Kissing Me Harder, Stepbrother novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Notebook

I called the head of content from the car with the garbage bag flapping.

"He's lying," I said.

"Everybody who calls me says that." She sounded like she was walking fast. "I can't premiere a lawsuit, Ms. Wheeler. Show me something dated before February second, in your hand, and we'll talk."

"My files say March."

"Then your files lose."

She hung up.

Lennon was in the passenger seat with his duffel between his knees.

"What was in your hand before February?" he asked.

I thought about it.

Then I hit the steering wheel so hard the horn went off.

"The notebook."

Before I ever typed a word of Sugar Tide, I'd written it longhand.

In a green spiral notebook, at my mom's kitchen table, last November, every night after my shifts at the restaurant.

The premise. The girl. The surfer. The first ten pages of episode one.

Every page dated in the corner, because my grandmother taught me to date everything.

"Where is it?"

"I don't know. Mom moved in June. Everything from her old kitchen is in boxes."

"Where are the boxes?"

"Your dad's garage."

We shot all day.

Episodes eleven through fourteen. The bait shop. The boat. The girl's first fight with her mother, which my mother watched from behind the monitor with her hand over her mouth.

"Is that me?" she whispered to Izzy.

"No," Izzy whispered back. "It's way nicer than you."

Mom swatted her.

At seven, we wrapped and went to the blue house.

Captain had already pulled out his truck again.

There were twenty-two boxes against the back wall of the garage, under the rescue board.

Every one of them said KITCHEN in my mother's big marker letters.

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