Page 16 of Story of My Life
“Ugh.”
Zoey was right. It was a ghost town. I’d abandoned it and the readers who followed it when things had gotten too hard.
Well, I’d already done one crazy thing today. Why not make it two?
I scrolled over to the button, and before I could ruminate over whether it was a good idea or a terrible one, I started a Live video.
“Oh, wow. I guess I should have looked in a mirror first,” I said, finger combing my hair when I spotted myself on-screen. It looked as if a family of birds had attempted to erect a bird condo building in my hair. My eye makeup was smeary, and the middle-of-the-night lighting was beyond unflattering.
“So I bet you’re wondering where I’ve been and maybe also why I’m going live at three o’clock in the morning.”
I glanced at the viewer count in the upper right-hand corner. It was sitting solidly at zero.
“Or maybe you’re not wondering because you’re not there because you’re asleep like a sensible adult who isn’t in the middle of an existential crisis would be right now.”
The zero changed to a three.
“I know some authors don’t think that they owe readers anything. But honestly, I feel I owe you everything. And that starts with an explanation. So for anyone out there seeing this, my name is Hazel Hart, and I used to be a romance novelist…”
“I don’t careif the building is on fire. I’m hungover and unemployed. Let the flames take me,” Zoey said on a groan through the crack in her door Monday morning.
“No fire,” I promised. “Is this the hangover from Saturday night, or did you keep drinking all weekend?”
She screwed up her face. “What day is it?”
“Monday.”
“Then I just kept drinking.”
“Cool. I’m gonna need you to pack a bag,” I said, handing her a coffee as I forced my way into her apartment. Unlike mine, it was light and bright and mostly debris-free. “On second thought, why don’t you let me pack it for you? You’re a horrible packer. Remember that time in St. Charles when you thought you were packing jeans, but it was really just three denim miniskirts stuck together?”
Zoey stood there, still staring into the hallway. An eye mask was tangled in her curls. She wore a satin nightshirt and one sock.
“I’m over here, Sleeping Bougie,” I called as I headed for her bedroom.
She groaned. “What is even happening?”
“You’re fired, right?”
“Gee, thanks for the memo,” she said, pulling the stopper from her coffee.
I threw her suitcase on the bed and unzipped it. “I need to write a book, right?”
“How many Cherry Pepsis have you had this morning?”
“Three.” I opened her dresser drawers and found a wild tornado of denim. “Are these your stand-up or sit-down jeans?”
“Ugh. Stand-up,” she said as she sank down on the mattress next to the suitcase.
I threw them back in the drawer and pulled out another pair, then raided her underwear drawer.
“Why are you packing for me?”
I headed for the closet and flung open the door.
Good old Manhattan storage. The tiny closet was overflowing with designer duds. Zoey didn’t even need clothes hangers since everything was just crammed in on top of everything else. I grabbed a few shirts and—knowing my fancy friend—added a business suit and two dresses that were probably way too sexy for small-town life.
“Whenever one of my heroines gets her ass kicked metaphorically by the universe, I give her a fresh start,” I explained, shaking a T-shirt and a cashmere scarf out of a pair of vegan-leather knee-high boots.
