A Tale of Two Pretties (8 page)

Thirteen

Mac & Darcy’s Apartment

Saturday

6:41 PM

Mac

The day was long. Between training Liam in the mailroom and then actually being trained for my new job at the company, too, I was back and forth across offices all afternoon. Mostly, Liam understood exactly what he was doing, but he fucked up the mail cart and I spent more than an hour sorting it out so he could distribute mail.

But it was over.
Finally
. I walked into the apartment, dropped my bag by the door and booked it for the bathroom. Darcy was lounging on the couch, eyes glued to her computer. She barely noticed me, so I ignored her, too, delighting in the cool water of the shower. I spent far too long in there, but Darcy didn’t seem to mind when I returned to the living room. I grabbed a change of clothes and then went to try to change in the bathroom.

My body type was considered petite, since I was short and lean, but even I had a hard time changing in the tiny space. I popped open the door, holding a towel over me and had a great idea. Between the front door and the bathroom, there was a small closet. Darcy had claimed it for her clothes because I had a small dresser, but I threw open the door and the width of it covered most of the hallway, creating a small but larger than the bathroom changing room. It was amazing. I could actually stretch my arms out as I dressed.

“Are you changing in the hallway?” Darcy asked from the other side of my dressing room door.

“Hell yeah, I am. How do you get changed in that little bathroom?” I asked her.

“You’re usually at work, so I just change where you are, without the door being open,” she admitted.

I laughed. “Well, this closet door might come in handy, then.”

“How was work?” she asked.

“Long. I just want to veg. Do you work tonight?”

“No, I picked up a day shift today. I did some more research about self-publishing, though,” she said.

I was fully dressed and closed the door. “Oh yeah? What did you find out?”

“It’s easy to upload our books and it’s pretty much a sure thing. People are making insane amounts of money doing this.”

I didn’t believe in
sure things
, but decided to entertain her ideas. “Well, let’s get working, then.”

She led the way back to our living room where I took a seat on my bed and she sat on the couch and set her laptop on her lap.

“There’s a lot of moving pieces, of course, like editing, cover design, formatters, and then the actual uploading of the books,” she started. I gestured for her to continue, content to let her explain it all to me. “Okay, so once we write our books, we have to get them properly edited. I’ve been scouring blogs for tips on self-publishing, and the number one complaint from readers is a lack of editing. There are a bunch of blogs that list free-lance editors, so we can choose one from any of those lists. Next is cover design. I’ve found everything from pre-made covers to custom photo shoots with real models and professional photographers who sell you the images to use. There are photographers who are also designers, so they could put the pretty fonts on the cover. It’s actually kind of neat. I’m keeping a list of all these different people in this notebook,” she said, holding up a ratty, old spiral notebook. I laughed at the sight of it. “B-Rad let me have it.”

“That’s good, ‘cause we can barely make rent, let alone spend money on notebooks. Is the pen his, too?”

“Nope. I swiped it from one of the waitresses downstairs,” she explained.

I laughed. “Amazing.”

“One of the other things we should discuss is keeping a blog,” Darcy started.

“What the fuck is a blog?” All this new information was overloading my already too-full brain. The day was insane, and getting worse. Or possibly better, depending on what happened with the publishing thing.

“A blog is like an online journal. You write posts about yourself, your world, and what you’re doing. Then you can use hashtags to get more traffic to the blog.”

“Hashtags. Like on Twitter and Instagram?” I asked.

“Exactly. Facebook also does hashtags now, which is cool. They haven’t quite blown up like they did on Twitter and Instagram, but they’re available. Once the blog post is written and hashtags assigned, we put the post out into the world and then share it on all our social media outlets,” she finished.

I thought for a minute, working it all out in my head. “It sounds simple enough. Do we each need to have our own blog?”

“Most authors do their own, but some share. I thought we would share because we’re both so new to this. Then we could each do separate posts, too, so our fans get a glimpse of each of us, you know?”

“When do you want to write our first post?” I asked, still uncertain, but willing to give it a try.

“How about right now?” Darcy replied. “I’ve started our blog page. We just need to name it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because a good blog name could speak volumes to our fans. It gives them a little insight into who we are,” she explained.

“So, fans want to know who we are, huh? We’re hopeless in Hotlanta,” I muttered, a lame attempt at a joke.

“That’s perfect!” she screeched.

“What?”

“Hopeless in Hotlanta. It’s a perfect blog name. Let’s get this journey started,” she said with a smirk. I couldn’t help but smile back.

Hopeless in Hotlanta

Hello, and welcome to Hopeless in Hotlanta, the scandalous lives of D & M as we navigate the world of writing in the underbelly of one of the hottest cities.

And by hot, I mean it’s ninety degrees in May.

Most of our posts will be individual about our writing, lives, and whatever the hell else we feel like telling you about. Occasionally we’ll get together and write a post that will hopefully be witty and entertaining or you’ll just laugh your ass off.

So what can you expect now?

We’re both working on our first books (titles and purchase links to come later). In the meantime you can follow us as we make this journey from Hopeless to Hopefully Hopeful.

We write together. We die together. Bad girls for life.

~D & M~

***

Fourteen

Darcy and Mac’s apartment

Wednesday

10: 00 AM

Darcy

Truth be told, the only reason I ever wanted to be an English major was because I wanted to be Judy Blume when I grew up. One of my mom’s many boyfriends was really into literature and bought me a boxed set of her books for Christmas when I was younger. The boyfriend left, like all the other ones, but the books stayed with me forever. My worn out, dog-eared copy of
Forever
went just about everywhere with me. Every random guy I stayed with and every shitty home I’d lived in, Judy Blume was forever.

Now, finally, I was sitting down and writing, with the actually possibility of being published. Self-publishing was my ticket to finally putting my work out there and proving I was worth something.

Mac sat on the bed with a giant pair of pink headphones over her ears, typing away on her lap top. She always got pissed off when I interrupted her when she was writing, but I was too excited not to.

“Mac!” I yelled.

Of course she didn’t even look up. Her music was so loud I could hear it from the couch across from her. Since yelling wasn’t going to work I decided to set my computer down and actually crawl on her bed. I tapped her foot a few times. “MAC!”

“Can’t hear youuuuu,” she said, not even looking down at me.

“I know you can hear me or else you wouldn’t have said that.” I sat up and pushed her computer screen down.

“What the fuck?” She pulled her headphones off, some old school pop punk music blaring from them.

“I just finished my first chapter and I wanted to see if you wanted to switch. Like read each other’s chapters and give feedback.”

She shrugged, pausing her music. “Okay, that sounds doable.”

“Great!” I crawled off the bed and grabbed my laptop handing it to her and she scooted her laptop toward me as I sat down next to her.

Mac’s writing style was interesting to say the least. I expected her and I have to write similar stories, maybe both have a bit of romance in them... or something I could relate to, but Mac’s story was none of that. I couldn’t even pronounce half the words and there was something about dragons and mythical creatures in some mountain town.

I sucked in a deep breath as I finished the last sentence.

“Blixt you must go to them and find the slayer,” Queen Y’ust whispered.

I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to say. I guess everyone had their own thing that they wrote, but high fantasy? What the hell?

Mac closed my computer and turned to me. “What the fuck is this fan fiction shit you’re writing?”

I grabbed my laptop, cradling it in my arms like it was a baby. “It’s not fan fiction! It’s a contemporary romance!”

“Uh huh, a British boy band with a dude named Barry Myles falls for an American girl that works at a pizzeria. That doesn’t sound at all like your own fantasy fan fiction.”

“Fiction, Mac, Fiction. And it’s better than whatever the hell this fantasy shit is you’re writing. Dragons? Queens? Mountain towns? I thought you would be writing a romance or something that people actually read.” My defenses were up. I was proud of my first chapter and now she was treating it like it was no better than the fan fiction that random girls posted online.

Okay, so Barry may have been loosely based on a British boy bander and my lead female was kind of based on me, but it was fiction. Pure fiction. Okay, and maybe just a little bit of fantasy.

“A lot of people like high fantasy and I happen to be one of them!” She yanked her lap top back.

“Really? You mean to tell me that you sit around reading books about Jodo who wants to find some precious ring?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a fucking moron. It’s Frodo. Didn’t you at least watch the movies?”

I shook my head. “Nope. No desire to sit through three hours of that shit. I’d rather see a Judd Apatow movie any day. Did you know that he’s married to Leslie Mann, who plays the sister on Knocked Up and those are his two kids in that movie?”

Mac raised her eyebrow. “How do you know this random shit?”

“People magazine is kind of my guilty pleasure. I think I have last week’s issue somewhere in my bag if you want to read it.”

She held her hand up. “No, I’m cool. I’m not really into all that celebrity gossip stuff.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Mac’s phone vibrated on the bed between us and she picked it up, probably happy to break our conversation. “Hey, Kiki. Okay. Yeah.”

I listened to bits of her conversation with the mythical gatekeeper known as Kiki. The girl called her in the mornings, told her about a new job and Mac went running, but it was unusual for her to have a call this late in the day.

“Okay, thanks Kiki. I’ll be there soon.” Mac hung up the phone, tossed it on the bed and stood up.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Kiki has a new job for me, three to eleven doing the late shift at some high end clothing store. I guess they’re packed in the summer and need some extra help. It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“That sounds cool.” I nodded.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower, so if you have to pee do it now or forever hold your pee.” She sauntered into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

I could have gone back to working, but Facebook stalking sounded a lot more fun. I only had a cheap ass flip phone, so I was stuck doing all my internet stuff on the computer. It didn’t make it any easier that we were using the free Wi-Fi out of the pizzeria, so the connection was always spotty.

As soon as I logged on there was a message waiting for me.

Congrats, Darcy!

You’ve won two reader tickets to The Savannah Author Event in beautiful, Savannah, Georgia! Check in at the hotel on Friday and your VIP tickets will be waiting for you at the event registration table. Below I’ve included a link with all of the hotel information and the itinerary.

Have a great day and see you in Savannah!

“Eeeek!” I squealed. I’d entered the contest on one of the blogs I was following with no hopes of winning, but now that I’d won, I was uber stoked.

I set my laptop down and ran to the bathroom, knocking loudly on the door. “Mac! Mac! I have great news!”

“Did you win the lottery and we can get an apartment with a bigger shower?” she yelled.

“No! But it’s still great news so open up.”

“Ugh, fine.” Mac opened the door slowly. She stood there in just a towel with her wet hair falling around her shoulders. “This better be good.”

“It is. We totally just won reader tickets to the Savannah Author Event for next weekend! Isn’t that awesome? We get to hang out with real authors.” I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was absolutely giddy.

But Mac. Not so much.

“Uh, I hate to burst your bubble but we can’t afford that and what the hell are we going to do with Heath?”

That damn hedgehog. The thing was the bane of my existence. I thought of poisoning his food but then I was afraid they would do an autopsy and find out he was poisoned and Mac would know it was me and totally hate me.

“B-Rad can watch him,” I offered.

“Uh, no, B-Rad is afraid of the not even one pound animal,” Mac said, her words tinged with disgust.

As if Brad heard his name mentioned, a knock came in the door, but he didn’t even bother waiting for us to answer before he opened it. When working, he was always in a plain black t-shirt, but when he wasn’t he usually wore just a pair of shorts or some shirt with a ridiculous saying on it. Today’s shirt was bright pink and read “Don’t laugh, I borrowed this from your mom.” “Hey, ladies, just thought I’d come in to check on you.” He turned slowly to see us standing in the open door of the bathroom. “Whoa, Mac, do you ever wear clothes?”

“You wouldn’t be complaining if it was Darcy.”

“Still would because she’d have something covering her.” He winked at me and my cheeks immediately flushed. I had to change the subject, and fast.

“We were just talking about you. We won tickets to an author event in Savannah next weekend and were hoping you could watch Heath.” I put on my flirtiest voice possible and batted my eyelashes, hoping my charm worked on him even though we were definitely past casual flirting.

“Nuh uh.” He shook his head. “No way in hell I’m watching Spiky Satan.”

“Told you, Darcy. Looks like no Savannah,” Mac said.

“But, I’ve got a friend that is going to veterinary school. He’s really good with animals, even has a rescued bull dog. I’m sure he’d do it. I’ll text him.” Brad pulled out his phone, typing away on it.

“See? Heath problem solved!” I said, smiling at Mac.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t help the other problem of money for a hotel and how the hell are we going to get there?” She arched an eyebrow.

“I can totally pick up more shifts at work and you make bank at the temp agency.”

“Not really,” she muttered.

“And we can just drive B-Rad’s truck to Savannah.”

Mac and B-Rad both snapped their heads in my direction as if I just told them the stupidest thing in the world.

“Can you even drive a stick?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, I totally can,” I lied. It couldn’t be that hard to figure out.

Mac shook her head. “Whatever, you guys figure it out because I need to finish getting ready. And please don’t be fucking when I get out of the bathroom.” She closed the door.

“Wanna come over and play Mario Party?” Brad turned to me a huge grin on his face. We’d played the game more times since we’d known each other than I had in my entire life.

“I would, but I actually have to get ready for work tonight, too.”

He leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m sure I can talk to the boss about letting you off.” His lips brushed against my cheek before he whispered, “In more ways than one.”

I wanted to give in, but not now. Especially not with Mac right there. “Maybe later. I really do need to get ready, but I’ll see you at work tonight?”

The disappointment was evident as the smile left his face and he let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. I guess I’ll see you at work and maybe we can hang out later?”

“Definitely.” I looked at the door, making sure Mac wasn’t about to open it then gave Brad a quick peck on the cheek which brought a hint of a smile back.

“See you later, B-Rad.”

“See you later, Peach.”

***