Book Lovers(29)

“I am,” I insist.

“I’m an editor, Stephens,” he says. “I’m going to need more details to buy into this narrative.”

“It’s my literary stock character,” I say. “I’m the cold-blooded, overly ambitious city slicker who exists as a foil to the Good Woman. I’m the one who gets dumped for the girl who’s prettier without makeup and loves barbecue and somehow makes destroying a karaoke standard seem adorable!”

And for some reason (my low alcohol tolerance), it doesn’t stop there. It comes spilling out. Like I’m just puking up embarrassing history onto the peanut-shell-littered floor for everyone to see.

Aaron dumping me for Prince Edward Island (and, confirmed via light social media stalking, a redhead named Adeline). Grant breaking up with me for Chastity and her parents’ little inn. Luca and his wife and their cherry farm in Michigan.

When I reach patient zero, Jakob the novelist-turned-rancher, I cut myself off. What happened between him and me doesn’t belong at the end of a list; it belongs where I left it, in the smoking crater that changed my life forever. “You get the idea.”

His eyes slit, an amused tilt to his lips. “. . . Do I though?”

“Tropes and clichés have to come from somewhere, right?” I say. “Women like me have clearly always existed. So it’s either a very specific kind of self-sabotage or an ancient curse. Come to think of it, maybe it started with Lilith. Too weird to be coincidence.”

“You know,” Charlie says, “I’d say Dusty writing a whole-ass book about my hometown and then me running into her agent in said town is too weird to be a coincidence, but as we’ve already established, you’re ‘not stalking me,’ so coincidences do occasionally happen, Nora.”

“But this? Four relationships ending because my boyfriends decided to walk off into the wilderness and never come back?”

He’s fighting a smirk but losing the battle.

“I’m not ridiculous!” I say, laughing despite myself. Okay, because of myself.

“Exactly what a not-ridiculous person would say,” Charlie allows with a nod. “Look, I’m still trying to figure out how your shitty Jack London–wannabe ex-boyfriends factor in to why you’re here.”

“My sister’s . . .” I consider for a moment, then settle on, “Things have been kind of off between us for the last few months, and she wanted to get away for a while. Plus she reads too many small-town romance novels and is convinced the answer to our problems is having our own transformative experiences, like my exes did. In a place like this.”

“Your exes,” he says bluntly. “Who gave up their careers and moved to the wilderness.”

“Yes, those ones.”

“So, what?” he says. “You’re supposed to find happiness here and ditch New York? Quit publishing?”

“Of course not,” I say. “She just wants to have fun, before the baby comes. Take a break from our usual lives and do something new. We have a list.”

“A list?”

“A bunch of things from the books.” And this is why I don’t drink two martinis. Because even at five eleven, my body is incapable of processing alcohol, as evidenced by the fact that I start listing, “Wear flannel, bake something from scratch, get small-town makeovers, build something, date some locals—”

Charlie laughs brusquely. “She’s trying to marry you off to a pig farmer, Stephens.”

“She is not.”

“You said she’s trying to give you your own small-town romance novel,” he says wryly. “You know how those books end, don’t you, Nora? With a big wedding inside of a barn, or an epilogue involving babies.”

I scoff. Of course I know how they end. Not only have I watched my exes live them, but when Libby and I still shared an apartment, I’d read the final pages of her books almost compulsively. That never really tempted me to turn back to page one.

“Look, Lastra,” I say. “My sister and I are here to spend time together. You probably didn’t learn this in whatever lab spawned you, but vacations are a fairly typical way for loved ones to bond and relax.”

“Yes, because if anything’s going to relax a person like you,” he says, “it’s spending time in a town conveniently situated between two equidistant Dressbarns.”

“You know, I’m not as much of an uptight control freak as either you or Dusty seem to think. I could have a perfectly nice time on a date with a pig farmer. And you know what? Maybe it’s a good idea. It’s not like I’ve had any luck with New Yorkers. Maybe I have been fishing in the wrong pond. Or, like, the wrong stream of nuclear waste runoff.”

“You,” he says, “are so much weirder than I thought.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, before tonight, I assumed you went into a broom closet and entered power saving mode whenever you weren’t at work, so I guess we’re both surprised.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” he says. “When I’m not at work, I’m in my coffin in the basement of an old Victorian mansion.”

I snort into my glass, which makes him crack a real, human smile. It lives, I think.

“Stephens,” he says, tone dry once more, “if you’re the villain in someone else’s love story, then I’m the devil.”