8. Blake

CHAPTER 8

Blake

I don't know how we do it.

But we do it.

The ironic affairs of Forrest Cosway in The Heart Thief are finished and handed into Professor Dumas on time. Actually, we had it ready to go a week before but Amanda wanted to keep on tweaking it, and while I would normally not fuss with a project this much, this one was special and I understood her need to make it all that it could be. Hell, I still think it could use another round of editing, but if there's anything I've learned from this class it's that you have to learn to let it go.

Now the manuscript has been handed over (as well as emailed), and there's a heavy sense of loss and confusion in the air, like the day after your birthday. For me it's double since this was my last assignment of my entire degree and I have no idea what's next.

No idea at all.

I try not to think about it.

"So," Amanda says as we leave the classroom, casually hanging her thumbs through the belt loops of her skinny jeans. With the April weather warm but temperamental, I'm seeing more of her skin lately, and right now my eyes rest on the dusting of faint freckles on her shoulder, showcased by her emerald green tank top. The freckles even lead down to the swell of her breasts, and I have an urge to find out where else they might lead.

"So," I say. She catches my eyes on her skin, and I'm in no hurry to move them away. "What next?"

"I guess this is it," she says, stopping by the foot of the stairs. She shrugs. "I mean, class is over, the year is over."

We're over, is what she wants to say next.

I knew this was coming. When the project was complete, we would cease to be partners and cease working together every other day. I didn't expect to feel this curious pang in my chest, but it's as unwelcome as a hemorrhoid so I swallow it down, push it aside, and ignore it.

"Hopefully Dumbass will take it easy on us," I tell her, trying to find something to say.

She rolls her eyes but smiles easily. "I can't believe I never thought about such an obvious nickname, even though Professor Dumas is not a dumbass."

"You were too busy trying to be the teacher's pet," I remind her.

"This is university. There are no teacher's pets," she snipes at me.

I rock back on my heels. "Hey, I said you were trying to become one. You didn't succeed." I pause, suddenly feeling awkward. "I'm sure we'll do great. I don't mean to get all cocky—" She lets out a derisive snort and I continue, "but we wrote the fuck out of it. And I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm kind of a big deal."

"Right, right." She sighs and looks around her, her body language telling me she wants to get going. "Well, I guess I'll see you... "

"Come into Crawford's Books for a friends and family discount," I tell her with a wink. Bloody hell, that was lame. What's wrong with me?

"I promise," she says, yet I have a feeling she'll be avoiding the bookstore for the rest of her life.

She waves goodbye and heads down the stairs. It's exactly where I was going, but I don't want to do that weird thing where you say goodbye and then end up walking in the same direction, so I wait a while at the top of the stairs until I hear my name being called from behind me.

"Mr. Crawford," Professor Dumas says, waving her arms at me, the fringe on her shawl swinging. Her eyes are bright, a warm smile on her face. I love how she calls me Mr. Crawford, as if I'm distinguished somehow.

"Glad you're still here," she says as I walk over to her.

"Don't tell me you've read it already," I say.

"No, no," she says. "Just the first few chapters. You learn to speed read in this job."

I bite my lip, waiting for her to go on, praying it's not rubbish.

"It's wonderful, really," she says. "Complex. Layered. Not without its faults, of course."

"Of course," I say, though I can't believe how thrilled I am at the feedback.

"I'm sure the rest will be great," she goes on. "But I know you're graduating, and I wanted to tell you that you have talent. A gift, if I can use a cliché."

My grin is splitting my face in two. So much for being cool and composed. "You can use all the clichés you want."

"I just hope you don't stop. I know you've finished a business degree, and I know how important Crawford's Books is to the community. Just don't let that side of things squelch your creative side. If you stay disciplined, you'll be able to write whatever you want and perhaps make a living off of it, as long as you make it a priority."

Obviously this is all music to my needy ears. But I still ask, "What about Amanda?"

She tilts her head at me. "Amanda? I'm not at liberty to talk about another student." She waits a beat. "But I will say that I was right when I thought the two of you would work well together. She's got a bright future ahead of her too, as long as she doesn't give up either. Writing is a hard profession, and it easily weeds out the dreamers from the workers, the ones who want a quick buck versus the ones who want to build a career. Stay with it and you'll both do great."

"Well, I'm pretty sure you can't really make a quick buck these days unless you're writing Fifty Shades of Grey Part Eight: Grey and Greyer."

"That's what I'm talking about," she says, her tone dropping with disapproval. "So many authors are popping up all over the place because of how easy it is to get rich writing self-published erotica. But real writers take the high road."

And I've totally tuned her out because now I'm thinking about what she said:

Get rich quick.

Self-published.

Erotica.

"So people are still buying those types of books," I say slowly. "I mean I know that sex sells and ebooks are taking over, believe me I hear about it enough from my father, but…"

"The romance market is bigger than ever," she supplies, and from the set to her jaw I can tell she shares my father's opinion. "And short, dirty, kinky books are leading the pack. These so-called authors, all using pen names obviously, are uploading their trash, selling it for a buck, and yet bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that's just on Amazon. In the real world, literature rules, and that's definitely where you should be focusing your efforts."

"Definitely," I repeat absently. Hundreds of thousands of dollars? I'm starting to think working in a bookstore has blinded me to what's really going on in the ebook market.

"Anyway," she says quickly, giving my arm a squeeze with her dainty hands, "you have an honest and bright future ahead of you. Stay focused, make writing a priority, and you'll be displaying your own books in the store one day. If you need any advice, you know where to find me."

"Thanks," I tell her as she waves and heads back down the hall to the classroom.

A million wheels are spinning in my head, a million gears churning in my gut.

I run down the stairs and out into the parking lot, blinking at the bright sunshine and the few students milling about, the last stragglers after exams. Amanda and her Mini Cooper are nowhere to be found.

Calm down , I tell myself, heading to Mr. Mean. You don't need her to do this.

And I'm right. Even though I need to do a lot of research to see if what Professor Dumas says is right, Amanda doesn't need to be involved. Our partnership is over. Besides, erotica? She's the least erotic person I know.

Unless she has some dirty, kinky side hidden deep within, one her ex-boyfriend never let her indulge in.

This could bring it out.

I could bring it out.

I shake my head, trying to get my thoughts straight, to get those thoughts about Amanda far, far away.

I make a plan. I have to go to the bookstore anyway, but if my father catches me scrolling through Amazon books I can just tell him I'm doing merchandising research. Then I'm going to text Mr. Mercedes girl (what was her name again? Stella? Stephanie? Cersei?) and see if she's available for drinks tomorrow. I have some steam I need to blow off, and now that Amanda's steely presence is no longer unintentionally cock-blocking me, I need to jump back into the dating pool like a fucking cannonball where all parties get wet.

April marks the start of tourist season in the city. The flowers are in full-bloom and foreigners descend on the clean streets, looking to spend their money on tiny bottles of expensive maple syrup, T-shirts with moose and beavers on them, and slabs of smoked salmon. They also find their way to the bookstore, looking for a vacation read or just to admire the ambience, so when I get there we're already slammed.

We work non-stop, which is great for business, and even my father seems to be in a boisterous mood. He still hasn't mentioned the divorce to me, and I don't dare bring it up, but at least he's smiling more. The summer seasons have saved us in the past, but I'm not sure if this season will be enough to do it.

I end up staying late, putting all the books back in their proper places and tidying up the store while my dad jets off to an appointment that he seems awfully cagey about (I'm assuming it's with a lawyer). With the lights in the store off and darkness settling outside, I hop on the stool behind the counter and pull up the Amazon Kindle site on the work computer.

Amazon's Top 100 list is the best indicator of how books are selling, and the moment I peek at the Top 20, I'm a little mind-blown. Professor Dumbass is not such a dumbass after all.

About half the books in the Top 20 are cheaply priced erotica, ranging from $ 0.99 to $2.99. They all seem to feature the same guy, in various stages of undress. A few have Jesus beards and tattoos, more are cut off at neck level because I'm guessing their faces are hideous, and all are baring their steroid-pumped chests. Shit, I don't want to think about how small their balls must be to look so jacked up. If they're getting any pussy from being a cover model, I'm going to assume the girls will be sorely disappointed once they take off their pants.

The books also have similar titles, like Bad Boy Being Badder and Sluts R Us, and all seem to be written by Sassy LaRue and Lacey Lippes and I. Swallows.

And they're all selling well.

All of them.

Now I'm determined to find out just how well.

I do some Googling which leads me to the website of a best-selling author I've never heard of who blatantly states how much she makes from each ebook, how much she needs to sell in order to get to a certain place in the rankings, and how much she makes over the course of a year with a release nearly every month. It's tacky and probably unprofessional to boast about your earnings like that, but I'm finding it extremely informative, especially since her sales are in excess of three hundred thousand dollars.

I bring out a notepad with the store logo on it and do some math. A lot of math. My degree is coming in handy.

Basically, from what I figure so far, if I make up a pen name, find a stock image of a shirtless roid monkey, and write a twenty to thirty thousand word novella about some kind of romantic or sexual endeavour, and put it up on Amazon for ninety-nine cents, I could stand to rake in some dough. If I released every month, I'd get even more dough. If I put some money into advertising and marketing, according to various other articles and websites, I could increase my sales even more.

Sales equals money equals saving the store. It means getting enough money to hire a manager who knows what they're doing, preventing my dad from going into bankruptcy, and giving me the freedom to do—and write—what I really want to.

It's win, win, win and all I have to do is write some smut.

But it can't be just smut. It has to be the clit-throbbing, panty-soaking, thigh-squeezing smut that gets women off again and again. Something plotless and easy to follow since masturbating all day has been known to delete a few brain cells. It has to be romantic too, just enough that while the dude is nailing the heroine, he's considerate (or whipped) enough not to go around nailing everyone else.

I only have a Kindle via app on my iPhone but it's a good enough start. In the name of research, I start downloading every bestselling erotic romance book I can find until my phone is full of them, and then I start reading. I also make a mental note to not let anyone look through my phone until I've read and deleted every one of these suckers.

It's nearly midnight when my eyes start to cross and my brain feels like rubbish. I've made my way through both Big Balls , a sports romance involving a well-hung tennis player named Rock Hardon, and Begging for Seconds , about Chevy Silverado, a billionaire chef who teaches his new cook how a turkey baster should really be used. Surprisingly, it worked a lot better in the book than it did in Gigli.

Maybe it's because I'm overly tired and my mind is trying to digest hours of explicit writing, but I'm feeling hopeful. If they can all do it, there's no reason why I can't. I mean, I actually know how to write, it's just the matter of finding the time and motivation. And maybe digging up some of that romance and tenderness that these books all seem to call for. I can write the dirty fucking kink pretty well, I think, but the whole lovey-dovey aspect of it is way over my head. I've only been in love once, and it ruined me, so I'm not sure my jaded point of view will be helpful.

But there's always Amanda .

Yes, she's also jaded and a bit of an emotional robot, but she's bound to be more sensitive than I am. I know she can at least write it. Her characterization of Susan and Bethany in The Heart Thief was honest and real and came from a soft place inside of her that I know doesn't exist inside me. She may hide it behind her glasses and resting bitch face and tendency to whip insults at you like she's shelling peas, but I know it's there.

And, to be quite honest, I want to see her again.

She's a bit much to take at times and I'm certain she still thinks I'm the world's biggest wanker—literally and figuratively—but I was getting used to her company. Writing with her was fun. Fighting with her was even more so. Maybe even hot. And hot is exactly what we need to bring to the table in order to rake in the dough.

But will she go for it?

That's a different matter entirely.