My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(14)

“People are talking about us?” I ask.

Ramona nods, clearly enthused. “Readers kind of went wild over your…chemistry,” she says. “We surveyed them online, and the overwhelming consensus was they wanted the three of you together on a book tour. And since all three of you are with the same parent company, it seems like a fantastic mix.”

Great. Just great. Axel and I faked liking each other so well we’re now stuck together for seven stinking days on a train.

In Europe.

Can this day get any worse?





7





A HORROR VALENTINE


Axel

I. Freeze.

There’s no way my editor just said Hazel’s name.

I’m holding my cup of coffee at Doctor Insomnia’s Tea and Coffee Emporium, midair, imitating a statue. Am I fucking living in an alternate reality?

I stare at Linus like he’s not making any sense. Because he’s not. “Hazel…Valentine, as in the romance author?” I choke out, like there could be any other Hazel Valentine. Like there’s a sci-fi Hazel. A horror Valentine.

My editor nods in that serious way he always has. “The tacos. The subway ride. Readers dig it, Axel.”

That was a survival game so we wouldn’t spew vitriol onstage. But instead, we won a prize of hosting a VIP reader trip together?

Talk about being careful what you wish for. “Are you sure?” I ask, hoping he can read between the lines of my question.

As in…

Hello? We abandoned our last book like a patient left on the operating table, so why would you pair the two of us?

But they don’t entirely know what went wrong.

Hell, she doesn’t entirely know what went wrong.

We played nice then too. We didn’t let on. We didn’t tell anyone.

“You don’t want someone from Dunbar and Loraine instead? Like Saanvi,” I offer, thinking on my feet as if I’m in court. “Wouldn’t that make more sense to send me with someone from the same imprint?”

That’s a damn good argument. Linus has to be swayed by my logic.

“Dunbar and Loraine and Lancaster Abel are all owned by the same parent company,” he says, and that’s publishing for you. Hazel and I might be with different houses, but we have the same corporate big media parent, so we’re riding the choo-choo together in Europe.

Fun. Just fucking fun.

But I’ve never met an argument I won’t turn inside out as I hunt for holes. “I’m not that great with public appearances,” I say, but it sounds like a feeble protest even to my ears.

Linus shakes his head in a firm, clear you’ve got that wrong style. “I beg to differ. You’re actually quite good at them, Axel. You’re smooth, sharp, and just the right kind of sarcastic. It works great in front of a crowd,” he says, and damn him for the compliment. Damn him too for catching me in my attempt to slither away from the tour. Damn him most of all for saying something nice.

“Thanks,” I say, though it’s more like a grumble. I’m busy searching for another tactic. “It’s just I worry readers are going to ask about our unfinished book.”

I offer that nugget like I’m trying to be helpful when I’m really trying to save my own ass.

I cannot travel with Hazel Valentine and play nice for a week. I just can’t. Besides, she can’t stand me, and neither one of us is an actor, last time I checked.

No, we’re over-actors, since that performance at the expo got us into this stupid predicament.

“You handled it so well at the expo,” Linus points out. “And it makes good business sense to send you and Kennedy and Hazel. All of your recent books are set in Europe. And as for you and Hazel, you two get along so well. Tacos. Am I right?”

“Yeah, tacos,” I say, leadenly.

Fucking tacos.

At least there’s Kennedy as a buffer.

I cling to that as he tells me the rest of the details about how I’m supposed to spend a week with Hazel. The woman is still too hard for me to be around.



I’ve got a long list of regrets that I update regularly.

I don’t want to forget all the shit I need to fix in my life, so I write each misdemeanor on a digital Post-it note tucked away in a folder on my laptop labeled Naked Photos of Mom. Just another alligator in the security moat, after my ninety-five-character password.

The list includes but is not limited to: Taking mock trial in high school, asking out the sexy brunette in tight black pants at the bar that night a few years ago even though tight black pants are my weakness and wow, did Sarah ever turn out to be a heartbreaker or what, and helping my dad with any of his cons, not that I had much of a choice at age seven.

Now, at T-minus-three days before the Trip to the Bottomless Pit of Torment begins, I click open the file on a Monday afternoon. I’m in my apartment, my brother’s newest playlist blasting in my earbuds, draining an afternoon coffee as I add another regret.

Taking Spanish in college.

I close the laptop, turn off the music from my phone, and finish the last dregs of fuel.

Here I go again.

Four weeks of twice-weekly language lessons end today. I’ve learned how to say in Danish and Italian: please, thank you, nice to meet you, plus why yes, that’s where my hero Jett raced against the clock to solve the crime like the rock star he is, and no, you can’t run through the Trevi Fountain, unless you’re vanquishing the worst kind of bad guys and then it’s totally okay. But we’ve spent the last two weeks on French, since we’ll be in France half the time. If only I’d taken that language in school, I wouldn’t have had to spend these extra days with Hazel. Kennedy, too, but Kennedy doesn’t shoot death rays from her eyeballs into the center of my heart.