Seven Days in June(89)
It was like a Gatsby-themed wedding. But with awards and no cake.
At the moment, Eva was applauding the weepy woman who’d just won Best Historical Fiction. Through grateful tears, she thanked her energy healer and LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow—and then the emcee, OG actress and Black-ish star Jenifer Lewis, who had titled her recent memoir The Mother of Black Hollywood, announced that the ceremony was taking a short break so everyone could eat. Resplendent in a belted teal caftan and matching turban, Jenifer looked like a wildly chic fortune-teller.
As waiters served an already-congealed chicken paillard dinner, the band played a strikingly faithful cover of “Gin and Juice”—and the tipsiest folks hit the dance floor. (Including Belinda, who was celebrating her Best Poetry Collection win.) In the far back of the room, the people in the standing-room section—mostly fans, readers, and bookfluencer bloggers—were getting autographs and frantically updating their social-media accounts, while most of the nominees, besieged by nerves, stayed in their seats and picked at their chicken.
The tables were assigned by award category, and each had its own distinct vibe.
The authors at the Best Chick Lit table were glam—on the smoky-eyes-and-sequins level of Bravo reality stars on a reunion episode. The Best Biography table boasted scholarly fifty-something women with Kamala Harris hair and adoring second husbands. Each of the six HBCU alums at the Best Political/Current Affairs Book table sat there with weaponized Twitter fingers flying over their iPhones, smelling faintly of beard oil and weed. Meanwhile, the podcast bros from Best Sports Book were hotly debating the NBA draft to impress their one female co-nominee—a bored, pretty WNBA star turned writer who could’ve dunked on every last one of them.
Eva’s table was the Best Erotic Romance nominees—an unlikely-looking bunch. Far from sex-crazed floozies, erotica writers were mostly mild-mannered moms wearing their church-function finest. Eva had known her competition for ages: Ebony Brannigan (Thug Pa$$ion), Bonnie Saint James (So Dark Her Desire), Georgia Hinton (Lust and Found), and Tika Carter (The Sinful CEO Part 7: Sluttily Yours). Every year, they were nominated together. And every year, grande dame Bonnie Saint James won for her series about a raging nymphomaniac working as a female spy in World War II Paris.
Bonnie would probably win again, and this certainty made the evening relatively stress-free for Eva’s group. While the rest of the ballroom was alight with nerves and halfway to wasted, the civilized erotica writers talked shop.
All except Eva. She was half listening to the gals, half keeping an eye on the door across the ballroom. Shane wasn’t here. Surely, he wouldn’t dare come? What would she do if he did?
It doesn’t matter, she thought, force-feeding herself rice pilaf.
“Ebony, how do you type with those acrylics?” asked Georgia.
“The click-clack sound is so satisfying.” She wiggled her fingers. “ASMR! Tika, what have you been up to?”
“I just started leading a collaborative e-course on romance writing.”
“Wowww,” said Eva, who didn’t know what a collaborative e-course was.
“My latest workshop was about incorporating condoms in sex scenes,” said Tika in her faux-lofty voice. She was from Gadsden, Alabama, but spoke like she starred in The Crown. “It’s our responsibility to promote safe sex.”
“Oh please,” scoffed Georgia. “As Zane, the queen of erotic fiction, once said, if a reader chooses not to protect themselves because my protagonist rawed her sister’s baby daddy during a conjugal visit, then her problems are bigger than condoms.”
Tika cocked a brow. “Zane said that?”
“Well, I’m paraphrasing,” huffed Georgia, and then she changed the subject. “Eva, what have you been up to, ma’am?”
“Me?” Lost in thought, Eva was not prepared to jump into this conversation. “Nothing, just listening to murder podcasts, mostly.”
Tika gestured at her with her fork. “Aren’t we due for book fifteen?”
“Oh,” she said with a faraway smile. “You know I’m superstitious. I never talk about what I’m working on.”
“Always so mysterious, Eva,” Tika said with a smirk, sipping prosecco.
“Very mysterious,” agreed Ebony. “We heard who you’re dating! When, what time, and upon what hour did this happen?”
“Leave that child alone,” said Bonnie, finally speaking up. She was a no-nonsense sixty-something woman who, no matter what she was doing, always looked like she’d rather be binge-watching 227. “This isn’t a high school cafeteria.”
Isn’t it, though? thought Eva, who saw a flurry of texts come from Cece, who was seated across the ballroom. Earlier in the evening, Eva had told her about Shane’s brunch no-show—and was now regretting it.
Today, 9:23 PM
Queen Cece
Darling, are you hanging in?
Today, 9:25 PM
Queen Cece
Heard from him yet?
Today, 9:29 PM
Queen Cece
If he doesn’t show up, I’ll kill him. No, I’ll let you kill him first.
Today, 9:33 PM
Queen Cece
EVA! You might want to check your FB fan group. I take full responsibility. I’m already drafting a letter to the catering agency, but I think one of the waiters at my party was spying on you and Shane. The redhead. How was I to know she was a CURSED stan? She looked so sophisticated!