Work Text:
Beth canceled the rest of the book tour. “We had a near-death experience—several near-death experiences,” she said, furiously typing out email after email on her phone while they waited for their plane. “We’ll promise those venues something special for the next tour.” Her fingers stilled and she narrowed her eyes at Loretta. “There will be a next tour, right?”
Loretta choked out a laugh. “Sure, Beth,” she said, closing her eyes and resting her head on Alan’s shoulder. “Just let me write the next book first.”
Beth still looked suspicious, but she let the subject drop.
Alan, however, didn’t. Over the next two months, he asked Loretta in every call how work on the new book was coming. At first, she brushed him off, but eventually she cracked.
“It’s not, Alan,” she said the next time he asked. “I have nothing on the new book. No concept, no outline, no nothing.”
Alan was quiet for a moment. “Thanks for finally telling me,” he said. “Now I can actually help.”
Loretta pushed down her first instinct, which was to acerbically ask how he expected to help. Instead she said, in a small voice, “You want to help?”
“Yeah!” Alan was enthusiastic. “You’re a great writer, so I figured you must be stuck at the ideas stage. I’m great at ideas.”
Loretta couldn’t help but laugh. “I reserve the right to veto any and all ideas,” she warned.
“Uh, obviously,” Alan scoffed. “My job is to look pretty on the cover. I’m not the writer here.”
“So what ideas did you have?” Loretta asked.
“Have you considered writing something that’s not a romance?” Alan asked.
~
“—so then Annie takes over driving the bus—why are you laughing?”
Alan’s grin grew broader. “I’m not laughing!” he protested. “I’m smiling!” He was leaning against the counter in her kitchen, relaxed and looking at Loretta with an intensity that reminded her of early days with John—but in a nice way, not a painful way.
Loretta handed him the wine glass anyway. “If you think the idea’s stupid, then just say so.”
Alan took a sip of his wine and considered. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said slowly. “I just think that it wouldn’t work if it’s contemporary?”
Loretta frowned, taking a sip herself. “What do you mean?”
“Well, that might have worked in the nineties, but buses are actually pretty high-tech now—hey, now you’re laughing!”
Loretta set the glass on the counter, afraid she’d spill it. “A bus? High-tech?”
“When was the last time you were on a bus?” Alan challenged, stepping closer and setting down his drink as well. “I’ll bet it was the nineties. I, on the other hand, was on a bus last week—“
The rest of his sentence was lost to a kiss, but he didn’t seem to mind.
~
“What do you think?” Loretta finished, pitching her latest idea to Alan as they brushed their teeth before bed.
He spat out the toothpaste and swished some water around his mouth before replying. “It’s got merit—I like the characters—but you know the Met Gala doesn’t work like that, right?”
Loretta’s jaw dropped. “What do you know about the Met Gala?” she asked, following Alan into the bedroom, where he was sorting through his pile of old Reader’s Digests in search of bedtime reading.
“Didn’t I tell you? I went as a guest once—one of the other guys from the agency was this actress’s date but he got food poisoning from some bad sushi the night before and I got to go instead.”
“No, you did not tell me this,” Loretta spluttered, turning off the overhead light.
“I definitely did!” Alan argued as he selected one of the magazines and climbed into his side of the bed. “I told you all about the time I met Sandra Bullock!”
“You didn’t say it was at the Met Gala!”
~
“Once they capture the actual bomber, the FBI leaves, which means that Gracie has to defy orders to stay—“
“The FBI wouldn’t just bail,” Alan interrupts. He smiles up at their server as she sets down his plate. “Thanks. They would stay, because arguably a copycat is more dangerous than the real guy, and either way, bomb threats to a televised beauty pageant is a domestic terrorism concern anyway.”
He picked up his fork and began to eat. Loretta stared at him.
“What?” he asked, with food in his mouth still.
“Nothing.” Loretta shook her head. “I should have known you’d have beauty pageant experience.”
Alan laughed. “With this mug?” he gestured at his face. “Nah, I got involved in an FBI investigation once, and the lead agent, guy named John Cale—nice dude—answered all my questions in exchange for my cooperation. Turns out, bomb threats get taken real seriously these days.”
He took another bite before continuing. “Although, that one might also work if you set it before 9/11—“
“I’m not having this conversation again. I refuse to write a historical novel set in the nineties.”
“You could set it in 2000!”
“You see how that’s worse, right?”
~
“What if I did a football drama? Everybody loved Friday Night Lights.” They were on the phone again, since Alan had a shoot this week in London for some European tequila brand.
“Do you know anything about football?” Alan asked.
Loretta ignored this aspersion on her sports knowledge and sunk deeper into her bubble bath. “What if it’s like, a family takes in a homeless kid and turns out he’s great at football? Focus more on the family drama?”
Alan sounded suspicious. “Isn’t that what happened to Michael Oar?”
“Who?” Loretta didn’t even have to fake her confusion.
“Have you been reading my Reader’s Digests in the bath again?”
Loretta looked guiltily over at the wrinkled pile of magazines on the windowsill. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I knew it! Look, the one with Tim Allen on it has an article about this guy who was homeless and became a football legend, so I’ll bet you just read part of it and forgot.”
Loretta fumbled for the pile, and leafed through the magazine until she found the article he was talking about. "Ugh, you're right," she said. "Except his name is Michael Oher."
"Okay well at least I knew he was a real person, unlike you, Miss Friday Night Lights."
Loretta groaned and dunked her head underwater. When she came back up, Alan was still talking. “—but you could probably write a different football story, if that’s what you really wanted to do.”
“I think I’m going back to romance,” Loretta said. “Clearly this other-genres thing isn’t working out.”
~
“They work at a publishing company, and she’s about to get deported, so she blackmails him into marrying him for the fiancé visa, and she goes with him to Alaska to meet his family but turns out they’re really nice, and…” Loretta turned away from the coffeepot and trailed off.
Alan was sitting at the breakfast table, frozen, spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth. Bits of milk were dripping down into his bowl. “That’s insane.” He said finally. “That’s like, so many different levels of insane I don’t even know where to start.”
Loretta let her head thunk down on the kitchen counter and groaned.
~
“So it’s us—like, our story—but fictionalized. What do you think?”
A broad grin spread across Alan’s face. “So the male lead is, like, some guy from Sarasota, and not Dash McMahon, international man of mystery.”
Loretta had been expecting more pushback. “I mean, yeah—I think I’ve got a good grasp on what might make a guy like that tick.”
“Oh yeah?” Alan rumbled, moving in closer and closer.
“Yeah,” Loretta breathed, right before their lips met.
After a moment, Alan pulled away. “It would also work as like, a spiritual sequel to The Lost City of D—like, finally satisfying readers’ curiosity about what was in the tomb without taking away from Lovemore’s agency in deciding to leave the adventuring behind.”
Loretta stared helplessly into his eyes. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said, and Alan snorted.
“No you weren’t,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t,” she agreed, and proceeded to show him exactly what she’d been thinking about instead.