Chapter 11
Grayson
I ring Knight’s bell and wait for him to open the door. He wanted to meet at his place, just the three of us. His text to me sounded a little curt for Mike. He’s not in charge of the Wordsmiths at all, but he’s taken a little bit of a leadership role since his career’s taken off. Mike’s not the scolding type—we’re all good friends and we’ve always treated each other like equals, but I’m worried he’s going to try to give me shit about disappearing for a few.
Colton’s on his way over and he’s bringing food. I’m starving. I got back last night and haven’t eaten yet. I dropped Rowan off at her place late night and then crashed as soon as my head hit my pillow. I’ve always been a terrible sleeper, and last night was no different, especially after a few shitty days on the road. The trip home took forever. I swear we hit every traffic snag and delay from Arizona to New York. But still, it’s good to be back home. At least I think it is—we’ll see how this little Wordsmith meeting is going to go.
“What’s up, motherfucker?” Well, Mike sounds normal.
“Hey. I thought I was walking into a firm talking to.”
“From me?” Mike asks. “You think I’m your father? I mean, I might be, you’d have to talk to your mom about that. But she was with a lot of guys around the same time so, you know.”
“It’s good to be back.”
“I’ll be it is. Colt’s on the way, he’s stopping at the deli, I think.”
“Nice! I could use a good pastrami sandwich!”
When we were in college there was a deli not far from school that we used to go to at least once a week. We found out one afternoon that all of us had the exact same order—pastrami on rye with mustard. So now, whenever one of us goes to the deli we know to just get three of the same order. Mike walks us over to his couch. It’s funny how much things have changed in less than a year. I remember when it was me and Colton barging in here to get Mike sobered up and off his couch. Then we came back again when he was on his bender. Then it was Colt’s turn with his anger and legal troubles. I guess good friends take turns being fucked up —that way the other two can always help them. Hopefully one day we’ll all be on equal footing.
Just as we sit down Colton comes in the door, the smell of warm pastrami wafting into the living room. “Hey!” He says. “Look who’s come back to town. What? Bumblefuck, Arizona didn’t do it for you, Gray? DIdn’t want to hang out with inbred neighbors and eat a lot of Tex-Mex?”
“You’re an asshole.” I tell him.
“That’s hardly news, is it?” He jokes. “You don’t deserve your pastrami, you prick, but I’m going to let you have it anyway, free of charge.”
“Thanks, Colt, you’re a fucking Prince among men.”
“Also guilty as charged. Come here!” We bro hug, and he looks really happy to see me. “Look, Mike, the band’s back together. Hell yeah.”
“The band never broke up, Colt,” Mike says. “But if it did I’d retain all the rights. I’m the brains behind the whole operation.”
Colton and I shoot Mike a look. He’s either being really sarcastic, or getting too big for his britches. I feel like I’m in no position to say anything at the moment, so I let Colton do the honors. “See,” he jokes. “You have a few meetings with some hack companies and hire an agent, and you think you’re Stephen fucking King. If you need me to put a needle into that rapidly growing head just let me know, okay Mike?”
“I’m kidding, you prick. Sort of.”
“Yeah, I bet you are.”
I love Colton. I’ve never met someone in my life who can be such an asshole but also be the kindest and coolest person I know. He’s a complex guy. “Anyway, guys, let me just get in front of all this before it becomes a thing. I’m sorry that I took off with no notice. I didn’t mean to leave you guys without saying something, but I had just had enough. I needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.”
I brace myself for all the shit they’re going to spew my way—about being irresponsible, about taking off when we had plans to meet up, all of it. But it doesn’t happen. I’m literally waiting for the comeback, but instead I hear words of encouragement. “Gray, I don’t think that Colt or I are the guys to sit in judgement on anyone, especially you. You didn’t drink all the alcohol in New York or assault a guy like me and Colt each did.”
“Yeah,” Colt says in agreement. “I set the bar pretty high for fucking up properly in this group. If you’re not retaining an attorney then whatever you think you did isn’t that bad, trust me. So you had a little Grayson hissy fit and skipped town. There are worse ways for someone to express their disappointment.”
Wow. I’m really surprised. Maybe I’m just being harder on myself than my best friends would ever be. “Holy shit, guys. I really thought you were going to bitch me out over this. I felt like a tool leaving just because my book didn’t do so well. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was upset. And I don’t know what I was thinking bringing Rowan along.”
“And there it is.” Mike says.
“Yeah,” Colt agrees. “That’s what we really wanted to know about. I don’t care that you got upset and hit the gas.”
“Right,” Mike says. “We wanna know everything. Spare no details at all. Everleigh’s out, so you can speak freely.”
“Where’d she go?” I ask. I’m avoiding telling them too much. I’m not the kiss-and-tell kind of guy. I never have been, even when I was in high school, and I don’t really want to give the guys the kind of information that they want from me.
“To meet up with your girl, actually. All three of them.”
“Yeah, Harley went also.” Colton says.
I’m still trying to avoid their question, so I divert the questions back on to them. “What’s going on with you two?” I ask.
“Since a week and a half ago? Nothing Gray, we’re golden. Now get to all the hot sex with Rowan in the middle of . . .where the fuck did you go again?”
“Arizona.” I answer.
“Right. Arizona. Hot sex in the middle of Arizona. And, go!”
I don’t want to say anything. Honestly I’m still not sure what even happened between us. I know we hooked up, and that we like each other a lot. But I’m not sure where she is in terms of what that actually means. Hell, I’m not even sure where I am on that. “It was really. . .nice. We had a good time.”
“Oh, no, you’re not doing that shit.” Mike says. “No, no, no. Forget the bullshit euphemisms.”
“You know what I just thought of?” Colton asks. Saved by the bell. “We’re like some weird porno movie.”
“What are you saying, Captain Radom? Who is ‘we’ and what are you talking about?”
“Think about it. There are three of us, right? Three of us, and three of them. Mike ends up with Everleigh randomly. I end up with her friend, Harley. And now you’re with Rowan.”
Colton’s right. The whole thing is a little weird—three friends with three friends. It’s implausible and strange, but it’s also a really great story. The only thing is I’m not sure about the last couple being a couple. But we’ll see. “It’s unusually, sure,” I agree. “But a porn? Where’d you get that from?”
“I was just imagining the six of us living in a house. Maybe we’re all naked, maybe we’re not. Just one big orgy.”
“Jesus, Colton.” Mike says.
“Yeah, you sick fuck. Your mind scares me. I know there’s more to that little fantasy, but I sure as hell don’t want to know it.”
“You’re right on both counts,” Colton says, laughing at his own depravity. “I’ve been writing too many new stories I guess. But if you ever want to know the rest of it you have my number.”
“I won’t.” I tell him. “Just save it for a book. Change all of the names, stop picturing other people’s girlfriends naked, and then write an amazing erotica book.”
“I think I’ll do that. So, back to the sex. Go.”
“Look, guys, you know me, right? You know I’m not going to give it up.”
“But did she?” Mike asks. “That’s what we really want to know.”
“You’re a dick. Both of you are dicks.”
“But how did she like your dick, Gray?” Mike’s feeling it right now. Maybe this is my punishment for leaving—endless torture by my best friends. He knows I’m not going to tell him anything detailed, but we all love messing with each other. It’s our favorite year round sport.
“Not as much as your mom likes it, Mike.”
“Oh, shit!” Colt says. “Nice one, Gray. I didn’t even see it coming.”
“But did Rowan see you. . .”
“Stop, Mike, I’m not telling you anything.”
“Alright, fine,” he says, finally conceding. “Joking aside, I hope you had fun. I’m glad that she was there for you. When and if you feel comfortable, you can tell me anything you want. We know you.”
“Fuck that,” Gray says. “I wanna know, still.”
Leave it to Colton to be the asshole. “Just use your imagination,” I tell him. “It seems to be working overtime right now.”
After our back and forth we catch up on what everyone’s been doing over the last week or so. Mike and Everleigh are still wedding planning. Colt and Harley are talking about moving in together, and it wouldn’t be a Wordsmith meeting without a little update on our arch enemies—the Brotherhood. Mike’s happy to update me on that. “So the universe is finally giving back to those pricks.”
“The last thing I saw before leaving was Roland Ray’s ugly ass face in that diner parking lot. What’s going on with him? Tell me all the gossip, Mike.” I’m not a spiteful guy, but with them I have no fucks left to give. I don’t go out of my way to hate on other people, in this case, I’ll make an exception.
“They’re all in a world of shit from what I hear. Jenny texted me randomly to give me more gossip.”
“Jenny?” Colton asks. “You sure get a lot of texts from your lesbian ex. You sure she isn’t switching teams and trying to get back with you.”
“No, Colt,” Mike says. “I think she just cares about me and knows we got into a lot of drama with them. After all it was Jenny who told me about the laptop thing to begin with.”
“Go on Mike.”
“Anyways, Jenny’s still close with some of the PA’s in the Brotherhood’s inner circle, and from what she tells me, KL is in some deeper legal trouble than I thought he’d be. The judge didn’t accept his plea deal on the theft of my laptop back at the signing. This judge didn’t like the deal that KL and his lawyers worked out—apparently being tough on theft is his platform, and now KL has to go to trial or make a different deal. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but he’s got some shit to deal with.”
“Good,” Colton says. “Fuck him. What about the others?”
“It’s not legal trouble with the other two, but their careers are going down the tube, fast.”
“What happened?” I ask. “Did everyone in the world realize that they’re terrible writers and hack authors and ban them from ever publishing books again?”
“Well, you’re not that far off, Gray.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“They’re getting caught up in that book stuffing shit. Have you seen any of that on social media?”
“Nah, Mike, our boy here was busy gettin’ busy in Arizona. He hasn’t been on the page much. Am I right, Gray?”
I roll my eyes. Colton doesn’t miss a chance to poke me. “If by right you mean you’re a dick, then yes, you’re totally right.” I turn to Mike. “I haven’t heard. What’s book stuffing?”
Mike gives me a crash course in the book stuffing controversy going on. He’s right, when I look it’s everywhere on social media. Apparently some authors are filling their ebooks that people download with more than one book, making the lengths of some of the ebooks go into the thousands. The story that they’re advertising on the cover is only a small part of the actual file readers buy. The rest of it is filled with extra stories—sometimes whole books—that the reader didn’t want. All of the books are on Kindle Unlimited, so the author gets paid for every page that the reader turns. A lot of hack authors just put old books into huge files and try to make crazy amounts of money for all the page turns.
“Jesus. Who the fuck does that?” I ask. I really don’t believe what I’m hearing. It sounds unethical and stupid, but the indie writing world is just like any other population—there are always going to be some bad apples that spoil the bunch.
“Apparently the other Brotherhood guys are doing it. Roland and Johnathan both. Each of their last two books were as stuffed as the grand slam pancakes at IHOP. They got called out about on social media by some readers that were pissed they paid $3.99 for a book that was only like twenty five pages long, and the rest of it was a bunch of bullshit. I heard one of them even got confronted by an angry reader at a signing in Florida—made a huge scene. The whole thing was on Instagram.”
“I have to find that post.” I say. “I’ll make it my screen saver. And screw those guys.”
“I second that.” Colton says.
“Well that’s all good news. I’m glad to hear they’re doing badly. Hopefully at least one of them is a decent human being and learns from all their troubles, but I doubt it. What about us. What do we have planned for the next few months?”
We throw around some ideas. Colton and Mike are both working on books. Colton is working on the next book in his MMA series. Mike is working on a standalone that he’s still in the process of shopping to different romance publishers. And me? I have no idea what I’m doing. And then Mike throws out an interesting idea for the Wordsmiths. “I was thinking. How about we publish a book together.”
“You mean like another anthology?” Colton asks.
“No,” Mike answers. “Not a book where we each write a separate story. A book where we all contribute to the same story. I want to co-write a book with you guys. All three of us. A novel in three parts, each of us taking a different section and then passing it on to the next guy until we’re done. I already started mine based on an idea I had for a standalone. If you guys hate the premise we can ditch it, but even if we start from scratch I thought it was a pretty unique idea.”
Colton and I rattle the idea around in our heads for a second. I have to admit, Mike took me by surprise with that one. I wasn’t expecting a three way co-written book idea, but now that I’m thinking about it I think it’s a really cool idea. “I like it, Mike. I like it a lot. I think it’s very original. No one else has a three way.”
“Do I even need to make the joke?” Colton asks.
“No, Gray,” I answer. “We all got it already. Thanks. What do you think?”
“You know I’m down,” Colt says. “Anything that’ll make us the biggest authors in the world. Let’s do it.”
I like the idea, but the devil is in the details sometimes. All of us work well together, but we write very different types of books. None of us has ever co-authored a book. So I’m wondering just how this whole thing is going to work, logistically. I guess we can work out the details later on. I need to start my own book. My next one. The one that’s going to get me out of the shit hole my career’s become. I think I have an idea already, but I’ll work on it later on.
One thing I do know for sure is that it’s good to see my brothers. My best friends. Thinking back now it seems silly that I ran out of town the way I did, but I was in a bad place. It wasn’t just the failure of my book, it was a lot of built up tension about my career in general, along with another flare up of my depression that I didn’t tell anyone else about. I’ve suffered from it my entire life to one degree or another. I was doing well for a while—training Jiu Jitsu and working on a book I was really proud of. Depression has its triggers—things that invite it into your brain and serve it dinner. For me it was the failure of my book, coupled with the stress of all the Brotherhood stuff. Most of that fell on Colt, but I let those guys get to me.
But I feel a turn in the road. On the way home from Arizona Rowan and I talked about her ideas for helping my career. I wasn’t just surprised by what a mind she had for marketing and promotion without actually being a writer herself, but I was also really touched by how much thought she’d even put into my career. I took a mental note of everything she told me, and when she slept I thought of ideas for a story—my story—the one that I think will make my career what I always wanted it to be. Tonight I’m going to do what I haven’t done in a while, what I was meant to do.
I’m going to write.