Lovestruck in Los Angeles (23 page)

“Good morning to you, too,” he said, laughing a little. I felt his lips press into my hair. “Lizzie?”

“Ellen showed my book to a senior editor, Thomas,” I said, looking up at him. I felt like crying or screaming. “And they liked it. They want to meet with me on Wednesday.”

His sleepy face lit up. “Seriously?”

I nodded. “I can’t believe it.”

“I can!” He suddenly picked me up and swung me around. “Of course they loved it! It’s fantastic!”

I laughed in his arms. “This is so crazy!”

He set me back on my feet but squeezed me tight to his chest. “You deserve it, Lizzie. I’m so proud of you.”

I squeezed him back before pulling away. “I need to calm down. This is only one small step. A lot of things have to go right before I really have a right to be excited.”

“Bullshit,” he said, shaking his head. “You need to celebrate all the good things as they come, Lizzie. Creative industries break you down like nothing else. If you don’t enjoy yourself along the way, you’re in for some serious rough times, you know.”

I nodded. “I just don’t want to get ahead of myself.”

“Cautious optimism is what I would suggest.” He grinned at me. “Let’s have dinner tonight, and we can practice your pitch and have a glass of champagne.”

“Will you be able to get out of work?”

He nodded. “I should. I’m only scheduled for a short shoot today.”

“Okay.” I felt a little thrill of happiness; I was so glad I had Thomas to enjoy this with. I hugged him again. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know if I even would have finished the book without you. Seriously.”

“You would have, Lizzie.” He brushed my hair back from my shoulder. “I know you would have.”

I spent the day on a little cloud of excitement. I was so anxious to see what could come out of the meeting, but I was also starting to feel the first stirrings of nerves. I had never been very good at selling myself.

At five o’clock I got a text that dampened my mood somewhat. “What’s wrong?” Imogen asked, watching as I frowned at my phone.

“Nothing.” I slipped my phone into my desk, smiling at her. “Thomas had to cancel our dinner plans. The shoot went over.”

She made a face at me. “Sorry, Lizzie. I’d offer to take his place but I’m supposed to see Gage tonight.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Gage, eh? Isn’t that the assistant from the photo shoot last week?”

She nodded, then rolled her eyes. “He’s no great catch, but it’s nice to be asked.”

“I thought he was cute!”

“He is.” She sighed. “But he’s also full of himself. And totally career obsessed and over ambitious.”

I laughed. “Then why did you agree to see him?”

“Because I have this cute new dress and nowhere to wear it.”

I shook my head, smiling. “You’re a strange girl, Imogen.”

After she’d left for the day, I milled around the house, at a loss. I had been looking forward to talking through the pitch with Thomas, with someone who had experience meeting with scary, career-making executives. I briefly considered calling Annie, but realized she was probably stuck at the same shoot as Thomas. When my phone rang again, I grabbed it quickly, hopping it was Thomas saying he could make it after all.

It was my mother.

“Lizzie, how are you?”

The sound of her voice made me feel like crying, somehow. “I’m fine, Mama,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. “Actually, I’m better than fine.”

“Better than fine? Did something nice happen?”

“Oh, Mama, the nicest thing. An editor read my book, and they want to meet with me on Wednesday.”

Her gasp of surprise brought a smile to my face. She’d been so excited and proud when she found out I was writing. “Mija, that’s wonderful! Who is this editor? Tell me everything.”

So I curled up on the couch and I did just that, explaining all about Charlie passing my book along to Ellen and our first meeting before Christmas. “And then, apparently, she passed it along to a senior editor at her publishing house and he liked it too.”

“Of course he did. It’s a wonderful book.”

“Thanks, Mama. So I don’t know what will happen or if they’ll want to buy it, but it’s a good step.”

“Of course it is,” she said. “A very good first step. Now, what will you wear to the lunch? You want to look professional, but not stuffy. I would think they’d be looking for someone fresh and exciting, which fits you just perfectly. Maybe a nice dress, dear.”

I had a sudden wish that I had gotten the call from Ellen while home in Michigan, instead of out here. I wanted to be able to tell her in person, to jump up and down in our little kitchen together, to run up to my room arm in arm to go through all of my clothes.

I looked around the gorgeous living room with its high-end features and twenty-million-dollar view and all I could feel was sad. Not for the first time in the last few months, I wanted to be home.

***

Ellen had made reservations at a bistro in Brentwood. I wasn’t very familiar with the neighborhood and was paranoid about getting lost, so I ended up arriving a good fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet.

I felt claustrophobic inside my car, so I decided to walk for a bit while I waited. It was another picture-perfect day in southern California, blue skies and seventy-five degrees. I wondered if the people here could properly appreciate such weather. Did you get immune to it after a while? I watched a woman about my age strolling down the street, talking on her phone. She was wearing jeans, a baggy, off-the-shoulder top, and large sunglasses. When she stopped at the corner for the light to change, her face seemed to tilt automatically toward the sky, as if soaking in the sun. I smiled to myself. Maybe they appreciated the weather just fine.

My own phone rang in my bag, startling me from my people watching. I pulled it out to see Callie’s name flashing on the screen. “Callie?”

“Hey,” she said. “Are you at the restaurant yet?”

“Yeah. I’m early.”

She laughed. “I had a feeling you might be. Are you also freaking out? ‘Cause I had a feeling about that as well.”

There was a bench down by the corner, so I decided to sit while we chatted. “You know me so well, Cal.”

“There is no reason to freak out,” she said, her voice soothing. “You’re going to be fantastic, Lizzie. I know you will. Besides, they obviously like the book, right? Otherwise they never would have called you.”

“I have confidence in the book,” I said, realizing how true it was as I said it. “It’s myself I’m not so sure about.” I tugged on the hem of my dress. Like my mom had suggested, I decided to go with a put-together but casual look. I wore a navy, poplin dress. The blue worked well with my skin tone and hair and the dress felt sweet and feminine with cap sleeves and fabric buttons up the front. But now I wondered if it was too casual. Should I have gone with a suit? Or should I have gone all-out literary and showed up in a blazer, scarf, and fake hipster glasses?

“God, I can practically hear you ripping yourself down,” Callie said, sighing. “You need to let that negative voice in your head go, once and for all.”

“I know. I wish I… I wish I could be more like you, honestly. Cool and confident.”

She snorted. “Oh, please. You are just as confident as I am, you just don’t see it in yourself. Think about how much more you stand up for yourself now, compared to a year and half ago. You’ve totally grown up, babe. You just need to realize it.”

I let out a loud breath. She had a point. Before we left for London I was definitely not someone that you would think of as having much of a backbone. But I had gotten better, I knew that. I stood up for myself so much more than I used to. That’s how I’d gotten here in the first place.

“I should go in,” I said, looking down at my watch. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Knock ‘em dead, lady,” she said. “And then call me and tell me all about it.”

I laughed. “Will do.”

I hung up feeling much better than I had a few minutes before. I stood, straightening my skirt, and walked the block back to the restaurant, ready to do my best not to let this opportunity pass me by.

***

An hour later, I was starting to wonder what I’d been worried about. Ellen was just as pleasant and easy to get along with as she’d been last time. And Bill, her boss, reminded me of my dad’s brother Rick, one of the more jovial relatives from home. He had a white bushy mustache, an easy smile, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that made him seem more like someone’s kindly grandpa than a scary book editor.

And he seemed to really like my book.

We’d spent the first half of our lunch chatting about London, a city that Bill apparently had a soft spot for. Whatever nerves were left after my conversation with Callie disappeared promptly once we started talking about my adoptive home. I could talk about London all day.

Halfway through our entrees, Bill segued into my book. “I can definitely see how the experience of living there inspired you, Lizzie. I can see the London fingerprint all over your manuscript.”

I nodded. “It was such an exciting time for me, you know? Being away from home for the first time and seeing all these new things. I wanted the book to have that feel to it.”

“Well, you succeeded,” he said. “And you nailed the romantic optimism. So tell me, how would you want to package a book like this? What genre do you feel best encompasses it?”

“Probably romance,” I said. “I mean, that’s definitely what I was going for.”

Bill and Ellen both nodded, looking thoughtful. “The romance element is strong, Lizzie, and definitely not something we would want you to lose. But there’s a lot there about self-discovery and growth as well. I actually think this book could fit well in the women’s fiction category, which is a little broader.”

My head swam a bit as they talked about the kind of authors that epitomized women’s fiction—from Emily Giffin to JoJo Moyes, they were rattling off the names of some of my literary heroes. The idea that someone might mention my book in the same breath as people like that made me feel faint.

“I do think we’re missing a bit of the humor feel,” Bill was saying. “We never want to get too bogged down with the heavy stuff, you know. But I think with a little work you could absolutely hit the right balance of whimsy, sweetness, and humor.”

“Absolutely,” Ellen said. “And I could help you identify areas that could be tweaked.” She picked up her wine glass. “The important thing is that your story is there, Lizzie, and that’s half the battle.”

I smiled at her and reached for my own glass, needing to focus and collect myself. Coming into the lunch, I had assumed I would need to do a fair amount of selling myself, but things weren’t really playing out that way. In fact, it was starting to feel almost like they were courting me.

I certainly had faith in my book, but I was not so naive and starry-eyed to think that this was typical behavior for editors talking to a totally green author with a single manuscript under her belt. Was it?

“Do you think you might be happy taking your book in that direction?” Bill asked, his eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Because we could certainly take another look if you really wanted a straight romance.”

“No,” I said, swallowing. “I always thought my book was a bit quirky to be considered straight romance. I guess I just didn’t know how it would be best categorized.”

Bill nodded. “I think we could have a real winner, Lizzie.”

A cold feeling was sinking into my stomach, a vague suspicion that I didn’t want to name. But it almost seemed
too
surreal, the way they were talking…

“Now, Lizzie,” Bill said, leaving forward over the table. “Ellen and I were both really big fans of your hero, the literature professor. He was quite well written, and funny too. But we wondered, what would the book be like if we perhaps changed that character a bit?” He must have caught sight of my face because he held up his hands reassuringly. “Not his personality, of course, just his profession. What if instead of academia, he worked in the entertainment field?”

The cold feeling in my stomach suddenly spread up to my chest. “The entertainment field?”

He nodded. “When we start thinking about marketing, it could really help us if we had that angle to go from.” He winked. “You know, the whole ‘normal girl-next-door falling for the celebrity’ trope. With your situation, people would really go for it.”

My lips felt numb. “My situation.”

“Of course, it’s just an idea. I would never want you to make a change you didn’t feel good about. But in this day and age it’s very difficult to get word of mouth—which is totally vital for book sales. The celebrity boyfriend angle could really help us there.”

They continued to talk for the next twenty minutes or so, bouncing ideas off of each other. I knew I answered them when they asked a direct question, but I honestly had no idea what I said. The numb feeling had gripped me, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted it to go away. As long as I felt numb I didn’t have to think of how embarrassed I was, how totally, stupidly naive I’d been, to think this meeting had anything to do with me or the merit of my book.

I didn’t realize they were wrapping up until I saw Ellen pick up her handbag. I saw, belatedly, that Bill was walking away from the table. Had he said something about using the restroom? I couldn’t remember. Ellen was checking her phone, a smile on her face, clearly not recognizing the tumult going on inside me. Without thinking, I blurted out the only question that had clearly formed in my mind. “Did Thomas call you?”

She gaped at me, clearly surprised. “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “After our last meeting. Did Thomas Harper call you? Did he ask you to arrange this lunch?”

“Of course not, Lizzie.” She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. “I showed your manuscript to Bill because I honestly enjoyed it.”

I looked down at the tablecloth, not wanting to meet her eyes. “Sweetie,” she said, her voice kind and more than a shade patronizing. “You can’t let yourself get worried about what Bill said, about the celebrity angle. He was right, it’s very difficult to get word of mouth for a first-time author in this business. We have to take every opportunity we can. It’s just business.”