I sit with my leg kicked up on the armrest of the couch and my eyes closed, wishing I could close my ears as easily too. Alec, my agent, is sitting across from me--in person--for the first time in months because he finally managed to track down the address of my cabin. Wouldn't have been that hard if he wasn't a dumbass. It's my parents' cabin. My recently dead parents. I'd have at least put it on a top five list of places to check for me, but then again, I’m not a dumbass.

Enter Alec.

I guess he was tired of me ignoring his calls, and he apparently misses hearing the sound of his own voice a lot, because the asshole hasn’t shut up since I reluctantly let him in.

“...millions, Chris. You realize that? It’s not just your ass on the line if you don’t honor the contract with them. We promised them a book. That means when you decided to say fuck it and live on this fucking mountain, you were fucking me over too. But I don't expect that to mean much to you really."

I crack my eyes open when he doesn’t speak for several moments. He must want me to say something. Too bad for him I couldn’t give a shit what he wants. I get off the couch and go to the kitchen for a cigarette until I remember I quit. Well, if running out of cigarettes and being too lazy to buy more for so long that you kick the habit counts, at least. I settle for a beer instead, snagging one from the fridge and deliberately neglecting to offer Alec’s skinny ass one. I flick the cap off with a calloused thumb. Life out here is good for making thick calluses, it turns out.

I guess fucking fangirls and riding shotgun in private jets doesn’t exactly compare to chopping firewood and doing repairs on this old and busted up cabin.

Like usual, my memories of the whirlwind of fame leave a sour taste in my mouth. My modus operandi has always been to do whatever feels like the biggest “fuck you” to everyone and everything at any given moment. Pretty simple philosophy, really, especially when you’re so angry that it feels like there’s acid in your stomach and fire running through your veins. For a while, partying and being the world’s favorite asshole felt like the answer. I’d think about how my parents and my perfect sister must be seeing my face on gossip magazines while they waited to buy their groceries, or how they’d have to field questions from their friends about me and my latest scandal. It felt good, in a twisted and fucked up kind of way, at least. Like scratching a mosquito bite until it bleeds—at least it doesn’t itch anymore.

And then… My eyes wander past Alec to the window by the front door that overlooks the hill where I buried my parents. Yeah, boo-fucking-hoo for me. I dared the universe to give me its worst, and go figure, it has a nastier sense of humor than me. A car accident, of all things. I didn’t even believe it at first because my parents always drove like they were ninety years old, and on their way back from church with a few cartons of eggs and two bowling balls in the back seat. “No sense hurrying to an accident,” was one of my dad’s favorite lines. It still feels weird to think about them with anything but the twisted, black anger I carried for so long.

Old memories. Old pains. No sense dwelling on it now, except I decided to come to the cabin they were living in when they died, where I have nothing else to do but dwell. Maybe Alec isn’t the only dumbass in the room after all.

I run a hand through my hair and sink back down on the couch, glaring at Alec in the vague hope that maybe I can scare him away, along with the rest of the world.

“The contract,” he says, not deterred in the least.

He wears thick-rimmed glasses and converse shoes with skinny jeans, along with one of those dumb square ties. He could’ve just walked out of a cell phone commercial trying to target “hip teens,” but I knew him before all the money from my book deal lined his pockets. Unfortunately, he is the same, squirrely kid, so I can’t even say money changed him. The only difference is that he pays out the ass now to buy clothes that look beat up instead of just buying cheap clothes and treating them like shit for a few weeks. He also has an irritating habit of not flinching away from me even when I’m at my worst, which is why I guess he’s lasted this long as my agent.

Alec was made for business, through and through.

“The contract,” I say in a bored tone. “I don’t want to write their book. They can shove the contract up their asses for all I care.”

“What about the millions you’ll pay for breaching it if you don’t write the book?”

“I’ll pay it. The rent here is pretty cheap. I think I’ll manage.”

Alec shows a rare flicker of anger. Actual anger. “This may not mean anything to you, Chris, but I staked my career on you when I took you on. If I can’t manage to get my client to follow through for one of the most profitable book deals of the century, my reputation is shot. I won’t be able to get work. Does that mean anything to you?” He clamps his mouth shut, nostrils flaring as he watches me for any sign of compassion or sympathy.

Tough luck, Alec. All the softer emotions were burned out of me a long damn time ago. You want anger? I’m your man. Want sarcasm? Sure, if I’m in the mood. If you have tits and you’re looking for a life-changing experience, well, you’re a few months too late, because the only thing I’ve felt like fucking lately is the world—and not in the literal sense.

He makes a disgusted sound and gets up, turning around to point at me before he leaves. “You do realize you’re not the only person in the world who has to go through shit, right?”

“Fuck you,” I growl.

He shakes his head and slams the door behind him. I take a swig of my beer and set it roughly on the table, sitting up and grabbing my laptop. The only solace for me since I’ve come up here has come in the most unexpected place I would’ve ever thought. I wrote a romance book. It started as a joke, and then for a while it was yet another metaphorical middle finger, but somewhere along the way, it turned into something else. For a few paragraphs at a time I’d forget to hate everyone and just write. Then it was pages at a time. Then after just a few weeks I’d cleaned up and finished the entire book.

I’m still not sure why I wrote a romance, of all things. If I want to go all therapist on myself, maybe I’d guess it is because there’s been so much anger in my life that part of my mind was craving something softer. Sounds like bullshit though, even to me. Maybe I just wanted to write a book where people fucked. Hell if I know.

For a while, it just sat there on my computer collecting electronic dust, because there was no way in hell I wanted to deal with the media firestorm a romance novel by Chris Savage would ignite. It was only when drunk inspiration led me to slap the pen name, T.S. Barnes, on the book that I actually put it out there for the world to see—or at least the small corner of it my romance novel reached. I even hired a personal assistant no one has ever heard of to handle all the behind-the-scenes crap I can't be bothered with. Most days, that includes all things email related, meaning I don't have to keep up with fan emails or anything but the writing. On a whim though, I click on the email account for T.S. Barnes and scan the inbox.

The first email that catches my eye has the subject line “I feel like a crazy fan for sending this, but…” It’s from “[email protected]”. When it comes to my own name, the words “crazy fan” work on me like bug repellant on a mosquito. I never wrote You’re Fucking Wrong to be a masterpiece or to change the world. It was just the best idea I had at the moment to piss off my perfect family. So when people wanted to gush to me about how much they loved the book, I felt like a fraud. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never really drawn a moral line at fraud, but I prefer to do it on purpose instead of by accident.

A crazy fan for T.S. Barnes is another matter entirely. I’ll never admit it to any living soul as long as I live, but I put some of myself in that book. Maybe more than a little. Hell, I might have even enjoyed it in a few places. So I scan the email with more eagerness than I’d like to admit.

Dear T.S.,

You probably get this kind of email all the time, so please don't even feel like you need to reply or anything. I just wanted to let you know that, well, I basically had a fangasm all over your book—like that scene in Ghostbusters when they are cleaning up after the… Yeah, T.M.I., I know. In all seriousness, your voice is unique. I don't know how else to put it. When your voice came through it was like nothing I've ever read. I could feel every single emotion and see every detail.

Anyway, I’m going to step away from my computer before I admit to anything else embarrassing, like how many times I’ve already read your book. Orrrr the fact that I kind of plan on making a little shrine for it in the center of my bookshelf. Or even how I am too embarrassed to review it on my blog because I won’t be able to stop from dropping all professional pretense and just typing a three page long, “Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”.

P.S. Your newsletters have your personal address at the bottom! Most authors change that to a P.O. box or something to protect their privacy.

P.S.S. We live super close. Like *really* close. So if you ever need a jump start on your car from a crazy fan or some sugar or whatever, just shoot me an email! I’m kidding. Unless you actually need anything, then you can definitely email me.

I slowly close the laptop with raised eyebrows and an odd sense of… something swirling in my chest. I'm afraid to call it pride because I've met crazy. I've fucked crazy. And I’m pretty sure I just got an email from crazy. Still, it’s the first real praise I’ve read for something I wrote that I feel is from me. The real me.

I throw back the last of my beer and take one final look at my laptop. Scorn rises up in me to push back any good feelings the email conjured up. Have I really lost it enough that a single email from a fan has me thinking I’ve accomplished something?

All I need to do is look around at the ruins of my life to get a crystal clear view of exactly how far I've made it. I'm dressed like a drunken lumberjack, sprawled out on the couch in my dead parents' house, hiding from the world that is quickly forgetting me, all while getting sappy over a single fucking email. Yeah. I've come really far… just not in the direction most people plan on going.