The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel—Chicago
My arm’s getting a workout as I raise my hand, once again, to grab the cute bartender’s attention. Motioning for another round, in no time, he’s sliding another cocktail in front of me, and I graciously accept. I’m close to clocking in five hours of drinking and people watching at the bar of the Waldorf Hotel, one of Chicago’s top-notch hotels, taking in the insane scene around me.
What’s so insane about it, you ask? Where do I even begin?
Let’s just begin with the sold-out hotel that’s filled with hordes of people, all here for the same reason. Books. So many books. Did I mention they were all romance books? Readers from all over the globe gathered for an all-week event or in “book terms,” an author signing. An event I was invited to.
I know the first thing you want to know is who the hell I am and what brought me, or as Journey sang it best, the lonely girl livin’ in a lonely world to this event. Well, it’s about time we got acquainted. My name is Katie Beller, but the world, as of late, knows me as romance author, Bailey Swan—the famous name behind the words.
I look around the packed bar, people huddled in groups, girls wearing matching T-shirts, and readers flaunting over their favorite authors. I’ve just spent the last hour by myself sipping on my vodka tonic, eavesdropping on a reader who drilled her author buddie on how she started her career. With eyebrows yay high, I think to myself I definitely don’t have a clever story like hers.
Mine’s simpler. The “one late night decision and my life changed” kinda simple. It goes something like this. On a dark and dreary evening… Okay, too dramatic? Got it. So, one night after a long shift at work, I came home at way past two in the morning. I sat down and wrote a bunch of words. By some bizarre force—which I blame on a tilt in the universe—this story became a New York Times best seller. How, you ask? No fucking idea.
I don’t have a great literary background story for you on how my book hit the big time, or any “awe” love story that pushed me to write it. To be honest, I’m a bartender at a local hole in the wall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, and I just get to hear and see a lot of shit.
Talk about inspiration.
Was it the love stories after love stories I listened to each night that drove me? Eh, I wouldn’t call it that, but it did consist of stories. Some good, some bad… Mostly bad. Hear enough of them and you begin to form your own judgmental opinion of that four-letter word and how people define it.
A squeal pierces through the air as a reader fan-girls over one of the many cover models in attendance. Just another reminder there was something about love that just made people so crazed for it. Deluded to what it truly meant, or felt like. Was it about a night of hot, passionate sex? A mistake one or both won’t ever be able to go back on? Probably. But love? Who knows? Like I said, I’m just the bartender serving the lonely, the brokenhearted, the misconstrued people of the world their drinks to loosen them up, taking the shots they offer me, and by the end of the night leaning my elbow on the bar, holding my chin up, wishing I were them.
Okay, wait. I take that back. I definitely do not wish I were them, getting lucky at two in the morning by a random stranger who’s been spilling lies and bullshit in their ear all night in hopes they’ll fall for it and end up back at their sketchy apartment having random “I’m going to regret this tomorrow” sex.
No fucking thanks.
Do I wish I were one of those girls who get swept off their feet by Mr. Romeo? Who treats his girl to the movies and perfect dinners? Maybe. Do I want to be swept off my feet with those special trigger words whispered softly into my wanting ears and made sweet endless love to until the sun comes up?
Ehh, okay, sometimes.
Fuck, okay, yes, I want love.
But I’m me. And that kind of love just doesn’t look like it’s anywhere in my future. Plus, I work in a bar and watch what people define as love nowadays, and you just don’t see the luster in it anymore.
And whatever. I’m fine with it. I mean, I’m going on twenty-eight and haven’t had as much as a flutter, a stolen breath, or even an endless night’s sleep when it comes to love. I’ve had boyfriends, one-night stands, and offers, but none were it. The it. The one you know has forever written all over him.
I’ve just come to the conclusion that I’m love broken.
It’s not that no one will ever love me. I just don’t have the mechanism to love back. I mean, I love. I love my parents, my friends. My bird, Gerdie. I just don’t know how to love deep. Like that deep love that burns. A girl once sat at my bar and told me how the love she felt for her boyfriend hurt so bad it was like being filled to the rim with hot lava. She couldn’t explain it any other way. I thought that sounded quite painful, but I got it. Love can be fulfilling. It’s what it’s there for. The end of a lifelong search to no longer be alone.
But that same girl sat at my bar two weeks later and cried her eyes out because her fulfilled love ran off with his hairdresser.
So much for fulfilling love.
I think I’ll pass.
I’m sure you’re wondering how someone with an empty heart like myself could sit down and write a love story in the first place. Well, I’m right there with you. I mean, what do I know about love? I know it hurts, that most of the time it doesn’t last, and it’s messy. I don’t need to experience it to know I’m okay without it. But working at a bar for the past seven years, I’ve heard it all. The good, the bad, the ugly. Love isn’t always neat, or beautiful. It is ugly and messy. So I wrote a book because I just thought people needed to finally know that.
So, the next question I know you’re wanting to ask is, for someone so down on love, does my book even have a happily ever after? Well, it depends on what you consider the perfect ending. Sometimes reality and that fairytale ending cross. And sometimes you just get that ending that completes you enough to say this life will do. People need to wake up and realize they’re always so worried about finding “happily ever after” that they panic and end up settling for that “this will have to do” ending. Maybe the one person who has no idea what true love really is, is holding the most powerful advice of them all.
Seven months ago, I came home from work. And before even washing off the sweat and grime, I sat down, opened my beer-label-covered laptop, and popped open Word. My brain was drowning in thoughts and opinions. Why do women always fall for the bad guy? Why do they fall so fast? Why do guys pretend feelings don’t matter when they reel in a girl, with all those sweet words and free drinks, and then the guy never calls again? I guess I had a spike of anger and needed to let the world know. Write a letter to those lame love columnist people at the paper and send it in, threatening that they better post it, or the world of love was soon to be doomed. Strangely, that letter turned into ninety-seven thousand words and before I knew it, I was chin deep into a story. Was it my story? Or was it every single heartbroken girl’s story who sat at my bar and confessed their dreams, crushed love, or failed success stories? Who knows? But it was mainly about a girl who just couldn’t sit back and take any more of this fake, broken love bullshit.
Because love was broken.
It may never be fixed for me, but God help me, it could be for others. As I’m already a lost cause, girls out there needed to know there was hope outside of the fake pickup lines, fake smiles, and fake loves.
When I wrote Love Broken, I never expected it to go very far. I just wanted someone to get a fucking clue and maybe tell their girlfriend. Maybe she would tell her friend, who would tell her sister, and in the end, there might be a handful of women making a change about love. One less wasted one-night stand on the guy with empty promises, or a girl who finally waits to find the one meant for her instead of the one meant for the moment.
What I didn’t expect was a cult-like following of women to read my book of words and start a hateration on dead-beat men. It was like overnight I went from being a nobody working at a bar to—well, still a nobody because no one knew Katie Beller. They knew the invented pen name, Bailey Swan, as the words of the wise. The love guru. And overnight, Bailey was famous.
The first couple of months after the book published I stood behind my bar listening to women dissect it. How Bailey just nailed it. Why hadn’t they seen it the whole time? How they were going to take Bailey’s advice and hold out for the one, read between the lines of those fake endearments, and be better at their choices in men.
And everyone wanted to be Bailey. They wanted to have her experiential brain when it came to men and swore she probably had the best life. Romance all girls wanted. She was probably married with her prince charming and three perfect little children. Little did they know, she was a plain Jane with some bad choice tattoos, straight brunette hair anyone would pass on, and a normal figure that has almost never seen the inside of a gym in her entire existence.
I turn to see another male model sitting with his back to me on my left. I don’t need to see his face to know he’s wooing the girl on the other side of him. Her star-crossed eyes tell me everything I need to know. She’s already head over heels for this guy. Blond, voluptuous and doe-eyed. By societal norms, she’s beautiful.
Me, on the other hand, sorry to disappoint, but I’m nowhere near this perfect portrait the world is painting of me. I’m normal. I’m five foot four, and nothing to call home about. I have tits, but everyone has tits. Are they the “perfect perked breasts” you read about in your smut books? How the hell should I know? I don’t review tits for a living. I serve booze. I’ve never worn a belly shirt, and that’s because I have a belly. When pot bellies become an “in” thing I’ll be all over it, but for now I will keep my cute little pooch behind closed doors. I’m your average size six, with my seventy-five pairs of ripped skinny jeans and tank tops under my band and random quote T-shirts. If I get fancy, I put on a cute black dress with my favorite pair of combat boots. That’s me. The one no one picks.
Wah-wah. Oh well. I’m over it. I’m on to saving others now.
When my best friend, Kristen, insisted on me joining this massive book event she hosts every year, I turned her down.
Well, at first.
“Katie, this can be huge for your career! To meet all your fans and get the praise you deserve!”
My response to that? “Nah, I’m good.”
I wasn’t looking for fame or power. I didn’t need the spotlight to feel I got my point across. I just wanted to put out my book, make a point, and move on. Serve more booze to people who appreciate me. Because everyone appreciates their bartender.
Also, they didn’t want to meet me. They wanted to meet Bailey.
“Katie, everyone writes under pen names. It’s the way of this world. People have lives to protect. You don’t have to tell anyone your real name. You come as Bailey Swan. Simple as that.”
“Yeah, and when they see a skater girl instead of a Stepford wife, what happens then? Who breaks off the riot of picketing housewives and single women who feel scammed?”
Kristen’s infamous sigh rings through the phone. “Katie. You’re beautiful. You are you. You don’t need to be anything but yourself. When will you see that?”
Umm, when I stop proving myself right that men don’t see girls like me as the ones. They see me as the friend, the buddie. Not the one you bring home to Mom.
“Katie, I know what you’re thinking. And stop. You haven’t found love because you’re so anti it. Stop rallying the troops to fight it and maybe you’ll surprise yourself.”
I laugh. “Oh, okay, so I should let one of my best drunk customers sway me? How about Jack? The drunk construction dude who swears he was born to teach me a lesson in bed. How about I let him teach me about love? Maybe he’ll surprise me.”
“Katie, that’s not what I meant.” More sighing, more eye rolling, that part on my end. “Listen. Just come out. If you don’t like the tour, you can drop. I won’t commit you to the whole tour, just the first two weeks. If you hate it, then you can bow out and go back to feeding the rising statistic of alcoholism.”
Okay, I laugh at that. She’s right. People drink too damn much in this world. I can’t really complain because their bad habit pays my rent, but I’m definitely shocked people haven’t caught on that booze doesn’t fix life’s problems.
“Please? Please, please, please!”
I don’t say no right away.
Ew, why aren’t I saying no?
Am I actually considering this?
I am considering this.
“Come on. You can do it. Just say yes…”
Stop! Get out of my brain!
“Ew. Fine.” What?
“YES! Thank you, Katie, you won’t regret this, I promise! This will be great for your career!”
Not if I’m deaf because she’s screaming through the phone.
Yeah, I wasn’t so worried about my career, as I was about the demise of my self-esteem.
What had I just agreed to?