The Seven Year Slip

WEDNESDAY NIGHTS WERE USUALLY reserved for three things: cheap wine and cheese plates at Berried Alive, a small bar down by the Flatiron Building decorated in death motifs that skewed more cute than morbid, and bitching about our week. Fiona called it our “Wine and Whine,” though she’d been missing out on the first part of it for the last eight months. Now she picked her way through the cheese plate and lamented about how she missed the taste of a house red. Usually it was just Fiona, Drew, and me, but Juliette had had a particularly terrible week, so we’d invited her along, too.

The wine bar was dead tonight—no pun intended—so we actually managed to get our favorite table in the back in the shape of a skull, and that just tickled Fiona. She sat at the top of the skull and cried, “Look, babe, I got a head!” with a cackle, and—not for the first time—Drew looked like she might just walk herself into the sea. We ordered what we always did, cheese plates and cheap house wine, and we started our Wine and Whine session, because it was nothing if not therapeutic, and none of us could actually afford therapy.

I, personally, just wanted to burrow into the center of the earth and never come out again. Ever since yesterday, I don’t think my heart had—once—calmed down.

“It was good to see you again, Lemon,” Iwan—James, damn it, he was a potential author—had said. Which meant he remembered me.

I knew how to handle a whole host of situations. I knew what numbers to call when my authors were stranded in airports, I knew which journalists to go to first for exclusive scoops, I knew how to make a good first impression, the best words to say to start off on the right foot, but none of that was going to help me here.

I kept replaying the meeting in my head, over and over again, trying to pick out the Iwan I knew from the James Ashton seated at the table. The way he just controlled the room the moment the meeting started—it was like I couldn’t look at anyone else—was infuriatingly sexy, and at the same time unattainable.

At the table, Juliette was beginning to spiral about the social media campaign that Rhonda had put her on—something involving a TikTok dance that was, above everything else, just a complete waste of time.

“I can’t even dance!” she cried, burrowing her face in her hands. “Oh, why did she choose me?”

Fiona said, “You could’ve said no.”

“To Rhonda?” she asked, aghast. “Clementine can, but I certainly can’t, and I like my job.”

Which, to be fair, was true, though Juliette was definitely the stronger of the two of us when it came to genius and unexpected campaigns. A year ago—when I was on vacation—Strauss & Adder had to promote a book titled I Chart the Stars, but the marketing designer had left a typo in an ad that ran in the New York Times and, regrettably, on the big jumbotron in Times Square that made it read I SHART THE STARS. It immediately blew up on the internet, and everyone started making fun of it, but instead of apologizing and pulling the ads we spent way too much money for, Juliette decided to lean into it with the hashtag #ISHARTTOO. It was only a coincidence that the main character also suffered from IBS, and the author, empowered, came out as a person with IBS as well. It became a whole thing.

And yes, that was the marketing designer Rhonda later fired.

Juliette thought on her feet in a way I absolutely did not, even though I’d worked as a publicist a little longer.

“Well, maybe you can get that new intern to do it?” Drew asked, and Fiona agreed.

“Or the new social media manager? Why don’t you make this her problem?”

“I tried,” she sighed. “She made it my problem again.”

“Well, that’s silly—Clementine, what would you do?” Fiona asked. “Clementine?”

I had my head down, scrolling through Instagram on my phone. Okay, technically a single profile on Instagram. James Ashton’s. My phone glowed, full of colors from all of the places he’d been, the bright yellow of the Sahara, the deep green of Thailand, the sakura pink of Japan . . . so many different places, soaking them all in.

Like my aunt.

There were other people on his timeline, too. His agent, Lauren, but also people I assumed he worked with at the Olive Branch. Further back, there were photos of women, too, grinning as he kissed them on the cheek, or as they sat on his lap in intimate poses. Pictures of vacations in the Hamptons and intercontinental trips with exhausted-but-happy girlfriends. None of those women stayed in his feed for long. A few months at most, and then they would disappear, and soon enough another woman would sneak into his life, and another.

Not unlike my relationships, I realized.

“Clem?” Fiona repeated. “Earth to Clementine!” She waved her hand in front of my phone.

I quickly slammed it, facedown, on the table. “I’m not looking at nothing!”

Drew said, “Well, that’s suspicious.”

“Answering a question we didn’t ask and bad grammar?” Juliette added, sounding a little dubious. “That seems odd.”

Fiona agreed, “She’s never been good at lying. Gimme that!”

I squawked in protest as Fiona snagged my phone, put in my passcode (since when did she know my passcode?), and gasped as his Instagram came up. I buried my face in my hands.

“Clementine! Do you have a crush?” Fiona asked slyly, and showed the rest of the table my phone, as if the sudden revelation was scandalous.

I immediately popped my head up, startled. “No! Absolutely not! I like my job!” I added, as if I didn’t already sound mortified. “I just . . .” I pressed my hands against the sides of my neck, knowing I was turning every shade of red imaginable, and all of my friends looked at me expectantly, because I wasn’t one to go stalking anyone’s Instagram pages. Ever.

Fiona shook her head. “Clementine never has a crush,” she said, and Drew nodded sagely.

“She must be sick,” Drew agreed.

“Oh, what a lovely crush!” Juliette added. “Wait—is that that chef?”

I wanted to die. I couldn’t just tell them that I was trying to figure out how someone who wrote such a lovely article in Eater could give us such a cold proposal, and I didn’t want to undermine Drew and her acquisition. My job was to back her up, so whatever feelings or reservations I had came second to being on her team. So, I ended up with, “Fine. You’re right. He’s really hot. I hope we get him.”

Juliette seemed intrigued. “Oh! Everyone was talking in the kitchen at work about this guy. Something about a weird acquisition process?”

“It’s a bit ridiculous, but we’re going to play,” Drew replied, and ate a chunk of cheddar off the bone-shaped charcuterie board. “Can’t afford not to at this point. I’m sure the book will land in the right hands.”

“Preferably yours,” Fiona said, and took her wife’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “We’re rooting for you, babe.”

I took my phone back from Fiona and shoved it into my purse. “There’s no way we won’t make it to the next round. Drew’s offer was fantastic and we’re a great team. I’d be more worried about that cooking class.”

Juliette clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Oh, I can just imagine the insurance he’d have to take out for that. Rob always has to insure his guitar.”

We gave her a strange look.

“Why?” Drew asked.

She replied, quite seriously, “In case it bursts into flames while he’s playing it.”

Well, then.

Fiona responded, saving both Drew and me from answering, “If anyone will burn down his restaurant, it’ll be Clementine.”

“Hey!” I cried. “I might not.”

She pointed out, “You’ve admitted that you’ve put tinfoil in the microwave.”

“It was once and I was drunk and the candy bar was frozen,” I said defensively, and everyone laughed and agreed that they’d all sell a kidney to be a fly on the wall of that cooking class.

They went on to talk about their current guesses for how long Basil Ray would stay at Faux before regretting his decision and returning to Strauss & Adder. Here, he was a big fish, but over at Faux? Not so much.

“He’s not coming back,” Drew said to Juliette. “And even if he did, he’s exhausted the list of every reputable ghostwriter.”

Juliette’s eyes widened. “He has a ghostwriter? Oh, actually that makes sense. His cookbooks are always so different . . .”

And I found myself zoning out a little again. I smeared a soft Brie on a cracker, topped it with apricot jam, and wondered what Iwan would think of this place. Would he like all the skulls on the wall, the terrible puns on the menu, or would he rake his eyes across the expanse and turn around and leave immediately, because it wasn’t somewhere his glossy image would go? Him, James Ashton, drinking house wine and eating the cheapest cheese plate at a death-themed bar with a bunch of gossipers?

I couldn’t image him here at all.

And maybe that was for the best.

“Speaking of Falcon House,” Juliette went on, after Drew mentioned that Ann Nichols had a ghostwriter as well, “I heard that the executive editor over in their romance list now oversees their entire imprint—fiction and nonfiction.”

Fiona gave a low whistle. “Are they single?”

Everyone gave her a look.

“What? For Clementine!”

“He has a fiancée,” I replied absently, just to show that I was, in fact, listening. I snagged another slice of cheddar—my favorite, it never failed me—and added, “Besides, you know me. I don’t have time to fall in love.”