Page 132 of Smoke and Fire
6
BASTIAN
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
The words battered my brain with every step down the street. What had I been thinking?
I didn’t know Dahlia beyond the curious looks she leveled my way the less than thirty minutes we’d been in the same room together. Of all the people to approach with such a wild request, I’d given it to the one person who’d say no.
Self sabotage at every level.
Panic made my chest tight as I headed down the street, toward the neighborhood where Hernandez and Dagny lived. Pineville was so small it wouldn’t take me long to get there. My bag hit my back as I walked, thoughts in a spiral as I thought about what to do next.
Lizbeth? Would she work for me? Unlikely. I already knew Lizbeth, but not personally. Her obsession with books and the local book club made her a Pineville legend. Besides, she managed a business with her husband.
Didn’t she have a baby coming soon?
Dagny . . . no. I wasn’t ready for Dagny, and then Hernandez, and then all three of my high school best friends—collectively called the Merry Idiots—to know my secret. Dagny was busy with the construction company that just hired her on after she graduated college last year anyway. Not a good fit.
My steps to Hernandez’s place slowed. I still needed to go to the store, stock up on blister stuff for my kit, some new laces, and protein bars. So many protein bars. But not yet. Now I needed to call someone that I’d been avoiding for too long.
With a sigh, I headed back toward Dad’s house. If I didn’t call Pri now, she’d strangle me later.
AFTERIRETURNED HOME,Psycho butted her head against my leg while I sat at the table and listened to Pri prattle in the background.
A tingling sensation pervaded my hands as I tried to hold my phone. I put it on speakerphone when my thumb went numb and set it on the table. My muscles and tendons ached as I stretched them out, swollen from all the chainsaw work on our last fire.
“Your anonymity as a person isn’t really the problem with Jess, is it?” Pri asked and pulled my attention back to the moment. “I mean, I don’t want to circle the wrong tree here.”
Despite occasionally grouchy emails, Pri had a gentle nature. Her quiet way of speaking and easy demeanor had first drawn me to her. It bled into her voice now, as if she nudged a box of eggs toward a precipice. Calmly and with painstaking care. Regardless of delivery, however, a precipice was still a precipice.
“It’s about the money,” I said. “We’re both aware that my intentions aren’t exactly the purest. This isn’t some higher calling. This is how I save my family.”
“But you’re so good at writing romance, Bastian,” she cried. “There’s some inner romantic in you that’s dying to get out. Why else would you have written a romance book? You could have gone straight to a culturally and historically more masculine-dominated genre, like mystery or thriller.”
“Because romance sells. I studied the markets before I wrote the book.”
“You saw the book through and you wrote twenty others, so there must be something in you that likes the subject matter.”
“I like taking care of my family.”
She sighed. A resignation if I’d ever heard one.
“Okay, I give up.” I could practically hearher shrug. “Regardless of motive here, you’ll still make money after people figure out that you aren’t a woman named Jess, which takes us back to the original point. This reallyisn’tabout a man being Jess because you’d still make money. There’s something else that’s pushing your career decisions, and I think you should figure it out.”
I scowled at the wall. She didn’t even know what she meant. How long had she been talking in circles over this? At least ten minutes. How was I supposed to understand her if she didn’t fully get it or herself? Or maybe I didn’t want to understand.
That made sense.
“Many readers will be loyal to your books no matter your gender,” she continued, “now more than ever. Some readers will drop out, but most won’t even care. Some might even read more books to make a point. If anything, it’ll definitely get you publicity and probably sales. It’s certainly one method of getting your back list to sell, I’d wager. Besides, a lot of readers won’t ever know about the update . . . unless you make headlines,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Thatafterthought is what made my teeth grind at night.
“Face it, Pri. Jess turning into a thirty-something-male would make the headlines, and not in a transgender kind of way but in a this-author-lied kind of way. It looks terrible.”
“Probably, yes.”
“And that is the lastthing I want. People will descend on my life and I’d really rather avoid that.”
