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Chapter 12

Eloise

Things had changed between us this weekend, and I was still deciding if it was a good thing or a bad thing. She’d been the one to message me first, but I’d been the one to ask her about the book. And when she’d sent me that drunken selfie on Saturday night, I’d responded. I couldn’t help myself.

She looked so happy and gorgeous and free and honestly, it took my breath away. When was the last time I’d let myself go like that? Danced in a group of people and not cared what I looked like? Sure, I’d gone to author conventions and had gotten a little tipsy at the bar, but I’d always been too conscious of my image to allow myself to let loose.

Nowadays, the only wild dancing I did was when my nieces were trying to teach me the latest moves they’d learned online and I usually failed spectacularly.

The kind of dancing that Cadence had photographed at the club was in my past. Except, it wasn’t even in my past because I’d never been the kind of girl who went to a club, not even in college. It was a waste of time, in my opinion at the time. People got drunk and sloppy and silly and I’d rather spend my time honing my craft and getting as many words out of my brain and onto a computer document than do anything else. Words meant a future. Getting drunk and dancing meant nothing.

I always told myself that I hadn’t missed out on anything, but that picture of Cadence hit me like a high-speed train. Her joy was radiant and mesmerizing. I’d pulled up the picture and looked at it so many times over the weekend. Camille almost caught me on Saturday and I had to quickly swipe away and pretend that I’d been reading an email or something.

And then there were the messages. So. Many. Messages. I’d known from that first interview that Cadence was a talker, but she had obviously been holding back. A lot.

No sooner had I asked something than she’d sent me an answer with near excruciating detail. How in the hell did she type so fast? The way she answered was interesting, though. She might say a lot, but I liked knowing what she had to say. Her mind was a twisting, complicated place. She’d start a sentence somewhere and end up somewhere completely different and it would take me a few read-throughs to find the common thread that connected everything. Sometimes I didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

Cadence was interesting. More interesting than I’d given her credit for. It felt like we’d unlocked something new between us with these messages and I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not.

“Who are you talking to?” Camille asked me for the fourth time on Sunday as we sat in the sun and sipped on bellinis by the water. John had apparently taken the kids out to the trampoline park and told Camille to invite me out for a day off. Drinks and appetizers were first up, then shopping and strolling, and finally back to Camille’s to sit in the quiet of the house and enjoy the silence.

“No one,” I said, turning my phone over so I wouldn’t be tempted to respond to Cadence.

“You’re talking to someone,” she sang as she sipped her drink and smirked at me. “You forget that I know you, El. I know your face and I know when you’re distracted. And I know when you’re happy. Whatever you’re looking at, whoever you’re talking to, is making you happy. I’m not trying to give you a hard time about it. I just want to know what’s going on in your life.”

Being friends with someone nearly your whole life was wonderful at times, and it was not so wonderful at times. Camille knew the exact words to use to get me to confide in her. Like she had a key to unlocking me.

“I can’t tell you,” I said. I absolutely could not tell her that I was talking with my much younger assistant with a goofy grin on my face that had no business being there.

“Eloise Irene Roth. Are you online dating?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said immediately, grabbing onto the suggestion like a life raft. “Yes, I’m online dating. Sort of. I’m trying it out.”

Camille let out an excited squeal and clapped her hands together. “I knew making you a profile on that famous people site was going to pay off,” she said. I wanted to roll my eyes. She’d forced me to make it, with her input, two years ago on my birthday and had been pestering me about it off and on ever since. I’d gone on a few times and had looked at the potential guys, but it seemed like such an artificial way to meet someone. I didn’t want to get to know someone that way. I guess it worked for some people, but it wasn’t for me.

But now, it was the perfect excuse.

“Well, whoever he is, I can’t wait to meet him.” She tapped her glass against mine and then drained it just as our server came over and asked if we wanted refills.

“We just started talking,” I said, feeling a little ball of shame settle into my stomach for lying to my best friend. “I don’t even know what it is at this point.”

Nothing. It was nothing, because it had to be nothing. And it wasn’t even flirting. It was just talking. And I couldn’t help it that Cadence was funny. Her making me laugh had nothing to do with flirting. I was straight.

“Well, I am going to need allll the details once you figure it out.” Camille reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “This is going to be good for you. Trust me.”

* * *

“You know what I hate?”Cadence said when she walked in the next day with coffee and our usual breakfast sandwiches. Not even a hello.

“Good morning to you, too,” I said, pulling out plates.

“Right, good morning, yeah,” she said, handing me my coffee. “I hate it when someone acts like they have never ordered coffee at a café before. They stand in line for like, ten minutes and then when the barista asks what they want, they act like they’re brand new and don’t know what the procedure is. It’s ridiculous, and it’s just plain rude to everyone else standing in line behind them while they figure out what the fuck they want, you know?”

The words flew out of her and I saw that her hair was extra messy today, pulled back into a bun with wisps going everywhere.

“Wow,” I said when she stopped to take a breath. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Her eyes flew wide, as if she realized belatedly how many words she’d just throw at me. I couldn’t fight back a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her cheeks and face and ears and upper chest blooming red with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to apologize, Cadence. You can talk to me. I don’t mind.” It was true. Anyone else saying all of that would have made me beg for mercy and silence, but Cadence doing it was different. I didn’t know why.

“And it is annoying, I agree,” I said as I unwrapped my sandwich. She sat down with me and there were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, and I could feel her holding back across the table.

“You didn’t bring me anything haunted, did you?” I asked, looping back to our previous conversation from Saturday.

She looked up and her face broke into a smile. “No. Thought about it. I will next time. Sneak it into your house and hide it somewhere and you’ll have to find it.”

I narrowed my eyes and glared. “You wouldn’t dare.”

There was that rapport we’d created this weekend. I’d wondered if it would translate to seeing each other in person, or if it was just a weekend messaging thing.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” she said with a smirk and something warm started to expand in my chest, like a balloon inflating.

“I can still fire you, you know.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I’ve made myself invaluable to you now. Who would bring you your sandwiches every day and make sure that everything you read is in the right font and correct size?”

I rolled my eyes. “I could find someone else to do that for me.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Could you now? Then why were you so desperate that you hired me?”

“I wasn’t desperate,” I said immediately. “You were simply the best candidate for the job.”

She let out a snort. “We both know that’s not true. I was definitely not qualified for this job.”

That was true. She hadn’t been completely qualified. But then I had been desperate enough to give her an interview and something about her had made me say yes.

I waved my hand. “A moot point. You’re hired now.”

“You’re stuck with me, Eloise Roth,” she said, picking up her coffee. My stomach did a slow somersault when she used my first and last name together like that.

My sandwich was getting cold, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. “Seems that way, Cadence.”

* * *

I pushedmyself back from my desk with a groan.

“What is it?” Cadence yanked off her headphones. I didn’t know how she always heard me with those things on and her music up.

“They sent me the cover concepts for the next book and I can’t decide which one I like. I’m not normally this indecisive, but I think I’ve looked at them so long that my brain can’t even see them anymore. They all look the same.”

I rubbed my eyes and sighed.

“Well, I don’t know much about anything, but I do have a new set of eyeballs. Want me to take a look?”

It wasn’t the worst idea.

“Sure,” I said. Instead of just forwarding her the email, I moved my laptop a little, gesturing for her to come to me.

Cadence popped up from her desk and leaned down next to me, bracing her arms on the surface. I caught a hint of her shampoo, which was something sweet like coconut and vanilla. It made me think of desserts and my mouth started to water a little bit.

I remembered what the hell we were supposed to be doing when she tilted the computer closer so she could see and then started scrolling. There were four options, all pretty similar, but with different fonts and slightly different images and colors.

As I watched her, Cadence squinted at the covers and minimized the window so she could see all four at once.

“What’s the book about?” she asked, and I told her.

She took that information in and then clicked the button to print the page.

“We’re going to try this a few different ways,” she said, going to the printer to get the pages. She’d put one cover on each page. Before I knew what was happening, she had taped each one to my wall, all in a row.

“Okay, close your eyes.” I did as she said and waited.

“Now, open.” I did and the covers were still there, with Cadence standing beside them.

I blew out a breath. “I still don’t know.”

She nodded, unperturbed. “Close your eyes again.”

I did for a second time, except there was a bunch of rustling. She told me to open and I found that all but one of the covers had been removed.

“Tell me the first three things you think of when you see this cover. Don’t think too much.”

She had her notepad and pen ready.

“Ah, okay,” I said, squinting at the cover. “Um, vacation, soft, elegant.”

Cadence nodded and then repeated the process with the other three covers. It was immediately obvious that I did not prefer the third cover, so Cadence dramatically ripped it up and threw it on the floor.

“Now tell me the thing you like the most about each of these.” For one it was the font style and color, for another it was the composition, for the other it was the colors.

“Question: is there a way to combine these three and make something new?”

I nodded. “I have more control over my covers than other authors. If I tell Sylvia what I want, she can get them to make it happen.”

Cadence squinted at the covers. “I wish I had the raw files because I could do a mockup for you in a few minutes.”

“I can see if they’ll send them to me.”

She waved me off.

“No, I’ll ask them and see what happens.” I hit Reply on the email and typed out what Cadence and I had come up with, asking if Sylvia could do her shark thing and get them to at least do a mockup for me.

Email sent, I looked back at Cadence, who was still looking at the covers with her head tilted to the side.

“I miss when they used to have those romance covers with the shirtless guys and the women in ball gowns and like, a horse rearing in the background.”

I snorted. “I don’t exactly write those kinds of books. And those covers are kind of out of style for this era. But…” I trailed off. “Hold that thought.”

I headed to the library and it took a few minutes to find the books I was looking for and I brought back a stack in my arms.

“Whoa, what’s that?” she asked, and I deposited them on my desk. A few of the paperbacks fell onto the floor.

“Oh my god,” she said, holding up a book with a shirtless man on the cover holding a woman in a gown. There was a horse in the background, but it wasn’t rearing. Just there. “This is majestic.”

Her eyes lit up as she went through the rest of the books.

“These are all incredible. I’m in love.”

Cadence stacked them back up on the desk in two neat piles.

“Those are treasures.”

“They are,” I agreed, leaning back against my desk. There were about five thousand things I should be doing right now, but here I was, looking at book covers with Cadence.

“I’ve been collecting them here and there. I watch auctions and wait for my favorites to come up.”

Cadence perched on my desk, swinging her legs back and forth.

“That’s so cool. I collect foreign editions of my favorites.”

“Show me,” I said, instead of telling her that we should get back to work.

Hopping up, she got her phone and did a few searches before showing me.

“So often the US covers are just so boring and then you see what Poland gets and it’s like oh shit, should I move to Poland?” she said, leaning over my shoulder as she flipped through different lovely covers. Many of them were for sapphic romances and featured two women in various positions.

“Book covers are so subjective, but I’ve had to fight to not have some really bad ones. Especially at the beginning. They’d give me these bad stock image couples that didn’t look anything like my characters, and I couldn’t understand what they were thinking.”

Cadence leaned away and I almost missed the smell of her immediately. She tucked her phone away and went to sit at her chair, but she pushed it over to my desk.

“Have you ever thought about not working with a publisher? Doing it on your own? That’s a whole thing now.”

I shook my head. “Not really. I mean, I would, if I didn’t have such a good team behind me.” Sylvia would still work with me if I decided to publish on my own, but then I’d need editors and cover designers and a publicist and even thinking about hiring all those people made me feel like I was bringing on a migraine.

“Makes sense. You’d probably have to do even more work than you do now, and that’s already a lot.”

It was. Some days I wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to quit and volunteer at the library or something. But then I started to panic, thinking about giving up the money from those advances and the royalty checks and I knew that wasn’t for me. I could barely go on vacation as it was, let alone have my entire life be a vacation.

“Speaking of that.” She twisted back and forth in her chair. “I should probably get back to what I was doing.”

Cadence was right. We had wasted far too much time already.

She went back to her work and I went back to mine, but I was having an impossible time focusing.

* * *

“Haveany of your books changed dramatically from when you started writing them to when you turned the last draft in?” she asked while we had lunch. I’d gotten some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes at the farmers’ market when I’d stopped by with Camille yesterday and had made them into a lovely salad, along with turkey sandwiches.

“They did when I was still learning how to write books. I’d have a million drafts and I’d change names and all kinds of things. My editors also had to rein me in a lot more than they do now. I was young and all over the place. I’d try to do too many things at once, convinced each one was going to be my last, so I’d better put in everything I wanted to say in case it was.” I shook my head at myself.

Cadence fired more and more questions at me, and I answered them all, giving her more detail than I normally would. I hadn’t talked this much about my career outside of an interview, and when I did do interviews, those were very controlled, and I had practiced my answers ahead of time. With Cadence, I didn’t worry about any of that. I said the first thing that came to mind, something I only did with a select few people.

I hadn’t even known Cadence for two months, and here I was confiding in her how hard those first few years had been. How the low advances had made paying my bills nearly impossible. The hours and the endless peanut butter and jam sandwiches I’d eaten because I couldn’t afford that many groceries and the awful apartments I’d shared with strange or awful roommates.

“It was all part of getting to where I am now.” I gestured at the house.

“Yeah, I’d say it all paid off,” she said with a snort. “Did you ever wish—” she stopped herself and shook her head. “Never mind.”

“No, what were you going to say?” I had a feeling I knew.

“I was going to ask if you feel like you missed out on anything, but you don’t have to answer that. I shouldn’t have asked.”

We’d finished eating a while ago and now we were just lounging in the sun. The light set her hair aflame.

All of my tasks were calling my name, but she was sitting there, and we were talking, and it was so easy, and she looked…

She was beautiful. She really was. I’d noticed it right away. She was impossible not to notice. The hair and the freckles and those eyes. It was more than that, though. She was stunning when she was talking about her favorite books or telling me about some article she’d read or when she was listening to me tell her about those early days. The way she could focus on me was almost jarring. Like she was taking in every single word I was saying, but watching every movement of my face while I said it. Looking at my expressions. As if how I said something mattered just as much as what I was saying.

I wrenched my gaze away from her face and looked down at our empty plates. “We should go back in. I need to work on edits, and I need you to work on next week’s social media.”

Cadence stood up and saluted me. “I’ll get right on top of that, Eloise,” she said before she gathered up our plates and took them to the kitchen. I took another moment to myself before joining her back in the house again.

* * *

“Fun plans tonight?”I asked as she shut down everything for the day.

“Mmmm, probably not. I mean, nothing exciting. Probably just making dinner and reading.” She shoved her headphones in her bag, and I watched as she checked her desk for anything else that she needed to bring home with her. “You? Not getting on your private jet to go out to dinner with someone famous?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is that what you think I do after I’m done writing?”

She grinned. “Maybe.”

I let out a snort. “No, I do not have a private jet. You know this. You’ve booked plane tickets for us.”

“You could always charter one. That’s a thing. I looked it up.” She was relentless.

“I’ve flown in a private jet once, and it was only because I was invited.” Her eyes got big and she sat back down in her chair.

“You have to tell me.”

Didn’t she want to get home?

She was so eager that I had to laugh as I told her about my one private jet trip with a very rich woman who was apparently a fan of mine and had invited me to her home in LA for the weekend, along with a bunch of other artists and writers and cultural icons.

“I’m shocked you don’t get invited to that stuff all the time.”

“I mean, not all the time, but I’ve been invited to things before, but it’s not my scene. Hobnobbing with wealthy people who expect you to be impressed by them isn’t my favorite. I’d much rather spend my time with other writers talking about craft and trends in the industry and so forth.”

She nodded. “Yeah, me too. I mean, not that I know all that much, but the more I learn the more I want to know.”

I could see that. There were times when she would send me copies of emails from my agent or publisher and ask me to break down what the terms meant, or what this process was like, or how things worked. She was relentless in her thirst for information. I’d never met anyone who soaked so much of it up so eagerly. Reminded me of myself when I was in college, but I’d been wanting to know so I could use it to build my career. So I could have a leg up on everyone else. Cadence wanted to know just because she was curious and that was something…remarkable.

Cadence’s phone went off, startling both of us.

“Shit. It’s later than I thought. I should get out of your hair. You’re probably sick of me.” She stood up and let out a little laugh.

The thing was…I wasn’t sick of her. I didn’t want her to go. For a moment, I wondered what she would say if I asked her to stay for dinner. If she sat at the breakfast table while I cooked for us. Asked her to set the table. Poured her a glass of wine and asked her how her day was. Except I already knew because her day had been spent with me. Perhaps she’d say something about her mean boss and I’d play along. Later on, I’d let her eat all my fancy ice cream while we sat on the couch and then…

“Have a good night,” Cadence said, slamming my racing thoughts to a screeching halt.

What the fuck had I been thinking? It all started normal and then got…strange. Uncomfortable.

“Good night, Cadence,” I managed to say. She waved and headed out the door while I stayed glued in my chair.

What. Was. That.

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