Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
The maid takes an ear bud out. “¿Qué?”
“Can you let me in my room?” Leslie points to her door. “I lost my purse. I had to go to the emergency room.” She points to her face.
The maid shakes her head and makes a face. “Perra loca.”
“Right. The door? Can you open it?”
The maid sighs. And then, just as a sneaky smile is playing across her face, she looks down at her master room card, hiding her reaction. Quickly she looks up again and nods, flashing her key card at Leslie’s door.
Leslie claps her hands, almost falls over, then carefully lets herself into the room.
She doesn’t even say thank you.
Once inside, she stumbles over to her bed and falls back onto the mattress, letting out a long sigh. Her eyes close. Her brain right on the edge of sleep.
But then, as one’s brain does when it’s winding down for the night, Leslie’s brain begins to wander. And then it puts on her Raylen Star hat and starts replaying that dreadful moment when the door smashed into her face all over again.
This is the worst signing of her entire career. Not even losing that lawsuit against Essie can hold a candle to the dreadfulness of this convention. This past week has been even worse than reciting that public apology for suing Essie.
Everything has gone wrong these past four days.
Why did they even invite her? Everyone knows that Steve and Essie hate Raylen Star.
“Wait.” She sits straight up in bed, a thought occurring to her. “Did they…?” No. No. Her conspiracy mind has gone too far this time. Surely—surely—petite, professional, popular Essie Smith and her stupid brother, Steve, did not, absolutely did. Not. Invite Leslie here, to their signing, just so they could humiliate her.
No.
But… it is awfully suspicious that she got the worst table placement, got the worst panel assignment, then—after insisting on a better panel assignment—got the only mic in the room that didn’t work. Not to mention her regular panel was cancelled. And then, just minutes later, she found herself conveniently stuck in the elevator.
She missed all the private parties last night.
She missed the gala tonight!
And they did that. They did it on purpose.
What else have they done? What other fresh hell is waiting for Leslie just right around the corner?
“Oh, my god.” She pats around the crumpled covers—and holy shit! Her room wasn’t even cleaned today! WTAF? She adds this to her mental list of wrongs as her fingertips find her phone and start tapping across the screen. Her eyes squinting from the too-bright screen glare. “Heh,” she grunts. “It should be in dark mode.” And that was. It. That was it!
They even fucked with her dark mode setting on her phone!
She lets out a long breath that does nothing to calm her nerves because she knows, absolutely knows, that there is more coming…
“No!” Her fingertips start scrolling. “No, no, no. Please tell me—ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” she screams. “No!”
But rejecting reality isn’t going to change this.
The damage has been done.
She’s scrolling the online Sin With Us Attendee social group, and sure enough, there’s a video of the entire accident. Taken by the assistant to an author who was signing at a table right across the aisle from Leslie.
The assistant captioned the video, ‘It was only a matter of time.’
That bitch. She sat there all damn day, watching with glee, as the catering room door bumped, and smacked, and whacked against Leslie’s table.
‘It was only a matter of time,’ indeed.
There are three hundred comments. Some supportive, some not. If Leslie wasn’t so fucked up on drugs right now, she’d take down the names of those good-for-nothing, unsupportive lowlifes and launch a one-star review campaign against them.
Unfortunately, they are not authors, they are readers. And aside from some serious stalking to rouse up a cancel campaign, there is no real way to get back at them.
But there are authors in this thread. Plenty of them.
Leslie won’t let this drag her down. The whole incident has been caught on video, which will be super helpful in her lawsuit against the Aria.
“No!” Leslie says this out loud. “Not the Aria.” Then she snickers.
Suing the Aria wouldn’t give her the satisfaction she requires. She is going to sue Sin With Us, and Steve Smith, and Essie Smith, and whoever it was who made the seating chart, and that good-for-nothing author assistant who watched her face danger all damn day and never said a word about it. Not to mention all the unsupportive bitches who commented on that group post.
She squeezes the two side buttons on her phone, trying to take a screenshot—but something goes wrong, and her screen flashes and goes black.
Shit. She shut it down by mistake.
No matter. One more button press and the phone is restarting. Two minutes later she’s back in the group, scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling… looking for that post.