Nathan was staring over Burke’s shoulder, peering into the screen. The look of utter incredulity on his face was edged with a growing smile.
“Holy SHIT!”
I took me a minute to figure out what they were looking at. And then I saw.
“That can’t be right.”
“Oh, it’s right,” said Burke.
“But that makes no sense!”
“It makes perfect sense,” he replied. “When you think about what just happened.”
Pulled up on screen was a sales graph indicating every day since the book’s launch. The bar on every other day looked tiny, minuscule. And that’s because the last two bars…
“Yesterday we sold more copies than all the other days combined,” said Burke. “Times twenty.”
My mouth opened and closed. I had no words.
“And look here,” he said, pointing. “Today’s only an hour old. And already…”
“Already we have half the sales of yesterday,” Nathan swore. His voice was filled with awe.
“Two-thirds,” Burke corrected him. “But yeah.”
“How?” I exclaimed loudly. “Why in the world—”
“C’mon,” Burke cut me off. “You already know the answer.”
The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach had coagulated into a knot. And yet…
And yet my heart wanted to soar. It wanted to celebrate the success I was seeing on screen! Something amazing was about to happen, and it was going to happen to us. It was going to happen to them: the guys I loved. After all this time, all their hard work… they were finally about to reap the rewards.
“Who would’ve thought so many people would read a tabloid?” Nathan breathed.
“Well, it is a tabloid.”
“I know, but…”
“Our story’s interesting, when you think about it,” I said. “How often do you see three guys kissing up on the same woman? In public? The photo alone grabs your attention. And then they mention the book…”
“And the plot of the book mirrors the photo.”
“And the headline,” Burke added.
It was crazy. No, it was absolutely ludicrous. That this many people could’ve reacted to the story this quickly.
And the tabloid had only been out for a single day.
Nathan hit the refresh button, and the screen blinked quickly. The sales bar jumped again.
“All this from a gossip rag,” Nathan swore again. “You couldn’t buy this type of publicity!”
Burke nodded slowly. “And you think this is good?” he smirked. “Just wait until tomorrow.”
I wasn’t sure I could take much more. I swallowed hard. “What’s tomorrow?”
“All the websites, lagging behind,” he said. “Social media shares. Hashtags, trending. Give it twenty-four hours, maybe thirty-six. Then this thing really explodes. We go viral, and… well… that’ll be it.”