? ? ?

“Explain it to me,” I said. Now that I was, apparently, spending the night in their house, I thought I needed to know a little more about the people who lived there. “Since you’re not Clark Goetz-Hoffman.”

Clark winced. “That’s a pretty terrible name,” he said, and I silently agreed. “My publisher is Goetz. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is Hoffman.”

“Got it.” I looked at Bertie’s water dish, at the B. W. that was painted there. “Then what’s the W for?”

“Oh,” Clark said, giving Bertie a gentle pat. “That’s his middle name.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “The dog has a middle name?”

“Bertie Woofter Goetz-Hoffman,” Clark said, raising an eyebrow at me, letting me know he thought this was ridiculous too.

“Woofter?”

“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug. “It’s from a book they liked. The character is Bertie Wooster . . . so it’s like a pun.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding, remembering the framed book cover I’d seen the first day. “So the dog has four names,” I said, still trying to get this to make sense.

Clark gave me a small smile. “I don’t get it either.”

? ? ?

“So you write books,” I said, shaking some Skittles into my hand. I’d found a half-full bag in my purse, and we’d been sharing them. We were both starting to get tired, and I’d decided we needed some sugar. “That’s so weird,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, you’re my age.”

“Just a little older,” he said, turning so that he was facing me a little more fully, both of us sitting cross-legged on the carpet. “I’m nineteen.” He held out his hand, and I tipped the Skittles into his palm.

“But still,” I said around my candy. “That’s weird. You have a job.”

“You have a job,” he pointed out. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d be off somewhere not reading.”

“But you have a career,” I said as Clark gestured to me for more candy. “Isn’t that weird?”

Clark laughed. “I guess not to me. I’ve been doing this for five years now, so publishing books is just . . . what I do.” As I watched, his smile faded, the wattage of his dimples dimming slightly. “It’s what I did, at any rate.”

“So you need to give them your third book?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well, when is it due?”

“Two years ago,” Clark said, and I felt my eyes widen. “Yeah. That’s pretty much everyone’s reaction. There are a lot of people who are really not happy with me at the moment. But it’s coming together. I just need to finesse some things, pull some threads together.”

I nodded. “Okay.” I was still trying to process the two-year delay. “So do you have a plan? A schedule worked out for when you’re going to turn it in?”

I saw something pass over Clark’s face, but before I could really see what he was thinking, it was gone, and Clark was giving me a smile. “It sounds like you’re pretty organized.”

I nodded, taking that as a compliment, even though he might not have intended it as one. “It’s the coin of the realm in my family.”

Clark stared at me. “The what?”

I realized a second too late what I’d done. It was an expression my parents always used, and I’d used it enough around my friends that they no longer thought it was strange. But I sometimes forgot that not everyone had heard it before. “Coin of the realm,” I repeated. “Something that carries the most value.”

“Oh,” Clark said, nodding, like he was turning the phrase over in his head. “I like it.”

“You still haven’t answered the question.”

“Busted.” Clark paused for a moment, like he was gathering his thoughts, then said, “If it were as easy as just getting organized or sticking to a schedule, I’d have done it years ago. But you can’t rush these things, even though I know I’m holding things up. Everyone wants the new book. My publishers keep putting it on the calendar. I’m getting pushback from the people who want another movie. . . . At this point, I don’t even think it would matter if it was good. As long as there was something they could put out.”

“But what’s the problem?” I asked, beyond glad that medicine didn’t have any of these issues. You didn’t take an extra-long time to do a heart bypass, or tell someone you weren’t feeling inspired to fix their brain hemorrhage. You did your job, that was all.

“Well . . .” He cleared his throat. “In terms of where I am with the third book . . . It’s complicated, because in the last one . . .” He paused and looked at me for a moment before saying, “I wrapped up Tamsin’s story at the end. Pretty definitively.”

“Oh,” I said, then paused. “But wasn’t she your main character?”

“Ah,” he said, pointing at me. “Now you’re beginning to see what the problem is.”

? ? ?

“Biggest fear?” I asked around a yawn, leaning back against the wall. Clark had gone and gotten us pillows after the Skittle sugar buzz had worn off and we’d both started to crash. I had a pillow behind my head and one underneath me. We’d tried to get Bertie out to a more comfortable location for us—like one with couches—but he’d just curled more tightly into a ball and made a little moaning sound when we tried to move him, so we decided to leave him where he was. Now that most of the adrenaline and panic had left the situation, I was feeling how late it was. It was starting to feel like two a.m. at a slumber party, when everyone is sleepy and a little bit punchy (and usually hopped up on sugar) and you’re too tired to tell anything but the truth—that fuzzy half-awake, honest feeling. It was how we’d found out Bri had kissed her second cousin—by accident, she swore—last summer at a wedding.