her
scathing words. Occasionally, there would be a couple of people chastising her
for such harshness, but mostly the comments were positive. She read them all. Huh. Imagine that!
She sat back a little dazed and
surprised. When she clicked on the stats again, half an hour later, five
thousand had become fifteen thousand. Hot
damn! It’s going viral.
Scrolling through the comments, she
noticed one from Tiffany Cowles, giving her an email address with an offer.
Wish to publish this review
in Celebs R Us . Will pay fifteen
hundred dollars. Call this number to talk about writing a regular review column
for us.
Grace wrote down the phone number
and the email. She dashed off a response accepting Tiffany’s offer and sending
her a copy. Yes, Ms. Cowles, I’d love to
do a weekly column. What’s the pay?
Grace hit “send” and sat back,
feeling proud of herself. Viral?
Thousands? In Celeb ‘R Us I’ll reach
millions. Hah! Take that Gunther Quill!
* * * *
Down the street from The Stanford on
a high floor in the Wellington Arms, Jake Matthews dragged himself out of bed.
His mouth was as dry as cotton. He was as thirsty as if he’d been in the desert
for months. His head ached and his stomach was growling, but the idea of food
made him retch.
How
much did I drink last night? He groaned and slipped on his bathrobe. Jake
had crashed at Quinn and Susanna Roberts’ apartment. He had been much too drunk
to go home so Bobby had called Quinn, who gave the go-ahead to drop Jake there.
Jake cracked the door open then
shuddered as the sound reverberated through his body. The brilliant winter sun
pouring through the living room windows stabbed Jake in the eyes. He padded to
the private guest bathroom to wash up.
When he finally emerged, Quinn and
Susanna were sitting on the sofa, coffee mugs on the table in front of them.
Susanna was reading the paper while Quinn surfed the Net on his laptop. When
Quinn’s gaze met Jake’s, he knew something was up. Quinn looked as if someone
had died.
“It’s just a hangover, Quinn. I’ll
be all right by performance time.”
“What happened last night?”
Jake went to the kitchen for coffee. Need about a gallon of this. He
popped two Ibuprofens into his mouth then washed them down. “I don’t remember
everything.”
“Bobby said you were bombed out of
your skull.”
He sat down slowly. “Maybe I had one
too many.”
“Maybe?”
“Okay, okay…I was a little…drunk.”
“How’d it go with Grace?”
All of a sudden, memories of the
fiasco date came flooding back. Jake put his head in his hands. “Oh my God.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” Quinn said.
Susanna put down the newspaper.
“Terrible. Horrible. I was a
Neanderthal. What did I do?”
“I dunno ,
Jake, what did you do?” Quinn chuckled.
“This is no laughing matter. I
screwed up big time. Do you have the number of a florist?
“Why?”
“I gotta send flowers, a dozen roses… no, maybe two dozen.”
Susanna smiled. “Quinn has a florist
on speed dial.”
“Hey, I don’t mess up that often,”
Quinn protested.
“Often enough,” she said, glancing
at the vase of fresh pink roses on the sideboard in the dining room before picking
up the paper again.
Quinn wrote down the number for Jake,
who called immediately. “That’s right, The Stanford. Message? Hmm. How about
‘I’m so sorry about last night. You deserved better.’?”
Quinn nodded.
“That’s it, then. When’ll they be
delivered? Can’t you get them over there today? I really need them there today.
What? Okay, charge me the rush fee. Yeah.”
“So what exactly did you do, Jake?
If you don’t mind me asking,” Susanna said.
“Yeah. Spill it.”
Jake outlined most of the evening,
but stopped at the car ride home.
“Come on, Jake. That isn’t a dozen
roses evening. What else? Give!”
Jake took a deep breath and rubbed
his stubbly face. “Yeah, well, there was one other thing…”
“Come on, Jake. I’m