Seven Days in June(20)

Shane thumbed his bottom lip, thinking.

“I don’t take America seriously, though,” he said with the blithe ease of a person who’d never needed to care about political correctness. Or correctness in general. (The Random House publicity department would have an apologetic press release drafted by 8:00 a.m. the next morning.)

On the surface, he looked at ease. No one but Eva noticed that since their exchange, his hand had been gripping his mic so tightly, his fingertips were turning white. It was the only thing that gave him away.

That, and his mic was shaking.

“Look, this quote-unquote current sociopolitical climate? It’s always been my climate. I’ve been up against Trumps and Pences and Lindsey Grahams since forever. The first one was the guard I was trapped alone in a cell with at eight years old. No laws, no cameras, no mercy. What happened in that hour made me the kind of person who doesn’t feel obligated to workshop racism with white people.” He shrugged. “The burden isn’t on me to explain it, Rich. The burden’s on y’all to fix it. Good luck.”

Shane spoke with such blandness, it wasn’t clear whether he cared in the extreme or not at all. Whatever the case, he’d delivered one hell of a sound bite. After refusing to shed light on The Struggle, he did exactly that, and his one brief personal anecdote resonated more than an hour of Khalil’s dick-first rants.

“Understood,” said Rich.

Squinting a little, Shane peered at the name tag on Rich’s shirt. An impish look spread across his face, and he smoothly changed the subject. “I do, however, feel like discussing carrot tagliatelle.”

Rich gasped. “You…you read my…”

“You’re Rich Morgan, right? You cover food on Slate sometimes? That piece was revelatory. I didn’t know you could make noodles out of vegetables.”

“I suggest the five-blade spiralizer from Amazon Prime,” enthused Belinda.

“I got mine at a lovely kitchen-and-home shop in Lake Como,” said Cece.

Eva shut her eyes, wondering if someone had slipped acid in her seltzer. This conversation was ridiculous. Shane had single-handedly changed the mood in a room, in milliseconds. When had he become so unguarded? So chatty? She’d never heard him say more than a grunt to anyone but her.

“I’m ordering that shit,” said Shane. “I’m new to eating healthy. Like, I’m still on avocado toast. Rich, thanks for your service.”

Rich beamed and floated down to his seat.

Khalil was disgusted. “Help me understand this. You won’t talk about racism, but you will open a discourse on hipster pasta?”

Shane shrugged. “Health is wealth.”

Cece waved her arm across the stage with a flourish. “Shane Hall, ladies and gentlemen!”

And then Shane handed Cece his mic, wiped his damp palms on his jeans, did not look in Eva’s direction, and returned to the wildly applauding audience.

There was twenty minutes left of the discussion, but the panel was effectively over. Shane had stolen it out from under them.

And Eva was a wreck.





Chapter 7





You First




THIRTY MINUTES LATER, THE ATTENDEES WERE STILL CROWDING AROUND THE panelists—chatting them up, asking Belinda and Khalil to sign the beat-up paperbacks they’d carried in their bags. No one had brought any Cursed books for Eva to sign, but she was suddenly hit with an influx of people itching to hear more about her “feminist fantasy” series. Meanwhile, the delightful Cursed fan in the hat was acting as Eva’s one-man street team, hopping from group to group, spreading the gospel according to Sebastian and Gia.

It was everything Eva had hoped would happen. She was suddenly on the radar of a whole new demo of the book-buying population. Literary types. And they would tweet and Snap and Instagram about her, and buzz would grow, and (fingers crossed) she’d ascend from popular niche author to a major voice in the book world. A thought leader! Someone whose interspecies sex movie you’d pay to see!

But at that moment, she couldn’t feel it.

Both Belinda and Cece had tried several times to corner her, with a ravenous, gossipy gleam in their eyes. But Eva had conveniently found herself entangled in a new conversation each time. She couldn’t face them. Not yet. Where would she even start?

Heart pounding, she glanced over at Shane from across the room. Visibly uncomfortable with the crowd of fans surrounding him, he’d somehow escaped to a back corner. (The Shane of 2019 was more comfortable around people than the Shane of 2004, but still no social butterfly.) He was pretending to talk on his phone. Eva knew he was pretending, because he had the phone to his ear but wasn’t saying anything. And she knew this because she was staring.

And he’d been stealing glances at her, too. Here and there, and then as though he couldn’t help himself…a lot. It was making her dizzy. Everything was making her dizzy. The dull throb in her temples. The impossible heels. The sexpot dress. It had gotten tighter somehow, sucking at her like Saran Wrap. She kept shifting it around her hips. It was a sample-size 2, which was really a 0, and Eva was a size 4 but a PMS 6. Between all of that and her past so rudely colliding with her present, she hadn’t breathed in hours.

Her phone dinged with an incoming flurry of texts from Audre, berating her for forgetting to shop for her “feminist icon” art final: