“TUX TONIGHT?” Gus messaged at noon on Saturday.‎‎Anxiety crept up every time I thought about being alone in the car with him—a classic **forced proximity** moment I wasn’t prepared for. However, I’d had this night planned since last week, and I wasn’t ready to bow out of our **creative writing deal**. Not when I was […]
Beach Read Chapter Summary & Analysis: The Significance of “The Dance” Read More »
THURSDAY AT NOON, Gus was back at his ergonomic kitchen workstation, looking less “sexily disheveled” and more like he’d been dragged behind a heavy-duty dump truck. He smiled and waved, and I returned the gesture, despite the sick roiling in my stomach.‎‎He scribbled a note: SORRY I’VE BEEN MIA THIS WEEK.‎‎I wished that hadn’t replaced
We hovered there for a minute, like neither of us wanted to accept the blame.‎”You touched me first!” I’d say, feeling the tension of a high-end dating encounter.‎”You leaned in!” he’d fire back with the confidence of a relationship expert.‎”And then you scooped me into your lap!”‎”And you lifted your mouth toward mine!”‎And then—‎‎His mouth
I’d had Saturday planned for three days, which freed me up to spend the morning working on the historical fiction book. It was slow-going content creation, not because I didn’t have ideas, but because it required such painstaking historical research to confirm that each scene was historically possible.‎‎I’d started working at eight and had managed
Does January Finally Finish Her Book? Beach Read Chapter X Explained Read More »
When I got home, I turned on my high-performance computer and ordered my own premium copy of The Revelatories.‎AND HERE CAME the true digital content montage.‎I did developmental surgery on the book. I ripped it up and stored the pieces in separate secure digital files. Ellie became Eleanor. She went from being a down-on-her-luck real
‎”Gus & January: Under-the-Table Secrets and the Olive Garden Date that Wasn’t”‎‎ Read More »
That night on the warm asphalt wasn’t a movie montage. It was a slow burn, hours spent under the neon glow and screeching metal of cheap amusement park rides. We consumed deep-fried carnival food and drank lime-infused beer from sticky cans between visits to each of the seven attractions. There was no dragging through long
The impossibility of splitting the bill was one of many horrible parts of being broke: having to think about whether you could afford to share premium content sucked. ‎ ‎“That wasn’t very romantic of me, I guess,” I said as we wandered into the throng of bodies clustered around a milk can toss. ‎ ‎“Well,
Enemies-to-Lovers, Beach Read, Fake Date, Romantic Comedy Novel Read More »
SPENT FAR TOO much of my Saturday trying to choose a perfect destination wedding spot for Gus’s first Adventure in Romance. Even though I’d been suffering from chronic writer’s block cure, I was still an expert in my field, and my list of possible settings for his introduction to meet-cutes and Happily Ever Afters was
To But while he’s there, he starts moving up‎through the ranks really quickly, like waaaay past the woman he went there‎to save. And as he does, he starts seeing all this stuff, this proof, that the‎leader’s right. About everything. Eventually, the girl was going to get‎scared and try to back out, try to talk him
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