Page 23 of The Villa

I laugh, but what she’s just said snags in my brain. She’s right, I hadn’t slept in my own sleeping bag that night. I’d curled up on someone else’s. I thought it was Chess’s but she just said she wasn’t there.

I almost push her on it, but shake it off. What does it matter if she was there or not, if she remembers or not?

Still, I can’t help but feel momentarily strange.

Disoriented.

It reminds me of those long months when I was dizzy all the time, my stomach lurching, and every doctor telling me there was nothing there, nothing wrong with me at all, and I shove the paperback back onto the shelf, suddenly wanting nothing more to do withLilith Rising.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “No murder talk, no creepy books. I’m gonna go dig up an issue ofTown and Countryon my iPad instead.”

“That is such a solid plan,” Chess agrees as we leave the room. “And I am going to have a shower and then get to work.”

“Perfect,” I say, pulling the door closed behind me. “But first, can we go back to the fact that your next book is calledSwipe Right on Life?”

She laughs, throwing her head back in that way she does. “The title was my publisher’s idea, and it’s gonna sell fifty bajillion copies, so you’re not allowed to make fun of it.”

As we head downstairs, we continue teasing each other (“It really bothersmethat your alliterative titles are in alphabetical order, but you don’t see me bringingthatup, Emily Sheridan.” “Okay, but at least none of my titles enthusiastically reference dating apps”), and just like last night, it’s asif no time has passed at all. Like we’ve been in each other’s pockets, in each other’s lives, every day for years.

I knew this trip would be good for us.

And if I feel a little sting that, just as I’d predicted, Chess doesn’t bring up the idea of us writing something together again, I do my best to ignore it.

CHAPTER SIX

“Petal still in peril?”

I look over the top of my laptop at Chess. We’re sitting in the formal dining room, a room we haven’t eaten in once in the week since we’ve been at Villa Aestas, but which we have repurposed as a sort of working space.

Well, Chess is working. Earbuds in, tiny cup of espresso at her elbow, her fingers clacking away on her extremely expensive and whisper-thin laptop. I don’t think she’s stopped typing from the moment we sat down.

Meanwhile, I have… opened a Word document.

And we’ve been in here for nearly two hours.

“Always,” I reply, not adding that I’m beginning to think I’m the one actually in peril these days. If I can’t finish this book while we’re here, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’d thought getting out of my house, situating myself in a brand-new space, would be all the jump-start I’d need to finally finish this damn thing, but so far, no good. I have maybe twoworkable chapters, and just got an email from my editor, Caleb, this morning with a less-than-gentle nudge asking how the book was coming along.

Worse, there was an email from my new fancy attorney’s bookkeeper, a reminder that I still owe part of last month’s bill and a link to how I can “easily pay and catch up!”

No book, no money, I remind myself, but I’ve never worked well under stress, so that’s not exactly the most helpful thought.

Not for the first time, I wonder if I should just tell Chess what’s going on with Matt and the divorce. Just how much Matt is looking to take from me. She’d understand, I know she would, and she’d hate him as much as I did for it.

But then it would just be another thing in the Litany of Things Going Wrong in My Life, and I’m tired of being that friend. The sick one. The divorced one. The one fighting to hold on to what, to Chess, is probably a negligible amount of money.

Poor Emily.

Chess stops typing and looks up at me, her head tilted to one side. “Are you just not feeling it?” she asks, because of course she saw through my chipper response, of course she knows I’ve been over here reading celebrity gossip for the past hour or so.

Sighing, I lean back, the ancient dining room chair creaking. “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I first started working on the books when I was living with my parents and feeling really stuck. They were an escape, and now… now it’s like I need an escape from them.”

That sounds overly dramatic out loud, so I shake my head. “Or maybe the series has just run out of steam, you know? Nine books is a lot. Maybe it doesn’t really merit a tenth.”

“Plus, Dex is Matt, so writing him must blow.”

Surprised, I close my laptop, leaning my elbows on the table. “You could tell?”

Chess gives me a look that’s somewhere between affection and pity. “Sweetheart,” is all she says, and I roll my eyes at myself, burying my face in my hands.

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