The Last Story

The Last Story (2)

Beep.  Beep.  Beep.  Startled by my blaring alarm clock, I leaped out of bed at seven the next day.  Being the night owl that I am, I was entirely out of it as I got ready for the book signing.  I knew that this would be long and tiring, that my face would begin to crack from all of the fake smiling, but despite all the formalities, it was nice to see that my books were still loved.  My first book signing was an epic fail.  One person showed up all day.  In fact, Karen, my publisher, wasn’t even going to have another one the next year, but on an impulse, she didn’t cancel it.  Over three thousand people showed up to that one.

Ever since we had a book signing the day after the book came out, and while at first I enjoyed staying up at midnight and hiding out in the book stores, timing how fast my books went, eventually I learned my lesson and began to sleep as much as possible.  This year I got a solid eight hours which I’m pretty sure is a new record.  I got dressed as quickly as I possibly could and smeared on a ton of disgusting makeup which I despised, but Karen insisted, “assisted my relatability.”  In all honesty, I wasn’t very relatable.

I was thinking about this as I signed each of the books and photos.  I would take in a person’s appearance and personality to try and make it out as accurately as possible, telling them how much I loved their shirt, often writing something along the lines of, “Never stop dreaming. I  wish you the best! ~Marissa.”  I never really paid attention to what they said to me.  Just nodded and smiled and said what I was supposed to.  Only twice did I ever stop.  Once to a young girl who looked so depressed in line but when she reached me, her smile was as bright as the sun.  “I’m so happy to meet you!  I made a special trip here, just so I could see my favorite author!” she had exclaimed.  A nurse came rushing over.

“Debbie!  There you are!  Don’t scare me like that.  Now, we should be getting back; you have a chemo session soon,” she said, grabbing the girl’s arm.  Poor Debbie gave me the most devastated look I had ever seen as she allowed herself to be dragged away by this dreadful woman.  No cancer patient should be treated like that, especially at that young of an age.  I nearly started crying at that point but continued on, making a mental note to try and track her down later.

The second instance was much later, near the end of the signing.  There were still quite a few people and I knew that we would most likely go over the allotted amount of time.  A couple walked up to me; an extremely beautiful woman and a man.  The two looked superb together; just happy and beautiful.  I wanted to say how gorgeous they were together, but before I had the chance, the woman was all over me.

“Oh my god, I have read all of your books!  I got my first one when I was eleven and have bought each one at midnight on the first day ever since!  I know that I probably sound like every other fan up here today but I seriously live for your novels!  I’m not kidding!  That one wedding scene where Grace and Marcus have the huge phantom ball, we’re going to use that for our wedding!”

I was in absolute shock.  First of all, nobody had ever said anything to me like that in my entire life.  Secondly, that was a seriously grotesque scene that I had almost cut from the book because I hated it so much.  And next, because the woman was so serious about it, so into the idea, so passionate, but the man wasn’t.  You could tell that the woman had a huge heart, but even as I was simply talking to the woman, I could see the man checking out other women and even teenage girls.  It was simply heartbreaking.

People like him sickened me.  My brother’s wife had cheated on him once and was so upset by it that she was practically a slave for a whole year; cooking, cleaning, doing whatever he asked and more with no complaints and, as far as I knew, hadn’t been unfaithful since.  This poor girl didn’t know what she was getting into.  Maybe this is why I couldn’t write romance, the idea of pain and disappointment.  I could write about disgusting people, but not the innocent; not about how this fan would feel when she discovered that her “one true love” was nothing even close to her idea of him.