can’t just kiss for the sake of kissing,” Vlad argued. “And nothing ruins a first-kiss scene like when you can tell that the author just put it there for the sake of having a kissing scene. It has to feel natural.”
“But they obviously want to kiss,” Del pointed out.
“Yes, but they can’t give in to the longing yet.”
“Why not?” Mack asked.
“It would not be true to the characters.”
Colton stuck out his bottom lip. “Are you saying this is going to be a slow burn? I wanted to help write the sex scenes.”
“It has to be a slow burn,” Vlad said. “They have too much history to move too quickly.”
“Too much history, huh?” Noah said. “Interesting.”
Vlad narrowed his eyes. What did that mean?
“Look,” Malcolm said. “All we want to know is what’s going to happen next. You really left us hanging here.”
“But . . . you liked it?”
“It’s brilliant, Russian,” Noah said. He leaned over and riffled Vlad’s hair. “We’re so proud of you.”
“It’s true,” Mack said, lowering to the sit on the floor. He kicked his legs out straight and leaned back on his hands. “You’ve got us hooked, man. Give us some more to read.”
The momentary surge of confidence he’d felt at their praise deflated like a pin in a balloon. He slumped and picked at the edges of the Velcro keeping his bone in place. “If I knew that, I would’ve written it.”
“You don’t have any more written?” Yan asked in a pouty way.
Vlad shrugged with one shoulder.
“How long have you been stuck?” Malcolm asked.
“Couple of years,” Vlad mumbled.
“Couple of years?” Yan’s jaw dropped to nearly to his chest.
“You’ve been staring at it for two years?” Colton asked.
“If you’d ever tried to write a book, you’d understand,” Vlad grumbled. “It’s not easy. I feel like I’ve been writing and rewriting the same few chapters over and over again but can’t figure out how to move forward in the story.”
“According to all these books,” Yan said, gesturing at his super-helpful pile of resource guides, “if you are stuck, it’s not because you can’t figure out what should happen next. It’s because you probably got something wrong in what you’ve already written. So we just need to fix that.”
“Wow,” Vlad deadpanned. “Is that all?”
“Obviously, they need to have sex,” Colton said.
Everyone ignored him.
“I agree in theory with Yan,” Del said, ripping open the bag of gluten-free crackers that Elena had sent along for snack time. “Maybe you can’t figure out how to move forward because you haven’t dug enough into your characters’ backstories.”
Mack and Malcolm looked at each other and spoke in unison. “Backstory is everything.”
Vlad tried not to growl in frustration. He knew backstory was everything. It was one of the central rules of book club. Whatever happened to a character before the first page of the book determined who they were on the first page of the book, and that dictated how they navigated every page afterward. “I already know their backstory,” Vlad grumbled.
“Then why are you struggling?” Malcolm countered.
“I don’t know.”
Del popped a cracker in his mouth and then immediately let it fall out. “That tastes like cardboard. Is this the kind of shit you have to eat all the time?”
“What? No. There are a lot of good gluten-free snacks.”
Del shoved the bag away. “This isn’t one of them.”
“Focus, boys,” Colton said.
“Let’s start with Tony,” Malcolm said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Why didn’t he tell Anna that he was 4F when she first accused him of not doing enough for the war effort?”
“Because he was offended.”
“Sure, but why?” Malcolm asked.
“Because it was a rude assumption to make.”
“True,” Mack said, “but that doesn’t explain why he didn’t just set her straight, tell her that her assumption was wrong.”
Malcolm jumped in. “Maybe he wasn’t offended. Maybe he was scared. In all the books we’ve read, characters fear something at the start of the book, and that fear drives their behavior. Which isn’t all that unlike people in real life, right?”
Gavin nodded like a man who’d seen some shit. “Fear forces us to do stupid things, brother. Make bad decisions, often against our own best interests and against wh-what we really w-want in life.” The reappearance of his stammer told him how much he spoke from experience. Gavin and his wife had been through hell before book club helped them repair their marriage.
“Fear has led every single one of us down very bad paths in our relationships,” Malcolm said.
Mack took over again. “So what is Tony