Chapter Text
Living in Seattle for the past couple of years had made Carina come to terms with three simple truths. The humidity in this city could easily evaporate your will to live, the morning traffic was as much a certainty as the uncertainty of the daily weather conditions, and all of the above became far more manageable if you had the right amount of caffeine in your veins.
For that reason, Carina pushed through the door of 19th and Brew, her favorite coffee shop on the corner of 19th Avenue and Madison, located just two blocks away from her lower Capitol hill apartment and no more than a ten minute walk from the Chroma magazine offices on Pine and Broadway.
The familiar combination of roasted coffee beans and something warm and nutty that had taken her two full years to place as toasted sesame, hit her as soon as she stepped inside. Full of mismatched second hand furniture and people who just needed coffee and somewhere to sit, 19th was almost like a warm hug in the morning, but without the commitment.
Which, this morning, was precisely what she needed.
Behind the counter, Travis was in the middle of making small talk with a customer, doing the thing he did where he made whoever he was talking to feel like they were the most interesting person in the room. He’d been the barista at 19th and Brew for as long as Carina had been coming here, and he was one of the main reasons she kept coming back.
He was a second generation Korean American, proudly and openly gay—there was always a pride pin on his apron, the kind with the black and brown and trans stripes included—and happily married to another unfairly good looking man that Carina had met on a couple of occasions and immediately understood why Travis talked about him the way he did.
Above all, Travis was the kind of person who made you feel like the world was a much better place than it actually was and Carina appreciated that more than she’d ever told him. As if he could read her thoughts, his eyes lit up the second she walked in. “Carina! Morning, bella.” He called, flashing her a freckled smile that was always just a little too wide, the kind that belonged in a toothpaste commercial. “Usual?”
Usual. When had the time passed and Carina reached that point of no return, living in this city for so long that she had managed to have a usual coffee order?
Seattle was never meant to be the place she ended up in. At first, it was just a place she visited to see her stupid little brother. Then, it was the place she stayed for Arizona. And now it was just…it. The city where she lived, where she had her brother, her friends, her work. The city where she had a ‘usual’ coffee order.
Realizing she was just standing there staring at Travis for a little too long, she smiled back. “Si, per favore. The usual.”
“Extra shot?” Travis asked, already reaching for the larger cup because he knew her too well.
“It is Monday, Travis, is it not?” Carina said, pulling out her wallet from her bag. “You know I won’t be a fully functional human being without it.”
“Coming right up.” Travis didn’t even bat an eye. He wrote her name on the cup with a little heart over the i and slid it over the counter. “You’re gonna love this one, I’m trying out a new Colombian bean that has a really funky finish.”
“I love your coffee every day, Travis.” Carina reassured him, slipping a generous tip into the glass jar at the far end of the counter. “You know that.” She added and picked up the cup, the warmth spreading through her fingers and up her arm, then turned to head out, absently stirring the triple espresso—no sugar, no milk, the proper Italian way— as she maneuvered around a couple of people who were paying far too much attention to the mouthwatering gochujang mayo breakfast sandwiches behind the glass counter.
When she stepped outside, the late October morning chill made her pull her light coat tighter around her body and silently negotiate with the universe about the possibility of going back to bed. The universe didn’t bulge, but she had her precious caffeine, so everything was finally right in the world—at least for now.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked her notifications. Work stuff, a few messages from the girls on their group chat she didn’t have enough of the coffee to open yet. She was due at work in half an hour, and her mind drifted to the editorial staff meeting that was happening in less than two hours. The one she was, to put it generously, extremely unprepared for. She put her phone back in her pocket and was about to start walking, when she heard a familiar voice in front of her that made her whole body freeze mid step.
“Carina?”
She looked up and was suddenly very glad she hadn’t taken a sip of that coffee yet, because it would have gone everywhere. Instead she just silently choked on the air in her throat as she met the crystal blue eyes of Arizona Robbins, her ex girlfriend of three full years. “Arizona.” The name came out tasting like sour Sicilian lemon. She hadn’t meant it to, she just couldn’t stop it. “Hi.”
“I—wow, it’s been forever! It’s so good to see you!” Arizona exclaimed, her voice overly bright and cheerful, as always. She was holding hands with a woman who was definitely not Carina. Not even close. She was taller, dressed too elegantly for a Monday morning, with short dark hair that was slicked back and a smile that carried a confidence Carina found honestly offensive given the circumstances.
“Forever is pushing it.” Carina said, struggling to keep her voice even and her face expressionless. “More like two months.” She gave the two of them a quick once over. Who the hell was—
“Right, of course. Well, this is Natalie.” Arizona said quickly, still able to somewhat read Carina’s thoughts before they were ready to be read. Still holding Natalie’s hand, her fingers brushing against hers in a way that was so familiar it made Carina’s chest pull tight. “Natalie, this is Carina. My…uhm…ex.”
Carina felt her stomach fall straight to the ground. “Right.” She swallowed and arranged her face into something that resembled a smile, because the alternative was crying on a public street at eight in the morning, right in front of her… “Ex.”
“Nice to meet you.” Natalie said simply. And then, as if the universe had decided this torture wasn’t quite enough, she reached over and pressed a kiss to Arizona’s hand. Soft, easy, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And that’s when the light caught it, the ring on Arizona’s finger, glinting in the one single sliver of Seattle sunlight that had apparently decided today of all days was the day to make an appearance.
“We’re…uhm.” Arizona pulled her hand gently back and tucked it into her coat pocket. “We’re engaged.”
The word landed in Carina’s chest like Miley Cyrus on her wrecking ball. Engaged? As in, to be married? “Wow.” She managed to utter, tightening her hold on the coffee cup with her extremely ringless fingers. “That’s…”
“Fast, I know.” Arizona filled in her obvious thought. “It was. But everything just clicked with us. It’s funny, but when you know, you just know. I mean, when you find the one, it’s like… magic.” She was looking at Natalie as she said it.
The one. Carina’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. The mythical, elusive concept everyone spent their entire lives chasing, and she had, foolishly, spent three years believing she had already found. Right here. With this woman. Who was now standing in front of her wearing another woman’s ring two months after their break up. “I’m happy for you, Arizona.” She said, but the words came out as flat as the pavement under her feet. “I really am.” She took a sip of her espresso, desperately in need of something to do with her hands. “I’m glad you found what you were looking for.”
“Well, it was really good seeing you, Carina.” Arizona, oblivious to the knife she’d just plunged into Carina’s heart, leaned in close to give her a hug and whispered. “You’ll find it too one day, I’m sure of it.”
Carina’s body stiffened inside the hug. The words were kind, of course they were. Arizona was always kind, saving tiny humans for a living, strolling through the hospital corridors in her heelys, she was literally sunshine personified. It was nearly impossible to be angry at someone like that. It had been impossible when Arizona ended things, her voice so gentle, so careful with Carina’s feelings even while she was breaking them, and it was impossible now, even if those words were the last thing Carina needed to hear. “Yeah. Sure.” She said, her voice tight, trying to fake her way through this nightmare as gracefully as possible. “Good luck with everything, Arizona.”
And then she turned and walked away. The cold air hit her face as she walked faster and faster and she pulled in a breath, and another, focusing very hard on the sound of her own footsteps on the street. But still, her brain did what it always did when she needed it to stop: it kept going.
The one.
Arizona had actually said it. Two months. Sixty days, give or take, and apparently that was all it took to locate the singular human being on the planet who completed you, who the universe had been quietly routing toward you all along, who made everything in your life make sense in retrospect.
Honestly, this would probably sound like the most romantic thing in the world to most people. But Carina knew the thing nobody wanted to say out loud. That the concept of soulmates was not romantic. It was lazy. It was the intellectual equivalent of not checking your sources, this idea that love was something that happened to you, that arrived pre-assembled, that you recognized across a crowded room the way you recognized your own name. As if the whole concept of love, the work of it, the choice of it, the thousand small decisions to stay and try and show up every day, was just killing time until the universe got around to you.
But if there was one person for everyone, if fate or serendipity or the universe or whatever ridiculous word you wanted to use was actually selecting for people, doing the real work behind the curtains while humans stumbled around with their hearts out in the open…then what had three full years with her been to Arizona? A detour? A lesson? A growth experience before the real story could start?
A placeholder?
The word arrived without permission and Carina shook her head as if the mere act could force it out. “The one doesn’t exist.” She mumbled it to herself like a proven fact, which was the only kind of knowledge she actually trusted. If Arizona could find hers in just two months, then the whole concept was entirely meaningless, just a story people told themselves because the alternative was scarier.
That love was a choice.
And some people just never got chosen.
***
By the time Carina walked inside the office building elevator and pressed the fifth floor button, she had already cycled through every possible stage of grief. But she didn’t settle on the last one, acceptance. Nope. As she stood alone in the metal box, staring at her reflection on the door’s surface, she found herself right back at denial again, for a second pass.
The doors opened and she stepped out to find herself face to face with the magazine’s logo glowing on the humongous display on the wall, the way it always did.
CHROMA. You, in full color.
It was all about every woman being exactly as she was, complicated and contradictory and real. No filters, no restrictions, no version of themselves that had been softened down to something more palatable. On any other morning, Carina would have smiled at it without even thinking. It was reflex by now, like Travis’ espresso. Today she just looked at it and kept walking.
She had been writing for the sex and romance column here for almost two years, and while ranking vibrators and offering relationship advice she herself didn’t take hadn’t exactly been the plan when she had committed to a career in journalism, she had never once felt like she was settling. Chroma wasn’t a consolation prize, it was empowering and honest and it took its readers seriously, which was far more than she could say for half the publications she’d dreamed about writing for in college.
And more than that, the people here had become hers. Not in the way colleagues became colleagues, but in the specific, slightly chaotic way that found family worked. They were the people you didn’t choose so much as happen upon, until one day you looked around and realized you couldn’t really imagine the place, or your life, without them. That exact found family clocked her the second she walked inside the open space office and dropped into her chair with a loud thump, mumbling incoherently under her teeth.
“What rained on your parade this morning, Deluca?” Amelia Shepherd, Chroma’s senior fashion photographer, asked without looking up from the approximately forty Photoshop tabs currently open on her screen.
“And it didn’t even rain before we got here.” Teddy Altman added, in between bites of what appeared to be some kind of hybrid pastry situation she was almost certainly going to have to write about. Croissant-bagels, if Carina had to guess. Cragels? Whatever the name for this new food trend, it probably wasn’t going to last the month.
When Carina didn’t acknowledge either of their comments, Amelia looked over at Teddy with an expression that communicated an entire conversation in about half a second. “Meditation room?”
“Meditation room.” Teddy confirmed and stood up, finishing the last bite of the food mash-up.
“Okay we’re standing up now.” Amelia was already up, turning to Carina in an uncharacteristically sweet voice, pulling her to her feet. She removed her scarf and coat carefully, like she was handling something fragile, then steered her by the hand toward the back of the office.
“Miss Shepherd!” The voice behind them sounded shaky and slightly terrified. They turned to find Jo Wilson, the newest intern, holding two coffee cups in her hands, looking between Amelia’s occupied hands and the drinks with the expression of someone trying to solve a very stressful math problem. “Should I…uhm…leave these on your desks?”
Amelia looked at her then turned back around and kept walking. “Don’t just stand there, Wilson, move along.”
Teddy brushed past the poor woman, giving her a sympathetic look and motioned for her to follow. When they reached the small room tucked behind the office kitchen, Amelia brought them to a full stop, turning her eyes back to Wilson. “Grown ups only.”
Wilson gulped, audibly.
Teddy gently took the cups from her before she dropped them. “Thank you, Jo.”
“No problem, Miss Altman.” Wilson attempted a smile, then retreated back toward her desk.
“You could be a little more gentle with her, you know.” Teddy mentioned as they walked inside the room.
“Was anyone gentle with you when you started?” Amelia replied, closing the glass door behind them. The silence from Teddy’s part was all the confirmation she needed. “Kids these days are soft.” She added, releasing Carina’s hands and letting her do what she clearly needed to do, which was pace in slow circles around the room, still mumbling.
The meditation room, with the ever present smell of sandalwood burning and the calming sound of running water no one really knew where it originated from, was that workplace amenity that sounded impressive when mentioned at dinner parties and made Chroma feel like the kind of place that actually cared about its employees inner lives, but in practice it was used almost exclusively by Karen, the wellness column writer slash Vinyasa yoga enthusiast, and, well…them.
It had actually been where the three of them had met for the first time. Carina had been only two weeks into the job, still finding her footing, still not entirely sure she’d made the right call saying yes to the sex and romance position. She’d slipped in here to actually give meditation a go and found Teddy already cross-legged on the mat, eating something that smelled like anchovies. The woman’s face had turned red as she explained she’d been cast away from her desk because of the fishy smell, and Carina had just smiled and told her the smell reminded her of Sicily. After not more than a minute, Amelia barged in and threw herself into the hammock, slapped on a face mask, and flashed them an actual do not disturb sign she had almost certainly stolen from a hotel room.
Nobody said much at first, but they kept showing up after that day, all three of them, at all hours and for different reasons, until somewhere along the way it stopped being a coincidence and started being a thing. Their thing. Which was why, when things went sideways, this was always where they ended up.
“Is that Italian?” Teddy asked after a moment, observing Carina’s mumbling that was now happening in a different language.
“It is.“ Amelia sighed. “This is getting worse.”
“We have to fix this, Amelia. The editorial meeting got pushed up and we only have a couple of minutes.” Teddy added with a furrow in her eyebrows and then turned to Carina. “Carina sweetheart?” She tried carefully. “Can you hear us?”
Apparently not.
“Deluca!” Amelia clapped, opting for a more firm approach than her pacifist friend. “Sex and romance awaits babe. Addison too, and you know she’s gonna tear you into a million little pieces and feed you to her pet anaconda if you don’t have something ready for the pitch meeting.”
Teddy’s head snapped toward her. “Anaconda??”
“Exaggeration for effect, Altman.”
“Right.” Teddy nodded, slightly relieved although not entirely convinced, then turned to their mumbling friend again. “Didn’t seem to work though.”
“No.” Amelia said, already walking confidently over to Carina. “But this will.”
What followed was a move that had almost certainly originated from her weekly Krav Maga class that consisted of her and a bunch of jacked dudes from various former Soviet countries. With impressive strength and coordination, she tackled Carina and threw her onto a wobbly floor cushion at the side of the room. Apart from the involuntary shriek that escaped Teddy’s mouth, the meditation room went quiet.
Carina, violently brought back to her english speaking self, blinked up at Amelia, her eyes wide. “What the hell?”
“You what the hell, Deluca.” Amelia huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “You mind cutting us in on whatever the hell is going on with you this fine morning?”
“Is everything okay, Carina?” Teddy added, her voice doing the soft thing it did when she was being the group’s designated mom friend. “You’re—”
“Okay?” Carina cut her off with a laugh that had no humor in it. “No, Teddy, everything is not okay. Everything is—” Unable to find a sufficient enough of a word to describe her current situation, Carina settled for a loud groan instead and buried her head in between her knees.
Teddy released a sympathetic sigh and went to her side, rubbing slow circles between her shoulders while Amelia sat cross legged on the yoga mat beside her and asked the million dollar question. “What happened?”
After a beat of silence, Carina’s voice sounded muffled behind her knees. “I run into Arizona.”
Amelia squinted at her. “Did you just say your aunt ate a raisin?” She asked, clearly bamboozled, turning to Teddy for confirmation.
“I feel like that’s not so much of an emergency sweetie.” Teddy added gently. “Is your aunt allergic or—?”
“Arizona.” Carina lifted her head. “I run into Arizona.”
“Oh.”
“Well…” Amelia shifted into a more comfortable position on the mat, because she knew from experience this was going to take a while. “That explains it.”
Teddy handed Amelia her coffee, sat next to her and took a sip of her own.
“She’s engaged.” Carina said.
Teddy did a spit take with the coffee then immediately went into a coughing fit.
“She what?” Amelia looked up, eyes wide, simultaneously patting Teddy on the back to keep her from dying.
“No way.” Teddy managed between coughs. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“How can she be engaged already?” The anger in Amelia’s voice was as evident as Teddy’s coffee now all over her jeans, which she appeared not to have noticed. “It’s been literally less than two months!”
“I know.”
“Who is she?” Teddy asked. “Do we know her?”
Carina shook her head. “Natalie.”
“Natalie.” Amelia repeated in a mocking voice. “Even the name sounds fucking pretentious.”
“How did they meet?” Teddy leaned forward. “Do they work together at the hospital?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she look like?” Amelia joined in. “Did anything seem off about her? Like did she give off any major red flags or—”
“No, she was—” Carina stopped. Both of them went very still, watching her. “She was just…beautiful.”
“Pffft.” Amelia scoffed. “Couldn’t have been more beautiful than you, babe.”
“Absolutely not.” Teddy agreed, without a single hesitation.
But nothing her friends said right now could make Carina feel any better. Not when Arizona’s voice kept playing on a loop inside her head. “Arizona said meeting her was like magic. That she found the one.” The last two words were accompanied by a bitter scoff.
“Well, you could find the one too, if you spent less time on your couch watching reruns of Friends.” Amelia mumbled under her breath.
“Amelia!” Teddy hit her with her elbow.
“First, ouch.” Amelia rubbed her arm, then turned to Carina. “Second, it’s true. Also, you said breaking up was the right call for both of you, so why are you so butt hurt about her finding someone else?”
“Because it’s been literally two months, Amelia.” Carina huffed, her hands moving with a life of their own, which they always did when she was worked up. “Because love isn’t fate. It’s not magic. It’s work and compromise and choice and—”
“To be fair.” Teddy cut in. “You guys were pretty miserable toward the end.”
“Exactly!” Carina exclaimed. “We were miserable because we were trying. Because despite our differences we still cared about each other and we were trying to make everything else work. That’s what being in a relationship means. But apparently Arizona just decided to give up on it and choose fate or whatever and get engaged to the first woman she laid eyes on. A woman who…what? Is her so called ‘one’? Seriously?” Carina bit down on her bottom lip, fighting down something that was dangerously close to tears. “Three years of a relationship down the drain all because of a lie.”
“A lie?” Teddy asked, softly.
“Yes, a lie. Because there is no ‘one’. There are no ‘soulmates’. It’s a myth. A very effective, very convenient myth that convinces people to blow up their lives in search of something that was never real to begin with.”
“Wow.” Amelia said after a beat of silence. “Maybe tone it down on the cynicism, Deluca. And that’s coming from someone who’s not exactly all sunshine and rainbows so it’s saying something.”
“I’m not being cynical, Amelia.” Carina shook her head. “I’m being realistic.”
“Well I hate to put a stop to this but, realistically…” Teddy said, looking at the time on her phone “…the pitch meeting starts in five and if we’re late not one of us will live another day to continue this conversation.”
“Right.” Carina exhaled, got up and pushed her hair to the other side. “Come se questa giornata avesse bisogno di un altro disastro.” [As if this day needed another disaster.]
***
Addison Montgomery had been the editor-in-chief of Chroma since the magazine’s first issue in the early nineties, which meant she had been running it longer than some of her current staff had been alive.
In the years since, Chroma had grown from a small independent print into one of the most prominent women’s publications in the country. And through all of it, Addison had stood behind its wheel, being its leader in every sense of the word. She didn’t manage from a distance, she was always there, in every issue, in every spread, in every vision, in every perfect standard she held every page to. Not only was she, in Carina’s genuine opinion, the most brilliant editor she had ever worked for, but she was also the kind of leader who made you want to do better work not because she demanded it but because disappointing her felt like a personal failure.
She also had absolutely no patience for people who wasted her time, turned in half assed ideas, or sub par work. Carina had watched that particular side of her surface on colleagues a handful of times over the past two years and had made herself a quiet, solemn promise to never be on the receiving end of it.
Which made it especially unfortunate as she was currently sitting at the far end of the long glass table in Addison’s office, with absolutely nothing prepared, knee bouncing under the table, doing her best to avoid Addison’s eyeline.
In her defense, and she was aware this was not much of a defense, she had fully intended to work on her pitch over the weekend. What she had not adequately accounted for was a Saturday spent avoiding visiting her little brother at the hospital because she didn’t want to run into Arizona (the irony wasn’t lost on her), and a Sunday that had dissolved entirely into an intimate session with a Nutella jar on her couch and a Friends marathon.
On Sunday night she had even told herself, with genuine conviction, that she’d have plenty of time before the meeting to work on an idea today. But then this clusterfuck of a morning had happened, proving that particular kind of procrastination hadn’t been one of her greatest attributes to the date.
“Before we start.” Addison‘s voice settled over the room with authority, as every last one of the staff members found their respective seats around the table. “Let me remind you that this November issue is our last before the holiday frenzy swallows everything whole. Which means this is your final window to bring me something actually worth reading before we spend December publishing redundant gift guides and end-of-year lists that no one really asked for.”
“Cazzo.” Carina breathed, too quietly for anyone but Amelia sitting next to her to hear. Not only did she have absolutely nothing, but now there was the additional pressure of it needing to be genuinely good. She closed her eyes and silently prayed to the Madonna, then to every catholic saint she could remember from her childhood, and then to the general concept of luck, even though it hadn’t been especially reliable lately.
“Let’s start with you, Altman.” Addison turned to Teddy. “What will be this month’s newest food trend? Please tell me we’re finally done putting matcha in everything.”
“We’re slowly getting there.” Teddy confirmed, clearing her throat. “Apparently food mashups are back. After Caesar salad wraps and sushi burritos, now it’s all about Crogels.”
“Let me guess.” Addison put on a mock thinking face. “Croissants and bagels.”
“That’s correct.”
“Astonishing. Truly never been done before. Readers will literally eat it up.”
The obvious sarcasm in Addison’s voice earned a loud snort from Amelia, making the editor in chief’s gaze shift toward her and the other members of the fashion department. “How are we dressing this fall, Catherine?”
Catherine Avery, the fashion department head, who had been almost as many years in Chroma as Addison, smiled at her good friend across the table. “Quietly, dear.” She said, her words emitting effortless poise like it was the most natural thing in the world and not something she had spent decades cultivating. “High couture is pulling back this fall. Which means we go stripped down. Real people, real spaces, nothing performative.” She tilted her head toward Amelia. “Shepherd has already started scouting locations for the cover editorial.”
“Of course she has.” Addison’s smile was brief and warm, the particular one she reserved for people who didn’t require managing. “I can always count on you to deliver, Catherine. I know this time won’t be different.” Then she scanned the rest of the room, and her eyes landed exactly where Carina had been hoping they wouldn’t. “Deluca.”
Carina’s own name echoed in her ears like nails on a chalkboard. She straightened in her chair, breathed in a deep breath and mentally prepared for the worst.
“I believe you owe us a new column idea.” Addison continued. “Your piece on unlearning the sex we were taught to want did very well with our readers. How do you propose you’ll follow that?”
Carina gulped. For a brief, wild second she genuinely considered faking a medical emergency that would render her unable to speak. A sudden onset of something. Anything. Instead, she opened her mouth and said the first thing that surfaced from the chaotic wreckage of her morning. “What about…chasing the myth of the one. One date at a time.”
She felt Amelia and Teddy look at her simultaneously.
“Elaborate.” Addison said, motioning with her hand in a way that meant I don’t have time to guess what you’re thinking.
Carina nodded, buying herself three more seconds while the idea assembled itself into something coherent inside her head. “I will be going on a series of dates and write about them, on a mission to find the ‘one’ for me…” And prove the whole concept is a big, fat lie in the process, she thought but what she said was. “…or prove it’s just a story we tell ourselves to make love feel less like a choice and more like fate.”
Addison seemed to be considering it. “That sounds…“ One of her eyebrows went up slowly and Carina held her breath. “Promising.” The air came out of Carina’s lungs in one quiet rush. “But I need more than a concept.” Addison set her red glasses down on the table. “What’s your personal angle? What makes this your story and not just a fun experiment? Are you looking for love? Making a case against it? I need to know why readers should care about you specifically going on these dates.”
“I…uhm….” She hesitated. Addison waited, and Carina knew the woman had infinite patience for the right answer and absolutely none at all for bullshiting. “I recently got out of a long term relationship.” She said finally, her voice level. “We were together for three years.” She exhaled. “And then this morning I ran into her and found out she’s engaged, two months after our break up. Because apparently she found the one, and I want to prove that’s not real. That there isn’t just one person for everyone. That love is a choice, not a cosmic accident, and the idea of the one is just…a very convincing lie.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Addison’s expression gave nothing away, which was either a good sign or a terrible one. “If you’re running this as an experiment, you can’t go in with a predetermined outcome.” She said finally. “That’s the first rule, Deluca. You have to approach it openly, even if you don’t believe in it.”
“I will.” I’ll try, she didn’t add.
“And you treat the dates with respect. All of them. Our readers are not stupid, they’ll know immediately if you’re phoning it in or using these people as props for a pre written conclusion. No cruelty, no clickbait.”
“Of course.” Carina nodded. “I’ll be honest, with the dates and with the readers.”
“Good.” Addison picked her glasses back up, which meant she had made a decision. “Then let’s up the stakes a bit, shall we? So that the readers are truly unable to resist following this story.”
“Uhm….” Carina blinked. “…up the stakes?”
“Yes.” Addison nodded. “Your ex found her so called soulmate in two months. You’ll have the same window.” She paused, just long enough. “You have until the end of the year, Deluca, let’s see if you’ll find the elusive one by then.”
And that’s what made Addison Montgomery the absolute best at her job. It was, Carina had to admit, a perfect premise. The kind that practically wrote itself, the kind that would pull readers in from the first line and keep them hooked.
Too bad Carina already knew exactly how it was going to end.