Eli managed to make landing just as easy, and I was equal parts relieved and embarrassed. The feeling only grew more profound when he hauled my luggage off of the conveyer belt and began carrying it through the airport for me. “Come on, I can carry it,” I assured him.

“I know you can. I watched you carry it earlier, but I can do it too.” He grinned down at me. “And I want to.”

“But you’re carrying all your stuff too,” I pointed out.

“I’m aware... but I can manage.” He shrugged his shoulders, hefting the precariously-placed duffels up there while his hands took care of the suitcases. He even had our tiny carry-on bags and my ergonomic neck pillow tucked under his arms.

I thought about arguing again, but I thought better of it. I could tell he wasn’t going to listen to me no matter what I said, so I figured I’d just let him have at it. Besides, he looked amazing carrying so much weight on his massive shoulders. I felt a tingle run down my spine, and for once, it wasn’t provoked by something terrible. “Okay, macho man,” I teased, and I followed along behind him.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have even thought he might be doing it to show off for me. Wishful thinking or not, I wasn’t going to object to that.

As soon as we walked into the hotel, I could already smell the development of what I lovingly referred to as “con stink”: a combination of sweaty nerds and excited pheromones. I wrinkled my nose.

Eli chuckled when he saw my face. “Takes a minute to get used to, right?” he said.

“Every time,” I agreed.

I shoved my hands in my pockets as I followed Eli to the front desk. I stood behind him, waiting for him to finish checking in so I could have my turn, and I decided to take that opportunity to finally check my phone for the first time since Lance’s angry call.

That was a mistake.

There were angry texts from all of the writers. None of them included any new information; it just seemed that they wanted me to know exactly how thoroughly I had disappointed them, as if that had somehow been unclear before. I had thirty-two texts from Lance, and as I scrolled through, I realized it was all pure panic. “Damien, he’s really nice and he’s driving my car.” “He’s so much hotter than I thought he’d be.” “Dude, he’s REALLY TALL.” “Why aren’t you answering?!” “HE LIKES COOL MUSIC AND MY PALMS ARE SWEATING!”

I shoved my phone back into my pocket with a sigh. I’d always known that Lance was incapable of allowing other people to experience emotions, but being faced with it so blatantly hurt a lot more than I’d expected. The fact that he was acting like a jerk wasn’t new to me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there was still a sharp pain in my heart that accompanied the wave of self-pitying messages. “Well, fuck me, I guess,” I muttered to myself.

I cared about Lance more than I had ever thought I was capable of. He was attractive and smart and, well, safe. He was untouchable, and nothing about him provoked me or inflamed any passions within me. He was like a piece of very aesthetically pleasing art I’d hung up in my house that occasionally complained to me. I thought I’d been okay with that balance existing in our relationship, especially when he unknowingly tolerated all of my feelings towards him.

As I read through the messages, though, I felt a deep pang of sadness over the fact that my best friend wasn’t much of a friend at all. He was barely even an adult, much less a genuinely caring confidant. The support Eli had given me during the flight had offered me a taste of what I was missing out on, and reading Lance’s texts gave me the sinking feeling of waking up from a really good dream.

I knew I would eventually cave and answer his messages. It was inevitable. I would feel too bad to ever truly ignore him, and I would want to appease and sooth him. I wouldn’t want to deal with the potential for anger and rejection. I knew I was going to end up sitting in my hotel room, watching him type out message after message about how difficult it was to sit quietly in a car while someone chauffeured him across the country and away from his manor.

But I looked at Eli, and I decided it could wait. I wanted to stay in this dream a little longer.

I checked into my hotel room with blessedly little fanfare, although Eli still demanded that he bring my bags up to my room. “Don’t they have, like, bellboys for that?” I asked, watching him pile everything back onto his shoulders before we got into the elevator.

“I don’t think bellboys are a thing anymore. At least not here. I haven’t seen one here during past cons, and I haven’t seen any today.”

“What? No. Bellboys are definitely still a thing. I’m ninety percent sure on this.”

“Are you positive you’re not thinking of the song by The Who? The one with the Keith Moon vocals?”

“… Oh, dammit, that’s exactly what I was thinking of.” I laughed, feeling relaxed and unashamed of my ignorance; something about Eli had that effect on me. “Sorry, I’m an idiot.”

Eli shook his head. “Damn, man, I’m trying so hard not to agree with you right now.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, come on, you have to admit that that was kind of fair!”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, bellboy. Just get my bags to my room.”

“Ooh, you get catty when you’re annoyed, huh?”

I gave him a theatrical hiss and he laughed.

“I hope all the other guys are getting settled in okay.” I checked my phone, but after a few hours of me not responding during my flight, all of my clients seemed to have given up on contacting me (with the notable exception of Lance, who was telling me something about “shipping” that I couldn’t possibly decipher). Rationally, I recognized that they were all adult men who could handle themselves, but I still said, “I think I should go check on them.”

Eli looked down at me. He must have heard the reluctance in my voice, because he said, “Are you sure?”

“Not really. I think they’re all still pissed at me. But it seems like the thing I should be doing.”

“Well. Yeah.” He shrugged, his smile quirking to the side mischievously. “But you don’t need to actually do it.”

“What?”

“Hear me out.” He tossed my luggage down in front of my door. “You’ve had a stressful day, and I’m sure they have too, right?”

“Extremely,” I muttered with a sigh.

“Well, the con hasn’t even started yet. And maybe you’re busy. Maybe you don’t have time to check on them.” He raised his eyebrows at me meaningfully.

I frowned. “No. I couldn’t do that,” I murmured, rubbing at my jaw. “I mean, that’s unethical. Or, if not unethical, at least sort of a dick move. Right?”

“You know how it’s only breaking the law if you get caught?”

A surprised half-laugh escaped my throat. And here I’d been under the impression that he was a boy scout.

“I guess you’re right,” I assented, trying the feeling of irresponsibility on for size. It didn’t fit quite right, but it still felt amazingly freeing. “I could catch up on some sleep. Or just relax and get ready for the rest of the week. It’s not like anything is happening tonight, and me going to apologize to all of them isn’t going to un-screw all the reservations and everything.”

“Exactly.” Eli patted me on the shoulder, and I was surprised when his hand stayed on my bicep. I looked up at him, my heart pounding.

In my mind, all I could think was, Oh my God, he’s going to kiss me.

He leaned in a little. I stayed still, terrified and unsure of what I should actually do or what I really wanted. My brain kept telling myself that I couldn’t kiss him, but every fiber of my being wanted to be swept up in those big strong arms and kissed senseless until we couldn’t wait and he’d throw open the door to my room and –

“You know,” he said quietly, looking shy and nervous, “one thing you could do is… read my manuscript?”

Oh. It felt like a brick had been dropped on my chest. Of course that was what he wanted – after all, I’d told him I was going to read it, and it was his dream for me to take him on as a client. It was only natural that he would care about that more than making out with some idiot he barely knew.

“Sure. Yeah, I mean, definitely,” I replied, feeling like a complete moron. I was in serious danger of my blush becoming visible. I fumbled around for my key card to the hotel room. “Yeah, I was just thinking that now would be the perfect time for that.”

“No pressure,” he added quickly. “I know you have to get to it in your own time. I just figured since you didn’t have anything better to do – “ He faltered for a second. “Shit. Sorry. I’m being condescending again. I’m just really excited for you to tell me what you think about it, you know? I’ve been sitting on this book for so long and I’ve gone back and retooled it so many times, so I’m just sort of anxious, I guess.”

I somehow didn’t laugh when he said he was anxious, which was impressive, considering I was ready to melt from my own nervousness. “I’d love to read it,” I told him. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to get as much of it read as possible, and I’ll let you know what I think. Sound good?”

He beamed, and any annoyance I was feeling towards him melted away, making my thoughts blur and race again. “Sounds great.” He patted my shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything, alright?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak and definitely not trusting myself not to say something embarrassing and incriminating. I watched him walk away with equal parts relief and regret.

I pushed my way into my room. It was nothing all that special, but it looked clean, which was all that really mattered. I’d been put in a two-bedroom at my own request; if one of the mattresses looked suspect, the other one would still be available. Hotel rooms are by their very nature absolutely disgusting, and I wanted to minimize contact with anything that had been contaminated.

I went about the routine I always performed at hotel rooms. It was calming. There was something very zen in repetition, at least in my opinion, and I slowly calmed down as I turned off the light, pulled back the beds’ comforters, and switched on the lamp, looking for any scuttling bedbugs. I stripped down the beds after that, folding the toppers up and setting them in a corner before washing my hands thoroughly and moving on to the rest of the blankets, examining them for any stains or peculiarities. The linens were all a brilliant, stark white, which was doubly reassuring; nothing could be hiding in or on them without me at least suspecting it. I was pretty impressed, but I still kept my socks on. I didn’t care how nice of a hotel it was, there was no way I was going to walk around barefoot on the undoubtedly filthy carpet full of other people’s skin cells and bodily fluids.

I set about arranging the room just so. I chose the bed closer to the window so that, if anyone broke in through the door during the night, I would have more of a heads up, and I arranged the pillows from both beds up near the headboard, creating a little nest for myself. I tilted the TV so that I could see it better from my bed. I stocked up the mini fridge with water, apples, and beef jerky, set a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and granola bars on top of it, and placed my shower sandals right on the edge of the tub in the bathroom. (It looked just as clean as the beds, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.) I arranged my toiletries on the counter by the sink, all of them placed neatly side by side on a fresh towel. I hung up all of my clothes, even T-shirts and pajamas, in the tiny hall closet.

It was nice to take a break from the organized chaos of my cluttered desk at work and my similarly-cluttered house. I loved having my things the way I wanted them and having my own organizational system, but I wasn’t too proud to admit that I occasionally got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff I surrounded myself with. Everything I owned was clean, and it made me feel safe, but sometimes I felt like I couldn’t get rid of it all if I wanted to. Being at a hotel felt like starting over. It was nice, minimalist. It was easy to find a place for everything.

The organization took a while – at least an hour, and probably significantly more – but it felt good. It was mindless busy work, something just strenuous enough that I couldn’t think too hard about anything else while I did it, and by the time I was done, the stress of the day had melted off of me. I looked out of the window and saw the black sky interrupted by little puffs of white, and the snow only added to the tranquility. I felt wonderfully alone.

I settled into my nest of pillows and fished the thick manilla envelope containing Eli’s manuscript out of my bag. I flipped through it, marveling at just how long it was. The final page said “762” at the bottom. As with most books that I’d read, I figured that I was going to delete a good hundred pages’ worth of unnecessary bullshit out of it before it was ready to print. I started reading, and I did so feeling a lot better about it than I usually felt about someone’s work. There was no part of my mind that had any small grain of doubt that it was going to be worth publishing.

I was so, so wrong.

It wasn’t just a crappy book; it was so bad that it had transcended itself, turning into a pure being of malevolent fury intent upon destroying the English language. It was such an affront to literature I half-expected Ernest Hemingway to rise from the grave just so he could shoot himself again after looking at it. The language was juvenile and hopelessly repetitive; the constant overuse of different words and phrases reminded me of Lord of the Flies if it had been written by an inept kindergartener. In spite of that, though, it still managed to be wildly inconsistent: characters came and went, their names changed, their personalities shifted to suit the scene, and the settings would change mid-paragraph. Two characters went from being in a monastery to sitting in a field to hanging out in a tree for some reason, all in the course of one incredibly lengthy conversation about whether or not two minor characters were sleeping with each other or not (spoiler alert: they weren’t). I wasn’t sure exactly who the main characters were, but I suspected that one of them was a woman who may as well have been named Katniss Everdeen right off the bat, given all the similarities between the two. The whole book was a mishmash of sex and fights, and I couldn’t always tell which was which throughout. I read a hundred and twenty pages that night, and the entire time, I had to fight off the feeling that this was an extremely elaborate prank, or that he’d given me the wrong document. I checked over and over again, but Eli’s name was still on the front page every time. His summary described it as a “tale of medieval political intrigue,” but as far as I could tell, not a single one of those words applied, including “tale.” Calling it a story was somehow too generous; it implied that there were events in the work and that those events were related in some way, which just wasn’t the case. It wasn’t just a terrible book, it was an abomination. If it had been a fetus, I would have strapped on a pair of gloves and aborted it myself. I wondered more than once if I was going to need to see an exorcist after reading it to make sure it hadn’t seeped into my soul and poisoned it.

But the worst part wasn’t how bad it was.

The worst part was that I loved reading every single word of it.

I was never a big moviegoer, so I’d never really gotten the concept of watching a movie because it was bad. Consuming media “ironically” was never even on my radar. But Eli’s book changed all of that for me. It was the first thing I’d ever seen that I could confidently identify as “so bad it’s good.” It was an absolute masterpiece crafted out of shit. It was like if the statue of David had been carved out of literal garbage. More than once, I had to put the book down because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t have a single joke in it, but it was, without a doubt, the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I wasn’t reading it so much as bearing witness to it.

Thank God I didn’t have a pen on me to start doing line edits, because I don’t know if I could have stopped myself from writing down the thoughts I was having while reading it. I wanted to call someone so I could share the experience, but it was getting late, so I just settled for texting a few choice quotes to Janet.

It was terrible. It was stupid. It was tasteless. It was even frequently incoherent while being borderline offensive. But I sincerely loved it. I had never enjoyed reading anything more in my life. It was two in the morning when I finally put it down, and I was still wiping tears of laughter out of my eyes.

It wasn’t until I was brushing my teeth, almost choking on toothpaste when I remembered a particularly insane scene where two characters who had grown up together as cousins were suddenly strangers having sex with each other, that I realized the problem with this book.

The issue was not that it was horribly written and conceived. The issue was that Eli had written it, given it to me, and was now going to be expecting a response to it.

I audibly groaned, spitting into the sink with a scowl.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just tell him that it was the worst pile of trash I’d ever seen. Even if that wouldn’t have been incredibly tactless and hurtful, I just plain didn’t want to have to admit that he’d done a bad job. He’d spent years working on this book, even though that effort didn’t exactly show. His dream was to be published, specifically with my help.

And he was so, so sweet, and so kind, and so hot.

I couldn’t stand to break his heart like this. The idea of looking him in the eye and telling him that his book was not just unpublishable, but completely unreadable, made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out. I’d had to reject authors before – it was the nature of my job – but never had I seen something so devastatingly bad, and never had I rejected someone I actually knew.

I tried to develop a plan as I rinsed out my mouth, changed into my pajamas, and slid into bed. Maybe I could tell him that the draft had been lost? No, idiot, you’re the only one that still uses hard copies of everything. He’s going to have the file on his computer.

My options were slim. I could technically tell him the truth, but I’d already decided that I would rather staple my own hand to the wall than hurt his feelings, so that wasn’t going to work. I could pretend to send it out to a couple places and tell him that it hadn’t been accepted, but I wasn’t sure if that would work. Some authors sent out the same pieces time and time again, doing everything in their power to find someone who would take them, and I didn’t want to spend the next several decades of my life pretending to mail a book called The Highlands of High Land, Book One: A Tale of Intrigue to different publishers. Besides, it would be too easy for him to confirm whether or not I’d actually sent anything out. I could tell him I was too busy to take on another client, but I’d been the one who offered to read it. He would want to know why I was going back on our potential deal, and I didn’t want to have to explain that I’d agreed to look over his work because he was handsome. I could also tell him that while I personally liked it, it didn’t fit my brand or the genres that I worked with.

That was technically true. I did enjoy it, just not in the way he intended. It also didn’t fit in with the stuff I got involved with, considering what I published was, well, good.

That was going to be my best bet, I knew that right away. It was only sort of a lie, and it was the best way to go about it without hurting his feelings. There was just one problem with that plan.

Ever since I was young, I was a terrible liar. It wasn’t even just that I wasn’t particularly good at coming up with lies – I couldn’t even lie by omission. Any time I did, I felt guilty. Any negative emotions that I had within me that went unexpressed slowly devoured me from the inside out. I once told my mom I enjoyed a new recipe she’d tested on me and ended up spending the next two weeks unable to eat or sleep because I felt like such a heinous person for not telling her that it was, in reality, pretty mediocre. I had come out to my very Baptist father when I was fourteen not because I felt he should know, but because keeping it a secret somehow made me feel morally deficient. I would learn years and years later that this was common in people who had OCD; many people with the disorder feel a need to “confess” any time they feel guilty, and I definitely fell under that umbrella. This meant that not only did I spend a lot of time going out of my way to tell people the truth, but also that when I finally did open up to them, I usually looked like an insane person.

I didn’t want to hurt Eli, but I didn’t want to lie, either. Unfortunately, there was no option in which I didn’t do one of those two things.

I sighed, my good mood quickly ebbing. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of this than I should, I thought, trying to stay rational. I’ll just take a little extra Xanax the next couple of days, and I can figure out what to do after I get back to New York. As long as I stick to my med schedule, I should be fine.

That thought was comforting. My medications didn’t make me well by any means, but they took the edge off and at least kept me functional. If I took a little extra to allow for the extra stress and I made sure to take everything on time – and I minimized contact with Eli during the convention – I should be fine. Hell, I might even be able to keep reading his work and enjoy myself.

It was a good plan, but as with all the plans of mice and men, it’s easy to imagine what came next.

I grabbed my bag and rifled through it, looking for the freezer bag of medicine I carted with me whenever I traveled. I rummaged through socks and boxers and found nothing. I looked again, but I got the same result.

Unnerved, but trying to stay calm, I looked through my carry on. Nothing. I check all of the pockets of my bags, even the ones that were far too small to fit big pill bottles. Still nothing. I got the same result after digging through my toiletry bag.

I sat on the edge of my bed, eyes squeezed shut and trying hard to think back to when I was packing. I had a list I used. I thought I was being meticulous, but packing was always overwhelming. I always seemed to lose my place in the list, getting lost in the sheer number of things I had to remember. I picked things up and put them back down over and over, trying to stick to some sort of system and failing.

And then I remembered a vivid image of my meds – Xanax, Klonopin, Prozac, sleeping pills, allergy medication, and pain pills – sitting on the counter in my bathroom.

If I hadn’t been aware of just how thin hotel walls can be, I would have screamed.

I could barely make it a day without my medication. It wasn’t a matter of addiction, either – it was pure necessity. It took almost no time for mood stabilizers like antidepressants to leave the human body, but the human brain becomes dependent on them. I may not have been abusing drugs, but it made no difference to my body. Once the medication was gone, withdrawal followed swiftly on its heels. I had taken the antidepressant Lexapro for about a year and followed my doctor’s orders to the letter for how to safely stop taking it and how to minimize my withdrawal symptoms, and I’d still been so sick for the next three weeks that I couldn’t even go into work. I’d been reduced to a shaky, sweaty, sobbing mess, my body wracked with cold sweats and fevers, and that was only one medication, one that I’d slowly weaned myself off of.

I stared at my empty bag, hoping beyond hope that somehow, some way, I’d missed my meds in my search, but I knew better. Without even thinking, I heard myself mutter, “I’m going to fucking die.”