The Invitation

At the door, I realized I hadn’t told her the good news. “I almost forgot—I used a connection to talk about your product with the executives at a home shopping network.”

“Really? Did they like it?”

“A lot, actually. Both the head buyer and the host of one of the shows loved the concept. They want to see it in person. Robyn invited us to have lunch tomorrow. I hope you don’t have plans.”

Her mouth hung open. “Robyn? As in Robyn Quinn? The queen of the Home Shopping Channel?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh my God! This is huge! How could you have come in here and let me babble for the last hour and not mention that sooner?”

“I guess I forgot. Listening to your stories makes my brain power down.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to let that slide and not punch you again since you scored an appointment that could be life changing.”

I smiled. “Robyn’s going to email me with the time and details. I’ll forward it along when I get it.”

“Okay! Wow. This is turning out to be a great day. I might have to celebrate by reading two entries from Marco tonight.”

“You’re a real wild woman.”

She shrugged. “I might not be, but sometimes the people in my diary are.”

CHAPTER 13

Stella

Seventeen months ago

“It could be them.”

I pointed to a couple sitting a few steps down from where we were eating our lunch on the library stairs.

Fisher’s brows knitted. “They could be who?”

“Alexandria and Jasper.”

His forehead wrinkled. “The couple from that new diary you’re reading? The one your roommate gave you for your birthday?”

I nodded. “It was really sweet of her.” I hadn’t even realized she knew it was my birthday, yet she had given me the most incredible diary as a gift. I was obsessed with it.

Fisher unwrapped his sandwich and took a large bite. He spoke with his mouth full. “I thought you didn’t know the boyfriend’s name.”

“I don’t. But I decided to call him Jasper since she refers to him as J. It makes him feel more real in my head when I think about them.”

“Honey, you know I love you. But most of the shit that goes on in your head isn’t real.”

I elbowed him playfully. Lately, I’d started coming to sit on the stairs at the library for lunch—the exact stairs where so much of the story playing out in the diary I was reading had occurred. I liked to read my daily entry allotments here and imagine that some of the people sitting nearby were the ones on the pages in my hands.

“This diary is the best thing I’ve ever read. One day last week, Alexandria’s husband came home early from work to check on her. The night before she’d told him she hadn’t been feeling well when he’d tried to initiate having sex. But the truth was, she’d had sex with Jasper just a few hours earlier, so she wasn’t into sex with her own husband. Anyway…when he came home to check on her, she was taking a nap because that morning she’d gone yet again to meet Jasper, and she was physically wiped out. Her husband always works late, so she hadn’t thought anything about leaving her phone out on the kitchen counter charging. But when he walked in, he happened to catch a text message popping up on her screen. It was Jasper telling her when to meet him the next day. Luckily, he was only in her phone contacts as J. When her husband asked her about the text, she told him it was related to a surprise for his birthday, and he bought it. The poor guy still seems clueless about her affair. But she’s become paranoid about where she leaves her phone now.”

Fisher shook his head. “Poor guy? You mean poor schmuck.”

“I know. I feel bad for her husband. Their wedding was right here at the library.” I held my hands out. “And now she sometimes meets Jasper on these very steps so they can go screw in the alley around the corner behind a dumpster. I don’t get it. She seemed so in love with her husband last year before the wedding.”

He took another bite of his sandwich. “What—did you buy multiple volumes of this person’s diary or something? One diary doesn’t span years, does it?”

“This one does, because she doesn’t write in it too often. The time hops around—it’s months between entries at some points. She wrote in it a lot before her wedding, describing everything she was planning. But then it mostly stopped after. I guess she had nothing exciting to write for a year or two…until she started sleeping with her husband’s friend.”

“You better take this one slow. Sounds like you’re going to have withdrawal after you finish it.”

“I know. It’s because the woman it belonged to and everyone she writes about are all right here in the City. I’ve never read a local diary before, much less one that takes place right down the block from my work. It makes it all seem so real—like it’s going on now instead of whenever she wrote it. I can’t stop thinking about the people in the story and wondering if I might be passing one of them. The other day I was at Starbucks, and the barista’s nametag said Jasper. I dropped my iced latte all over the floor because I got so excited, thinking it could be him. I sat inside the store until he finished his shift. Luckily, his boyfriend came to pick him up, so that ruled him out as the diary woman’s paramour.”