Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(69)

Dorothea is first, and yes, that Dorothea. The one that Luca nicknamed Granny Romance, the one whose blow job paragraph I accidentally sent to him, and the woman who’s responsible for half the hot flashes around the world.

Katharine James-Taylor follows almost immediately. She’s British, in her mid-forties, married with two kids, living in Montana—don’t ask—and writes dark romantic suspense that makes me worry about her sometimes.

Last to join us, though only by like four seconds, is Jen Persimmon, pen name Jack M. Hughes, and yes, I mean that Jack M. Hughes who writes legal thrillers, and if you tell anyone he’s actually a woman, I’ll never speak to you again. Jen and her wife, Lin, just adopted their third baby, so I didn’t expect her to hop on so quick, but here we are.

“Henri, I love you, but if you’re telling us you’re engaged again—” Jen starts.

“Wait, that’s my line,” Dorothea interrupts.

“Elsa’s writing romance novels,” I say, and then I burst into tears.

It’s ugly.

I’m embarrassed.

I know I’m overreacting, but all three of my friends gasp and stare at me in horror through the computer screen, and maybe I’m not overreacting.

“No.” Katharine leans closer to her camera. “Why—when?”

“Right?” I sob.

Jen leans back and crosses her arms, tapping her fingers slowly over her biceps. “I’ve met a hacker or two. Want me to take care of her computer?”

“Not necessary.” Katharine smiles, and she manages to smile in a way that’s both deviously terrifying and also as soothing as her voice, which I could listen to basically all day, with or without the accent. “She’ll find out soon enough that writing a book is harder than it appears.”

“Romance novels,” I repeat. “She could’ve written self-help. Or a yoga book. Or a memoir. Or a new kind of planner. But no. She says she has to write romance novels. But none of that silly paranormal stuff. She’s writing a modern-day romance where the heroine dies.”

Katharine drops her teacup, mutters what the fuck in that lovely British accent that makes it sound like she’s asked if you’d like to take a stroll through the park, and disappears from view.

“Isn’t the whole point of a romance novel that they all live happily ever after?” Jen asks.

I’m hiccupping now. I’m crying so hard I’m hiccupping. “She’s going to be—hic!—famous and—and everyone—hic!—will think she writes b—bet—better romances than me when—hic!—she doesn’t write romance at all.”

“Psh. She’ll get six hundred words in and give up,” Dorothea says.

“Elsa never fails at anything.”

Dogzilla hops onto my lap, then tries to climb my chest, which is awkward in all the ways it can possibly be awkward, not the least of which is that she’s dressed in her alien costume today and her tentacles are going up my nose.

Katharine pops back onto the screen, wiping her arms with a cloth napkin. “What did you say to the twat when she told you what she was about?”

Usually I love her soothing accent as she lets out a solid twat, but today, the question itself makes me sob harder. “She asked—hic!—me for a—aad—advice.”

Jen leans right into the camera. “Tell me you didn’t give it to her.”

Katharine’s leaning in too. “Tell me you did, but you gave her awful advice.”

I reach for my hot chocolate. “I can’t doooooo thaaaaaat,” I sob.

The front door slams.

Dogzilla jerks while she has her claws in my chest, yowls in terror, and leaps onto my laptop, but she misses and hits my arm, which sends my hot chocolate flying everywhere.

Everywhere.

“No!” I leap to my feet.

Towels.

I need towels.

I can’t lose my laptop. I can’t lose my laptop.

“Henri?” All three of my friends blink and stare, and then everything goes black.

“Nooooo!”

“Henri?” Luca calls. “What’s—oh, shit.”

Dogzilla yowls again, looks up, sees Luca, and then collapses on the floor like she’s realized we’re not being invaded by Nonna, or Luca’s mom, or Elsa and her family, or something not quite as terrifying like an angry hoard of bees on steroids or a pack of saber-toothed tigers that have traveled through time to eat us, and my cat has officially checked out of duty.

Luca’s leaping all over the kitchen. He throws me a towel, then skids on the hot chocolate on the floor as he grabs another towel.

I lunge to wipe off my laptop.

He stops next to me and tries to pat down my arms while I’m trying to use them to clean up my laptop.

And I can’t stop sobbing.

“Henri. God. Are you okay?”

I nod. “I’m fiiiiiiiiine.”

“Jesus. No, you’re not. Did someone die?”

“No—hic! I—I’m okay.”

“This is not okay.”

Well.

When he puts it like that, the only thing I can do is sob harder.

“Don’t cry, Henri. Don’t cry. I’ll buy you a new laptop. Do you use a cloud back-up? Tell me you use a cloud back-up. Never mind. Not important. I’ll pay for your hard drive to get recovered. Oh, shit. Shit. You named it, didn’t you? You named your laptop and now you’ve lost a friend and shit. I can’t fix this.”