Open for Business, Chapter 6
Let's bring in some supportive characters to make life spicy for Ethan & Elise
Plot twists, plot twists, plot twists!
Elise has contact with a mystery person from her past.
Ethan has contact with a mystery person from his past.
Georgie is just her own classy, jumbled, elusive mess…
and also has contact with a mystery person from her past.
We also get a flashback of the conversation that began everything with Ethan and Elise’s open marriage. (Wonder what real life event that was based on?)
I originally dated Ethan and Elise’s conversation as “June 2020,” as if COVID didn’t happen in their world. (I wrote novel in the fall of 2022.) Since over two years have passed, I decided to bump the conversation up to June 2022. Hope it doesn’t mess up the time line. Feel free to call me out on it later on.
Note: I originally used different fonts to distinguish different “speakers” in text messages. I can’t do that here, so I used different heading types and boldface. I don’t like how it looks. Sorry. 😒
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Chapter 6
Elise was working on a new client’s product descriptions for their houseplant website, and Ethan was on an interview. She was feeling hopeful and kept the insane escorting idea out of her head. She was intrigued by the idea of writing copy for herself though.
What would my personal “product description” include? she thought.
She tried to focus on respectable work. The spelling for “rhododendron” didn’t look right to her. As she took a sip of her sparkling water, she heard her phone buzz and read the text message:
hey hows it going gorgeous
It was a number with a 360 area code which meant western Washington but outside of Seattle. Her mind flipped through the possibilities. She usually used messaging apps to communicate with potential dates, but she also had their phone numbers as backup. This was one number that she no longer had a contact assigned to.