Looking for a Love Story (6 page)

But I thought all that changed after my marriage and
Love, Max
.

“Now I’m like you and the Girls,” I told Sheryl.

“Oh, Francesca, I’m so glad,” she said. “I know you have Pete and your mom, but there’s nothing like knowing you have a bunch of girlfriends who are there for you.”

My new pals did talk about being there for one another; the word
supportive
was tossed around a lot. But it seemed to me that most of the time at dinner was spent detailing all the fabulous moving and shaking they were doing.

“So they share the good stuff instead of boring the hell out of one another with a lot of soul searching,” Jake said, when I mentioned it. “Not everyone wants to get all gloomy and introspective.”

“But would they really have my back if I needed them?”

“Who says you’re going to need someone to have your back? Lighten up, Francesca.”

I told myself that he was right, and I just wasn’t used to hanging out with the
in
crowd.

“I love my life,” I murmured happily to Jake one night as I was drifting off to sleep. “If I ever go back to being me, shoot me.”

We were six months into our marriage by then.
Love, Max
had been published six months and a week earlier, and I’d had my run on the
Times
bestseller list. I truly believed that my life was golden and nothing could ever go wrong for me again. Then Nancy took me out to lunch.

“Gramercy has gotten in touch,” she said. She was so excited, she’d forgotten to send the breadbasket back and was inhaling a hunk of focaccia. “They’d like to buy another book from you. Do you know what you want to write next?”

I didn’t have a clue. My brain—and I could actually visualize
this as I sat there—was like an empty room with nothing in it but a few dust bunnies in the corners. But Nancy was licking focaccia crumbs off her fingers and waiting for me to speak. I couldn’t admit I had nothing.

“Well, I thought maybe I’d write about Max again.”

“A sequel!” Nancy said. “Oh, God, you don’t know how happy I am that you said that. Gramercy will be over the moon.”

“Really?”

“Sequels sell. Big-time.”

Well, it made sense. People would want to read about the characters they already knew they loved. And I wanted to write a book that would sell even better than my first one. No way I wanted to lose my shiny new success. “That’s what I want to write,” I said. “A sequel.”

Nancy leaned forward eagerly. “What’s the story?” she asked.

I was back to dust bunnies in the brain. “I have a couple of … thoughts … and themes … that interest me,” I improvised. “Let me go home and put something down on paper.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t have any ideas, I reassured myself, it was just that I hadn’t thought seriously about writing a second book. I’d been too busy running around, sparkling and getting manicures. Once I got back into work mode, I was sure to come up with something.

The trouble with me being in work mode was, frankly, there were times when it wasn’t pretty. When I was writing
Love, Max
, there were days when I got so absorbed I forgot to brush my hair—let alone curl it fetchingly on top of my head. Hell, there were times when I forgot to brush my teeth. I didn’t go out of the house for three weeks while I was rewriting the first draft except to grab food and chocolate. I walked into walls and talked to myself when I was working out plot points. No way I was going to expose Jake to this side of Francesca.

I told myself I could continue the active social life Jake enjoyed so much even though I was working. It would just take a little discipline. I’d put myself on a schedule—check into my office from nine to five like anyone else with a job. I’d still have my weekends free to get my hair straightened. I could still do my makeup every morning.

It took me three weeks to figure out that story ideas do not come on command. At least mine didn’t. I sat in my office wearing my itchy false lashes for eight frustrating, terrifying hours a day and came up with nothing. I eighty-sixed the damn lashes. I also canceled a couple of brunches and a hair appointment. Finally, I managed to concoct a plot that even I knew was too vague to show to Nancy.

Meanwhile, Jake watched me thrash around and became increasingly bewildered. “Don’t you have a deadline for finishing this proposal?” he asked me.

“Not a specific one, but Nancy says the sooner the better.”

“Why don’t you just write it?” It was the first time I’d had to remind myself of all the reasons why I loved him.

The good news was, Jake was going to Tuscany for a week to do a shoot with a young Italian starlet—a gig he’d gotten on Andy’s recommendation—and he wanted me to go with him so I had a reprieve.

“We didn’t have a honeymoon, so this will be like one,” I said to Nancy. “I’ll get that book proposal to you as soon as I get back.”

“Great. Because they’re hot for Francesca Sewell’s next novel, and we don’t want to let them cool down,” she said, thereby ensuring that I spent every morning of my belated honeymoon hunched over my computer trying to force sentences out of my brain and into the keyboard. In the afternoons, I joined Jake and the starlet and Andy, who had flown over to see how the shoot was going. We drank cappuccinos in little cafés, and I tried to pretend
that I was paying attention to all the laughing and fun chat that was swirling around me, while the computer back in the hotel room haunted me.

Andy was the one who noticed how distracted I was. “Go up to the room and work,” she’d say, with her warm laugh. “You know that’s what you want to do. We can entertain ourselves.”

By the time we were back in the States, I had finally written a proposal of sorts. Nancy took me out for a drink and I showed it to her. She read it and paused a really long time before she said, “Well, we all know it’s the details that make the story.” Then she added, “Why don’t you write up a few chapters to flesh this out before we send it to Gramercy?”

“No problem,” I said cheerily. Then I went home and threw up.

But I was still determined not to disappoint Jake. I continued going to gallery openings and fancy dinners held to raise money for research on obscure diseases—Jake and I never got invitations for A-list illnesses like cancer—but I was crying a lot, and I’d gained ten pounds.

Jake tried to help. “Why don’t you join a gym?” he suggested. “It’ll get you out of the house and away from that damn computer for a couple of hours.” I tried to explain that I needed concentrated time—blocks of it—to do my kind of work. “Okay,” he said, and he gave me a little kiss. “But it’s so depressing to watch you.”

For the next few days, I did my damnedest not to be depressing. I swear I tried. But it seemed like every time I might be getting a handle on my story, I had to quit to get dressed up so Jake and I could go somewhere and hang out with a friend who suddenly seemed to me to have the IQ of an avocado.

“When did you become antisocial?” Jake asked angrily, as we were going home in a cab one night. I didn’t have an answer for him.

I wrote and deleted the first chapters of my book five times.
And I learned the painful difference between writing a book you love and throwing words at a book you wish you wanted to write. I started being afraid it would be like this for the rest of my life.

I told Jake I had to take a rain check when he asked me to go out to California. He had impressed the starlet from Italy and was in negotiations with her people to work as the director of a documentary about endangered species for her wildlife charity.

“This could be the start of a whole new career for me, Francesca,” he said. “I’ve been a cinematographer before, but this is my first shot at directing. I’d like you to be with me. I went with you on your book tour.”

“Please try to understand,” I begged. “I just need to get an outline on paper.”

“You’ve been saying that for months.”

“Weeks,” I corrected, with what I hoped was a cute grin.

Jake didn’t grin back.

“It just seems longer.”

“You can say that again.”

“I don’t know why this book is so hard. I didn’t have this kind of trouble with
Love, Max.”

“Stop worrying. Just sit down and get it done. This is getting frustrating.”

I FINALLY ADMITTED
my problem to Nancy, who told me in soothing tones that what I was suffering from was called Second Book Syndrome. “It happens all the time,” she said. “When you have a hit with a first book, the expectations can be so great that you freeze. You’ll work your way out of it.”

But it didn’t feel like I was working my way out of it. It felt like I was drowning.

At the same time Jake was out in LA, where he was being wined
and dined by the starlet and her people. And of course he hung out with our pal Andy—who had some bad news to report. She hadn’t been able to sell
Love, Max
to the television people.

“She said to tell you it has nothing to do with the book,” Jake said on the phone. “Lifetime has too many projects in the pipeline already, and Hallmark is putting everything into turnaround because of budget problems. The Big Three aren’t doing long form anymore, and the actor Andy pitched, the one with the deal at Fox, said he didn’t want to play second fiddle to a dog.”

“Wow, it’s impressive how you do Hollywood-speak,” I said.

“Francesca, you don’t have to try to be funny. I know you’ve got to be feeling a little disappointed.”

That was like saying someone who has just been through a tsunami is feeling a little waterlogged. What I was was numb. “Have you had a chance to meet Sheryl?” I asked, so we wouldn’t have to dwell on me and my feelings.

“She’s a sweetheart,” he said.

Sheryl was a little more cryptic about Jake. “I think he’s the kind of man who doesn’t like to be alone,” she said. Then she paused, and I could feel her picking her words carefully. “He’s so … outgoing. And I don’t think he really understands how important your writing is to you, Francesca.”

When Jake came back, I tried to explain it. “I feel like I’m fighting for my life!”

“Don’t you think that’s a little over the top? It’s just a book, Francesca.” He gave me a kiss—was it my imagination, or was it the kind of kiss you’d give your mother?

“I can’t seem to do all the running around we do and work. I need to lie low—just for a little while.”

“How long?”

As long as it takes!
I wanted to scream at him. “Give me a few months.”

“You’ve already had months.”

The point of telling you all of this is: There were signs. But I was so busy trying to beat Second Book Syndrome, I didn’t pick up on them. No, let me be really honest: I didn’t want to. I should have known better. I
did
know better. I’d learned that lesson the hard way when I was a kid.

CHAPTER 6

I’d finally reached our apartment building. I checked the clock in the lobby; it was still too early for Jake to have left for Andy’s awards dinner. It wouldn’t take me more than five minutes to get ready if I dressed fast.

“When did my husband get in?” I asked the doorman, as I walked by him.

“I don’t think he’s back yet, Ms. Morris.”

That stopped me for a second. But doormen working at big New York City apartment buildings don’t always see everyone who goes in and out. This guy could have been on the phone when Jake came in; there were dozens of other possible scenarios. I got into the elevator and went up.

None of the lights were on. I was greeted at the door by Annie, who made a frantic break for the hallway. Clearly she hadn’t had
her evening potty break yet, which meant the doorman was right; my husband hadn’t come back home. I called out, “Jake, are you here?” just to make sure. There was no answer. I grabbed Annie’s leash and the pooper-scooper—Annie and I are good citizens—and we hurried outside so she could do her thing.

A part of me expected to see Jake in the lobby when I walked out of the elevator. He’d be pressing the button anxiously, and he’d say he was sorry he had worried me. But he wasn’t there. When Annie and I went outside, I couldn’t help waiting for him to come up the street, running because he was so late. I promised myself I wouldn’t get mad or demand to know where he’d been. I’d just be grateful that he was back. But Jake didn’t rush up to me on the street with his hair mussed, breathing hard. Jake wasn’t anywhere.

And now the memories that were flooding through my mind were getting scary. I stood next to the curb outside my apartment building, while Annie sniffed around for that one perfect spot, and tried to block them, to stop remembering what I’d done—and hadn’t done—during the time when I was trying so desperately to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was
Love, Max
. But memory is a pesky thing; once you start it rolling it’s almost impossible to turn it off.

IT TOOK ME
a year, but I finally finished the first half of my new book—at least, I hoped that was what I’d done—but after my editor, Debbie, read it she didn’t seem happy.

“Why did the dog get so mean?” she asked.

Because I got desperate
.