The Baron and the Blogger

Chapter 1

I typed faster. The words were coming quickly now. This was going to be amazing—the best entry I'd ever written. The thing was going to be a viral sensation by morning. I could feel it.

I'd never have to work again. Never have to pose a photo for an entry, or sign up for an advertising or collaboration deal I didn't want to take. I'd finally lose fifteen pounds and get a tan. I'd definitely get a boyfriend. Maybe even a fiancé and a big, white wedding, and then babies. The whole white picket fence shebang.

This was amazing.

I took my fingers off the keys for a moment, hardly daring to breathe. My eyes skimmed the paragraphs. I scrolled up. Scanned. Scrolled down.

Damn it.

Who was I kidding? This was terrible. I was the worst blogger in the history of the Internet.

I scrolled back a few paragraphs and considered a rewrite. My fingers hovered over the keys, the blinking cursor mocking me and what I now realized were pathetic attempts at blogging fame and renown.

I was going to die poor, alone, and childless.

Not to be too dramatic, or anything.

I slammed the laptop shut and left it on the couch, where it seemed to stare at me in accusation as I went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of wine.

Red blend? Riesling? Drier white?

I considered my options.

"Probably the cab," I said aloud, into the emptiness of my apartment. I stabbed the corkscrew into the bottle and opened it, inhaling deeply as I raised the red-stained cork to my nose.

"Smells like defeat," I said again to no one. "Delicious defeat."

I poured my glass to an aggressively full level and took a few unladylike sips until the level of the liquid was low enough that I could swirl it pretentiously.

I drank the first glass a little too fast and poured another, already tipsy. I hadn't been drinking lately because I was "focusing on my writing." But now that I was a failure, what did my sobriety matter?

Halfway into the second glass, my phone buzzed. I paused the video of kittens I was watching to check the text.

My twin sister, Rebekah, had messaged me:

How's the work coming?

I set my phone down noisily on the counter and leaned against the granite. I had asked to her to check on me if she thought I might not be working. Her twin senses must have been tingling.

I opened the pantry and scanned. I'd removed most of the junk food from my apartment in an effort to lose some weight, but now all I wanted was salty, greasy chips and maybe something chocolatey to top it off.

I sipped my wine and slung a few drawers open and closed again when their contents revealed only broken pencils, used pads of sticky notes, and batteries that probably didn't have any juice.

I opened another. "BINGO!" I announced.

Dark chocolate. Didn't it have antioxidants or magnesium or something? I had probably blogged about its benefits to my willing, wonderful followers at some point, but I didn't remember what I'd written.

Whatever.

I was two squares in and considering refilling my wine glass, holding my phone above my head for the perfect "my life is in shambles but isn't it adorable" selfie when the phone started buzzing.

"Shit—shit shit…" I nearly dropped it on my face but managed to swipe to answer in time.

"What are you doing?" my twin's voice demanded from the speaker.

"Writing," I lied.

"Bullshit," Bekah said.

"No, I am," I insisted. "I just got up for a bathroom break. But I've been at it for hours. I'm making huge progress. Like, lots and lots of—"

"Wine," Bekah said. "You're drinking. I can tell. I feel like I caught you just before your 'I'm supposed to be writing but I'm drinking instead' tweet went out."

"That's absolutely untrue," I said, closing Twitter on my phone without sending the tweet Bekah had perfectly predicted.

"Mmm."

"Bek, come on. Give me a break. I'm trying."

"Look, Lizzy, I'm just trying to help you. You asked me to do this, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah…" I swirled the dregs of my wine, sniffed it without interest, and finished the glass.

"So are you getting back to work tonight or what? Because my date fell through and if you aren't working anyway, then I'll just come over and help you finish that bottle."

I looked at the bottle guiltily. My laptop seemed to be sending out, "You should be over here working, you lazy woman" vibes.

"Well…"

"I'm coming over," Bekah said decisively. "You aren't going to get anything else done anyway. In the morning I'll drag your ass out of bed and you write while I make us pancakes and mimosas like the good boyfriend neither of us has."

"Bek…" I protested, almost sounding whiny. What she proposed sounded great, but I knew I had a lot of work I needed to get done.

"Be there in twenty."

She hung up.

Bekah lived nearby in a townhouse that she shared with some of the other pre-med students from her school. She'd started as an architecture major, then swapped to kinesiology, and finally settled on pre-med.

"I'm going to save the shit out of some lives," she told me.

"BEK," I said. "So vulgar."

"Yeah yeah," she said, waving a hand dismissively.

I couldn't pretend I wasn't happy she was coming over. It let me off the hook for the night, and I didn't feel up to rereading and editing what I'd just written right now. But I did worry about her: Bekah may have been able to joke about our nonexistent love lives, but she'd just gotten out of a long relationship. Actually, other than the twins we'd dated during our sophomore year of high school (just to see what it was like to be twin sisters dating twin brothers), Bekah had never really had a relationship before Rob.

The two of them were crazy for each other. The whole family thought they were getting married. Bekah had even worn this little ring he'd given her. Not quite an engagement ring, not quite a promise ring, but it was special.

I knew things were bad when she stopped wearing it.

"Did you give it back to him?" I asked her. It had a very small (possibly real) sapphire in it.

"No," Bekah had said. Normally fiery and defiant, she'd seemed almost defeated. "He didn't ask for it back. He didn't want it back."

Just like he didn't want me.

She didn't have to say it out loud. I knew what she meant.

When I opened the door she had two bottles of wine under one arm and a bag of caramel-filled chocolates in her other hand. "Let's get white-girl wasted and brainstorm blog ideas and stuff. You can write tomorrow."

Before we fell asleep, I poked her face until she opened her eyes.

"What?"

I giggled. "I thought you were supposed to help me come up with things to write or something. Be all brilliant or whatever."

The wine was thick on our breath, mingling over the sheets, the way we used to lie awake and whisper when we were little girls.

"I'll come up with something," Bekah said, sounding less slurred than me. "I'll let you know in the morning. Let's just sleep on it." She pulled the pillow over her head, pressing her cheek into the mattress. She pulled her legs up to her chest: an odd cocoon, the way she'd always slept.

The next morning we had matching headaches and I sliced some cucumber while Bekah popped a bottle of champagne.

"I'm not eating any fruit," she told me, holding the cork in one hand while the bottle fizzed in the other

"Cucumber isn't a fruit," I said.

"Still not eating it," she said. She took a sip of champagne from the bottle. Bekah grabbed the cinnamon and tossed some into the bowl before returning to stirring the batter.

"Good," I replied. "Because it's not for eating. It's for our puffy eyes."

Her next sip turned into a swig of champagne out of the bottle. "Uh—I'm cooking, Lizzy. I don't have time to lie down with produce on my face and hope it makes me look like I'm eighteen again."

Bekah was a little obsessed with premature aging. We were only twenty-five, but she was always asking me to do things like ask the blogsphere about Botox or see if companies would send me products with retinol for me to review.

"Stop drinking the champagne. That would help."

"Right," she said. "Because I'm going to give up champagne." Her sarcasm was nearly palpable. "If you'd just add some orange juice already it would be socially acceptable. And you could take pictures of it or whatever." She waved a hand dismissively and licked some wayward pancake batter off her fingers before she returned to stirring the bowl enthusiastically.

"So do you want to hear what I came up with?"

I pulled a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. The expiration date was questionable. I swirled it around and sniffed. Eh. It would be fine.

I filled red wine glasses with champagne and topped them off with orange juice. "I'm listening."

"You need to get your groove back." Bekah pointed her spoon at me for emphasis, then shoved it back into the bowl and kept stirring.

"What does that mean?"

"You need to go somewhere you've never been. Do something you've never done."

"Cool," I said, sipping my mimosa. "Burning Man and cocaine. Perfect. Great idea. Thank you for your input."

She ignored me and dumped a spoonful of batter onto the hot griddle. It sizzled a little.

"Is that too hot?" I asked.

"It has to be something you care about. Something you like." She dumped another spoonful for a second pancake.

"Are you brainstorming, or…?"

"No, I'm pitching. I already came up with this. You're kind of ruining my pitch, honestly. And no—" She dumped a third spoonful for the next pancake. "The stove is not too hot. Let me worry about the pancakes."

"So what are you suggesting?" I asked. "I should shut down my blog and start an animal shelter or something?"

"Don't be stupid, Lizzy. You'd be a terrible shelter owner. No, I'm talking about something really crazy." She flipped the trio of pancakes to reveal two that were perfectly golden-brown and one that was burnt.

I set down my glass and crossed my arms over my chest. "Fine. I'm listening."

Bekah held out the spatula with a flourish. "A Regency ball."

I stared at her. "A what?"

She rolled her eyes and turned back to her breakfast preparations, apparently annoyed with the confused reception her idea had gotten from me. "You love all that Pride and Prejudice crap. There are tons of weirdos all over the world who put on balls and have croquet matches or whatever it is they did. You should dress up and go get your Jane Austen freak on. Go crazy. Take lots of pictures. Then write about it. People would love it. I would love it. I don't even really like that stuff, but niche culture is fascinating. I'm telling you, Lizzy, this could be exactly the thing you need to get going again." She pointed the spatula at me. "No—actually, this is the thing you need to get going again."

"That's crazy," I said.

"No," she said, handing me a plate that was a slightly charred short stack. "What would be crazy is giving up now. People love your blog. You love your blog. And if you stop and get a 'real job' and resign yourself to working in a cubicle until you die after you've proven you can make a living sitting at home in leggings typing on a laptop that probably needs to be replaced, then there's no hope for the rest of us. So you have to do this."

"For The People," I said, joking.

"For The People," Bekah repeated. I'd never been handed syrup by a more serious-looking person before.