Page 130 of Happy After All

“I’ve never taken a selfie in my life, and I’m not going to start now.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

We move into the tent, and there are stacks of books in there. More of his, fair enough. He is Jacob Coulter, and I am not.

I take a deep breath, and I fully come to terms with the fact I’m not just going to see Christopher in a parade. I’m actually going to see him, talk to him, interact with him.

I feel so much more okay than I expected to. It’s still weird.

“Are you good?” he asks.

“I am,” I say. “I mean, nobody is totally good right before a socially awkward interaction, but that’s all it is. Genuinely.”

Nathan nods and goes up to the front, where all the chairs are facing. I see it again, his relative ease with this kind of thing.

“You’re a strange man,” I say, and I mean it in the nicest way.

“I am?”

“Yes. You are. Sometimes the least personable human being on the planet, but also the most. You are utterly insensitive. On the surface. Usually, if I get past my knee-jerk reaction to the things you say, I realize they aren’t clichés, they aren’t platitudes. You’re actually saying something important. You value your privacy, but I can see that you do well at things like this.”

“At something like this,” he says, “we’re talking about the books. I can do books, Amelia. Writing is the only way that I’ve ever found to make sense of anything. I’m not talking about myself when I’m talking about my stories.”

“You are, though,” I say. “They’re the deepest part of you. The part I think not even you see sometimes. I mean, that’s why we have to write, isn’t it? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I started writing romance after the biggest romantic implosion of my life. Helped me sort through everything. Everything.”

“Save it for the panel,” he says, giving me a slight smile.

“No, because I’m not talking about that in front of Christopher.” I take a fortifying breath. “Wow. This is going to be interesting.”

The tent begins to fill. Then Christopher comes in at the very last minute. I realize why. As soon as our eyes connect, I see his guilt. I see his fear. He has no idea what he’s walking into. He knew he was asked to moderate this panel, that I was on the panel—even if he didn’t know my pen name, he knows what I look like—and he’s been stressing about it. Of course he has. I wouldn’t pick up his phone calls. That kind of amuses me. I didn’t really mean to get revenge on him that way, but apparently I did.

Nathan steps forward and holds his hand out. Aggressively. Not in a friendly manner. “Jacob Coulter,” he says.

“Christopher Weaver,” Christopher says in response. Then he looks at me. “Amelia ...”

Nathan moves back to my side and puts his hand on my lower back in an extremely possessive gesture that can’t be misconstrued. Christopher’s eyes dart between us.

“We’ll talk after,” I say.

Because now there’s just the panel.

Christopher is, of course, charming as he introduces us to the crowd, introduces himself, and reads Nathan’s—Jacob’s—and my bios.

When we start talking, it’s like Christopher disappears. Nathan and I already know how to talk about writing. I ask him a hundred questions that I’ve already asked him. We go back and forth, talking about genre conventions and process, why I love a daily word count and why he would find it oppressive.

This is where his passion has always been, even when he can’t find it. He manages to talk about his feelings without sharing anything personal.

“Why do you write romance?” he asks me.

“Because no matter how terrible things have been in my own life, I wanted to believe there was hope. That’s what we all want to believe.Don’t we all want to learn how to write a happy ending in our own lives? That’s what I’ve been doing. Learning how to write one. Figuring out how people other than me, fictional people, find happiness after the darkness. What’s more important than that?”

“Nothing,” he says.

When we finish the panel, we’re both busy signing books. I’ve never done a book signing before. I enjoy it more than I thought I would, even if it takes a little bit to get used to signing a pseudonym.

It takes a few tries for Belle Adams to feel natural. I’ll have to ask Nathan for pointers later.

It hits me then that I’ve found something in him I never imagined was possible. I’ve found a man who learns about the world the way I do. Who processes his feelings using the same method I use. We might write differently—me with my word count, him with his brooding—but there is something so common between us that I’ve never found with another person.

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