Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

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This one is for everyone who's ever had the whole story living rent-free in their head — every scene, every line, every beat — and then opened a blank document and suddenly couldn't remember a single word of it.

For those of you who've been having a rough go of it lately. And for those of you who've been on the shit end of the stick long enough to start wondering if maybe the stick only has the one end. It doesn't. The other end is coming. It's just taking the scenic route.

This is for you.

 

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Chapter One: Mascara Won't Fix This

 

I woke up the way I always did — badly.

Not dramatically. No nightmares, no cold sweats, no falling off the bed in a tangle of sheets like some romantic comedy protagonist who was about to meet the love of their life at a farmers' market. Just the slow, grinding return to consciousness that came from staying up until 3 a.m., staring at an empty Word document, and then lying in bed for another hour thinking about all the words you didn't put in it.

My phone said almost ten. The sun was doing its best to get through the blinds, which I'd bought specifically because the listing said "total blackout" and which had never, not once, blacked out a single thing. Fraudulent blinds. I should have left a review.

I sat up, scrubbed a hand over my face, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room. Adrian Moore, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty-eight years old. Hair doing something unfortunate from the pillow. Old t-shirt with a coffee stain that I was fairly sure was from two days ago but might have been from last week — the full portrait of a bestselling author at the height of their creative powers.

I padded to the kitchen in boxers and that same stained shirt, because mornings didn't require dignity, and started the coffee machine. My apartment was a study in contradictions — or, less charitably, a mess with good taste. The living room had a velvet loveseat I'd spent way too much money on, positioned next to a side table currently buried under unopened mail, three empty La Croix cans, and a paperback I'd been "almost finished with" for six weeks. The bookshelves were styled — genuinely styled, I'd spent a whole Sunday on them — but the kitchen counter looked like a crime scene if the crime was "person who keeps buying groceries and then ordering Thai food instead."

I leaned against the counter while the coffee machine did its thing and scrolled my phone with the glazed focus of someone who wasn't really awake yet but needed the simulation of activity.

Fourteen new emails. Most of them from my publisher's mailing list, a couple from brands wanting to know if I'd be interested in "a collaboration opportunity" which was corporate speak for "post about our product for less money than you'd think." One from my aunt Karen with the subject line "Saw your book mentioned on the internet!!" — two exclamation marks, which for Aunt Karen was practically a standing ovation. I'd read that one later. Or possibly never.

The coffee machine beeped. I poured a cup, added enough cream to make a barista cry, and took the first sip standing up because sitting down felt like a commitment to the day that I wasn't ready to make.

I ate breakfast the way I ate most meals alone — standing at the counter, scrolling my phone, consuming something that technically qualified as food. Today it was toast with peanut butter, because I'd forgotten to buy eggs again. I'd also forgotten to buy milk, dish soap, and the specific brand of conditioner that my hair had decided was the only acceptable option after I'd made the mistake of buying it once. My grocery list existed as a note on my phone that I updated religiously and then left at home every single time I went to the store. The system was flawless.

The toast was slightly burnt on one side because the toaster had a personal vendetta against even browning, and the peanut butter was the fancy kind that separated if you looked at it wrong, so the first bite was mostly oil and sadness. I ate it anyway, standing at the counter in my boxers with one hip against the edge, scrolling through Twitter with the specific posture of someone who knew they looked like a disaster and was choosing not to care. Fine. It was fine. I wasn't performing for anyone.

This was what I looked like when no one was around. Adrian. Not in some grand philosophical sense — I didn't wake up and think ah yes, now I am in my masculine presentation, how fascinating for my sense of self. It wasn't that deliberate. It was just that alone, with nowhere to be and no one to see me, this was where I started. Hair unbrushed, jaw rough, body moving through the apartment in a way that was functional rather than considered. Not thinking about how I looked or how I carried myself because the only audience was the toaster, and it already hated me.

I finished the toast, washed it down with coffee, and headed for the shower.

The bathroom mirror was fogged by the time I got out, which was a kindness I hadn't asked for. I wiped a stripe through the condensation with my palm and looked at the face underneath. Same face. Always the same face. It was just a question of what I was going to do with it.

Some days the answer was "nothing." Some days Adrian stuck around, and that was fine — jeans, a plain tee, minimal effort, maximum comfort. Those days had their own ease to them, a kind of off-duty looseness that I genuinely liked. But today wasn't one of those days. Today I could feel it — that particular itch at the back of my brain, the one that wasn't about dysphoria and everything to do with wanting. Wanting to be seen a certain way. Wanting the mirror to show me the version of myself that felt most like the point.

I wrapped the towel around myself, wiped the rest of the mirror clear, and got to work.

I had a system. Not the kind of system you see in YouTube tutorials with seventeen steps and a ring light — just a routine that I'd built over years of practice, trial and error, a brief and regrettable period of orange foundation, and the slow accumulation of products that actually worked versus products that were beautiful in the store and betrayed me at home.

Foundation first. I'd been doing this long enough that the steps were automatic — primer, a light-coverage foundation because I wasn't building a mask; I was just evening the terrain. Concealer under the eyes because 3 a.m. had opinions about my under-eye situation, and I was overruling them. I worked it in with a sponge, blending at the jawline with the focused calm of someone defusing a bomb. This part was meditative. No music, no podcast, just the quiet focus of turning raw material into something deliberate.

Eyebrows next. Mine were decent on their own — one of the few genetic gifts I wasn't going to argue with — but a little pencil work gave them the kind of arch that said I have thoughts and they're sharper than yours. Eyeshadow was minimal today, just a wash of warm bronze across the lids and a thin line of brown along the lash line. Not dramatic. Not yet. The day hadn't earned dramatic.

Mascara. Blush — just a touch, swept across the cheekbones and blended up toward the temples so it looked like I'd been mildly complimented rather than painted. Lips were a tinted balm in a shade the brand called "Desert Rose" which was a very poetic way of describing "your lips but like they've been gently bitten."

I looked at the mirror. Getting there.

The hair took longer than any of it. I had good hair — thick, cooperative when it wanted to be, a length that sat just past my shoulders and could be convinced into a few different shapes depending on the day. Today I worked some product through it, let it fall into loose waves, and pinned one side back with a clip that was subtle enough to not look like a statement but intentional enough to not look accidental. The kind of thing where if someone said "I like your hair clip" you could say "oh, this?" as if you hadn't spent four minutes placing it.

Then the clothes. This was the part people assumed was frivolous, and maybe it was, but it was also the part where everything clicked. I stood in front of the closet — which was organized by color because I was that person and I was not apologizing for it — and let the day tell me what it wanted.

The rust-colored silk blouse first — the one with a neckline that showed collarbone without trying too hard — and the cream wide-legs that made my legs look like they went on for longer than they strictly did. A thin gold chain, lying flat. Small gold hoops, the pair I reached for when I wanted to feel put together without announcing it.

I slid into all of it like stepping into a warmer room. It wasn't that Adrian was cold. It was just that Adrianna was the temperature I wanted to be today.

I looked at the mirror one final time. She looked back. Same eyes, same bone structure, same person who'd been eating sad toast in boxers forty-five minutes ago. But settled. Like everything that had been slightly out of focus had sharpened into place.

"Morning, gorgeous," I said to my reflection, because if you couldn't gas yourself up in your own bedroom, what was the point of anything?

Then I walked to my desk, sat down, opened my laptop, and watched the cursor blink at me like it had been waiting.

I should have been used to this by now. The empty page. The blinking cursor. The quiet little standoff between me and a document that had nothing in it because I had put nothing in it. But the thing was — and here was where it got stupid — it hadn't always been like this.

The thing about being a writer that no one told you, or rather, everyone told you but you didn't believe it until it was happening to you: success made the next page harder, not easier. You'd think selling well would be a confidence boost. You'd think having actual readers — people who bought your book with money they earned at real jobs and then spent hours of their limited time on earth reading words you arranged — would make you think I can do this. And it did, briefly, in the way that a shot of espresso made you think you could reorganize your entire apartment. The feeling was real and it was lying to you.

My Husband, My Bride was my fourth book. Not my first. That was an important distinction because people kept treating the viral moment like a debut, like I'd stumbled out of nowhere with one lucky manuscript. I had three other books. Three perfectly decent, modestly selling erotica novels that had paid my rent and earned me a small, loyal readership of people who liked kinky stories with teeth. I was proud of those books. They hadn't set the world on fire, but they'd kept the lights on, and there was a specific kind of pride in that — the pride of someone who's been doing the work for years without anyone making a fuss about it.

Then My Husband, My Bride happened.

I still wasn't entirely sure why it happened. The book wasn't fundamentally different from my others — same genre, same voice, same me. But something about it caught. Maybe it was the title, which people kept screenshotting and posting with captions like "EXCUSE ME?" and "I need to read this immediately." Maybe it was the cover, which my publisher had actually invested in this time — a striking image that managed to be tasteful and provocative in exactly the right proportions. Maybe it was just timing. The internet was hungry for bold, kinky erotica that didn't apologize for itself, and my book walked into the room at exactly the right moment wearing exactly the right outfit.

Whatever the reason, it took off. Not gradually. Not in the slow, building way that my publisher's sales projections had optimistically suggested. It just — went. One week I was checking my royalty dashboard and doing mental math about whether I could afford to replace my spiteful toaster, and the next week I was watching numbers climb in a way that made me refresh the page three times because I was sure it was a glitch.

It was not a glitch.

I opened my browser, because that was what I did every morning instead of writing. The ritual. The procrastination liturgy. Step one: check email. Step two: check sales dashboard. Step three: check social media. Step four: feel a complex cocktail of emotions. Step five: fail to write.

The sales dashboard loaded and the numbers were still good. Not launch week good — that particular surge had settled into something steadier — but good. Solidly, undeniably good. Good enough where my accountant had recently used the phrase "you might want to think about quarterly estimated taxes" which was apparently what happened when you made enough money for the government to start paying personal attention to you. Wonderful. I'd always wanted a closer relationship with the IRS.

I closed the dashboard and opened Instagram.

New followers overnight. Not the tidal wave of the first few weeks, but a steady trickle that showed no signs of stopping. I scrolled through the notifications with the detached compulsion of someone checking a weather app — I wasn't going to do anything about what I found, but I needed to know.

DMs first.

@sapphicreads_maya: OMG I just finished My Husband My Bride and I am DESTROYED. The scene in chapter 14?? I had to put my phone down and stare at the wall for ten minutes. You are an evil genius and I mean that as the highest compliment.

I smiled. That was a good one. Chapter fourteen was the scene where the husband stopped pretending submission was something being done to him and started admitting it was something he wanted. The pegging scene. The one where he asked for it — where he'd finally stopped performing reluctance and let himself want what he wanted. I'd rewritten it four times because getting that moment right meant walking the line between vulnerability and eroticism without letting either one swallow the other. Hearing that it worked felt like being told the parachute opened.

@book.boyfriend.energy: Hi Adrianna! I run a book blog with 40k followers and would love to feature an interview with you. We focus on diverse voices in romance and erotica. DM me if interested!

Maybe. I starred it for later, which was what I did with things I was probably never going to respond to but felt guilty about ignoring.

@lena_k_writes: Your book made me feel seen in a way I wasn't expecting. I don't want to get too personal in a DM but just — thank you. The feminization scenes were handled with so much care and honesty. It mattered to me.

That one stayed with me for a moment. Those were the messages that made the whole thing feel worth it — the ones where someone wasn't just saying they liked the book, they were saying it meant something. I wanted to respond with something worthy of what they'd shared, which meant I'd probably spend twenty minutes drafting a reply that still didn't feel adequate. I starred that one too, but differently.

Then I made the mistake of checking the comments on my latest post.

Mostly good. Mostly enthusiastic, generous engagement that I was still getting used to — heart emojis, people tagging friends with "you NEED to read this," the occasional comment in all caps that I chose to interpret as affection rather than aggression. I scrolled through them feeling something warm and unfamiliar, a feeling that wasn't quite satisfaction but was in the same neighborhood.

@realtalk_brenda: Am I the only one who thinks this is just smut dressed up as literature? Like congrats on writing about sex I guess but let's not pretend this is actual writing.

I stared at that one.

I stared at it the way you stare at a parking ticket — you knew getting angry wouldn't undo it, you knew engaging was pointless, you knew the correct response was to take a breath and move on with your day. You knew all of this. You knew it with the full weight of your rational adult mind.

And yet… Smut dressed up as literature. As if those were mutually exclusive categories. As if writing about desire and power and vulnerability and the messy complicated ways people want each other was somehow less valid than writing about — what, exactly? What was @realtalk_brenda reading that was so elevated? What literary high ground was she standing on while typing that comment with her whole chest?

I scrolled down.

@j_marcus_74: Not my thing personally but the writing quality is undeniable. The prose style alone puts most "serious" fiction to shame.

Thank you, @j_marcus_74. A measured take. A reasonable human being. I appreciated you.

@dirtypageturner: The way she writes submission is SO good like it's not just about sex it's about trust and identity and I am UNWELL

I appreciated you too, @dirtypageturner. Unwell in the best way.

@keepitclean_karen: This is what passes for "empowering" now? Writing graphic sexual content? Sorry but I don't see how this helps anyone.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Two of them. Two in one scroll. I could feel the irritation building, a small, hot coal that wasn't going to become a fire but was going to sit there and smolder all morning anyway. The rational part of my brain — the part that had read every article about not engaging with negative comments, the part that understood these people represented a tiny fraction of my readership, the part that could deliver a perfectly calm TED Talk about the validity of erotica as a literary form — that part of my brain was fully operational and completely irrelevant.

Because the irrational part of my brain, the part that wrote the books in the first place, was busy composing a twelve-paragraph response that I was never going to send, explaining in devastating detail exactly why @keepitclean_karen's reductive understanding of sexual expression in literature revealed more about her own discomfort than it did about my work.

I did not send it. I did not even type it. But I composed it, mentally, in its entirety, and it was magnificent.

Then I closed Instagram, because I was a grown-ass adult with self-control and also because continuing to scroll was going to ruin my whole morning.

I took a breath. I took a sip of coffee that had gone lukewarm while I was busy having a parasocial argument with strangers. I set the mug down, positioned my fingers over the keyboard, and looked at the document I'd opened before I'd fallen into the social media vortex.

The cursor blinked at me.

I'd been looking at variations of this same empty page for three weeks now. Three weeks of opening the document, staring at it, and closing it again like I was checking on a patient who was never going to improve. The document had a title — "Untitled" — which felt like it was mocking me. I'd tried giving it a real title once, thinking that might help, like naming a plant to make yourself more committed to watering it. It had not helped. The plant was still dead.

I typed a sentence.

She walked into the room with the kind of confidence that—

Delete.

No. Absolutely not. That was the opening line of every book I'd ever read that I didn't finish. "She walked into the room with the kind of confidence that—" that what? That made people notice? That hid her insecurity? That the author couldn't think of a better way to introduce a character? Garbage. Into the trash.

I tried again.

The first time I saw her, I—

Delete.

Worse. Now I was writing a prologue, which was the literary equivalent of clearing your throat before saying something and then not saying it. Nobody wanted a prologue. I didn't want a prologue. I didn't even want a "first time I saw her." I wanted to be past the seeing and into the feeling but I couldn't get to the feeling because the feeling required a character and the character required a first line and the first line required me to commit to something and committing to something required — what? Confidence? Certainty? The knowledge that the sentence I chose was the right one and not a waste of everyone's time?

I typed again.

She had the kind of mouth that made you—

No. No, no, no. I was not starting a book with a mouth. I wasn't starting a book with any body part. That was the kind of opening that made people think erotica writers couldn't construct a sentence that wasn't about anatomy, and I had spent four books proving that I could, even if the anatomy eventually showed up and had a great time.

Delete.

I sat back in my chair and stared at the screen.

The problem wasn't that I didn't have ideas. I had ideas. I had a notes app full of them — half-formed concepts, character sketches, scenes that had arrived fully formed at 2 a.m. and looked completely incoherent by morning. "Woman discovers her ex is dating her dentist — explore power dynamics." What power dynamics? Whose power? The ex? The dentist? The woman in the chair with her mouth open while someone she's not speaking to is spoken about? I'd written that note three weeks ago and I still had no idea what I'd meant by it.

The real problem was that none of the ideas felt like the idea. The one that would justify sitting down every day for six months — that would prove My Husband, My Bride wasn't the ceiling — that there was another book in me that was just as honest, just as sharp, just as willing to go to the places that made readers put their phones down and stare at walls. Every idea I had felt thin next to that standard. Every opening line felt like it was trying to audition for a role it wasn't right for.

The cursor blinked. Blink. Blink. Blink. Patient. Unhurried. Taking absolutely no responsibility for the fact that the page was empty. That was the cursor's whole deal — just standing there, blinking, like a very passive-aggressive personal assistant waiting for you to dictate a letter. I'm ready whenever you are. Well, I wasn't. Clearly. I had been not-ready for three weeks and the cursor didn't seem to be taking it personally, which was somehow worse than if it had.

I typed one more time.

Chapter One.

I looked at it. Two words. The most generic, zero-commitment two words in the English language. I couldn't even get past the heading.

I deleted them.

I closed the laptop.

Not gently. Not with the measured calm of someone who was going to come back to it later with fresh eyes and a positive attitude. I closed it the way you would close a door on a conversation you were losing — firmly, with just enough force to communicate that you were choosing to leave and not being driven out, even though everyone in the room knew the truth.

Then I sat there, in my beautiful rust-colored blouse and my cream trousers and my carefully placed hair clip, looking like a woman who had her entire life together, and I thought about how I was going to explain to my editor that the new book was going great when the new book was not going at all.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days of this. I'd rearranged my desk twice, convinced that the problem was environmental. I'd bought a new candle — cedar and bergamot, because apparently creativity smelled like an expensive man — and burned it every writing session, accomplishing nothing except making my apartment smell like a spa that was closed for renovations. I'd tried writing in coffee shops, which had worked exactly once and produced a single paragraph that I'd deleted the next morning. I'd tried writing at night, in the afternoon, first thing in the morning before the coffee. I'd tried writing longhand in a notebook like some kind of Brontë sister, and all I'd gotten out of it was a hand cramp and the realization that my handwriting had deteriorated to the point of being genuinely illegible.

The tools were fine. The desk was fine. The candle was fine. The problem was the person sitting at the desk, and she was rapidly running out of things to rearrange.

As if the universe had been listening — and the universe, in my experience, had terrible comedic timing — my phone rang.

The screen said MARIBEL GRANT with a contact photo from two years ago in which Maribel was pointing at me across a restaurant table with a breadstick, mid-sentence, looking exactly the way Maribel always looked: like she had a plan and you were already part of it whether you'd agreed or not.

I considered not answering. I considered it the way you would consider jaywalking when you could already see the cop — technically an option, practically suicidal.

I picked up.

"Adrianna." Not a greeting. A statement of fact. Maribel didn't greet people, she acknowledged their existence and then got to work.

"Maribel. Hi. Hello. Good morning."

"It's almost twelve."

"Good late morning."

"How's the writing?"

And there it was. Three words, delivered with the casual precision of someone who already knew the answer but was going to make you say it anyway. How's the writing. The question I'd been dreading from the one person I couldn't bullshit, delivered on a random Tuesday with no warning, as if she'd been monitoring my laptop activity and had timed the call to the exact moment I'd slammed it shut.

"Great," I said. "Really, really great. Flowing. Words are just — flowing."

"Flowing."

"Like a river."

"Which river?"

"I — what?"

"Because some rivers are wide and powerful and some rivers are mostly mud. I'm trying to gauge which type of flowing we're talking about."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Maribel."

"Adrianna."

"The writing is going fine."

"The writing is going fine," she repeated, in the same tone a doctor might use when a patient says they've been "basically" taking their medication. "That's wonderful to hear. I'm so glad. In that case, you won't mind telling me what the new book is about."

Silence. Heavy, textured silence that was doing more work than any sentence could.

"It's still... taking shape," I said.

"Taking shape."

"Things are in the early stages."

"Ade." The nickname landed with the gentle thud of someone setting down something heavy. "You haven't written a word, have you?"

I opened my mouth to deny it. I really did. I had a whole defense prepared — I'd been doing research, I'd been brainstorming, I'd been letting ideas marinate, which was a real and valid part of the creative process and not, despite how it looked, the same thing as doing nothing. But Maribel had this quality — this deeply inconvenient quality — where lying to her felt like lying to someone who was holding a printout of the truth. Not because she was intimidating, exactly, but because she cared enough to actually listen, which meant she would actually hear the lie, and then she would wait, and the waiting would be worse than whatever she was going to say next.

"I've written several words," I said. "I've just also deleted them."

"All of them?"

"To date, yes."

I heard her exhale. Not a sigh — Maribel didn't sigh, sighing was for people who hadn't already moved on to solutions — but a measured breath that said okay, this is what we're working with.

"We need to talk," she said.

"We're talking right now."

"We need to talk in person. Over food. Somewhere I can see your face while you explain to me how a woman who wrote four books is suddenly incapable of writing a fifth."

"That feels aggressive."

"That feels like lunch. Are you free at one?"

"I might have plans."

"You don't have plans."

She was right. I didn't have plans. My plans for the day had been: wake up, fail to write, spiral quietly, and possibly order Thai food for the third time this week. Maribel slotting herself into that schedule was, if anything, an improvement, though I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of saying so.

"Fine," I said. "One o'clock. Where?"

"Sorrentino's. I'll get us the corner booth."

"The corner booth is for when you're about to say something I don't want to hear."

"The corner booth is for when I want to have a conversation without your face being visible to the entire restaurant in case you get dramatic."

"I don't get dramatic."

"You once knocked over a water glass because I suggested a title change."

"That was an involuntary physical response to a bad idea."

"One o'clock, Ade. Eat something before you come, you get prickly when you're hungry."

She hung up. No goodbye, because Maribel didn't do goodbyes, she did conclusions. The conversation was concluded. The plan was in motion. My attendance was not optional.

I set the phone down and looked at my closed laptop and then at my apartment and then at the mirror by the door, where Adrianna Moore looked back at me — perfectly dressed, impeccably made up, absolutely killing it in the earrings department, and completely, comprehensively unable to write a single sentence that she was willing to let live.

"Great," I said to no one. "This is going to be fun."

I grabbed my bag, checked my reflection one more time — because even creative despair didn't excuse leaving the house without confirming the eyeliner was still sharp — and headed for the door.

Lunch with Maribel. A conversation about the book that didn't exist. A cheerful interrogation over Italian food in a corner booth specifically chosen so no one could see me when I inevitably got dramatic about it.

Just another Tuesday in the glamorous life of a writer who couldn't write.

I locked the door behind me and walked toward the elevator, already composing the version of "it's going great" that I was going to try on Maribel next, knowing full well she was going to see through it in under thirty seconds.

She always did.