Professor Feelgood (Page 8)

“It’s a journey of discovery,” Eden says, pointing to the screen. “If you start at the beginning, you’ll see he’s trying to find himself by traveling around the world. Then he meets someone he thinks is his soul mate, they have a passionate relationship, and he loses her. Now he’s trying to find ways of coping without her.”

Max nods. “Okay.” He looks between me, Eden, and Joanna. “Wait … you all find this sexy?”

We answer almost in unison. “Oh, my God, yes!”

“He should have called himself Professor Feelgood in my pants,” Joanna says, fanning herself again.

“Right?!” I say, nodding vigorously.

Eden laughs. “Absolutely.”

Max raises his eyebrows and turns to his girlfriend. “Is that right?”

Her smile falls, and she clears her throat before stretching up and kissing him gently. “Don’t get me wrong, no one will ever be as sexy as you, but … I can see the appeal. Good-looking guy, broken-hearted and pining for the woman of his dreams? That’s pretty attractive.”

Max hands the phone back to me. “How do you know he’s good looking? There are no pictures of his face.”

“Oh, he’s good looking,” Joanna says, still staring at her screen. “Just from the few flashes of that scruff-lined jaw, you can tell he’s a freaking dreamboat.”

“But what he looks like isn’t the point,” I say, glancing up from my laptop. “It’s his words that affect us, so much more than his body or face. They’re just so … soulful. Overflowing with passion.”

Joanna hands Max her phone. “Look, here’s a prime example. Read this out loud.”

Max looks at us all dubiously before holding up the phone and reciting what’s on the screen.

If people were colors, then she’d be bright yellow, like sunshine.

I’d be charcoal gray, like the sky before a storm.

But whenever I was with her, it was like I was standing in full sun,

bright and happy.

I was yellow, too.

I liked being yellow.

I tried to stay that way when she left. To keep her light inside of me.

But I’ve always been made of storm clouds, and eventually, she faded

and the gray descended again.

Sometimes, I hold my hand up to the sun,

and the warmth always reminds me of how it used to feel

when I held her fingers between mine.

When he finishes, Joanna and I let out deep sighs.

Eden has a more … physical reaction. She looks at Max like she’s three seconds away from tearing his shirt in half and licking his chest.

Max doesn’t miss her wild expression. “You know, if you’re into this sort of thing, I have a ton of angsty poetry at my loft that I wrote a few years ago back.”

Eden moves closer and touches his abdomen. “Is that right?”

When Max nods, she puts her arms around his neck and pulls him down so they’re face to face. “Then it looks like you’ll be giving me a private reading later tonight.”

Max kisses her, and Joanna and I sigh again. It’s both wonderful and terrible being around people so in love. On the one hand, I’m over-the-moon happy that my sister has finally found someone worthy of her. On the other, they make love seem so easy and natural, I wonder if there’s something wrong with me for taking so long to find it.

After a few seconds of sucking on each other’s lips, Max pulls back, looking self-conscious as he shoves his hands in his pockets.

Oh, please. As if I’m not used to his body’s reaction to kissing my sister by now.

“Okay,” he says, giving Eden a final peck on the lips. “I gotta go supervise some new staff members on their dates tonight. See you at my place later?”

Eden nods. “Definitely.”

“Aw, Max,” I say. “You’re not staying for dinner? But I’ve already put in our pizza order. Extra pineapple, just for you.”

Max narrows his eyes. “You’re a monster, Asha. You know that, right?”

His loathing of fruit on pizzas is almost as passionate as his love for my sister, and that’s saying something.

Joanna laughs as Eden drags Max from the room. “Come on, big guy. We’re not getting into the pizza debate again. You get way too intense about the whole thing.”

“I’m not intense,” Max says, his voice fading as Eden pushes him toward the front door. “There’s a right and wrong way to eat pizza, and you and your sister do it wrong. End of story.”

As I continue typing up some preliminary notes expanding my book idea, I hear the apartment door open, and then some soft moaning and whispering. I have no doubt Max and Eden are saying their goodbyes by sucking face.

After a couple of minutes, I hear the front door close, and Eden comes back in and drops into the chair beside my bed with a deep sigh.

“Okay,” she says, pushing her hair away from her face. “Now that I’m free from a giant, man-shaped distraction, give me all the deets on this professor guy. Can I assume from you almost bouncing in your seat that you’re thinking of him for your bestseller project?”

“Maybe,” I say, trying to play it cool. “Do you think it’s totally crazy to try to publish this guy?”

Beside me, Joanna makes an excited noise as Eden’s eyes light up. “Not so much crazy as brilliant. His whole timeline reads like a like a sexy guy version of Eat, Pray, Love. If you can work with him to conjure up some kickass narrative, you could easily get a book out of it.”

Joanna nods enthusiastically. “Yesssss.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” I say, allowing myself to get more excited. “And with how many followers he has, it’s sure to be a hit, right?”

Joanna sits up straighter. “Absolutely! Even if only one percent of his followers buy the book, he’d still storm onto the New York Times bestsellers list.” She waves her hands in excitement. “I’ll do up a spreadsheet for projected sales. I’ll even color code it so a blind man could see how amazing this could be.”

I smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Despite Joanna’s obsession with all things fashion and pop culture, I’ve learned she’s an absolute demon with numbers. I guess that’s what comes from managing her own international wealth portfolio since she was eighteen. I suspect she has no financial reason to even work at Whiplash, but she does have a genuine love of books.

“Let’s do this,” I say, typing furiously. “If I’m going to win this proposal, I need to make the good professor seem like the goose who lays the golden eggs. Or more accurately, the man who writes the golden books. I don’t know that even with this guy’s following I’ll be able to compete with a new Rageheart book, but at least now I’ll go down swinging.”

“Shouldn’t you contact him first?” Eden says. “You know, in case he’s some sort of weirdo who doesn’t want to be a bestselling author?”

“Huh. You’re right.”

That puts the brakes on my momentum.

Someone knock on the front door.

“That’ll be our pizza.” Eden jumps up and leaves the room. After some murmuring with the delivery guy, I hear her laugh.

When she comes back, she’s smiling. “It seems Max accosted the pizza guy in the lobby.” She holds out the pizza box, and I see that Max has written in large, heavy letters, “THIS PIZZA IS AN ABOMINATION! CHANGE YOUR MONSTROUS WAYS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”