However, they were all sore, sweaty, and tired by the time the last box had been carried across the bungalow’s threshold. Olivia sank down on the sofa while Millay perched on the coffee table, surveying the haphazard arrangement of furniture and accessories.
“Where’s Little Administrative Assistant?” she asked Harris. “Isn’t it the girlfriend’s job to help haul her lover boy’s crap when he moves? This is, like, a major Kodak moment. A freaking milestone. How can she miss it?”
Harris blushed and turned away from Millay’s sharp stare. “Estelle volunteers at a senior center on Saturdays. She would have been here if she didn’t have another commitment.”
“How sweet of her!” Laurel quickly exclaimed. “And I’m sorry I arrived so late to the moving party. The twins are going through this biting phase, and I’m afraid Dermot sank his teeth into my father-in-law’s thigh and hung on like a little bulldog.”
Rawlings and Harris hooted with laughter.
Millay nodded her head with approval. “A pint-sized vampire. Way to go, Dermot.”
“The in-laws don’t think he’s so cute at the moment,” Laurel answered with a giggle. “And Steve tried to make it seem like Dermot’s bad behavior was my fault for not being by his side every second of the day. I told them Maddie Jackson is still biting people and she’s old enough to wear a training bra!”
Harris’s house was filled with the sounds of mirth.
Later, over six-packs of cold beer and several large ham and pineapple pies from Pizza Bay, Harris’s friends toasted his new home.
The coworkers took off with the leftover food, but only after pausing at the doorway to haze Harris about spending Saturday night with his book club.
Millay was on her feet in a flash. “It’s not a book club, nerds. We’re a writers’ group. We write books. Book clubs discuss someone else’s published works. You just wait.” She pointed a finger at their chests while slinging her free arm around Harris. “One day, this übergeek is going to be signing his book for packs of hormone-crazed hotties. And what’ll you clowns be doing? Playing online video games with some twelve-year-old in Albuquerque?”
Instead of being offended, the young men were delighted by Millay’s sauciness. “Now we see the benefits of this group. You’ve got sweet Millay on Saturday and Estelle Sunday through Friday. We didn’t know you were such a player, dude!” They took turns exchanging high-fives with a dumbstruck Harris.
Harris pushed them onto the porch just as Millay lunged forward, her eyes flashing. Amused, Rawlings mollified the lovely bartender by handing her a fresh beer. He raised his own bottle in salute.
“If you ever consider a job in law enforcement, come talk to me. You could scare the good back into half the town’s criminals.”
Millay grinned, her face relaxing as she took a sip of beer. Twirling a strand of her glossy black hair, which was dyed fuchsia at the tips, she walked back to her spot on the coffee table, giving Laurel a squeeze on the arm in passing. “Let’s get down to it. Mama’s got a brand-new bag.”
Harris dug around in a nearby box until he found a file folder from which he pulled out Laurel’s chapter. “Is it okay to ask why you ditched the duchess?”
Laurel had clearly been anticipating this question. “The more I worked on that book, the less sincere it felt. With every paragraph, I was struggling to place myself in her shoes. The scenes felt forced and then, one day, I realized I didn’t even like her.”
“You could have gone back and edited her,” Rawlings pointed out.
“Sure,” Laurel agreed. “But it was too late. She is who she is. I just got to this point where I didn’t care what happened to her and so how could I expect a reader to care?” She pointed at the pages in Harris’s hands. “But this woman! She leapt from my mind like, um, who was the Greek goddess who was born fully matured?”
Millay tapped her forehead. “Athena, goddess of wisdom. She busted right out of Zeus’s head wearing a full suit of armor. Talk about some serious labor pains . . .”
“Imagine if he’d had twins!” Laurel chuckled. “Anyway, that’s how The Wife came about. She literally forced every other character out of my mind and started whispering her story to me. I literally cannot stop writing. It’s like being high on drugs.”
Rawlings arched a brow. “Oh? Is that something you’ve personally experienced?”
“No!” Laurel cried in horror and then realized the chief was joking. “I know I just dropped this on all of you with no warning, but I wanted this chapter to be read without any preconceptions. So I’m ready now. Fire away!”
Millay volunteered to go first. “I totally thought this woman was going to be some whiny Stepford wife, and I guess, on the surface, she is. She’s got the tan and the toned bod and the French manicure, but I felt sorry for her when I read about all the things she did to make herself more attractive to her husband. I was, to my own surprise, rooting for her.”
“You did an incredible job describing the scene where she gets Botox.” Harris gave a little shiver. “I hate needles. And the way she just sits there—thinking about how good she’ll look without those lines on her forehead and around her mouth while the doc sticks her again and again—I kind of wanted to shake her and tell her she didn’t have to go through that.”
The group of writers began to argue vociferously over whether The Wife had been wasting time and money trying to improve her physical appearance, since her husband didn’t seem to notice anything she did.
“You’re forgetting that she also attempts to become a better person on the inside,” Olivia said. “She begins volunteering at the hospital. She bakes meals for the employees at her husband’s company that have had babies or fallen ill. She reads dozens of biographies about strong and powerful women. That’s what saved her as a character in my eyes. She wants to be the whole package. She is deeper than she appears.”
Rawlings threw up his hands. “But she wants to be Wonder Woman and that’s ridiculous. Impossible.”
Everyone began talking at once. This was unusual, as the writers were careful never to interrupt one another. Olivia wondered if the afternoon’s physical labor coupled with several beers had produced this chaotic atmosphere. She glanced over at Laurel and saw her friend smiling with happiness.
Eventually, the rest of the group noticed her expression and fell silent, gazing at her inquisitively.
“It doesn’t bother you that we want to push this woman off a bridge half the time?” Millay asked.
“Not at all,” Laurel replied. “She’s evoked emotion in you in a way the duchess never did. I’m thrilled.”
Rawlings reviewed the notes on his paper. “An excellent point, but I think you need to revamp your title. Lessons for Ever After doesn’t seem to reflect the complexity of The Wife’s character.”
Olivia agreed. She’d made a note about the title as well. “You may need to wait until your story develops further before deciding what to call this book. We already know from reading one chapter that The Wife must figure out what makes her fulfilled, with or without the husband, and that she needs to redefine her definition of happily ever after.” She scanned over the pages in her hand. “Don’t get too caught up in the fairy-tale theme,” Olivia cautioned. “I sense this romance is going to have more depth than your previous project. It might turn into more of a Chick-lit romance if you use too many Cinderella elements.”
Laurel nodded in agreement and then Harris pointed out bits of unclear dialogue. Millay finished the critique by voicing reservations about Laurel’s word choice in the final paragraph, but overall, it was clear that the Bayside Book Writers were impressed by her new project.