Page 2 of For the Plot (The Stone Siblings #1)

Nikki

YMCA - Village People

I hadn’t meant to lie, not really. It had just kind of…

happened. More like an omission than a lie.

Was I supposed to just announce my sexless status?

It wasn't like the whole world was entitled to hear about my sex life, or lack thereof.

Being a romance author who writes smut could be a mindfuck sometimes.

I considered myself a sex-positive person.

I loved promoting depictions of healthy sexuality, and was a firm believer in destigmatizing discussions around sex.

But I was also an incredibly awkward human being who had never been comfortable talking about sex growing up, even with my friends.

I didn’t have an issue talking about sexuality or even my (lack of a) sex life when it was all hypothetical.

But when it came to the actual thing—being physically intimate, even platonically—I always froze. It was just how I had always been.

In high school while all my friends began falling in love and lust, I just…

didn’t. For a long time, I wondered if maybe something was wrong with me.

Maybe something inside me was broken if I didn’t feel the same way all my peers, including my twin sister, seemed to.

But then again, I was always falling in love with fictional characters.

And I did want a partner. I craved the affection and emotional intimacy I saw in my friend’s relationships, the casual touches and looks, the warmth of being wanted and chosen.

When I got older, I went on a few dates through a dating app, even kissed some people, and had one mediocre attempt at a hookup, but nothing had ever felt right .

The desire for sexual intimacy just didn’t seem to come to me the same way it did for everyone else.

And then in my freshman year of college, I realized that yeah, I did want the sexual intimacy as well. I had just never felt safe enough to explore that part of myself until I read my first smutty romance book and my whole world changed.

That was when I discovered the term demisexuality, from one of the romance books I read. It felt like that piece inside of me that had always been just a little off finally clicked into place with that label. Only feeling sexual attraction for someone after an emotional connection—that was me .

Suddenly, it made sense why I always fell in love with fictional characters, but had never fallen in love in real life. With a fictional character, you got to know them, their deepest darkest thoughts and fears, their every internal thought. What was more intimate than that?

And with romance books in particular, the way I could dive into a character's head, feel their sexual desire as if it was my own?

Paired with my obsessive tendencies, I was gone.

I devoured romance book after romance book, until I was so entrenched in the genre I just had to write my own.

I never even planned to be an author, let alone a romance author. It was more like fate, or destiny.

I graduated with my degree in communications, entered the bullshit world of capitalistic hell, and barely made ends meet in my underpaid, overworked retail job. But at night, I had the smutty little stories I was writing to bring me joy and make me feel less alone.

And then Noah, my twin sister, convinced me that I should try to get it published.

The asshole snuck onto my computer and read the book I was working on without telling me.

At first, I was embarrassed that my twin sister read the sex scenes I wrote.

But she just told me how good the story was and convinced me that I should go for it.

And somehow I did. And then I got an agent.

And then suddenly I was quitting my day job because I had just gotten a three-book deal for a romance series about three best friends finding their happily-ever-afters, with an advance large enough to fully commit and give this full-time author career a real shot.

But all along the way, that little voice in my head kept calling me a fraud, an imposter. What business did I have writing about people having sex when I had no firsthand knowledge myself?

Sure, there was the copious amounts of smut I had read by that point, the porn I had watched, the self exploration I had done.

And nothing annoyed me more than the infantilizing way society liked to treat adults who had never had sex, like it was some mile marker of adulthood.

But still, that little voice in my head had persisted. You’re an imposter.

And then, The Review.

I made it a point not to ever seek out reviews.

I knew that was just asking for a mental breakdown.

Reviews were for readers, and I didn’t need to know all the negative things people felt about my writing.

Not every book was for every person, and I knew there were people out there who did enjoy my writing, so that was good enough for me.

But every now and then, a review would slip through the cracks and I'd see them. You can’t avoid random reviews coming across your feed as a chronically online twenty something, and you definitely can’t avoid those awful posts when the reader tags you in their negative rant, forcing you to see their list of all the ways your writing was cringy and unbelievable to them.

Or that your fat characters just needed to lose weight. That one was always the most annoying.

What you could never protect yourself from, however, was a famous BookTokker putting out a video that goes viral.

A video where they absolutely shred your book apart and go on and on about how terrible the sex scenes were.

Not just cringy and unrealistic, but written like someone who has never had sex.

Well, you got me there.

My worst nightmare had come true, but I was too chickenshit to do anything about it—not that there was really anything I could do about it directly.

The Review happened not long after my second book was released last fall, and all I did was try to forget about it and retreat into my shell.

I posted the bare minimum I needed to keep my social media accounts afloat, and nothing more.

I should have probably talked to a therapist about it, but I never seemed to get around to it.

I hadn’t spoken to one since I first got diagnosed with ADHD around 21 and tried meds.

Unfortunately, the first try hadn't worked and I’d felt defeated, so I gave up instead of continuing to try like I knew I should have.

I also accidentally ghosted the therapist and was too embarrassed to try to go back, so I just… never did.

And now here we were. I had been outed as the imposter I was, and I couldn’t even write my next book. And if I couldn’t write my next book, my career was over before it had even really started.

I closed my eyes, breathing in and out in four-second intervals, using the only calming technique I had gotten from my therapist that actually took.

Four seconds, in and out, over and over until the tornado of thoughts in my head slowed to a normal speed.

Well, normal for me. It was still probably a little chaotic up there to anyone who didn’t have the same brain.

Getting up, I briefly glanced at myself in the full-length mirrored, sliding closet doors.

I took in the dark circles under my eyes, my sallow skin, the greasy knotted hair thrown into a haphazard bun on the top of my head.

At least with my black hair it wasn’t as easy to notice just how greasy it was and how bad I needed to take a shower.

Not like that mattered here. My roommates wouldn’t even notice. My gaze dropped down to my chest, and I remembered I wasn’t wearing a bra. I threw on my comfiest sports bra before walking out into the common area.

Will, Collins, and James all sat on the couch, yelling at whatever was on the TV, beers in hand. I glanced over to see what it was and laughed under my breath when I saw RuPaul’s Drag Race .

Yes, I did live with three male roommates, but it wasn’t the typical situation you probably imagined. Sure I lived with three men, but they were the greatest guys ever and all four people in this house were queer as fuck.

As I passed the couch in the open concept living/dining room on my way to the kitchen, Collins looked up and caught my eye, sending me a wink, his blue eyes gleaming with mirth.

I responded by sticking my tongue out at him.

Collins and I had hit it off the second we met, the two messes we were, and now I would say he was probably my best friend.

You might wonder how I ended up with three roommates, but you try living in Orange County.

You were either rich as fuck, married to someone rich as fuck, or had roommates.

You could probably guess which category I fell into.

Will and I had been close friends since high school.

He had transferred in as a sophomore and, as a nerd and one of the only Black kids there, had struggled to fit in.

My twin Noah and I, being two of the nerdiest people at the school, bonded with him right away.

After college, he needed to find a place, and I was desperate to get out of my house.

Listen, I love my family more than life but living with your parents and four siblings is not exactly the life you want to live in your early twenties. I had gone to school locally and stayed at home through all four years to save money, and was so ready to get out.

Will brought in Collins, the best friend he had met in college, and we had planned to find a place just the three of us.

But then we stumbled across a perfect four-bedroom unit that we just couldn’t pass up.

We put up an ad to find a fourth person, and James had answered.

And so our little quartet had formed, and four years later here we still were.