I take a big sip of my coffee, tulip or no tulip.
“Straight men want women, Kara. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter if it’s their wife, a girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend or the friendly but eccentric band geek from their senior year music composition class.”
“That last description feels very specific to you.”
“It was. Kurt Wyatt and I went on to have many a tryst in the instrument storage closet. I still think about those days fondly.” She gazes off into the distance for a bit until I clear my throat and she focuses on our conversation. “So yes, all I’m saying is that if a guy sees a woman and he’s attracted to her, then he wants her. And if he’s single, he’ll go after her if she even slightly alludes to the fact that she wants him, too.”
“But I don’t want Ryan just to want me.”
“Then what do you want?”
I take a second to think about it. “I don’t know. I want more than that.”
“You want more, meaning you want him to love you again.”
I don’t correct her. I don’t tell her no. I should. I need to.
“You do,” she affirms. “You want him to love you again.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. What is it about him that’s so special anyways? I’ve never seen you this wound up over a guy before.”
“I don’t know.” I find myself glancing around the café, feeling like I shouldn’t be talking about this and, more importantly, that I shouldn’t be having these feelings at all. “He’s just different. He’s nice and he’s absurdly great with Duke. He’s weird but in a quirky, interesting way. He thinks I’m funny, so I let my guard down with him. I consider myself a happily boring person, but to him, I’m exciting. I just like seeing myself the way he sees me, I guess.”
I stop there as Maggie looks over at me as if two huge cartoon hearts are bulging out of her eye sockets.
“You are going to marry him,” she says. “You’re going to marry him or you’re going to have mind-blowing, bodice-ripping, otherworldly sex with him and I’m entirely okay with either option.”
My cheeks streak red and the skin on my neck starts to itch. “This whole conversation is ridiculous and I’m pretty sure it’s giving me hives. Falling back into something with Ryan is the last thing I should be doing right now.”
“No, it’s not,” Maggie argues. “You like this guy and you deserve to feel wanted and I’m going to help you. Making a man fall in love with you is the same as making him want you, just with a couple of extra steps. And it will be even easier for you because Ryan already loved you once so all we have to do is make him love you again. It’s like renewing a library book. You love library books.”
“I do love library books, but what about the fact that I’m going to Italy in less than a week? Isn’t it selfish for me to pursue this when I’m about to leave?”
“It is in no way selfish. Just because there isn’t a picture-perfect future cemented in place doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go after what you want.”
Her argument is sound. But then again, she’s saying what an ashamed part of me wants to hear.
“First things first. You have to make Ryan want you, but that shouldn’t be a problem since you guys have already been together. By the way, what was this troublemaker like in bed?”
I push my chair back to distance myself from the table. “Yeah, I changed my mind, I’m not doing this.”
“Will you relax? I’m not telling you to throw him to the floor and bang him into oblivion—though I do think that’s a good option. What I mean is, you have to get him thinking about you in that kind of light again. Plant the seeds, so to speak.”
“And how do you suggest I plant the seeds?”
“Are you seriously asking me that? You’re bestselling romance novelist Kara Sullivan! You should be a lust-game master. How do the people get together in your novels? Do you use any sort of formula?”
“I don’t think of it like a formula, but I guess there are certain steps I take to get my characters together.”
“Good. Let’s start there.” Maggie looks over to the woman at the next table, who is working on her laptop with an open notebook beside it. “Hi, I’m sorry but can we borrow a piece of paper and a pen?”
The woman hesitates for a second and looks from Maggie to me. I give her a smile, hoping we’re not creeping her out.
“Sure,” the woman hesitantly says, tearing a piece of paper out of her book and handing it over with a pen from her bag.
“Thank you so much.” Maggie takes the paper and pen and immediately gets to work. She writes Seducing the Cowboy on the top of the sheet and underlines it.
“Hey, that would be a good title for a book. You think you could use it someday?”
“I’m going to go ahead and guess that there’s a lot of books with that title.”
“Figures. It’s catchy.”
I squirm in my seat, growing more uncomfortable by the second. Maggie holds her pen at the ready.
“Okay, so what’s step one?”
I take a breath and at the end of a few minutes, Maggie has written out all the basic steps my characters typically go through to find love, in her own words. The list states:
They meet.
They have issues—internal and external.
They have goals.
One or both need the other to achieve said goals.
They clash (smooch).
They’re drawn together (hard-core smooch).
They clash again (smooch and over-the-shirt stuff).
They’re really, really drawn together (smooch and under-the-shirt stuff).
They give in (full enchilada).
It all falls apart.
I hate you.
I love you.
Happily-ever-after and babies.
“Now,” Maggie says, reviewing the list and drawing another column,
