Seven Days in June(18)

Cece graced him with a blinding proud-mama smile. Like the way Diana used to look at Michael: I’m fucking brilliant; I discovered this unicorn.

“I mean, do I have to?” said Shane, with an amused chuckle in his voice. He grew up in Southeast Washington, DC, and the inflections still lived in his vaguely Southern-sounding, slow accent. That Ah meeaaan took him ten years to get out.

“You have no choice. Payback for allowing that Random House editor to steal you from me.” Cece gestured toward Eva and company.

“But I…um…I’m not the best public speaker. I really just came to watch. This is awkward.” He looked out into the crowd apologetically. “But when Cece Sinclair tells you to do something, you do it. I ain’t crazy.”

“Unconfirmed,” mumbled Khalil.

Before Shane could address this shade, a young woman raised her hand. She was wearing a snapback that said MAKE AMERICA NEW YORK. Her face was beet red.

“Mr. H-Hall,” she stammered. “Not to be rude, but I love you.”

He smiled. “Rude would be ‘I hate you.’”

She laughed way too hard. “I can’t believe you’re here. Just had to tell you, Eight is the reason I write. Eight, the character, is me. You never see angsty, depressed Black girls in pop culture. There’s no Black Prozac Nation or Girl, Interrupted. I love that she narrates every book.”

“Thank you.” He shifted a little in his seat. “I like her, too.”

“Is Eight based on a real person? You describe her so intimately. It’s like I’m peeking in on something I shouldn’t see.”

“Do you think Eight’s real?”

“Definitely,” she said, nodding.

“Then she is.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.” He grinned.

And then Eva had to do it. Finally, she had the nerve to look over at him—and regretted it instantly.

Age had made the skin around his eyes crinklier. Eva had forgotten about the scar snaking across his nose. He had scars everywhere. Once, while he was sleeping, she’d counted them all. Traced them with her mouth. And then named them, like constellations.

Perfect jeans; rugged boots; expensive watch; sinewy, lanky build; two-day stubble; simple white tee. Could’ve been Hanes or Helmut Lang. Fuck him—it was exactly what she wished she were wearing.

How am I gonna survive this?

A blond journalist Eva recognized from Publishers Weekly raised her hand. Cece nodded in her direction.

“Speaking of Eight,” started the blonde, “you’ve gotten some flak for writing exclusively from a female point of view. Is that fair? As a man, do you feel qualified to speak from a feminine place?”

At this point, Eva, Belinda, and Khalil were effectively back-burnered.

Shane chewed his bottom lip and stared into his mic, like it held the answers to every mystery. “I guess…I don’t think a lot about whether or not I’m qualified to do things. I just do them.”

“But it’s a ballsy move, as a man, to explore young female angst in such an intimate way.”

“I don’t think I’m exploring female angst. I’m just…writing a character? Who has angst.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Novelists should stretch beyond their experience, right? If I can’t adequately manage a female voice, then I’m probably in the wrong profession and should revise my LinkedIn.”

“Oh! Do you have LinkedIn?”

“No,” he said, his eyes playful. To Cece, he whispered, “Told you I was bad at this.”

And in that moment, whatever was holding Eva together snapped. Suddenly she was volcanically offended by his existence. She’d worked herself into a frenzy prepping for this event, running lines with Audre, and squeezing into this dress, but Shane was allowed to be exactly himself. His whole career, he’d done whatever the hell he’d wanted—evading interviewers, dropping off the face of the planet, sleepwalking through events Eva would kill to be invited to—and generally been awarded for bad behavior in a way that, in the history of creative pursuits, no female artist had ever been indulged. Women didn’t get to be bad boys.

“I don’t think; I just do.”

Shane made it all look so easy. Everything Eva did was so effortful. And the worst part? This was supposed to be her moment to prove that she was a legitimate author, a force to be reckoned with. And it was shot to hell the second the One Who Mattered showed up. Was this even her real life, or a Mona Scott-Young production?

For all these reasons—as well as the older, darker ones—she had to say something.

“I hear what the reporter’s saying,” started Eva, slowly, to quell the tremble in her voice. “You’re co-opting an experience you know nothing about. Eight’s troubled. She self-harms. She’s suicidal. And you idealize it, making her this adorable, sad chick. Depression isn’t a ‘catastrophe of a girl’ weeping a single, pretty tear while gazing out of rain-streaked windows and dropping one-liners. Depression is tragic. Eight is tragic. And a male writer romanticizing female mental illness is inappropriate.”

“You’re right,” Shane said. He scratched his jaw slowly, thinking, and then dragged his eyes over to Eva. For the first time, she met his gaze. Which was a mistake.