Chapter 12: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Fucking Bad Day

Teri

At 6 am on a Saturday, the hotel workout room was nearly empty, and nearly as fucking useless. Oh, sure, there was a universal machine, but it was a weak-ass home workout model and I need something pro gym. Fucking figures.

Worse, though, was the fucktard who made it only nearly empty—a guy in his, I dunno, mid-twenties maybe, an obvious jock. He came over as I was bent down, adjusting the overarm pull to its heaviest weight.

“Need some help? These things can be tricky.” I could hear the smug grin in his voice.

“I’m good,” I said, and slammed the pin home with a satisfying kang.

“You don’t want it too heavy,” he smugged at me, “you could hurt your ... self...”

He trailed off as I casually yanked the handle forward, too far, and the machine clanged and rocked. I’d used bad form to impress, of course. I muttered as if to myself, “Not enough weight—I’ll have to up my reps.” Then I got into a proper stance and pulled, smooth and easy.

The guy stared at me for two moments too long, then retreated to his douchey elliptical whatsit without a word. Fucking jock.

Sam was hogging the shower when I got back.

I dropped one of my best earrings under the bed and my necklaces were all tangled up and my grey pullover was unraveling at a seam and the sewing kit my mother said to take with me was not in my suitcase and I had to wear my fucking navy pullover.

The breakfast buffet had premade omelettes instead of scrambled eggs. I fucking hate omelettes.

I said to myself, “Today is going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” No one even answered—but that was because I didn’t say it out loud.

And that was just as well, as I was sitting at a table eating breakfast with Sam and Zoe and if either one had spoken one word to me, I would have lost it. Fucking traitors.

I stabbed a sausage and tore off half with my teeth.

Okay. Fine. No, Sam wasn’t a traitor. I didn’t fucking trust her in the first place.

Zoe, though, my former-one-of-two-best-friends. How could she betray me like that—by screwing my sister? Did she seduce Sam? Did she let Sam seduce her? Did she—they—?

ARGH.

I gnashed the other half sausage.

(Of course, she wasn’t the only traitor at the table. Someone else had kissed a girl she fucking wasn’t supposed to. Me.)

It was going to be a long fucking day of being in public, and I was already tired. Author table, panel, signing afterward, back to the table, signing at the bookstore booth, table again. Somewhere in there scrounge up a lunch. And a dinner. A nap would be nice, too.

And a pony.

All while being polite and friendly and professional. I hate polite and friendly and fucking professional. Even after coffee.

As we set up our table in author alley, Dana sent a text: Luck. What the fuck? How did she—oh, wait. I checked the time. Mike was about to start his race. I scowled. As if luck has anything to do with a race against your limits. I tapped out, strength—that’s what he needed.

So did I. I sent it to him anyway.

A woman trailing behind a teenage girl in a Sailor Moon t-shirt stopped to glance at our books. I completely failed to smile.

Zoe, though, greeted them—even managing to sound, ugh, chipper.

I fucking hate chipper in the morning.

And this fucking con.

The moderator for our panel on Erotic Collaborations met us at the Green Room. Which wasn’t a room—it was a roped-off down-time area in the back of the exhibitor hall, reserved for convention guests heading to or coming from panels and workshops. There were snacks and drinks, with platters of sandwiches arriving around lunchtime.

The moderator, Josh, was a weedy guy, maybe around 30, who’d published a couple dozen horror short stories. His t-shirt was black like his thinning hair and his pants were brown like his patchy beard. He claimed he preferred our novella The Coming Stars over the novels, but admitted Triple Games was a step above the others. Zoe claimed to be pleased he’d read anything of ours. I managed not to snarl at him.

The other panelists were a middle-aged couple, Paul and Kathleen Bower. The woman was shortish, with obviously blonde hair and obvious makeup. Her nails were the same saturated light blue as her eye shadow. The man was exactly my height, and kept drawing himself up straight as if it was important to be the tallest person around. He wore a black long-sleeve shirt like Dennis’s from Creative Costumes, but didn’t pull it off nearly as well—too many necklaces and a messy greying ponytail. I gave him a dirty look when he complimented Zoe and I on our youthful appearance.

Zoe nudged my hip with her elbow (if she was taller, it would have dug into my side) and told him, “No worry, luv, we’ll grow out of it soon.”

“Surely not Scouse?” Kathleen exclaimed.

Zoe thickened her accent, “Nay, m’um, I be from south Liverpool.”

The discussion of British accents and Kathleen’s linguistics degree spared us from one that would, actually, have been worse. I still decamped to the snacks and found a club soda in a flavor that wasn’t actively disgusting.

A minute later, I turned to find Zoe glaring up at me. What the fuck? I was the pissed-off one here.

“I don’t know what your fucking problem is today,” she whisper-hissed at me, “but you need to get your shit together. Now.”

I glared back. I wanted to—hell, I didn’t know what. Rip something in two. Put on green body paint and purple pants and SMASH. Spit in Zoe’s face. But no, I couldn’t. Not ever, with my physical strength. Not now, especially. And not to her.

I took a deep breath, let it out. “I’ll be ready,” I said. Not growled, not snarled—said. “Gimme five.”

“That’s good, because that’s all you’ve got.” She turned and stalked back to the moderator.

I sat in a plastic chair, closed my eyes, and tried to center like Dana describes. To focus in, to calm down. Usually, when I have to do something hard, like face up to someone, I think of how Dana would handle it then try to do that. She has such mental strength, that girl. (Unlike me.) I call it putting my Dana Face on. This time, though, I couldn’t. It was like a living mask that squirmed out of my imaginary hands.

As if I needed another source of frustration. I was about to sit on stage in front of an audience and pretend to be a public speaker, and I couldn’t conceive how Dana does it. I mean, I’ve seen her speaking in public, including training Program Escorts—hell, she’s been on-stage at all-school assemblies. She talks with people all the fucking time. Just like Mike, that smartass extrovert—

Oh. No. Not just like Mike. Dana speaks with earnestness and conviction. Mike’s the one with the silver tongue and quick wit—and that’s what I needed now. A panelist is an entertainer as well as an informer.

Our moderator called out, “Teri! Time to mosey!”

I stood up and, for the first time, put on my Mike Face. It came with a self-mocking smile.

Just outside the panel room, as we waited for the audience for the previous panel to file out, my phone dinged. Oops. I set it to DND and checked the text—from Mike: 1:41:53

Whoa. That’s, like, 16 minutes faster than last year. Dang. If only—

Dana sent a gif of Kermit the Frog flailing his arms, then a thumbs-up emoji followed by a string of confetti emojis. My throat felt tight. If only I hadn’t—

“Teri!” Zoe called as she slipped into the room.

I put my phone away and my Mike Face back on.

Time to fucking shine.

We sat behind a table on a raised platform, facing a room slowly filling with people—maybe half the hundred-odd seats were already taken. Shit. Josh sat on the other end from me, next to Kathleen.

To get things started, Josh asked us to briefly introduce ourselves. Kathleen turned out to have degrees in sociology and anthropology as well as linguistics. Paul was nowhere near as brief—I kinda tuned him out when he went on and on about how he and Kathleen co-wrote their erotica based on their real-life experiences as long-time attenders of science fiction conventions. It took Josh interrupting him twice to get to Zoe.

“I’m Zoe Barnes, here from Liverpool and Manchester as one third of Raina Bronson, author of the Downstar Runner series—the latest of which is Triple Games.” She pointed to the copy we’d propped up between us, then gestured to me. Pointedly brief.

I had to bend down to talk into the table-top microphone. I named myself as another third of Raina, here from Colorado, then pointed to a picture of Cal I’d set beside me, and included her as our “unindicted co-conspirator,” unable to join us from Australia.

Josh pounced on that last. “The Bowers collaborate in person, but you girls can’t.”

“Not hardly,” Zoe broke in. “Teri and I met in the flesh for the first time, day before yesterday.”

“Since you can’t yell across the office, how do you collaborate?”

“Google Docs, Discord chat, and a weekly conference call,” Zoe summarized. “We keep in touch every day.”

“So constant communication,” Kathleen agreed.

Zoe and I nodded in sync. “Just like any relationship,” I added.

Josh looked puzzled. “So how did you three originally meet up without, yanno, meeting up?”

“But we do meet up,” Zoe broke in. “All the time—online.”

I added, “But to answer your question, fanfic.” And then waited.

“Don’t drown us in too much detail,” Paul tried to snark.

Amateur. I rolled my eyes at the audience, who laughed—with me, not at me. “We three shared a couple fandoms, liked each other’s fics, offered to beta each other, and eventually each of us collaborated with one of the others on a few. When we got together in a chat to discuss all three writing something, we realized we could file the serial numbers off the idea and rework it into an original story. So we did, and we published it, and now book six of the series comes out later this summer.”

“Keep in mind,” Zoe told the panel’s purported grown-ups, “we grew up living online as much as off—for some, it was the only escape we had, where we could be fully ourselves and where we had a loving, supportive community—in fandom.”

Applause from a significant portion of the audience—most of them female. We had a healthy contingent of online fandom.

“It’s not the same,” Paul insisted. “The internet isn’t a substitute for real life.”

I had enough of this fucker. I lowered my head so I could speak clearly into the mic. “OK Boomer.” That rocked him back. The audience laughter rocked him back a second time. I told him, “You’re not listening. Online’s not a substitute for real life—it’s an extension of it.”

Wild applause.

“I’m not a Boomer,” Paul insisted over the noise. “I’m Gen-X.”

“I think,” Kathleen said into her mic, “they are trying to say that you’re out of date.”

Which gave him enough slapdown that Josh could redirect us with a question about working through writing disagreements. An inoffensive topic, even when Paul was insufferable—though he somehow managed to warp the conversation into ranting about needing to have enough sexual experience to write erotica.

I really and truly did not say “OK Boomer” again. I leaned over the mic and mouthed it silently at the audience. Paul had no idea what made them laugh.

Zoe took up the gauntlet. “You’re right that inexperience shows, in any kind of writing—it doesn’t have to be personal experience, but that’s easier to use.”

“Reading erotica does not teach you how to write it well.” Paul was clearly looking at Zoe and I. I had to pull my Mike Face on tighter, to focus on how to dissect him rather than blowing up.