8 years in the life

Chapter 54 - May 2015

"Why are we here again?"

Rory didn't usually enjoy uppity restaurants, and The Odeon was apparently one of that kind. She had spotted HarperCollins vice-president and a clothing designer that she couldn't remember the name. Yep, it was a hip joint.

"Don't know, Logan picked the place, he was there for business two days ago and said we had to try it," Robert answered nodding to the waiter who finished pouring the wine.

"Maybe Logan wants to impress Odette," Rory said in a bitchy tone unusual for her.

Robert frowned. "Why are you so edgy?" He pushed the glass of wine toward her, "try this."

She swirled the wine, sniffed then took a gulp and closed her eyes. The corner of his mouth tilted up. Over the time, Robert had rubbed off his love for the grape elixir on her. They had reacquainted with what had brought them together when they were roommates. Back then, they always shared their love for books, music, movies. They were from the same generation, but probably because he was raised abroad, they didn't have the same pop culture references.

Since they got back together, just by watching him, she had slowly learned to appreciate wine more than the occasional beverage to get buzzed. To the contrary of what her mother had implied at the beginning, he'd never tried to influence her, to fit her into a mold of the perfect wife. On the other hand, he had absorbed her way to see the world positively, lose the constant sarcasm, embraced things how they were without any judgment.

Rory finally smiled. "You know me so well. What's that?"

"Corton-Charlemagne, at least they serve good wine here. They also have Pinot Grigio. I know you girls think it's trendier."

"Robbie, you're so snobbish when it comes to wine," she put a peck on his cheek to sweeten the pot.

He shrugged. "Are you going to tell me why you're so crabby?" He put his hand on hers and gently stroke it with his thumb.

Rory was pissed; she still wasn't getting along with the marketing part of her job. She had another meeting where it was told that they'd better have good arguments if their authors didn't have at least 50 thousand followers in their social media.

"They also went on and on about how Pinterest was one of the primary traffic drivers to the websites, that Pinterest was essential to get hits to Amazon... How does it concern my authors? I'm doing non-fiction, that's for fiction I guess... But I got to hear that if we don't handle the website, we got to make sure that the authors' website was built with Squarespace, blah blah blah."

She took a sip of her wine while Robert was staring at her trying not to smile. He loved how she was passionate, how there was absolutely no distance between herself and her work.

"And let's not talk about Goodreads reviews... Since  Amazon bought it, it's nothing from its formal role of helping indie writers."

"I thought that it was mostly for fiction?"

Robert totally got what she was saying, and that's why he'd let Lilian and Rodham take care of all the marketing. They had asked him if he wanted to get an agent that could manage his interests more independently, but he thought he was fine with Lilian as he didn't plan to write another book anytime soon. At least not with a non-academic publishing house anyway.

"Sorry guys I'm late, I'm straight out of the office, the conference call with California was endless." Logan put a peck on Rory's cheek and patted Robert's back.

"It's okay; it's nice to see you, Logan. Where's Odette?"

"Still in Paris, she'll arrive just for the wedding, after handling the finals. You know these academics, nothing can tear them apart from their students."