As soon as Nella caught up with Danielle and Lucas, they linked arms with her, one on either side.

Danielle's cheeks plumped as she grinned. "We heard about you and Sexy Tat Guy at Draper's the other night. Did you fuck him?"

Nella tried not to choke at Dani's bluntness while she considered her response. Dani and Lucas were her tightest friends at TO. If she blushed and blundered over Dani's interrogation, their teasing would be never-ending.

"Hell yeah, I tapped that," she said coolly.

Danielle dropped her messenger bag and the takeout and held both hands up in the air. "That's my girl!"

They high-tenned.

Lucas picked up the sack. "The full moon makes all chics crave dick."

"You're disgusting, but you might also be... right. I don't know what came over me. It was just a... random... thing."

"Not random if you went back for round two," Danielle declared.

Nella's phone alerted in her pocket, and she pulled it eagerly, expecting it to be the start of a brand new thread with Baz. She dropped the phone, retrieved it, and was double disappointed. She had cracked the safety glass, and she was wrong about the texter.

The name "Captain Asshat" headed the top of the thread. The text read:

Did you get my voicemail?

Her ex had sent her a voicemail? When? She tried to check her recent calls, but the crack in the safety glass was making it difficult to swipe over the phone icon, and she gave up in favor of texting him back.

Sorry. You know how bad I am about listening to voicemails. What's up?

Despite their break-up, Nella still lent a sympathetic ear when it came to his family problems because she understood how difficult his relationship with his father was.

Him: Nothing.

Her: Sure?

Him: Yeah. Drunk dial. Delete it.

She hesitated, then thumbed quickly.

Drunk dial as in you there's something you need to tell me?

He replied with a quick series.

What are you fishing for, Miss Fischer?

Something like...

I miss the shadows your eyelashes cast on your sleep-sweet cheeks in the morning light?

Or maybe...

I miss the cadence of your typing when I read in bed because I haven't enjoyed a single line of poetry since you left me?

She groaned internally. There was no denying that Captain Asshat had a way with words. But they were better as friends. He knew that.

Her: If we could only live in that gorgeous fiction...

Him: Yeah, I actually hated the inconsiderate way you prioritized your writing over my basic needs.

Her: Reading is a basic need?

Him: I only read because I COULDN'T SLEEP WITH ALL THAT BANGING!!!

Her: It was the only banging going on at that point.

Him: Well aware, Nellie. We were on our way to divorce before we even got married. I just hate the way you left me at the altar.

Her: It wasn't the altar.

Him: Close enough.

Her: How many times do I have to apologize?

Him: Delete the VM, and we'll call it even. It was embarrassingly sappy.

Her: Will do, Cap'n Ahat.

Him: Don't you think in the spirit of reciprocation...

Her: Nope. Don't go there. You know what it will take to decommission your nickname.

Him: I'd rather keep the nickname than negotiate The Imbroglio with you. But you'll get rid of the VM?

Her: Deleting now.

Him: Asshat over and out.

She wished she hadn't probed so far about his drunk dial, but nostalgia was not what she expected from him these days. Their break-up had been bad, but they'd returned to where they began—friendship—in the two years since. She had no desire to turn back time or rehash old hurts. She thumbed rapidly to delete his voice mail before even reading the transcribed text and felt a sharp stab of pain in her thumb as it skimmed over the crack in the glass.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered.

"Yes, he is," Dani remarked, well aware that Nella had lagged behind during their walk through the park due to texting with her ex. "but I doubt Captain Asshat can hear you calling him that from his ivory tower."

Nella rolled her eyes at Dani's real and unwavering dislike of Captain Asshat, checking her thumb with her phone flashlight. "Not him. Glass splinter."

Danielle nodded. "That's a perfect metaphor for him. Sharp but transparent, and annoying as fuck."

Nella laughed at that. "He's not that bad."

Danielle stopped, looking into the air. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I recall your attention to The Parisian Chair Sex Imbroglio."

Danielle's mother was a trial lawyer; courtroom theatrics came naturally. The Parisian Chair Sex Imbroglio referred to the most recent falling out Nella had with her ex, which happened long after their break up.

"The Imbroglio" as Lucas had named it, was the situation that had earned him the nickname Captain Asshat. Until he made the "Imbroglio" right, Captain Asshat he would remain. At least in her phone and in Danielle's mind. Most of the time she did not refer to him like that in her thoughts.

Nella played along with her friend's theatrics. "Let the record show that the defendant swears under oath—the time of profaning Captain Asshat has passed."

"Yep. You're right. He was from a different time and place. A false fairyland where twenty-one-year-olds think it's a great idea to get engaged."

Nella shrugged. "I was drunk, it was Paris. I challenge you not to get engaged when a rich, handsome, romantic guy goes down on one knee at the Eiffel Tower."

"Was it really the Eiffel Tower or during the chair sex in front of an open window where you said yes, yes, yes?" Lucas teased.

Nella stopped, huffed, and swung around to her friends, hands on hips. "Why are we even talking about this? Him? Again?"

"Because if you're seeing Sexy Tat Guy, we all know what's going to happen."

"And what exactly is that?"

Dani glanced at Lucas. "Tell her, Lucas."

"Captain Asshat will do what asshats do. Temporarily revert to Prince Charming to reclaim his territory."

"I am not his territory."

"An asshat doesn't know that, though," Lucas shrugged sympathetically.

"This is what you're going to do," Dani said with determination. "Forget Paris. Forget him and his ancestral home and his stuffy family and their obscene riches. Thank god you got out before they permanently fitted you with those money-colored glasses. Can you imagine the headache that seeing everything with a perpetual green haze would give?"

Danielle flung her arm to the horizon. "Now—all the world is yours, and you can see it free from those Old Money Blinders!"

Nella grinned at her friend, whose current stance resembled an explorer planted firmly on a ship's deck, grimly preparing to weather a storm. Danielle reminded Nella of Indiana Jones. Smart, seasoned, adventurous, and entirely sarcastic.

"Why are we even talking about Captain Asshat?" Nella waved him away. "His arc in my story is so finished."

"That's what I'm talking about!" Danielle linked arms with her. "So tell us all about Sexy Tat Guy. Is he just a trope or does he have male protagonist potential?"

"I have no clue. All I know so far is, he's charming and easy to talk to, he's well-read, he rides a motorcycle, and he's incredible in bed. I'm terrified to sleep with him again, I might get completely addicted," Nella breezed up the front steps of her apartment building, leaving her friends flat-footed from her frank admission.

She slid her keycard through the outer door and yanked it open. "Are we writing or what?"

###

The clatter and clamor of Lucas and Dani flirting while they made coffee in her kitchen jerked Nella from her reverie. She sat on her bed, cross-legged and bolstered by pillows, with a lap full of laptop. It was 2 am.

"Shit," she murmured, hastily rereading the last paragraph she had written, constructed more than a half-hour ago. She'd spent thirty minutes daydreaming—replaying the conversation with Baz in the tattoo shop.

She'd searched for every word she could recall between them—the entire confessional he'd made, and all her angry queries and accusations. Every expression he'd paired with his rebuttals, explanations, apologies. Every gesture he'd made toward her. Every touch, and the way he'd murmured in her hair.

None of the details could answer the question in her mind.

Was Baz for real?

The other question that she should have—Where was Rindlewinn?—didn't burn through her brain as singularly as Baz might be expecting.

Now that the shock and anger that someone had taken her book was fading, the second question maybe wasn't much of a mystery.

She had a strong suspicion she knew where it was: with Mitchell, who would not have taken it out of malice.

Mitchell was brilliantly perceptive. If Hazel suspected that the mystery manuscript in Baz's possession might have been Nella's? Certainly, Mitchell had silently beaten her to that conclusion.

And if Mitchell had suspected that Baz had a manuscript of hers? He would be tempted to sneak a peak of it. And if he had snuck a peak, he would know it was hers. He knew her writing well. Nella could imagine that Mitchell, having confirmed Rindlewinn as hers, might have walked right out the door with it in the righteous belief that he was doing Nella a favor, because Baz had lied about who it belonged to. Mitchell would have read something into the lie that wasn't there. He would have equated it with a deeper level of dishonesty and assigned Baz the role of villain. He would have suspected Baz had it without Nella's knowledge or permission, and he would have cast himself in the role of hero, saving Nella from her deceiver.

And if Mitchell had taken Rindlewinn, Nella knew three things. One, her manuscript was safe. Two, he'd give it back immediately if she asked. And three, she was going to tear him a new asshole for causing all this drama.

So in her mind, the question of Rindlewinn was at least temporarily satisfied, but she wanted to look Mitchell in the eye when she asked him if he had it.

But what about Baz Hanlon? Her mind was not so easily satisfied when it came to him. Was he everything he seemed to be?

Part of her hoped so. She'd never met anyone she felt such an immediate attraction to. Not even to Captain Asshat. They'd been much more of a friends-to-lukewarm-lovers. She'd never felt the kind of wild infatuation for him she was feeling for Baz now.

She really liked Sexy Tat Guy. Liked his voice and liked his smirk and liked his looks. Liked his wit and liked his flirtatious charm and liked the way his expressive lips parted in advance of what he was about to say.

And she loved his ink. The way it smelled and the way he wore it.

But was there enough there? To move from infatuation to something more?

Baz said he wanted more, but was that what Nella wanted?

The timing was terrible. She'd been doing her damnedest to keep her focus on her MFA these last two years. She did not want to repeat the same mistakes she'd made back in undergrad. She'd nearly lost her entire focus to a love affair.

And now here she was, unable to get Baz Hanlon out of her head when everything she'd been working so hard for was all coming together. Her MFA, her first literary novel, her opportunity to pitch that novel and launch a career as a published writer.

No, she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. She squinted at the Courier New Font on her screen, reaching for the dialogue, willing it to draw her down back into the scene. She couldn't afford to be off her writing game. The due date for her completed thesis was looming.

Her thesis was called The Scryer. Her protagonist—Emma—was a ten-year-old girl struggling with the death of a parent.

Nella had lost her own mother to a fiery car crash at about the same age. Looking back from the vantage of adulthood, it was easy for Nella to see why she had created a fantasy world of fiery creatures impervious to their own power. In Rindlewinn, no one burned to death, though many sparked to life.

Now Nella was grown, and as healed from her loss as she was going to be. She no longer used her writing to escape, but to examine. In The Scryer—the young heroine, Emma, had a disturbing mechanism for coping with her grief. Emma starts fires. She imagines she scries a fantasy world in the flames. She believes her father has crossed into this fire realm, which she believes is very real.

In some ways, The Scryer was fairly autobiographical. Emma has a whole series of very real mishaps and youthful struggles on her family farm, most related to keeping her fire-starting hidden from her mother and older brother.

In reality, Nella had never started unsupervised fires. Her father was a firefighter; he preached fire safety into her bones. Ironic that Nella's father came to view her fascination with dragons with as much dread as he might have pyromania. Her grandparents, with whom she mostly lived after her mother's death, also worried about her obsessive writing. She supposed their worry, their disapproval, their continual attempts to disengage her from writing was why she treated Rindlewinn like a closely guarded secret. Why it still felt wrong for anyone to read it.

Anyone except Baz.

Nella shook her head, shedding the thought of him to keep the space for her work. Her real work. Her purposeful work.

The Scryer would not be a secret. The plan—the hope—was to publish her thesis. She was proud of the way she had developed her young heroine, proud of the book's themes, and not dissatisfied with her own prose. Especially several small but key fantasy sequences in the narrative, where Emma imagines the world within the flames and observes her father's journey there.

Her critique group hadn't really warmed to the fantasy sequences. Some thought the vividness of the fantasy scenes disrupted the narrative. Some favored the earlier drafts, where Emma talked to her father about her life instead of witnessing his afterlife path. Others in her group said Emma's imaginary world called into question Emma's reliability as the narrator, but Nella felt like that was exactly the point—Emma is in denial about her father's death. Her advisor was skeptical of the way Nella was attempting to join two genres into one cohesive story. Yet Nella hadn't given up on the idea of keeping the fantasy sequences. She'd spent the last week fiddling with them, paring them down, but leaving them in the narrative.

Now, as she accepted a cup of steaming coffee from Lucas with a wide smile of gratitude, she inhaled the deep roast. She imagined the scent was the scorched acorns Emma cast into her scrying fires. Long deep breaths helped her hear the pop of the acorns, then the hiss of green wood burning, and eventually the heat of flame. Soon, she was in The Scryer's world, and the final scene of her novel blossomed in Nella's mind and took root on the page.

Two hours later, the scene polished to the best of her ability and emailed to her advisor, Nella closed her laptop and set an alarm on her phone to wake her in advance of her date with Baz. For the first time in a long time, reality was more interesting than fiction.