The Decoy Girlfriend(5)
“And you’ve let your tea get cold. How many times have I re-microwaved this for you?”
Freya presses her lips together and mentally scrolls back through the day. “Two?”
Stori gives a long-suffering sigh and reaches for the forgotten mug. “Try three.”
“Oops?”
It’s always been like this with Stori: their close relationship shifting based on the setting and how much of a role model Stori feels like being. Party Girl Stori will join Freya and her friends in Jell-O shots and table dancing in Atlantic City; Sister Stori loves Freya like breathing, like a pulse; Boss Lady Stori will hire her part-time when book two is going nowhere fast and Freya isn’t quite ready to call it quits on her dream just yet.
Taskmaster Stori is easily Freya’s least favorite, especially when she shames her deplorable, non-writerly tea-drinking skills. Still, Freya adores her. Even when Stori’s helicoptering drives her nuts.
Stori takes a tentative sip of the brew, eyeing Freya over the rim. She pulls a face. “Make that four.”
Freya’s tempted to remind her that she doesn’t actually like tea all that much, but ever since she moved to her aunt’s city and into her apartment over the bookshop, Stori’s gone out of her way to make Freya’s environment as writer-friendly as possible so she can finally finish her draft. Freya doesn’t want to disappoint one of her last remaining cheerleaders, so she’ll gratefully accept the micromanaging.
“At least tell me you sent those poor unfortunate words to the Graveyard,” Stori says, reaching out to comb her fingers through Freya’s hair. It’s a habit of hers, but unlike her aunt’s silky black hair, Freya’s coarse, oft-tangled waves aren’t meant to be played with.
“Um. Fresh out of plots. These went straight into the incinerator. Fiery annihilation.”
Freya doesn’t dodge Stori’s hand in time, wincing as it catches on a snarl in her locks. It’s unbelievable she was once so precious about saving lines, copying and pasting them into a separate Word doc saved as “The Graveyard” in some kind of childish optimism that they’d be resuscitated one day. But like her career and her love life, everything she’s written in the last three years is dead on arrival.
Freya’s critique group calls her ruthless for killing her darlings, but she knows she’s not.
She’s terrified.
She can’t remember the last time that she wrote a sentence she cared about enough to advocate keeping, and part of her thinks that after so long, maybe that means she’s out of things to say.
Stori untangles her fingers from Freya’s hair. “I’m reheating this writer fuel, and then I’ll be back to make sure you get it down your gullet. Try to rewrite that paragraph while I’m gone.”
“You do remember I’m not your kid to issue commands to, right?”
“You do remember you’re on the clock and I’m your boss?” Stori says with a smirk. “The only acceptable reason for fingers not being on keys is if a customer needs help. Deal?”
“Deal. Want me to pinkie promise on it?” Freya’s only half joking.
Stori eyes the lapel pin with an old coworker’s name on Freya’s camisole. The real Randy quit last week.
“When I said wear a name tag, I meant maybe one with your actual name?” she says, barely holding back an eye roll. “You know that’s a synonym for ‘horny,’ right?”
“I mean, considering my dating drought, it’s technically not wrong,” Freya drawls, giving her a teasing jackass salute, the kind she can give Sister Stori but not Boss Lady Stori, and her aunt doesn’t turn away fast enough to hide her grin.
* * *
—
Soon after, when Stori disappears into the stockroom to get things ready for tonight, Freya turns to the hard stuff—the entire contents of a six-cup Bialetti, which comes to one giant mug’s worth. Illy espresso is vastly superior to quadruple-microwaved tea, which frankly tasted a little toxic.
Freya’s fresh coffee is piping, but her new paragraph is every bit as insipid and lukewarm as the many that came before it. She hesitates, scraping her teeth over her full bottom lip, then presses Delete with a hard-heartedness that her best friends would have envied.
With each letter and each word disappearing in a slow-moving trickle, it looks like something’s swallowing up a scurrying single-file line of ants. Instead of selecting the entire paragraph and deleting it in one go, it’s just so much more satisfying to see each letter wink out of existence.
“Freya, m’dear. How’s the writing?”
She looks up to see a familiar patron, Mrs. Skye McKenzie, totter up to the counter with her usual stack of hardcovers, which almost reaches her chin. Freya loves Skye, and knows she means well, but it’s her least favorite question.
“Oh my gosh,” Freya squeaks, thrusting her arms out to take the weight from the older woman. “You should have asked me to carry these up for you!”
“Nonsense. I’m sturdy as an ox. Fit as a fiddle.” Skye gives Freya a look as she perches her glasses on her nose, Pride flag–colored beaded chain swaying. “Those are similes, you know.”
“I did know that,” Freya says every bit as gravely.
Before she even arrived in LA, Stori had bragged about her “famous” author niece to all the Books & Brambles regulars, which was super sweet, but now that she’s here they all think they have to impress Freya with their knowledge and inquire about her writing, her love life, and her good health—in that order.