure.
But while Gavin and I have a goal—to get me past this block—I can’t tell her about it. “Maybe they have to pretend.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh, fake dating? Yes, please.” She rubs her hands together, the silver rings on her thumb and forefinger clinking. “But they’re friends. This could get messy, girl.” Exactly what I’m worried about. “Ilovemessy,” she adds. “Readers love messy. But you’ve got to have rules.”
She’s right. If this was for my characters—and it is, sort of—then they’d need ground rules. “What about a contract? Sydney handles those for her clients all the time. I bet she could write an ironclad fake-dating agreement.”
“Love that idea.” Evie takes her cardigan off the back of the chair, buttoning it over her spaghetti-strap denim dress because the café is blasting the air-conditioning to compensate for the blistering temps outside. “Does the contract have a physical intimacy clause?”
The guy next to us scratches his ear, pushing one of his headphones aside, and Evie and I share a look. Dude is definitely eavesdropping.
With a glance at him, I whisper, “Absolutely not.” Gavin and I are not kissing on this fake date.
She frowns. “What if someone catches them and they have to prove they’re really dating?” Oh right. She thinks we’re discussing fictional characters.
For a moment, I reconsider the wisdom of getting Evie’s advice without divulging the truth. Throwing fictional characters into mayhem makes for great books, and she doesn’t know what I’m trying to figure out is how to navigate a real-life fake date. No extra mayhem required.
“They’re friends,” I insist. “Physical intimacy would be a bridge too far. They need to come back from this.”
“Okay, but at some point—”
“They’ll get there eventually.” I cut her off before my brain unhelpfully supplies images of Gavin’s lips pressed to mine. I’ve seen him kiss women, quick kisses goodbye or hello. But it’s not like he’s making out with his girlfriends in front of me.
Well, other than that New Year’s Eve house party our last year of college. He and I were getting air on the balcony, and he’d draped his coat over my shoulders just as the countdown to midnight began. The sliding door opened, and my then-boyfriend had stumbled out to steal a kiss. We’d only been dating for a few weeks, and it ended not long after when I found out we weren’t exclusive. That night, he was drunk and sloppy, and I turned down the midnight kiss, telling him I was headed home.
Gavin had disappeared and I went in search of him to give back his coat and found him tangled up with a girl in the kitchen, his hand in her hair. I remember feeling a strange lurch in my chest, probably shock at seeing him so lost in someone else when only a few minutes ago we’d been laughing together. He’d been thoroughly engrossed in the kiss, giving her all his attention in a physical way he never had with me. That explained the twist in my gut that felt a lot like jealousy, or maybe desire.
Evie snaps her fingers in front of my face and I jerk to awareness.
