The Ro Bro, page 1
Contents
THE RO BRO
Chapter One — Cordelia
Chapter Two — Steve
Chapter Three — Cordelia
Chapter Four — Steve
Chapter Five — Cordelia
Chapter Six — Steve
Chapter Seven — Cordelia
Chapter Eight — Steve
Meanwhile...
Chapter Nine — Cordelia
Chapter Ten — Steve
Chapter Eleven — Cordelia
Chapter Twelve — Steve
Meanwhile...
Chapter Thirteen — Steve
Meanwhile...
Chapter Fourteen — Cordelia
Meanhwhile...
Chapter Fifteen — Cordelia
Chapter Sixteen — Steve
Chapter Seventeen — Cordelia
Chapter Eighteen — Steve
Meanwhile...
Chapter Nineteen — Cordelia
Chapter Twenty — Steve
Chapter Twenty-One — Cordelia
Meanwhile...
Chapter Twenty-Two — Steve
Chapter Twenty-Three — Cordelia
Meanwhile...
Chapter Twenty-Four — Steve
Chapter Twenty-Five — Cordelia
Meanwhile...
Chapter Twenty-Six — Steve
Chapter Twenty-Seven — Cordelia
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Steve
Chapter Twenty-Nine — Cordelia
Chapter Thirty — Steve
Chapter Thirty-One — Cordelia
Chapter Thirty-Two — Steve
Meanwhile...
Epilogue — Steve
End of Book Shit — Julie
End of Book Shit — Johnathan
About the Authors
Copyright © 2023 by JA Huss and Johnathan McClain
ISBN: 978-1-957277-07-3
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover Design: JA Huss
No part of this book may be reproduced or resold in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER ONE
THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE CONVENTION
I know I shouldn’t bite my nails.
But I can’t help it.
It’s the whole reason I’ve never gotten a manicure.
I can hear my mother’s voice in my head even as I’m doing it: “Cordelia. Don’t chew at your fingers like you’re some kind of rabid wildebeest. It’s a filthy habit.”
Never mind that wildebeests can’t chew their nails because they’re basically antelopes and antelopes don’t have fingers and even if they did are unlikely to be able to get one of their hooves up to their mouths to chew on it in the first place, so it’s a bad simile and she could have just said ‘wild animal’ and also left out the part about it being rabid because what does that have to do with anything, but my mother has never been one to go for simplicity, much less use only two words when fifty will do…
Which, as I play back my run-on sentence to myself, occurs to me, not for not the first time, might be a heritable quality.
But putting all that aside, it’s not the most constructive way to get a kid to stop doing something. By lecturing them.
Or, at least, it wasn’t for me. The more I’d get lectures to stop, like, biting my nails, or touching the door handle five times on each side before turning it, or rearranging the silverware by my dinner plate in three very distinct formations before I could begin eating, the more it made me anxious and drove me to do the thing she was telling me not to do even more.
Like when she said, “You don’t want to be a writer, Cordelia. You really don’t. It will break your heart. Then, when it’s finally beaten you all the way down, it will cause you to become filled with hope just when you least expect it only to break your heart once more,” it made me decide: Okay. Well, guess I’m gonna be a writer then.
At least that particular lecture was founded in something more substantial than just her not wanting me to look like a wildebeest. Mom and Dad are both writers, and neither of them ever really achieved what I think they thought they would when they started out. I mean, all things considered, they’ve had pretty good lives. They wrote as a team for some of the most successful TV shows ever to be on TV, back when TV was just on, like, TV.
Changing tides and all that caused them to realize that the world of entertainment was moving in a direction they really didn’t want to try to keep up with, so they took all the TV money they made over the years and moved to Mykonos, where Dad’s side of the family is originally from, and now they wake up every morning, drink their coffee, look out at the ocean, and then spend a few hours each working on their own ‘great literary novel.’ Which, I mean… if the cost of a repeatedly broken heart is having enough money to retire in your early fifties to an island off the coast of Greece? I’d be willing to take that trade.
But the point is I sometimes wonder if maybe I should’ve just listened to her.
Instead of pushing back like I tend to do when given advice I don’t want to hear, maybe I should’ve considered that what she was saying was a genuine attempt to look out for my best interests. I was a pretty high-strung kid. I think I’m less of a high-strung adult, but I can’t deny that one of the things my mom encouraged me not to do—bite my nails—is happening at the moment because of another thing my mom encouraged me not to do—become a writer.
Sitting in my favorite sling chair—that really needs to have a section of the canvas back reupholstered so I stop playing obsessively with the bits of loose thread that hang from it—by the side of the pool, waiting for Britney to finish reading the last two chapters of my latest manuscript, I find myself unable to avoid biting at my nails and letting my brain wander all over the place.
I actually first tried my hand at being a TV writer like Mom and Dad, but I wasn’t cut out for it. You have to write in teams with a whole writers’ room filled with other maybe-up-and-coming writers and collaborate, and be willing to have all your writing rewritten by someone else and just a whole lot of other stuff that made it feel less like writing and more like going to work on some kind of assembly line. Just, instead of assembling widgets or car parts or something, you’re supposed to be assembling art.
Or, no, that’s not quite right. It isn’t art. It’s entertainment.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Entertainment is great. I love being entertained. I find many things very entertaining. Circuses, for example. I think circuses can be super fun. But I don’t wanna be a clown.
I wanna do something that I feel matters. That touches people. That makes them think and has a real impact on their lives. I want to write the kind of thing that stays with someone long after they’ve finished the story. That’s my goal, anyway.
And that’s why I became a romance writer.
Well, that and the fact that I’ve been addicted to romance novels since I read my first one when I was, like, nine.
I was in the library down the street from our house in Santa Monica, by myself (partially because I didn’t really have a ton of friends and partially because the friends I did have didn’t want to spend their afternoons hanging out in a dusty old library when they could be at the beach), and I just happened to wander out of the kids’ section and into the grown-ups’ section.
And there I found an old, weathered, beaten copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I don’t know what drew me to it. Something about seeing the words on the spine, maybe. The P and the P so elegantly alliterative and simple all at once. Or maybe it’s just because when I pulled it out and saw an artist’s rendering of a busty Elizabeth Bennet on the cover, looking like a porcelain doll, it made my mind wander to far-flung places that my nine-year-old brain didn’t even know existed yet. But, whatever the reason… I started reading.
And I was done. Cliché though it may be to say, I was… transported.
And that’s been my dream ever since. To transport someone the same way. To ferry them away to magical places where love conquers all and happily ever afters aren’t some unachievable fantasy, but real, honest, sincere aspirations that we shouldn’t feel embarrassed to want.
My dream—candidly and with a little embarrassment of my own—is to be one of the greats.
I’m not there yet. But I’m getting there. I really believe I am. And that’s why I’m particularly nervous just now.
Because I think this book is the best thing I’ve ever written.
I spit away another bit of nail shaving from my index finger, noticing that if I chew anymore I’ll surely draw blood, and attempt to still my thoughts by taking a deep, deep breath. I close my eyes and just try to feel the sun streaming down onto my face. It’s nice out today. There’s a tiny bit of a breeze that’s causing the palm trees to sway gently, the rustle of the fronds creating a pacifying white noise.
It’s been hot this summer, even for LA. Or so I hear. I haven’t really gone outside much. Just been working on getting this book finished.
I really feel like I turned a corner. Unlocked some kind of code. I think maybe before I was too hung up on ‘rules’ and ‘expectations.’ A
Which, I suppose, sounds awfully grand, but it’s how it felt while I was writing it.
But now I’m a little freaked out, waiting for Brit’s notes. She’s taking an awfully long time to finish and give me her thoughts.
I trust Britney. She’s one of the only people I can say that about. It’s why I asked her if she’d be my assistant. My first read on everything. Because I’m writing exactly the kinds of books she reads too.
We met online, in a reader group for one of our favorite authors, SS.
That’s it. Just ‘SS.’ Her real name is Essie Smith-Scott, but SS is her pen name. I like it. It’s simple. The S next to the S. For some reason, something about it reminds me of the P and P in Pride and Prejudice. To be clear: SS writes very different kinds of books than Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Jane and Charlotte had far less, um, choking, and, y’know, fellatio in their books (at least on paper; you can’t tell me that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy weren’t getting all kinds of freaky off the page), but there’s just something about the way she writes. It’s… I don’t know. There’s a real beauty to it that makes me swoon. Even with all the choking and handcuffs and stuff.
But that’s where Britney and I first became friends. And then we discovered that we both live in LA and decided to meet up IRL. It was Britney who encouraged me to try writing romance.
“Oh, no, no,” I said. “I don’t think I could.”
“Why not?” she asked.
And I enumerated for her the number of reasons I thought I was not cut out for it.
— I haven’t had the greatest personal track record with ‘romance.’ My last boyfriend lied to me about… well, everything. And then he stole from me. Money. A pair of earrings my grandmother gave me. My remaining trust in humanity.
— I don’t really, um, go places. Or do things. (What I have heard some refer to as ‘peopling.’) When I’m overstimulated, I get kind of… manic, I suppose. So, I try to avoid it whenever possible.
— I’m what some might call ‘cynical.’ (They’d be right. I am. But at least I’m self-aware.)
— I’m a snob. I really am. I’m not proud of the fact, but I grew up in a house that was so filled with snobbery and self-judgment, and, frankly, fear of failure and of what others think, that I actually feel like I should pat myself on the back for turning out as well as I have so far. (I won’t though. Pat myself on the back. Because of the aforementioned self-judgment.)
Britney countered all of my arguments one by one.
— So? You think crime writers go out and commit murders? I mean, unless they’re really, really good at hiding it, probably not. (Probably.)
— You don’t have to have gone places or done things to know they exist. Have you ever been to Saturn? No. Do you believe it’s there? Of course. So, just make up what happens there. It’ll be fresh and original!
— Cynicism is amazing! What better to write about than someone whose cynical, hardened heart is made all gushy and soft by the magic of love? (Note: Britney is not a cynic. Clearly.)
— You think all writers aren’t snobs, no matter what they’re writing? That’s what makes you a writer. The kind of introversion that requires you to stay locked inside your house, scribbling away, but, at the same time, the kind of ego necessary to believe that anyone wants to read a hundred thousand words that just happened to fall out of your brain? If you’re going put that kind of energy to use, may as well put it to use writing the kind of thing you like.
She is incredibly persuasive.
And so… I decided to go for it. I followed my dream. I became a romance writer.
I haven’t told my parents yet.
They know I’m writing, but I’ve just been cagey about what I’m writing. Because if I can get judge-y about stuff, they can get Supreme Court judge-y about stuff.
(Which is also ironic, given that they spent almost half their lives writing jokes for sitcoms, but I know if I told them I was making a go of it self-publishing my own romance novels they’d give me grief about it.)
Ugh. I need to cut them some slack. I have this tendency when I’m feeling anxiety about anything to pivot it back onto them, and that’s not fair. They’re not bad parents, they’re really not, they’re just very… specific in their opinions.
I mean, look, it’s not like I don’t still have an aspiration, just like the ones my parents still have, of writing a great literary novel someday, but I have to tell the truth: I’m happy writing what I write. I really, really am. It gives me joy in a way that not a whole lot of other things do. And I have to believe that makes it right. They say if you eat a meal prepared by a chef who’s happy and loves the food they’re making, you can taste it. And if you’re eating something made by someone who’s just going through the motions—cooking by the numbers—you can taste that too.
I have to believe it’s the same with writing books. I want the people who read what I write to feel that I put everything I have into it and to get something out of it that moves them in a real, meaningful way.
And I think it might be working? Maybe? Because the first two books I’ve written—the start to a series I call The Purity Principle (a blatant homage to my girl Jane and P&P)—have sold okay(ish) and I’ve begun growing a little bit of a fanbase.
But, even more exciting…
I’ve now been invited to attend the Sin With Us Romance Convention in a few weeks! SS’s convention! She runs it and only invites all the hottest authors. It’s, like, the biggest romance novel convention in the world and they want me there!
(Okay, so I realize I probably got invited last minute because someone dropped out and I just happened to be the first one to respond when they sent out the mass email asking if anyone wanted to take their place, but still…)
I’m going! And this book I just finished is going to be the thing I lead with at my big romance con coming-out party.
I’ve taken a little break from writing book three of The Purity Principle because I had a new idea come to me in the middle of the night and I had to get it out there. It shook me to my core and I knew that if I didn’t write it down, I’d never forgive myself. So I put my scheduled release of the next PP book to the side to focus on this one.
I’m calling it (coincidentally) Filling the Gap.
It’s taken a while to finish. Normally, when I’m in my flow, I can write pretty fast, but as I started writing FTG… I dunno. I just felt it in a different way and wanted it to be perfect, so I’ve taken a little longer than I normally would to revise it and rethink it and really hone it to the best, most pristine, gleaming version of itself that it can be.
My plan is this: Show up at Sin With Us with bunches and bunches of free copies of the new book, hand them out to whoever I can hand them out to, make friends with the biggest writers there, get them to co-sign how swell my new book is, get one of them to introduce me to their agent, get a big, traditional publishing deal, and then blow everybody’s mind with my grand literary opus that tops the NY Times bestseller list and gets turned into a movie that I have complete creative control over and that changes people’s lives and leaves a mark on history.
Doesn’t feel like too much to shoot for.
So, I really need Britney to tell me that she likes it. That it’s good. That it’s special.
Because I’m ready to explode out of the middle-tier writer purgatory place I’m in. And I know. I know I sound like kind of an asshole. I know I should just be happy that anyone reads anything I write at all and grateful that I’m making a go of it, but if I’m being honest with myself… I really, really want to graduate to the big leagues. Like I say, not just because of attention or money—
“Cordelia, can you rub some more lotion on my back?”
—although I wouldn’t mind moving out of this pool house and buying a house of my own with its own pool and its own pool house that I could rent to someone else, rather than being the one doing the renting and serving occasionally as the impromptu pool girl.
“Uh, sure, Sheila.” I pull myself out of my stream-of-consciousness reverie and push myself out of my seat, padding barefoot around the deck to the other side of the pool where Sheila lies face down on the fully supine lounge chair, wearing only the thong portion of her micro-bikini, tanned butt cheeks glistening in the sun, the top half of her barely-there-in-the-first-place bathing suit discarded off to the side to avoid any unsightly tan lines.
