The Villa(3)

I wave a hand. “Seriously, it’s fine,” I tell her. “The latest book is, like, epically late, but it’s book ten in the series, and book nine’s sales weren’t exactly setting the publishing world on fire, so I don’t think anyone’s all that concerned.” No one except for me, but that’s a different story.

Chess shrugs, the silver bangles on her wrist rattling. “People have no taste, then. A Deadly Dig was my favorite so far. That bit at the end on the beach where you’re, like, ‘Oh shit, the wife and the best friend did it together!’” She leans forward, beaming as she grabs my hand across the table. “So damn smart!”

Flopping back into her chair, she keeps smiling at me. “You were always so damn smart.”

Feeling almost absurdly pleased, I pick at another piece of bread. “You read A Deadly Dig?”

You write for long enough, you stop expecting anyone in your life to actually keep up with what you’re producing. My mom only got through book five of the Petal Bloom Mysteries, A Murderous Mishap.

Matt, my ex, never read any of them other than the first one. It had really never occurred to me that Chess would even keep track of the titles, much less read them.

But that’s the magic of Chess. Just when you’re kind of over her shit, she does or says something genuinely kind, genuinely lovely, something that makes you feel like the sun is shining right on you.

“Of course, I did,” she says, picking the last piece of bread out of the basket. “You read mine, right?”

I have, more than once, but not for fun or because I genuinely enjoyed them. I think of lying in my bed, exhausted and nauseous, so sick and tired of being sick and tired, reading Your Best Self and then You Got This!, shame pricking hot under my skin because I was looking for shit to dislike, looking for sentences to roll my eyes at. What kind of person hate-reads their best friend’s books?

“Obviously!” I tell her now, a little too bright, but she must not notice because she just smiles at me again.

“Good. I never would’ve written them without you.”

I blink at her. It’s the first time she’s ever said anything like that, and I have no idea what she means. By the time Chess launched herself as this weird combination of Taylor Swift, Glennon Doyle, and a girl boss Jesus, we weren’t talking all that much. I was wrapped up in my own writing, and Matt, while she was taking over the world.

“Oh yeah, I was very vital to your process, hanging out here in North Carolina,” I joke, but she shakes her head.

“No, you were! You were the one who actually got me to commit to writing, you know? You always took it so seriously with your little notebooks, blocking out those … what did you call it? You had a little timer for it.”

It’s called the Pomodoro technique, and I actually still use it, even though it’s not exactly doing me much good these days. I wave her off.

“I was just a nerd,” I tell her, and she reaches across the table to swat at my arm.

“That’s my best friend you’re talking about, bitch.”

The rest of the lunch passes by quickly, so much so that I’m actually surprised when the check comes. Chess swipes it up before I even have a chance to pretend I was going to pay, and then we’re outside on the sidewalk, the late May afternoon warm and rainy.

“I’ve missed you, Em,” she tells me, giving me another hug, and I smile against her collarbone, shrugging when I pull back.

“I’m always here,” I tell her. I don’t mean for it to come out quite as sad sack as it does, but it’s the truth. Chess is the one who is always on the go, but I’m still here in Asheville, the same town where I grew up. We only managed this lunch because Chess had a signing at the local bookstore this weekend.

“Well, good,” she tells me now, flashing me a wink. “That way I always know where to find you.”





CHAPTER TWO





I don’t expect to hear from Chess again for a while.

That’s always been her style. Okay, to be fair, it’s always been our style. We were in each other’s pockets every day for such a long time, all the way through our years together at UNC, but after college, that changed. It happens, right? Lives go in different directions, you make new friends, new connections. Chess had moved to Charleston with Stefanie, both of them working at some fancy restaurant while Stefanie worked on getting the website off the ground, and I’d come back to Asheville with a B.A. in English, and not much else. Chess had invited me to move to Charleston with her, had even insisted she could get me a job at the same restaurant, but I missed home, and my parents thought it would be smart for me to save some money by moving back in with them. Dad was still holding on to his dream that I’d go to law school, but I hadn’t been ready to commit to another expensive degree, and had ended up substitute teaching and occasionally answering phones at Dad’s accounting firm.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been a little bit jealous, watching Chess’s life unfold through social media. I mean, sure, she was just waitressing then, but she was living somewhere new, meeting new people, and I felt like maybe I’d somehow fallen back in time, still sleeping in my childhood bedroom under a poster of Justin Timberlake.

It had all worked out for the best, obviously. If Chess hadn’t been living with Stefanie, she wouldn’t have started writing for Stefanie’s site, and if I hadn’t been so depressed staying at home and contemplating law school, I never would’ve randomly picked up a cozy mystery I saw at the library, drawn in by its colorful cover and silly title, wouldn’t have read dozens more just like it and then, finally, started writing my own. Petal Bloom owes her whole existence—and I owe my whole career—to the fact that my life had diverged from Chess’s.