Girl Before a Mirror (11 page)

What will he?

“Mrs. Brubaker is on a phone interview right now. If you would.” Hector leads us into another room in Helen's lavish hotel suite. The room is fitted out with urns filled with coffee and hot water, fresh flowers, and an entire breakfast spread. We are obviously one of several meetings Helen has this morning.

“Thank you,” I say, entering the room and eyeing the Fortnum and Mason loose-leaf teas still in those beautiful Georgian blue tins. Hector closes the door behind us.

“Are you kidding me with this?” Sasha loudly whispers, pulling her phone out of her purse and taking several pictures of herself with the elaborate spread.

“Are you taking a picture with a platter of strawberries right now?” I ask, cringing as she snaps the photo. “Why don't I just take a picture of you?”

“No, I got it,” Sasha says, now in front of the beautiful spray of fresh peonies in the middle of the table. Pursed lips, raised eyebrows, doe eyes, aaaand snap. Sasha looks at the picture, grimaces, and deletes it.

“I can't with the selfies,” I say, making myself a much-needed
cup of tea. “Don't post those anywhere. I know that's asking the world of you. Not to document one second of your life for your thousands of friends.” I put air quotes around the word
friends
.

“For someone who didn't come back to her room last night, you should be in a much better mood,” Sasha says, sliding her phone back into her purse.

“How did y—”

“I'm right across the hall,” Sasha says, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She scans the condiments. “No soy? Come on, Brubaker.”

I set my tea on the side table, tuck my purse and workbag next to my feet, and finally settle in on the tufted white couch, which is overrun with silk pillows. Sasha settles in next to me, knowing to leave the floral wingback chair for Helen when she arrives. I am trying to ignore Sasha. Because you
would
think someone who didn't come back to her hotel room last night would be in a better mood, and yet here I am. Cranky and picking on a poor twentysomething who has the audacity to show how excited she is about something.

“So you're really not going to dish?” Sasha asks, now gathering various fruits on a small plate for herself. I sip my tea. Fortnum and Mason, Royal Blend. A thing of beauty. I inhale its fragrance as I try to gather my thoughts. I am exhausted but amped—my entire body is buzzing. But whereas I thought I'd be scattered and elsewhere—namely in Lincoln Mallory's bed—I am more focused than I've been in months. I feel alive.

“It's just a fling,” I say, and the words cut through me, choking in my throat. Another sip of tea.

“You slept with him?? You naughty little hellcat, you,” Sasha says, pointing a strawberry at me emphatically.

“Shh!”

“Well, did you?”

“Hellcat? Really?”

“I know, right? I was like . . . did I really just say
hellcat
right now, but . . .” Sasha dissolves into giggles as she picks through her plate of fruit, finally settling on a piece of pineapple. “Don't change the subject.”

“I've worked very hard to get to this point in my career, and something like this?”

“It's just a fling. Like you said.”

“It can give people a reason to call my professionalism into question,” I say.

“Well, they'd have to find out first, right?”

“Right.”

A beat.

“Wait, you think I'm going to say something?” Sasha can't help but burst out laughing. “Who would care? That's . . . I actually can't breathe—” Sasha begins choking on her piece of pineapple and takes a long sip of her coffee. “You're the only one who talks to me at that office.”

“I . . . what?”

“In order for me to spread any kind of rumors about you, I'd have to have . . . I don't know, made friends first? And seeing as how you're my only friend . . .” Sasha sips her coffee again. What was once funny has become a bit melancholy for her. “The women hate me and the men just want to . . . well, you know.” She can't look at me. We are silent. “P.S.? I would never say anything. I'm not like that.”

I look up at her. She finally makes eye contact with me. I nod. She smiles. And I start talking.

“I guess I just . . . I'm not a fling kind of person,” I say.

“It sounds kind of amazing,” Sasha says with a sigh. “Straitlaced businesswoman lets her passion get the best of her for a night of wild abandon with a hot British stranger.” Sasha gestures broadly as if she's seeing the romantic comedy poster now. “But is it more than she bargained for as—”

“We're not in a romance novel. As much as—”

“As much as it sounds like you are?”

“Yeah, but here's what I know. All of those romance novels—and granted, I've only read a handful—all of the trials and tribulations the couple goes through are worth it in the end, because we're promised that they're going to live happily ever after. Right?”

“Right.”

“But that's not how real life works. I've been married. I walked down the aisle with my dad in his dress blues to a man who wept when he saw me in my wedding gown. What they don't tell you is that even with that . . . you can still just fall out of love.”

“But he wasn't your guy.”

“What?”

“That first guy?”

“Patrick.”

“Patrick? He's not The One.”

“There's no such thing as The One.”

“No, I know. I'm not delusional. I think there are several Ones. It's kind of based on how much you want to better yourself or how much you love yourself. Like stops on a train? If you keep going, your Ones get better. You just got off at the wrong stop with Patrick.”

“So, this hot British stranger? This is what? The guy that I send to the store for tampons a year from now? I mean, because
that
? Is true love,” I say.

“Yes! Exactly. Things have to start somewhere. It might as well be in a hotel in Phoenix,” Sasha says, eating another strawberry.

“I don't know. You know, I'm too embarrassed to even tell my friends back home about him?”

“Why? It's wonderful,” Sasha says. Her use of the word
wonderful
makes me kind of love her in that moment.

“I don't know. It feels . . . I told my brother about it—”

“Ferdie?”

“Yeah. He said that I had to . . . wait, let me get this right. That everyone falls for the Bruce Wayne version of us, but what we want are the people who love the Batman side.”

“Wow.”

“I know. And I knew I was doing that—you know, playing a part—with the men I was dating. Even with Patrick to a point. But I never knew how much I did that with my friends. I don't think even they see the Batman side of me,” I say, unable to look at Sasha.

“Yeah, I get that.”

Hector pokes his head in and tells us it'll be another ten minutes and to get comfortable.

“It just got me thinking.” I pause. A sip of tea. Sasha waits. “I was over at a friend's house—a dear friend, I might add—for this nerdy book club that we do. We're reading Shakespeare in order. I've known Michael forever. And his wife, Allison, for going on . . . what is it, six years? She's lovely. They're both lovely,” I say. I take another sip of my tea as Sasha offers me a mini-muffin. I take it and thank her. She takes a croissant for
herself and proceeds to pick at its buttery layers. “I had to go to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. Like
go
to the bathroom. I'd started putting flax oil into my morning smoothies . . . it was a whole thing.” Sasha's eyes get wide. “I ask to use the bathroom, they say yes—of course—and I am all over the place. A wreck. I do my business and it flushes—because I'd convinced myself it wouldn't, even though there was never a problem with the plumbing before. I wash my hands, trying to waft the smell of the soap around the bathroom. There's this tiny window, and I try to open it—but never noticed before that the window was levered. So, all of Allison's perfumes—which were lined up neatly on the sill—go tumbling onto the marble counter. And I get the ‘Are you okay?' from just outside the bathroom. I yelp out ‘Yes!' And now I'm panicking. I use some of Allison's lotion to try to, you know, offer another option in the scent column. I finally leave the bathroom and join them in the living room. I sit down. And Allison asks Michael if he could change that lightbulb she was talking about earlier.”

“No.”

“Where's the lightbulb, he asks.”

“No.”

“In the bathroom.”

“Noooo.”

“And they both stream back into the bathroom and are back there for what feels like
hours
as I just sit all alone on their couch with my little glass of bubble water and . . . my hands are shaking, my face is all hot, and my heart rate is through the roof. They come out and never say a word.” I take a sip of my tea and Sasha finishes the croissant that she nervously ate during the telling of my story.

“I would have died.”

“I know, but it's things like that that let me know I'm not only guarded around the men I'm dating, it's everyone,” I say.

“No, I'm the same,” Sasha says. We are quiet. Haunted.

“And this is after a year on Time-Out.”

“Time-Out?”

“Oh, that's right. You don't know about that.” I fill Sasha in on the ‘Thunder Road' story, the yearlong Time-Out. She plows through another croissant during the telling of it.

“So before Hot British Stranger, you hadn't had sex in a year?” Sasha asks.

“It'd been longer than that,” I confess.

“What . . . wait . . . wh—” The door to the room pulls open just as Sasha begins to speak. Helen Brubaker strides in with a cup of coffee from Starbucks and Team Brubaker at her heels.

“So, let's talk turkey, girls,” Helen says, settling into the large, floral wingback chair.

“You have thirty minutes until your prizewinners,” Hector says, tablets and phones and headsets abounding.

“Is this for the photo op or . . .”

“No, you're assisting two aspiring romance novelists with their pitches,” he says.

“Ah, sure. Okay. Give me a five-minute warning,” Helen says, taking a sip of her coffee. A coffee which, I notice, has the word
soy
written on the side of it. Sasha's eyes narrow. Hector closes the door behind him and we are alone with Helen.

“Thank you for making time for us this morning,” I say, setting my tea on the large coffee table.

“You're welcome,” Helen says. A beat. And then . . .

“Your book is exactly what women need right now. What I
need right now. The audacious idea that we should all be the heroes of our own stories? And the boldness to suggest we should put ourselves first,” I say, coming forward on the couch just enough.

“Thank you,” Helen says. This is a different version of Helen Brubaker. And it's terrifying. This is the businesswoman.

“It's inspired us. Professionally. Personally—”

“But don't you think all this is below you, Ms. Wyatt?” Helen asks.

“I absolutely did—”

“Like yesterday,” Helen interrupts. “Do you know how many times I've defended the books I write to people like you? Explained that it's actually a fallacy that anyone could write a romance novel if they just lowered themselves for the weekend it'd take them to spit one out? That the relationships and people you read about in the books that are deemed ‘important' are actually the same ones that I write about? The same ones my readers have and find within the pages of my books?”

“I know.” Helen is legitimately pissed. As she should be. I all but insinuated her entire life's work was garbage. She winds through example after example and I realize that we'll be lucky if we get our allotted thirty minutes. This entire meeting is slipping through my fingers, and if I don't do something our time here at RomanceCon could be cut short, because if Helen Brubaker doesn't like you, no one does. I want people to remember my name, but not for this reason. I look up at Helen with the realization of what I have to do. Of course, she misinterprets it.

“It's the look of surprise when there's something truly meaningful found in the pages of a romance novel that gets me every
time. That we're actually intelligent women and not drooling, wanton cat ladies.”

“Cookie-cutter. That's what I hate,” Sasha adds, trying to salvage the meeting.

“Cookie-cutter. Formulaic is one of my personal favorites. Of course, when a man writes about love and relationships it's worthy of a ticker tape parade or a Pulitzer,” Helen says, sipping her coffee. “But when we do it it's unrealistic. Because I don't know about you, but I know countless pretty—but don't know it, of course—oversexed, yet virginal, college students who not only lust after their English professors but will get in line behind several other women for the honor of doing so.”

“A miserable ending with unlikable characters doesn't make you deep,” Sasha adds, edging closer to me. Nudging me to say something. Do something. My face feels hot. I know what I have to do.

“Amen,” Helen says.

“You want to truly understand a culture? Just record what they read when they think no one is looking,” Sasha says.

“Oh, that's good. I'm going to use that one,” Helen says, tapping the thought into her phone.

“Thanks,” Sasha says. They both turn to me.

The room falls silent.

“I was wrong,” I say, flustered but not thrown.

“Damn right you were,” Helen says.

Silence.

“So what happened?” Helen asks. A breath. And then the truth. Or at least whatever sliver of the truth I'm starting to understand.

“For me, it was easier experiencing pleasure secondhand,” I say.