fucking rape some chicken tenders right now, babe” could be considered dinner—were the most he’d ever uttered about her literary accomplishments.
As she sinks into the sofa, she’s remembering the stunned expression on Jerald’s face when he saw the wounded look on hers. The speed with which his expression turned to a smirk, and then a dismissive snarl. Her next words had come tumbling out so fast, she still can’t remember all of them. But they weren’t furious. Not yet. They were specific.
It was a speech she’d rehearsed ever since Rachel had suggested she might be hiding her light under a bushel to avoid causing a fire in her relationship. She explained to Jerald the time it had taken, the effort she’d put in, the rejection letters she’d received over the years and how much they’d hurt. And the whole time, Jerald’s snarl just got more severe, as if she had no right to be boring him with any of these details and oh my God why was she still talking?
And, of course, she knew it wasn’t about the books. Their relationship was a hot mess, had been for months now, and now that fact was bubbling to the surface like magma, ready to melt everything in its path. In the beginning, he’d said all the things he thought he needed to say to land the deal; then, as soon as they decided to go exclusive, he merged with her sofa. It’s where he spent most of his time whenever he came over, and the steady stream of criticism he gave her seemed designed to derail any decision she might make that would require him to get up off it.
Maybe they could have recovered, sought higher ground. But what Jerald said next was even worse than his opening line. “That’s fine and all, babe, but I honestly don’t think you’d need the books if you felt better about your body.”
She spoke her words as she thought them. For her, that was rare. “Did you just say I only wrote my novels because I’m fat?”
“I didn’t say you were fat. You said you were fat. I said you don’t feel good about your body, and when you don’t feel good about your body you have to do all these other things to feel better about yourself. Just be you, is what I’m saying.”
“I am being me. The books are me. All my life I’ve wanted to be a writer.”
“Yeah, well all my life I’ve wanted to date a supermodel but . . .” He realized his mistake too late and went quiet and still, as if she might not have realized it was a mistake.
“But you’re just dating me? Who’s fat, but not fat, apparently. I just feel bad about my body. I’m sorry. What are we even talking about right now?”
“Stop yelling.”
She’d barely raised her voice, but the next thing she heard herself say was, “I’m sorry, Jerald, but I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“I just . . . wish it was something else, OK? I just wish you’d found something else to do other than those books. They’re weird and they’re hard to explain to people and I mean, I know you’re not crazy about working at Dr. Keables’s office, but you’re good at other things, Zoey. You are. You can be good at other things.”
Of course, she recognized the phrasing, but it was his tone that gave him away. He sounded like he was continuing a conversation they’d been having for months instead of just a few tense, awful minutes. And that was it—he had been having the conversation for months, just not with her. He’d been having it with himself, and along the way it had taken the form of a one-star review.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, “that was you.”
“What?”
“Bored Reader. You’re Bored Reader!”
Anyone who’d never used the moniker Bored Reader on the internet before would have reared back in shock or simply shaken his head in confusion. Instead, Jerald went really still and tried not to chew his lower lip.
“‘Hopefully this writer can be good at other things because it’s not writing stuff’ . . . That was you. You wrote that review.”
Jerald’s sneer had been replaced by a deer-in-the-headlights-of-an-eighteen-wheeler look. This should have satisfied her on some level, but it didn’t. Instead, her stomach felt like it was coated in ice. Her face, on the other hand, felt like it was made of melting wax that was about to smack to the table