Chapter 1
“A TOAST TO OUR SEX GODDESS, EVA MERCY!” HOLLERED A CHERUB OF a woman, raising her champagne glass. Eva, whose throat was still raspy from yesterday’s gum incident, coughed back a snort at “sex goddess.”
The forty women crammed around long dining tables cheered loudly. They were bombed. The book club, composed of rowdy, upper-middle-class white women on the business end of their fifties, had traveled from Dayton, Ohio, all the way to Manhattan to celebrate Eva with a brunch. The occasion was the fifteenth anniversary of her bestselling (well, formerly bestselling) erotica series, Cursed.
Lacey, president of the chapter, adjusted her purple witch hat and turned to Eva, who was at the head of the table. “Today,” she bellowed, “we celebrate the magical day we met our bronze-eyed vampire, Sebastian—and his true love, the badass unwicked witch, Gia!”
The tables erupted in squeals. Eva was relieved that Times Square’s deliriously cheesy S&M-themed restaurant, A Place of Yes, had provided a private room. And oh, what a room. The ceiling was awash in red velvet, and a web of bondage ropes and riding crops decorated the walls. Goth candelabras dangled dangerously low over the black lacquered tables.
The Menu of Pain/Pleasure was the tourist attraction. Depending upon your selection, waitstaff in bondage gear would lightly flog you or do a lap dance or whatever. If you so desired.
Eva did not desire. But she was a good sport, and the Real Housewives of Dayton had traveled such a long way. These were her people—the rabid fandom who kept her afloat. Especially recently, as the vampire phenomenon (and her book sales) had cooled off.
So Eva chose “Cuffs + Cookies” off the menu. And now she was seated on a gothic throne, her hands cuffed behind the chair while a bored waitress in a pleather corset fed her snickerdoodles.
It was 2:45 p.m.
She should’ve been mortified. But she was no stranger to this scene. After all, Eva did write supermarket-checkout porn. While most authors had speaking engagements at bookstores, universities, and chic private homes, Eva’s events were, well, raunchier. She’d done signings at sex shops, burlesque clubs, and tantric workshops. She’d even sold books at the 2008 Feminists in Adult Film (FAFFIES) after-party.
This was the gig. She smiled indulgently while her readers swooned over the two horny, dysfunctional permanently nineteen-year-old basket cases she’d invented when she herself was a horny, dysfunctional nineteen-year-old basket case.
Eva had never set out for her name to be synonymous with witches, vampires, and orgasms. As a double major in creative writing and advanced melancholia, Eva had accidentally stumbled upon this life. It was sophomore year, winter break. She had nowhere to go. So she holed up in her dorm room, pouring her teen angst and horror-fan daydreams into a violent lustfest—which her roommate secretly submitted to Jumpscare magazine’s New Fiction contest. She got first prize and a literary agent. Three months later, Eva was a college dropout with a six-figure multiple-book deal.
Ironic that she made a living writing about sexy sex. Eva couldn’t remember the last time she got naked with anyone, undead or otherwise. Between authoring, touring, single-mothering a tween tornado, and fighting through a chronic illness that ranged from manageable to utterly debilitating, she was too depleted to romance a real-life penis.
Which was fine. When Eva had an itch, she scratched it in her books. Like a boxer abstaining before the big match, she used her unconsummated lust to give Sebastian and Gia’s story a wild edge. It was fiction ammunition.
But in the social-media era, nobody wanted to picture their favorite erotica author zonked on painkillers, drooling on her couch by 9:25 every night. So in public, Eva looked the part. She had her own tomboy-chic take on sexy. Today, it was a gray T-shirt minidress, Adidas, vintage gold hoops, and smudged black liner. With her signature sexy secretary glasses and collarbone-length curls, she could almost convince anyone she was a man-killer.
Eva was brilliant at faking things.
“…and bless you,” continued Lacey, “for instilling our faith in passion, even though Gia and Sebastian are bound by an ancient curse to wake up on opposite sides of the world the moment after orgasm. You gave us a community. An OBSESH. Can’t wait for Cursed, Book Fifteen!”
Amid applause, Eva smiled brightly and attempted to rise. Unfortunately, she forgot she was handcuffed to the chair, and she was abruptly yanked back down. Everyone gasped as Eva plummeted to the floor. Her dominatrix-waitress sprang to action two seconds too late, uncuffing her from the overturned chair.
“Whoa, too much merlot,” giggled Eva, popping back up. It was a lie; she couldn’t drink alcohol with her health issues. Two sips would land her in the ER.
Eva raised her glass of seltzer up at the sea of happily wasted boomers. Most of them, like Lacey, were wearing Gia’s signature purple witch hat. A handful had a blingy S pendant pinned to their Chico’s blouses. It was Sebastian’s S, meant to emulate the vampire’s scrawled signature ($29.99 at evamercymercyme.com).
Eva had the same S branded on her forearm. A regrettable decision made years ago on a blurry night by a blurry girl.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she gushed. “Really, your support keeps the Cursed world turning. I hope book fifteen lives up to your expectations.”
If I ever write it. The manuscript was due in a week, and paralyzed with writer’s block, she’d barely cobbled together five chapters.
Swiftly, she changed the subject. “So, does anyone read Variety?”
This was a Redbook and Martha Stewart Living crowd, so no.
“Exciting news broke yesterday.” Eva sat down her glass and clasped her black-manicured fingers under her chin. “Our wish was granted. Cursed has been optioned for film rights!”
There were shrieks. Someone threw a witch hat in the air. A flushed blonde whipped out her iPhone and recorded Eva’s speech so she could post it to Cursed’s Facebook fan page later. Along with several Tumblr and Twitter fan accounts, Facebook was a deeply important book-promo platform for Eva, where her readers shared fan art, gossiped, wrote obscene fan fiction, and debated casting decisions for the movie they’d fantasized about for years.
“I landed a producer”—a Black female producer, thank you, Jesus—“who really gets our world. Her last film was a steamy Sundance short about a real estate agent seducing a werewolf! We’re interviewing directors now.”
“Sebastian on film! Imagine?” swooned a faux redhead. “We just need a Black actor with bronze eyes. One who’s a good biter.”
“Eva, how do I ask my husband to bite me?” whined a Meryl Streep look-alike. This always happened, the sex talk.
“Arousal through biting is a thing, you know. It’s called odaxelagnia,” Eva divulged. “Just tell him you want it. Whisper it in his ear.”
“Odaxelagnia me,” slurred Meryl.
“Catchy,” Eva said with a wink.
“I’m stoked to see big-screen Gia,” said a husky-voiced brunette. “She’s such a fearless warrior. Sebastian’s supposed to be the scary one, but she’s killed armies of vampire hunters to protect him.”
“Right? The force of teen-girl passion could power nations.” With a twinkle in her eye, Eva launched into the mini-monologue she’d perfected ages ago. This part was still fun. “We’re taught that men are all animal impulse and id. But girls get there first.”
“And then society stomps it out,” said the brunette.
“Word.” Eva knew the pain was close. Before an episode, her mask slipped and the Black popped out.
“Look at history,” Eva continued, rubbing a temple. “Roxanne Shanté out-rapping grown men at fourteen. Serena winning the US Open at seventeen. Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein at eighteen. Josephine Baker conquering Paris at nineteen. Zelda Fitzgerald’s high school diary was so fire that her future husband stole entire passages to write The Great Gatsby. The eighteenth-century poet Phillis Wheatley published her first piece at fourteen, while enslaved. Joan of Arc. Greta Thunberg. Teen girls rearrange the fucking world.”
An electrified hush fell over the group. But Eva was sinking. The pounding in her temples was sharpening by the millisecond. Sugar triggered her condition, and she’d been force-fed all those cookies. She knew better—but she’d been cuffed.
Absentmindedly, Eva snapped the rubber band she always wore around her right wrist. It was a pain distraction. An old trick.
“Remember when Kate Winslet escapes the Titanic?” asked the brunette. “And then jumps back on to be with Leo? That’s teen-girl passion.”
“I’d do that today to get to Leo,” admitted Lacey, “and I’m forty-one.” She was fifty-five.
“Just like Gia,” gasped a petite woman with a clip-on bun. “In every book, she fights her way back to Sebastian—despite knowing that when they have sex, they’re cursed to lose each other again.”
“It’s a metaphor,” said Eva, her vision blurring. “No matter how perilous the journey, it’s never over for true soul mates. Who doesn’t want a connection that burns forever, despite distance, time, and curses?”
She didn’t. The thought of perilous love made her nauseous.
“Confession,” whispered a flushed blonde on her fourth glass of rosé. “My son plays Ohio State basketball, and I get so horny during games. To me, all those beautiful Black players are Sebastian.”
Speechless, Eva gulped down her seltzer.
This’ll be my legacy, she thought. I have friends organizing protest rallies and writing Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker essays on race in America. My own daughter’s so militant that she begged a cop to arrest her at the Middle School March on Midtown. But my contribution to these troubled times will be inciting white women of a certain age to sexually profile Black student athletes who’d really just like to make it to the NBA in peace.
Then Eva’s head was seized by a thunderous hammering. She clutched the edge of her seat with trembling fingers, bracing herself for each blow. The world went fuzzy. Features were melting off faces like Dalí’s clocks; the competing perfumes in the room made her stomach lurch, and then the hammer slammed into her face harder and faster, aiming to maim, and she heard everything at a punishing decibel—the AC, clanging silverware, and merciful Christ, did someone open a candy wrapper in Connecticut?
They always escalated so fast, the ruthlessly violent migraines that had tortured her since childhood and baffled the most decorated specialists on the East Coast.
Eva’s eyelids started to droop. In a well-practiced fake-out, she raised her brows to look alert, shooting a dazzling smile at her audience. Looking at those bawdy broads, she felt the low-grade envy she always felt in a group. They were normal. They could do things.
Regular-ass things. Like diving headfirst into a pool. Holding up their end of a conversation for more than twenty minutes. Burning scented candles. Getting tipsy. Surviving an F-train ride while a subway saxophonist blared “Ain’t Nobody” for nine stops. Enjoying sex in ambitious positions. Laughing too heartily. Crying too mightily. Breathing too deeply. Walking too swiftly.
Living, period. She’d bet these women could do most of these things without shredding agony smiting them like punishment from an angry god. What was it like, the luxury of not hurting?
I’m an alien, Eva thought. She’d always felt as if she were impersonating a human, and she accepted it. But she’d never stop fantasizing about being unsick.
“Uhhh…excuse me for a sec,” Eva managed. “J-just need to call my daughter.”
Calmly clutching her tote, she swept through the red velvet door of the private room. Weaving through tables of suburban theatergoers gushing over Hamilton, she spotted the ladies’ lounge behind the hostess area. She rushed in, burst into a handicapped stall with a sink, and vomited into the toilet.
For moments afterward, Eva stood there, breathing deeply through the pain, the way her team of neurologists, acupuncturists, and Eastern healers had taught her. Then she vomited again.
Swaying, she grasped the sink rim for balance. Her eyeliner was a mess now. This was why she wore it smudged. She never knew when an episode would strike—so if her makeup aesthetic was Rihanna-at-3:00-a.m., then she could pretend it was intentional.
Eva pulled her box of disposable painkiller injections out of her bag. Yanking up her dress, she exposed her scar-addled thigh, jabbed in a needle, and tossed it in the trash. For good measure, she grabbed an Altoids tin and chose a medical-marijuana gummy bear (prescribed by NYC’s top pain specialist, thank you very much). She chomped off an ear. Fuck it, she thought and tossed the whole thing in her mouth. This would take the edge off until nighttime, so she could get through mommy-daughter after-school rituals and then crash.
Gingerly, Eva leaned back against the tiled wall. Her lids shuttered closed.
Sickness wasn’t sexy. And her disability was invisible—she wasn’t missing a limb or in a full-body cast. Her level of suffering seemed impossible for others to fathom. After all, everyone got headaches sometimes, like during coffee withdrawal or the flu. So she hid it. All people knew was that Eva canceled plans a lot (“Busy writing!”). And was prone to fainting, like at Denise and Todd’s wedding (“Too much prosecco!”). Or forgot words midsentence (“Sorry, just distracted”). Or disappeared for weeks at a time (“Writing retreat!”—definitely not an in-patient stay in Mount Sinai’s pain ward).
White lies were easier than the truth.
Case in point: what would the Orgasmic Ohioans think if they knew she wanted to strangle Sebastian and Gia? To banish them to wherever those Twilight fuckers went?
She loved her books at first. She wrote to tickle herself, the ideas sparking like wildfire. Then she wrote for her readers. Now she lifted entire plot points from the comments sections of Cursed fansites—the depth of author-cheating.
She just couldn’t peddle “tortured romance” anymore. Years ago, she’d thought love wasn’t real unless it drew blood. She, Sebastian, and Gia were all teens once, sharing the same twisted brain. Sebastian and Gia didn’t grow up. But Eva did.
She wanted Cursed to die, but the series provided a stable, secure life for Audre. Eva had fought dragons to spare her baby from the childhood she’d had. And she’d won. She just wished she could find her spark again. The movie might help her rescue it.
Not only that, but deep down, Eva hoped it’d give her a fresh start. With her cut from the deal, she could finally afford to take a break from writing Cursed and work on her dream book, the one that’d been buzzing under her skin forever. She was so much more than her silly, raunchy romance (at least, she hoped she was). It was time for her to prove it to herself.
Feeling a bit better, Eva rinsed her mouth out with her travel-size mouthwash. Almost unconsciously, she raised her left middle finger, where she always wore her vintage cameo ring (she felt naked without it), to her nose and inhaled. It was an old habit—the barely there scent of some long-ago woman’s perfume always soothed her.
Finally, in a quiet moment, she decided to check her phone.
MA’AM. Where are you? As your editor, I HOPE you’re writing. As your best friend, I DEMAND you take a break. HUGE NEWS. Text back.
Been trying to get you for 3 hours! I think I found our director! Call me.
did u get me the feathers 4 my #feministicon art project I need it 4 grandma’s portrait specifically her hair it was so fluffy thx mama enjoy ur cringey sex luncheon xo
Audre’s home from the Debate Team pizza lunch. But she brought 20 kids with her. I noted on my ChildCare.com profile that I don’t do large groups. (Agoraphobia, germaphobia, claustrophobia).
“Jesus, Audre,” she moaned.
Light-headed from her gummy-and-injection cocktail, she scheduled an Uber, offered her apologies to the Ohio Players, and was Brooklyn-bound in six minutes.
Chapter 2
“JACKIE! WHERE’S AUDRE?”
Breathless, Eva stood in the doorway of her apartment. She took a cursory sweep of the bright, eclectic space. Her Indonesian (via HomeGoods) throw pillows and rugs were in their rightful place. Not a book was askew in the wall-to-wall library behind the purple armoire she’d bought when Prince died. Her Pinterest-inspired Park Slope home was exactly how she’d left it.
Park Slope was a hippie-dippie Brooklyn hood, thoroughly gentrified with wealthy liberal families. Most of the parents had kids when they were in their late thirties, after having conquered careers in new media, advertising, publishing, or in one celebrated case, Frozen songwriting. Mostly white, the hood felt diverse because of its sprinkling of same-sex parents and biracial kids (in predominantly Asian-Jewish, Black-Jewish, or Asian-Black combos).
Eva and Audre stood out because (a) Eva was a decade younger than the other moms; (b) she was single; and (c) Audre had a Black mom and a Black father, as opposed to her dad being Jewish or Vietnamese. Or a woman.
“Oh, hey.” Jackie, the babysitter, was chilling on the couch with her feet propped on a boho ottoman.
“Jackie, I was working! I ran here from Times Square!”
“On foot?” Jackie, a divinity student at Columbia, was very literal.
Eva stared at her.
“Audre’s in her room with the kids. On Snapchat.”
Eva squeezed her eyes shut and fisted her hands. “Audre Zora Toni Mercy-Moore!”
She heard murmurs bubbling from Audre’s bedroom, down the short hallway. Then a crash. Giggles. Finally, Audre cracked the door and slipped out, grinning guiltily.
At twelve, Audre was Eva’s height, with her dimples, curls, and rich hazelnut complexion. But she took her style cues from Willow Smith and Yara Shahidi, hence the two space buns atop her head, tie-dye crop top, cutoffs, and Filas. With her mile-long lashes and gawky frame, she looked like Bambi at her first Coachella.
Audre galloped over to her mother, giving her a hearty hug.
“Mommy! Are those my jeans? You look so cuuute.” Pronounced kyuuu, no t.
Eva disentangled herself from Audre’s grasp. “Did I say you could bring the entire debate team home?”
“But…we’re just…”
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” Eva lowered her voice. “Did you charge them?”
Audre sputtered.
“Did. You. Charge. Them.”
“IT’S AN EXCHANGE OF GOODS, MOM! I provide counseling services and they pay me! Everyone at Cheshire Prep is addicted to my Snapchat therapy sessions. The one when I cured Delilah’s fear of flying coach? I’m a legend.”
“You’re a child. When you’re sleepy, you still pronounce ‘breakfast’ breckfix.”
Audre groaned. “Look, when I’m a celebrity therapist making several mil a year, we’ll giggle about this over bubble tea.”
“I told you to stop this therapy business,” hissed Eva. “I don’t send you to that fancy private school to hustle white children out of their lunch money.”
“Reparations,” said Jackie from the couch.
Eva jumped, forgetting that the babysitter was still there. Sensing her dismissal, Jackie scurried out the door while Audre murdered her with her eyeballs.
She whipped her head around to her mother and said, “I’m too old for a babysitter! And Jackie is the entire worst, with her judgmental eyes and Crocs with socks.”
“Audre,” started Eva, rubbing a temple. “What do I always say?”
“Resist, persist, insist,” she recited.
“What else?”
“I’ve never been sleepier than I am at this moment.”
“WHAT ELSE?”
Audre sighed, defeated. “I trust you, you trust me.”
“Right. When you break my rules, I can’t trust you. You’re grounded. No devices for two weeks.”
Audre shrieked. The noise reverberated in Eva’s head for thirty seconds.
“NO PHONE? What am I gonna do?”
“Who knows? Read Goosebumps and write poems to Usher, like I did at your age.”
Eva stormed down the hall and entered Audre’s room. Twenty girls were crammed on the bunk beds and floor, a blur of spring-break-tanned skin and crop tops.
“Hi, girls! You know you’re always welcome here if Audre asks my permission. But she didn’t, so…time to go.” Eva beamed, careful not to disrupt her standing as “cool mom,” which wasn’t supposed to matter but did.
“We’ll host a sleepover soon,” promised Eva. “It’ll be lit!”
“Tell me you didn’t just say ‘lit,’” wailed Audre from the living room.
One by one, the girls filed out of the bedroom. Audre stood slumped next to the front door, a droopy weeping willow of misery. She pulled a wad of cash out of her back pocket, and as the girls left, Audre handed each one her rightful twenty dollars. A few of the girls hugged her. It was like a funeral procession.
“Whoa!” Eva noticed a blond boy attempting to sneak out with the crowd. He rose to his full height—a full three heads taller than Eva.
“Who are you?”
“Omigod, Mom. That’s Coco-Jean’s stepbrother.”
“You’re Coco-Jean’s stepbrother? Why are you so tall?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“You’re in high school?” Eva glared at Audre, who sprinted down the hall and flung herself on her bottom bunk.
“Yeah, but I’m chill. I’m in the honors program at Dalton.”
“Oh, I’m bathed in relief. Why are you hanging out with twelve-year-olds?”
“Audre’s, like, a really gifted mental health specialist. She’s helping me manage the anxiety I feel due to my gluten allergy.”
“Quick question. Did my daughter diagnose this gluten allergy?”
“He breaks out whenever he eats focaccia or crostini!” Audre yelled from her bedroom. “What would you call that?”
“Listen, you seem like a nice”—gullible—“kid, but you being here in my home without my knowledge is a hard no.”
“I can’t believe I missed my hip-hop violin lesson for this,” he grumbled, storming out.
Eva leaned against the door for a moment, trying to decide how deeply she was going to freak out. In these moments, she wished she had the kind of mom she could call for advice.
She had an ex-husband, but she couldn’t call him for advice, either. Troy Moore, a Pixar animator, had two settings: cheerful and really cheerful. Complicated emotions upset his worldview. It was why Eva had fallen for him. He’d been a ray of light, back when everything in Eva’s world had been dark.
She had literally tripped over him in the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital. Troy had been a volunteer, sketching portraits for patients. She’d realized she liked him when she scrambled to hide the IV bruises on her arms (as a result of her weeklong stay upstairs). After six weeks of rom-com-cute dates, they wed in city hall. Audre was born seven months later. But by then, they’d unraveled. The girl Troy had fallen for, the one who could sustain bubbly spontaneity on dates and lusty sleepovers, was different at home. Dazed from pain and pills. And soon her illness overwhelmed Troy’s life—killing patience, choking love.
Troy belonged to the Church of Just Think Good Thoughts. Despite watching Eva suffer—the nights she’d repeatedly smash her forehead against the headboard in her sleep, or the time she fainted into a 2 Fast, 2 Furious display at Blockbuster—he believed the real issue was her outlook. Couldn’t she meditate it away? Send positive energy into the universe? (This always baffled Eva. The universe where? Could he provide cross streets? Would someone greet the positive energy when it landed, and would the greeter be Lena Horne’s Glinda in The Wiz like she imagined?)
Once, after a late night at Pixar, Troy climbed into bed next to his fetal-positioned wife. She’d just given herself a Toradol injection in the thigh, and a little blood had leaked through her Band-Aid onto their dove-gray sheets. Moving was excruciating, so Eva just lay in it. Through slitted eyes, she saw revulsion, and just beneath it, martyrdom.
She was gross. Cute girls weren’t supposed to be gross. Quietly, Troy snuck out and slept on the couch—and never returned to their bed. In their one couples’-counseling session, he admitted the truth.
“I wanted a wife,” he wept. “Not a patient.”
Troy was too polite to end it. So Eva liberated him. Audre was nineteen months old; she was twenty-two.
Troy went on to be blissfully happy with his second wife, a yogi named Athena Marigold. They used words like “paleo” and “artisanal” and lived in Santa Monica, where Audre spent her summers. Next Sunday, she was flying out to “Dadifornia” (the name Audre gave her West Coast trips), where Troy excelled as a carefree summertime dad.
But tricky stuff? An almost man sneaking into his baby’s room? Not his territory.
Eva staggered to her couch. She’d never been able to think clearly with jeans on, so she wriggled out of them. Sitting there in Wonder Woman panties, she googled TWEEN DISCIPLINE TIPS on her phone. The top article suggested a “behavior contract.” She had neither the legal prowess nor the energy to draw up a contract! Huffing, she tossed her phone aside and clicked on the Apple TV. When life got too challenging, she watched Insecure.
“Mommy?”
She looked up, an. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
