Page 67 of Going Viral for Christmas
but you?—
you gave me in something I’ve never known before.
Hope.
A glimpse of a home I’ve been aching for my entire life.
Thirteen
AVA
Feast and Fiction, my ass.
They should’ve called itChaos and Crippling Foot Pain. OrHerding Bookish Cats: Live!
Either way, my voice is gone, my Sharpie smells like betrayal, and I’ve officially hit my social limit for the week. Maybe the decade.
The Massachusetts leg of our book tour was supposed to be the calm before the family storm. One more round of panels, photo ops, and pretend-you-love-each-other banter before I escape to Salem for Thanksgiving and let my mom feed me into a coma.
Nothing about this day was calm.
By noon, the fire marshal was threatening to shut us down due to the line snaking through the hotel lobby and out the front entrance.
By two, someone threw a pair of lace-trimmed panties onstage during mine and Soren’s fantasy-romance panel.
By three, I’d lost a contact, and Fisher had to sprint up eight flights of stairs–because the elevators had been overtaken by enthusiastic readers–to my hotel room for a replacement. When he finally returned, he was muttering about “diva-level ocular emergencies.”
And by the signing hour, security had to escort a woman, who wasvisibly upset, out after she demanded Soren write his phone number inside her book.
He gave hermine.
“I panicked,” he said, later in the green room. “And it felt… thematically appropriate.”
I should’ve murdered him. Instead, I laughed. Because as much as I pretend to roll my eyes at all this—at him—there’s a part of me that doesn’t hate it. The routine, the rhythm of being with him in these tight spaces, the banter we slip into so easily.
He watches me like he's trying to burn every square inch of me into his brain. And, okay, so it’s fake. For the fans. For the tour. For the algorithm. But it doesn’talwaysfeel fake. It didn’t in D.C. It especially doesn’t now, hours after the day has ended, when we’re back in the suite and the world is finally quiet.
The buzz of the crowd is still ringing in my ears, and my feet ache in that deep, satisfying way that means I did something productive.
The air smells faintly of lemon polish and the warm, plasticky scent of overworked electronics. The floor lamp beside the couch throws a soft amber glow across the room, catching the dust motes drifting lazily in the air.
My hoodie sleeves are pushed halfway up my arms. I’m absently rubbing circles against the bare skin of my forearm, chasing a kind of comfort that never quite settles.
Curled up in the corner of the suite’s overstuffed sectional, one leg tucked under me, the other bouncing in a slow rhythm, I turn on the TV.
Itriedto write earlier. Opened the doc, stared at the blinking cursor, and rearranged the same three sentences twelve different ways. Deleted them all.
My deadline’s breathing down my neck. It’s a fire-breathing ghost, and my brain’s decided to check out at the worst possible time.
So, Netflix it is. A temporary distraction-slash-bribe for my creativity. Maybe if I feed it enough angst and banter, it’ll finally come out of hiding.
Some old cooking show plays on the flatscreen, quicklybackground noise against Fisher’s monologue as he flits around the kitchenette. He’s methodically organizing the minibar, muttering about electrolytes and avoiding sugar crashes–which is comical coming from him. He’s acting like we’re prepping for a summit in the Andes.
My fingers toy with the tassels on one of the couch pillows, twisting them until they coil tight, and I let them unwind again. It’s either that or check my phone, and I’m not ready to scroll through any more tagged posts ofBell and The Blade.
“You know,” Fisher says, voice casually laced with intent, “youcouldinvite him to Thanksgiving.”
One brow raises. “What? Who?”
