Page 81 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“I didn’t put my money in crypto, so I’ll be all right.” He raises his glass. “Maybe I’ll give self-publishing a try. Or I’ll just stop writing.”

“Can you do that?”

“Stop getting up at four A.M. every day? You’re damn right.”

“Worrying about whether they’re going to accept your manuscript,” I counter.

“Worrying about the first reviews,” Emily says.

I shiver. “Goodreads.”

Emily takes a large gulp of her drink. “Goodreads is the worst.”101

We start to laugh again, but it’s not free like before. Instead, I feel uneasy, like someone’s staring at me, that creepy-crawly feeling of eyes boring into my neck. And when I turn around, the feeling’s confirmed. Connor’s standing there, close enough to hear everything we’ve said, and he’s got that smile on his face, one I know too well.

It’s the one he used when he was explaining to me how it was all going to work ten years ago. How much I was going to pay, and what would happen if I didn’t.

Then Connor cocks his finger in a pretend gun and pulls the trigger.

The fake bullet lands right between my eyes.

AMALFI MADE ME DO IT—OUTLINE

I’m a bit too drunk to write this properly, but I think I’ve solved it: It’s making Connor think that someone’s trying to kill him that kills him. The stress, the looking over his shoulder. The PARANOIA.

It could make you do stupid things. The way you can make a relationship end if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s a word for it.

“Manifestation.” So…

HOW:

Make Connor so crazy with worry that he’s going to die that he does. It just… manifests.

Ah, shit. That’s not going to work.

TO DO:

Work on this outline when not drunk.

Actual quote: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Good advice.

CHAPTER 1539 Steps

With Connor’s fake bullet between my eyes, I go back to my room and spend ten minutes in the shower trying once again to wash away the feeling that I’m missing something.

It’s been a very odd forty-eight hours.

It felt like everything was in place before I came to Italy. After too many months of casting around for a plot, I finally had a plan for Book Ten, even if it wasn’t fully formed. But that didn’t bother me. I’m a pantser, not a plotter102—in writing and in life, too. I like to wing it. I like not always knowing what’s going to happen. It’s why I went to Italy in the first place. After spending seven years living my parents’ life, giving up on my dreams, I wanted to come back to myself. I wanted something just for me.

I wanted to go back to being that irresponsible girl I was until the day my parents died. The girl they shook their head over. The girl they didn’t know what they were going to do with.

I got what I asked for. That and much more.

After everything with Connor, I was changed again. I wasn’t the girl I was at eighteen, but I wasn’t the twenty-five-year-old me either. I was some in-between person who suddenly had all these opportunities I never imagined for myself. I lived that life for ten years—the good, the bad, the doubt, the fears, the loss, the love, and the loss of that love. I was managing. I was good, mostly. But I had to go and upset the apple cart.

Was it really about Connor?