23
“Wellllll, there she is,” Gretchen says. She’s wearing the same clothes as when I left this morning. Hair knotted in a bun stabbed with a pencil; no makeup. She still looks like she could strut the catwalk.
“You didn’t go in today?”
“Called in sick.”
“Are you? Sick, I mean?” I ask.
“No. I just didn’t want to listen to Holden talk about you all day. You’re going to have to deal with him, Jayne. He’s got it bad.”
“We’re just friends.”
“Might want to tell Holden that.”
She offers me a stack of papers from the coffee table. “But just because I didn’t show my face at the paper today doesn’t mean I haven’t been working. Take a look.”
Sales reports from the online retailers. This is surreal.
“The second book has almost a hundred and fifty reviews on it already. Can you even believe t
