The Arrangement

Burke sank into the couch, a fresh ice-pack wrapped around his swollen hand. He looked like he’d just come home after the end of a very long day.

“So you decked him, huh?” Chase asked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Did it feel good?”

Burke nodded. “Better than sex.” He glanced over at me, then rolled his eyes. “Alright. Almost better than sex.”

I chuckled. “Thanks for the clarification.”

My two lovers settled back in silence. Each of them looking at nothing, lost in their own thoughts.

“This changes everything,” Burke said abruptly.

“Uh huh.”

“Getting a new publisher is going to be tough,” Burke went on. “It could take months. Years.”

“We’ll need an agent first,” said Chase. “We’ll have to draw up queries. Prepare sample chapters…”

I could see their hope slipping away. The excitement at having finished their story, vanishing in lieu of all the work still ahead of them.

“Or you could just self-publish,” I offered.

I might as well have suggested they calculate trajectory formulas for some distant star. They looked back at me with their eyebrows knitted together.

“What?” I said. “It’s a common thing.”

“We just wrote a trilogy,” Chase said evenly. “And you want us to forgo publishing it?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “You’ll publish it. Everyone does it these days.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere,” I shrugged. “Have you looked into it? There are lots of different platforms.”

Chase swallowed hard. He squinted at me before continuing.

“We’d need to pay for our own editors,” he said. “That’ll be a small fortune.”

“Not to mention cover art. Typesetting. Book jacket design…” Burke grunted. “We don’t know any of that stuff.”

“Then we’ll learn it,” I said. “It can’t be that hard.”

Burke laughed. Maybe not at me, but at least at my understanding of the process. I frowned at him.

“Look, if you don’t think you’re good enough—”

“Please,” he rolled his eyes. “You really think you’re gonna pull that reverse psychology crap on us?”

“Seriously,” I went on. “Lots of top-tier authors got their start publishing their own books. They pick up agents and publishers afterward, for their later works. Some of them make more money staying independent. Some lucky ones even get movie deals right off the bat.”

“And you really think we could do this?” asked Chase.

Now it was my turn to squeeze his hand. “Of course you can do it. You might not even need to do it.” I nodded toward the empty spot where Nathan had been sitting. “But if things aren’t going well with his phone call…”

“And they’re not,” Burke added quickly.