My phone buzzes while I’m waiting, Mercedes humming along to Heart’s Greatest Hits. I’m positive it’s McNair—but it’s something much more exciting.
Delilah Park’s book signing has been on my calendar for months, but in the midst of my last-day-of-school-isms, I somehow forgot that tonight I am going to meet my favorite author. I even stashed a few paperbacks in my bag earlier this week. Delilah Park writes romances with feminist heroines and shy, sweet heroes. I devoured These Guarded Hearts and Lay It on Me and Sweet as Sugar Lake, for which she won the country’s highest romance-novel award when she was twenty.
Delilah Park is the person who makes me think my journal scribbles could be something someday. But going to a book signing where the books being signed are romance novels means admitting I am someone who loves romance novels, which I stopped doing after that fateful ninth-grade essay contest.
And maybe admitting I am someone who is writing a romance novel too.
Here is my dilemma: my passion is, at best, someone else’s guilty pleasure. Most of the world takes any opportunity to belittle this thing that centers women in a way most other media doesn’t. Romance novels are a punch line, despite being a million-dollar industry. Even my parents can’t find respect for them. My mom has called them “trash” more than once, and my dad tried to take a box of them to Goodwill last year, simply because I’d run out of space on my bookshelf and he thought I wouldn’t miss them. Fortunately, I caught him on his way out the door.
These days, I have to hide most of my reading. I started writing my novel in secret, assuming I’d tell my parents at some point. But I’m a few chapters from the end, and they still don’t know.
“The finest hazelnut latte in all of Seattle,” Mercedes says as she presents it to me. The light catches the six piercings in her face, none of which I could pull off. “You working today?”
I shake my head. “Last day of school.”
She holds a hand to her heart in mock nostalgia. “Ah, school. I remember it fondly. Or, at the very least, I remember what the bleachers looked like when I was behind them sneaking joints with my friends.”
Mercedes won’t charge me, but I drop a dollar bill into the tip jar anyway. I pass the kitchen as I leave, calling out a quick hello/goodbye to Colleen, the owner and head baker.
The traffic lights are out all along Forty-Fifth, making every intersection a four-way stop. School starts at 7:05. I’ll be cutting it close, a fact that delights McNair, based on how often he’s lighting up my phone. While I’m stopped, I voice-text Kirby and Mara to let them know I’m stuck in traffic, and I sing along with my rainy-day soundtrack: the Smiths, always the Smiths. I have a new-wave-obsessed aunt who plays them nonstop when we spend Hanukkahs and Passovers at her house down in Portland. Nothing goes better with gloomy weather than Morrissey’s lyrics.
I wonder how they’ll sound in Boston, beating against my eardrums as I stroll through a snow-dusted campus in a peacoat, my hair tucked into a knit hat.
The red SUV in front of me inches forward. I inch forward. Tonight unfolds in my mind. I glide into the bookstore, head held high, none of that shoulder-scrunching my mom is always scolding me about. When I approach Delilah at the signing table, we trade compliments about each other’s dresses, and I tell her how her books changed my life. By the end of our conversation, she finds me brimming with so much talent, she asks if she can mentor me.
I don’t realize the car in front of me has slammed on its brakes until I’m crashing into it, hot coffee splashing down the front of my dress.
“Oh, shit.” I take a few deep breaths after recovering from the shock of being thrown backward, trying to process what happened when my brain is stuck at an exclusive authors-only after-party Delilah invited me to. The harsh metal-on-metal sound is ringing in my ears, and cars behind me are honking. I’m a good driver! I want to tell them. I’ve never been in an accident, and I always go the speed limit. Maybe I can’t parallel park, but despite present evidence to the contrary, I am a good driver. “Shit, shit, shit.”
The honking continues. The SUV’s driver sticks an arm