Page 1 of For the Plot
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Nikki
mirrorball - Taylor Swift
“Youtastesogood,”his voice purred as his body pushed hers up against the wall.
Ugh, purred? Really? What was he, a fucking cat?Delete, delete, delete.
I dropped my hands from the keyboard, banging my head onto the desk in front of me. I couldn’t remember the last time it had been this hard to find words that sounded right. Or even to find words at all. Usually, they flowed out of me, a never-ending, hyperfixated stream. Sure, they were pretty messy the first go-round, but they were alwaysthere.
Until the one thing I had been terrified of for the past two years finally happened. Until I had been outed as a fraud.
No, I chastised myself. I wasn’t a fraud, and my brain needed to stop being so mean. I just…
I groaned in frustration, deciding I had tortured myself enough for one evening, shutting my laptop with a decisivesnick.Pushing as far away from my desk as my messy clothes strewn floor allowed, I got up and stretched out the pain from my shoulders.
Normally I couldn’t sit in the same position for longer than five seconds at any given time. But when I got into a hyperfocus, time ceased to exist. I’d lost whole hours, entiredays, before, so focused on whatever was in front of me. Sometimes it was a productive focus—but most times, it was definitely not. Like the time I decided to finally clean my room top to bottom. One hour in, I got sidetracked reading through my old journals and trying not to cringe too hard at my teenage angst, just to look up what felt like moments later to find the sun had actually gone down hours before.
This was not one of those times. I sat down to start writing three hours ago, and the line I deleted was as far as I had gotten—a.k.a., exactly nowhere. It had been like this since The Review.
The book I was writing—supposedly writing, that is—was my third book. And of course, the first two had been hard. So hard I felt like quitting every other minute, pulled out what felt like halfmy hair, and cried my body weight in tears, which at my size, was a lot of fucking tears.
Yet, Ihadwritten them. I had been able to finish those drafts and submit them to my editor, even if it nearly killed me each time. But now? My deadline waslastweek, and I was still less than halfway through the book.
And that deadline had been pushed back from the one three months prior.
Which was three months after thefirstdeadline had been.
God, I was so fucked.
I didn’t even want to open my bank app and see what my account had dwindled down to.
Before I could spiral even further, my phone began ringing. I looked around the mess of half-full cups and empty chip bags on my desk until I eventually found it half buried under the pajamas I had thrown off this morning in exchange for more appropriate working clothes. And since I worked from my bedroom, that meant a soft cropped T-shirt and the baggiest pair of sweatpants I owned. Who willingly wore real pants at home? I shuddered at the thought.
Remembering that I was supposed to answer the callbeforeit stopped ringing, I hastily swiped across the screen without even checking who the caller was.
“Nikki!” The voice on the other end sounded pleasantly surprised, and I quietly cursed my own stupidity. Listen, my agent Lucy was incredible. I was so beyond lucky to have them on my team, and I couldn’t imagine a better person in my corner. But I also looked up to them so much, and I hated disappointing them. Which was all it felt like I was doing lately, as exemplified by the fact that they sounded surprised that I'd even picked up their call.
I truly was the worst.
“Lucy! Hey, it’s good to hear from you!” My voice sounded high-pitched even to my own ears. I had nothing good to tell Lucy, and I knew this call was not going to be a fun one for either of us. Hence why I had been avoiding their calls for the last week. Six days to be exact. The first call I ignored was the day my draft had been due, and all I sent was an email to Lucy and my editor that the draft wasn’t ready and that I needed a little more time.
“You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?” Their wry voice cut through my internal thoughts, and I focused back on the conversation at hand.
“Psh.” My mouth moved before my brain could catch up long enough to stop it. “I have no idea what you mean.” I slapped my hand to my forehead, flinching as it made a loud smack, definitely loud enough to be heard through the phone pressed against my ear.
Lucy sighed in response. “Listen, Nikki, I get it, okay? No one likes getting bad reviews.” I huffed in derision at that gross understatement. "But you need to get back on track, sweetie. You know I love you and I’ve got your back, but you’ve already pushed this deadline twice. Your sales are good, but they're not ‘I can push back deadlines indefinitely because my publisher can’t afford to lose me’ good.”
I flopped back onto my mattress, putting the phone on speaker and tossing it next to me as I stared up at the ceiling. “I know,” I reluctantly started. “I know, and I swear I’m working on it. That’s actually what I was doing when you called.”
I hated how quickly their voice perked up. “Really? And how far have you gotten?”
Wincing, I tried to decide how honest to be. It’s not like they wouldn’t figure it out when I sent them a big old draft of nothing. “Well…” I began, but they cut me off, their Nikki bullshit detector 100% accurate.
“Listen, Nikki.” Lucy’s voice was kind, but firm. And this was one of the many reasons I had known they were the right agent for me. We just clicked, and we genuinely enjoyed each other. Not to mention the fact that they're queer and understood me on that level. And, well, they were really good at putting me in my place and not letting me get away with my shit. I’m a twenty-six year old woman with late-diagnosed inattentive ADHD. If there is no external pressure for me to do something? Yeah, that’s never getting done. “I will go back to your editor and ask for another extension. But I don't know what she’s going to say.”
I’m pretty sure I knew. I was a mid-list romance author in an oversaturated genre, with no wildly viral books or huge social media followings, and only a two-book backlist to my name. My position was in absolutely no way secure. Not to mention the next segment of my advance only came once I submitted the final book under my three-book contract, and I was very quickly running out of money. I'd probably be out by the end of the year. “I swear, Lucy, I’m trying.” I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes until little stars popped up in my vision and hoped Lucy couldn't hear the wobble in my voice. I swear, all I ever did was try, and it never felt like enough.
