It was late Monday morning, and I took a break from my work so I could start putting together a list.
As was her way, Elise was doing anything she could to go above and beyond the call of duty to support me, even if it seemed as though she was insulting me.
Elise Flynn was my best friend. We met about nine years ago at a book signing. Elise had been hired by another author to come to the signing to do makeup, and her services were offered to the other authors who would be at the signing. I’d jumped at the chance because while I could do the basics, I was no professional. And since I was still relatively new to the publishing industry at the time, I wanted to make every effort to leave a good impression.
Elise and I started talking that day and learned that we both lived in Northwestern Wyoming. While I lived in Rising Sun, Elise lived in one of the neighboring towns, Norfolk. It was the same town I grew up in, and Elise was only a twenty-minute drive away from me. After the signing, the two of us kept in touch and had remained friends ever since.
I couldn’t have been more grateful for her. She was the best friend I had. In fact, she was the only friend I had. Of course, I have lots of loyal readers, but none of them know the details of my personal life.
The truth was, it didn’t bother me that I only had Elise to depend on. I’d never been the kind of girl who always needed tons of people. Ever since I could remember, it had always been about quality over quantity.
And the quality was exactly what I got with Elise. My friendship with her was one of the few things that kept me sane over the last nine years or so. It took me a long time to get to the point where I shared a bit about my past with her, but I eventually did it.
So, she knew about Ryker and everything we’d been through. In all the years she’s known about him and how I feel about him, she’s never once pressured me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable doing. She listened when I needed her and offered advice when I asked for it.
As great as all of that was, one of the best things about our friendship had been both of us being able to be there for one another throughout our career milestones. What was nice was that we both started in relatively the same position.
We were both struggling artists.
While I had only recently started my career as an author and publisher, Elise worked as a makeup artist.
She was incredibly talented, and I encouraged her to start a YouTube channel to promote her work. I’d seen so many videos that other makeup artists had done, and I believed she could be very successful that way. So, she started filming makeup tutorials, uploading them to YouTube, and gaining followers. It didn’t take long for her channel to explode. And the next thing we knew, Elise was launching her own beauty brand. Because she had already been so successful with her YouTube following, she ended up having instant success with her brand.
Interestingly enough, while things were kicking off for Elise, they were doing the same for me. It was roughly two years into my writing career, only a year after I met Elise, when my career took off. Before I even realized what was happening, my fourth self-published book landed me on the New York Times Bestseller list.
It was a dream come true.
Something I never thought would be possible when I started writing years prior.
There were two reasons I decided to become an author. First, I’d always loved reading. For as long as I could remember, I always had a book in my hand. I had a feeling life wouldn’t feel like work if I loved what I was doing. But the other reason I decided to become an author was that I needed to find a way to let go of all the pain and hurt I’d experienced in my life. I needed to find a way to heal from everything.
And while I couldn’t exactly say that I no longer felt any hurt, there was no denying that writing had proven to be a very cathartic and therapeutic experience for me. The truth was, I didn’t expect I’d ever fully heal from that day fourteen years ago. As long as Ryker Holt wasn’t in my life, I’d always be in pain.
Living without him had been the single most difficult thing I’d ever done. And that was saying something considering I walked away from my former life without so much as a backward glance.
“Okay, well, you can’t take too long of a break,” Elise advised. “We need you to finish it. I need you to finish it.”
Elise was referring to my current work-in-progress. After I finished writing a book, Elise was the first to get it. Her opinion was invaluable and meant the world to me. Of course, while she often texted me relentlessly with her reactions throughout her reading of the story, it was rare for her to find something she thought should be changed.
“Fine. Will it make it any better if I promise to finish it by no later than Wednesday?” I retorted.
“Can you make that promise?” she asked.
I could. I knew I could.
The likelihood was that I was going to finish the book tomorrow. But when it came to Elise and her enthusiasm to read my books, I didn’t want to disappoint her and send it a day late. I figured it was best to under-promise and over-deliver.
“Yep. I’m at the end. And you know how quickly that goes for me,” I reminded her. “Besides, I think if I don’t get a list together now for this weekend, I’ll be too distracted to write.”
“After all the times you’ve done this, you’d think you’d have the list memorized,” she said.
“I do. I guess I’m not necessarily getting the list together so much as I’m trying to make sure there isn’t something on it that I completely forgot about. I don’t want to wait until the end of the week and suddenly realize that I don’t have something I need. I’d rather give myself an hour or two this morning to run through my inventory of books, swag, and supplies to make sure I’ve got everything so that all I’ll need to do is pack it up before the end of the week.
“Do you want me to come over and help you out one day this week?” she asked.
“No, it’s okay,” I answered. “Today is going to be simply an inventory check, and I’m going to go hard on the writing tomorrow. I probably won’t start packing up until sometime on Wednesday, but it should be plenty of time for me to get it all together. Besides, you’re already doing way too much for me as it is.”
“You’re my best friend, Scarlet,” she reminded me. “Doing way too much is what I’m supposed to do. You do the same for me whenever I’ve got something big going on in my career.”
“This isn’t big in that sense, though,” I argued. “It’s just a small signing at a local bookstore.”
“It’s still a big deal,” she retorted. “It should feel like it’s a big deal to you. I know it is for your readers. If I didn’t know you personally, and I had the chance to come and meet you at a book signing, it would be the highlight of my year. Don’t diminish what it is because it’s not one of the bigger events that thousands of people flock to.”
“That’s really sweet of you to say, Elise,” I started. “I never really thought of it like that. I just liked the idea of doing a small local signing.”
For years, I’d been attending the larger events. They were great, and I had a lot of fun. But for some reason lately, I hadn’t had the urge to travel so much for signings. I only occasionally did them—and had one coming up at the beginning of November—but mostly found I no longer had the same excitement over it that I’d had initially.