Love Isn't as Easy as the Books

Part 5

 It had been a week since Freen had been to GAP Publishing and ran into Becky again.

She was angry when she left, pissed when she got home that evening and absolutely livid when she reread the final chapter of Epilogues.

She tried to find Becky, but she had no way of contacting her. The names in her phone went from Knight to Kovinsky without anything in the middle. Freen even searched through the several hundred names for anything even remotely close to the name "Becky" and there was nothing.

How dare she put the blame on her?

And yet, here she was, one week later reading Epilogues for the second time.

Freen hate read it the first time. She wanted to know, with morbid curiosity, if Becky had used her for shit dime-store novel fodder any other times.

But by the end of the first time, Freen felt her anger lessening, it was by no means gone.

Despite her better judgment, Freen found herself warming to Becky all over again. Hell if some of these endings were real and Freen's imagination wasn't reading too much into it, then she empathized with Becky more than she ever know she could with anyone.

The manuscript was sitting on her coffee table, and like a black hole it was drawing her attention once again.

But Freen was saved as she reached out for it by her cell phone ringing. A bright chipper tone.

She looked at the ID and read, "Lora, Sex Goddess".

Freen's eyes narrowed at her ringing phone. Wasn't Lora the name of the one weird girl she made out with once in Tennessee at that conference? It had to have been five years ago now. It could have been Lorraine, but Freen couldn't remember. All she did remember for sure is that the girl from Tennessee was crazy clingy and a borderline stalker.

She swore she had an auto-reject for that number, but strange things happen when she changes phones and syncs address books and such.

Convinced it was someone she really did not want to talk to, Freen felt justified in hitting the reject button.

A second later the phone buzzed again indicating a voice mail, but Freen was already beyond the event horizon of Becky's book.

When she got up for work the next day (after falling asleep reading Epilogues till three in the morning), she found a bouquet of flowers outside her door. It was orchids and roses and violets in a stunning arrangement.

She smiled, but didn't see a note. Freen brought the flowers inside and carefully followed the instructions about putting them in water. Her talents never extended to growing anything or keeping it alive for any length of time, but this was too beautiful to neglect.

When she arrived at her office she suspected today was going to be a good day, and for the most part it was. Her company was doing well because the employees seemed happy and were doing their jobs. Her father's scandals were finally starting to slip out of the limelight, even if the seriousness of his crimes were not.

A little bit before lunch, Freen's assistant handed her two slim packages.

"Your order of business cards arrived."

"Oh," Freen said. She must have forgotten she ordered more. She did go through a whole sleeve for Becky, which caused a frown when she thought of it.

She took the first box and opened it to see a row of perfect business cars with her name and contact information.

That was when she noticed the other box was opened already.