Page 3 of Loved Out Loud
“Mom, Jesus.” My mom grimaces and glances around the restaurant. “Keep talking like that, and I’m not going to take you out in public anymore.”
“Hazel will break me out,” Gran winks at me.
“Sure will.” I smile back at her.
Beverly Macnamera is a gem of a woman. Fiercely independent, even after recovering from a stroke that the doctors told us she’d likely never recover from. She went from being unable to use her left arm and hand and having to relearn how to walk to knitting and taking ‘hot granny walks’ around the retirement home she lives in again.
She’s everything I aspire to be. Strong, funny, and completely unafraid to be unapologetically herself. Even when it makes her daughter cringe.
Not that my mom, Barbara, isn’t equally as amazing. After finding out my dad had an entire second family, she walked away and never looked back. She worked grueling twelve-hour shifts my entire childhood as an emergency room nurse. Her work ethic imprinted onto me.
That’s one of the reasons I’m having so much trouble beginning my next book. The pressure of writing a follow-up to my debut when it was so successful has me paralyzed. I sit down at my computer and stare at the blinking cursor for hours. Every passing minute feels like a brick laid over the corpse of my creativity.
A finger snaps in front of my dazed eyes, pulling me from the inevitable downward spiral of my thoughts.
“Stop it.” Sierra points at me. “Today is for celebrating, not stressing.” She lifts her glass of champagne, bubbles shooting to the top of the pale gold liquid. “In fact, here’s to our girl being an instant New York Times bestseller with her debut.”
All four of us tap glasses and share smiles.
My phone vibrates with a text. I set my glass down after taking a sip and try to check it slyly, knowing who sent it.
Greg: Hope the interview went well. Come over tonight, I’ll be done by ten.
My stupid heart sinks. I had wanted him to watch, especially since he doesn’t have any classes to teach today. Apparently, he can’t even be bothered to watch a clip online. Ignoring my disappointment, I text him back that I’ll be there and then slide my phone back into my purse.
When I look up I find Sierra watching me with a look of annoyance. Somehow, she’s managed to go from being a stranger to my agent to my best friend in such a short time, but she still knows every single expression I make and its meaning.
Needless to say, she’s not a fan of Greg. She loathes him on a professional level because she claims he’s too negative about my work. He’s not negative, he’s critical because it’s literally his job. He teaches creative writing at Columbia.
Yes. I’m in a quasi-relationship with one of my former professors. It crosses countless boundaries but didn’t start until after I finished taking his courses. At least not technically. But we’re also not in a committed relationship. It’s open, not that I’m interested in anyone else.
When I explained all this to her, she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “If it was a healthy relationship, you wouldn’t feel the need to overexplain everything.”
I won’t lie, her saying that did make my stomach drop through my ass. But then he asked me to come over, and we spent hours on his couch talking about literature, and hereminded me how much promise I have. The next thing I knew I was back on my knees with his dick down my throat.
I just can’t say no to him. He has this aura that’s indescribable. He’s so damn smart, and his dry sense of humor turns me into a puddle. Not to mention his British accent makes me fucking weak.
Now isn’t the time to lose myself to thoughts of him, though. It's not often that I get to share a meal with three of my favorite people at the same time. I’m going to soak up every second of the afternoon.
Two
STONE
“Hold for three, two, one,”Anya says in her soothing Pilates teacher voice. “Release.”
“Fucking hell, Anya.” My muscles tremble as I relax into the reformer. “Did they teach torture techniques in Pilates school, or was this something you learned as a child?”
“Don’t be a little bitch.” A water bottle lands on my stomach. “Make sure you stay hydrated. You’ve come a long way, but touring is going to be hard.”
“Don’t I know it.”
I blot the sweat beading my brow as I stare up at the ceiling of my Brooklyn brownstone’s gym. Two years ago I wouldn’t have thought I’d still be living at this point. Years of partying, drugs, booze, sex, over and over, night after night, left me spinning out of control. You would have thought falling off stage and breaking my back would have set me onto the path of sobriety.
It didn’t.
In fact, it made everything so much worse. I was never addicted to the cocaine or the weed, but the second those opiates hit my bloodstream I was hooked. Pills and booze are what ran me into the ground.
Literally.
