The True Love Experiment

Tuesday afternoon, the bell chimes over the door at Twiggs, and everything about it—the force of the chime, the footsteps that follow, the jostling of keys latched to a purse—is so familiar that I know without even looking up who it is.

“Fizzy?” Jess asks.

I don’t blame her for the bright surprise in her voice; I’m surprised, too.

I type the end of the sentence and then look up at her, reaching for my latte. “Hello, bestie.”

“Hi. What am I seeing? A laptop? Notebooks with frantic scribbling?” Her eyebrows inch up. “Are you… writing?”

“I had an idea this morning.” In fact, I woke up with a scorching sex scene in my head and thought… maybe I’d try to write it down. If I’m being honest, it’s a filthy fantasy about Connor’s mouth, but the inspiration hit me the way it used to, in this sort of fevered excitement, and I didn’t want to let the moment pass me by.

I packed up my laptop, came here, and of course what was clear and perfect in my head on the drive over is a mess of words on the page, but I’m forcing myself to remember that it’s okay for a draft to be awful. It’s better than nothing, and I’ve had enough nothing to last a lifetime. Terrible can be edited.

Jess sits down across from me. “That’s fantastic.”

“No, it’s garbage,” I say, “but I’m just happy to be typing words that aren’t hate mail to myself.” I shrug before remembering something. “Oh my God, I eavesdropped on the best conversation today.”

She leans in. “Hit me, I’ve missed gossip.”

“These two women were sitting at the front table with the wobbly leg—”

“I hate that table.”

“—and one of them said her husband fired the nanny after recognizing her on an escort site.”

“Wait,” Jess says. “Why was he cruising an escort site?”

“Exactly! Wouldn’t that make a great opening for a book? Scumbag husband sees familiar face on an escort site and is too stupid to realize he shouldn’t tell his wife? Wife leaves him and falls for the handyman who comes to fix the toilet her ex never got to.” I tap my chin, turning the idea around in my head. “Scratch that, make it the roof so he can be shirtless.”

I reach over to jot it in my notebook before I forget.

Satisfied, I turn back to Jess. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Working.” She winces. “I’m bored at home. River is planning a new start-up with Sanjeev and… I miss it. The idea of not working anymore is sort of depressing to me. I didn’t get into math for money, I got into it because it’s fun.”

“Maybe we’re getting our mojo back?”

She grins. “Fuck, I hope so.” The moment lingers, our gazes hugging, and slowly, Jess’s smile straightens as, I presume, she reads the shadow in my eyes. “Hey.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I’m sorry that things with Connor fell apart. That really sucks about the other show tanking.”

I nod. I’ve got nothing useful to add. It does suck.

“But does it help to know it wasn’t just about what happened at the hotel, that there were other things at play?” she asks. “I’m guessing he didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I guess?” I laugh and it comes out a little watery; I didn’t realize I’d gotten teary. “I know this situation is complicated. I know he has different pressures and responsibilities. It’s bigger than me and my feelings.”

“Look at this character growth. Five stars,” she says, grinning. Pushing back to stand, she says, “I’m going to order coffee. Need a refill?”

“I’m good.” I’m so close to finishing this terrible document. I’ll probably never show it to another human, but it isn’t even about that.

Two hours ago, my agent called to let me know she expects several of my backlist titles to hit the bestseller lists this week. Apparently new readers have been discovering my books, and posting photos and hilarious challenges, videos, and reviews. She sent me a few and I laughed through teary eyes as I watched. Writers can work for years and never know how a story will land with an audience. Being reminded that my words really affect readers made me want to get back to it immediately. Book people are just better, I swear by it. She also scolded me for avoiding her calls (valid), but said that she cares about me first, and if I never want to write another book, that’s fine. I won’t be letting her down, and she won’t take it personally. I have to do what’s best for me. Four months ago, the idea of hearing that would have been a relief, a weight lifted, but the moment Amaya said I could quit if I wanted, all I felt was a devastating bleakness.

It made me realize I’m not ready to give up writing. I did the show to find myself, not for fame, and if I have to give up Connor, I want to at least hold on to what makes me me. And what I am is a writer. So even if every word in this doc is garbage, I’m not quitting.

And tomorrow, I will put on my mental blinders and sit down and try to make a diamond out of a hunk of coal. Because tomorrow, I will do everything I can not to think about Connor and the show and how in just over four days I will be expected to embark on a trip with a man who isn’t the man I want.

When my phone buzzes on the table, my immediate hope is that it’s him. I need to work on that. But then it buzzes again. And again. I turn it over and my heart takes off in a gallop for a very different reason. It’s a text from Alice.

Fizzy.

Fizzy oh my god

Meet us at the hospital

I’m in labor

Everyone says newborns are ugly, that they look like grumpy old men or tiny, unfurled leaves. They’re wrinkled and red-faced; fuzzy and grouchy. They do nothing but sleep and eat and cry and poop.

That might be true for other babies, but at only six hours old, Helena Ying Kwok is already, hands down, the most beautiful and entertaining human ever to grace this planet. Baby Lena—I chose the nickname—has her mother’s tiny button nose and her father’s permafrown. She has her maternal grandmother’s full lips, her paternal grandfather’s long neck, and her maternal grandfather’s gassiness. But the dimple in her left cheek is all mine. This one is going to be a rascal. From this moment forward, I have no choice but to lay down my life for her.

Petting her tiny fist, I gently uncurl her tight little fingers, kissing each one. The sweet crescent moons of her fingernails are a miracle. My heart is too small for these feelings; the sense of choking on happiness, of drowning in it, hits me every few breaths. “I’m your Auntie Fizzy,” I whisper. “I will never let you suffer an ill-fitting bra. I’ll tell you when you have food in your teeth. I’m the one you come to when you need clothing advice or spending money. I only ask that you let me vet every person you want to date.”

“Okay, okay. Give her back.”

I make a strangled, infatuated noise and pass her back into Alice’s outstretched arms. I’ve been in this room for just over forty-eight hours and am going on roughly three hours of sleep, but I’ve never felt more energized. Alice, though, looks like she’s about to drop. Labor was intense. My sweet baby sister spent twenty-six hours pacing the room in early labor before fifteen hours of active labor and an epidural that didn’t take. An obstetrician himself, her husband, Henry, was on the verge of insisting the doctor wheel her in for a C-section, but as if little Helena heard her daddy and decided enough was enough, she came out with one more push, bright-eyed and with only a tiny, shocked cry of protest. She’s not even a day old, but already the room is packed with people and flowers, gifts and balloons.

Mom comes up behind me, sliding her arms around my waist from behind, and we peer together at baby Lena in Alice’s arms.

“She is perfect,” Mom whispers.

“She redefines the word perfection,” I agree.

“I remember holding you,” she says, “and this new feeling pushing everything else away. I had everything I needed in that moment. It’s still like that, every time I look at you.”

Bittersweet warmth threads through me. I never feel so loved as when I’m with my family… and I hate knowing I might never give my mother this magnitude of a gift: a grandchild, someone else to love unconditionally in the way only she can.

But being the mother she is, she already knows what I’m thinking. She turns me to face her. “You were perfect then, too, and you are perfect now.”

Eyes watery, I laugh. “You are not a credible source.”

“I am the only credible source. I’ve known you every second of your life.”

I have no walls left up to hold things in. I clutched my screaming sister’s hand for the past day, watched her experience brutal pain and blinding joy. With nearly everyone I love packed into this room, crowding around Alice and Henry and Helena, I feel stripped down, a live wire. “I might never do what Alice just did,” I remind Mom. “I might never even get married. I might never write the kind of book you want me to write. I might always be exactly like this.”

“So?”

“So?” I repeat. “So I don’t want to disappoint you.”

Mom cups my face in her hands. “You look in the mirror and see all of the ways you are letting me down. I look at you and see everything I’ve ever wanted you to be. That admiration is where expectations come from, dai leu, not from disappointment. And if I want something for you, like marriage or a baby, it’s because these things have made me happier than anything else in life. You spend so much time working to make other people happy, and all I care about is that you are happy.”

The way these words drag Connor’s face front and center in my mind’s eye is startling. He is, without question, the current seat of my happiness, and if there is anything about the show ending that makes me sad, it’s the reality that I won’t see him every day.

And then a new jarring thought crashes in.

“Mom,” I ask, “what day is it?”

She blinks at me, confused. “Thursday.”

I look at the clock. It’s a quarter to five in the evening and if it is indeed Thursday, then I am an hour away from the wrap party that begins in fifteen minutes.

I lean over Alice, kissing her forehead. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

“Where are you going?” she asks without taking her eyes off her newborn.

“Wrap party.”

Finally, Alice turns her dark, tired eyes to me. “Tell him you love him.”

I’ve started to turn, but pause at her words. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

I stare at her. I haven’t talked about Connor with anyone but Jess, too worried about it getting out, too worried about stressing out my pregnant sister, too worried about my show already outshining my brother’s wedding, too worried that the show was yet another embarrassing stain on my résumé as far as my family was concerned. But in the end, the people who love you see through all the subterfuge anyway.

“It’s not that simple,” I tell her. “I wish it were, but it isn’t just about me.”

“Even so.” My exhausted sister lifts her hand. I lean forward, like she might cup my cheek. Instead, she lightly slaps it. “Say it anyway.”