Main Bonus #53: Fiction Feedback (Patreon)

IMPORTANT: Please do not screenshot and post any part of this bonus scene to other sites or share with non-patrons. All of the Patreon content is exclusive to Patreon and for current patron's eyes only. Thank you!! xoxo Krista & Becca

RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

MUSIC: we listened to “Boom” by GG McG while writing this bonus scene.

SPOILER ALERT: There will be spoilers if you have not read MISFITS LIKE US yet. 

I WONDER IF I MADE the wrong choice. Maybe I should’ve left Hell’s Kitchen with Donnelly when he asked if I was leaving, too. But I’m still here, feeling the last bits of our exchange ricocheting through my body.

“You have me hooked, Luna Hale. Don’t forget it.”

“I never will.”

Should I run after him? He’s probably already at the elevator.

Maybe he’s made a pitstop to say hi to Oscar, if Oscar is at his studio apartment down the hall.

Whatever the case, I don’t chase after Donnelly. It won’t make anything easier if I do. The pangs inside me won’t lessen at all. They’ll just grow until my heartstrings are squeezed too tightly around the organ.

So I back away from the door and return to the couch. Taking a seat beside Charlie, he’s still flipping through the binder I brought him this morning.

With my stomach in knots, I realize I’ve chosen the torture of hearing Charlie’s feedback over the heartache of being so close to Donnelly. The knowledge that nothing can truly happen between us is hard to wade through. It’s knowing that I’m still the girl on the other side of the glass.

He’s the guy I can’t fully reach.

Maybe I did choose right.

Maybe this is less painful. Even if Charlie is dead quiet. Ughhh he’s flipping another page and his brow is cocked. What does that even mean?

“Do you have any thoughts?” I ask quietly.

He licks his finger, flips a page. “You seem to be making the same mistakes in this one.”

“Consistency issues,” I guess.

“No.” His yellow-green eyes lift to mine. “You’ve improved with those.”

I begin to smile. Did Charlie just compliment me? He doesn’t hand those out too frequently, and I tuck that one into my pocket for safekeeping. Just in case another never joins it. “Thanks. I’ve been trying.”

“I can tell.”

I choose to believe that comment isn’t a backhanded slight, even if his pretentious tone says it might be. I imagine he’s just saying he can tell I’m trying hard because everything looks spectacular. Not because “try hard” is written all over my writing.

I blow-fish my cheeks then puff out the air. “So…what’s the thing that I keep doing wrong then?” I brace myself for impact.

“This chapter is written in past tense, first person.” He has Human Him, Cosmic Her: The Free-for-All in his possession. “And at times, you switch to present tense when you’re supposed to be in past.”

“Oh,” I frown, not realizing I did that so much. “I do that a lot?”

He just nods, flips another page, reading silently. He already wields a red pen and scribbles onto the manuscript.

I lean over, peering at the note about tenses. “Which one am I better at?”

“Which tense?” he asks.

“Uh-huh,” I nod, my pulse beginning to speed. “You’ve read a lot of my writing, and some has been in past tense, some in present. Some in first person, others in third. I just wondered what combination you think I’m the best at.”

Charlie eyes me with the cock of his head. “That’s an opinion.”

“I’d like to hear your opinion,” I shrug.

“Reading is subjective in nature. What I believe you’re better at isn’t what Beckett will believe or even what your self-righteous brother will believe.”

I often skip over his little digs at Moffy. Especially these days when they’re friends. Charlie just likes to poke.

Though, I don’t like when he brings up Moffy. I feel oddly protective of my older brother whenever Charlie surfaces his name, and Moffy isn’t someone who’s ever really needed a lot of protection. He’s built to withstand hellacious things.

Maybe that’s why Charlie pokes so much. I have a lot of different theories.

Moffy might be Captain America to me, but he is the Thor to Charlie’s Loki, and my heart is happy knowing that Thor and Loki resolve their animosity in the end. So I figure whatever and whenever strife surfaces between Moffy and Charlie, they’ll always resolve their animosity too.

“I know you can’t be unbiased,” I tell him, “but you’ve read a lot of my writing in both tenses, so you might have some idea of which one I’m good at…” I trail off at the look he’s giving me, like I’m not understanding. I guess I’m not.

He tugs at his golden-brown hair a little bit. “You’re better at third person, past tense.”

I frown, not liking that answer. “I am?”

“You’re better at first person, past tense.”

I’m confused.

“You’re better at first person, present tense.” He shakes his head once. “What does it matter, Luna? I can tell you my opinion, but I don’t want you to take it and run with it.”

“Why?”

“Because art isn’t for me to dictate. You’re the writer. You write what you want to write. I read it and enjoy it, or I read it and I don’t.” He lets out a sharp laugh. “I don’t care for Picasso. Can you imagine me living in the early 1900s and telling Pablo Picasso to stop painting cubism because I think his earlier work is better?”

“But you don’t like Picasso, and maybe you would’ve liked him if he listened to you.”

“Or maybe his art wouldn’t have satisfied me either way,” Charlie volleys. “And then no one would be happy. His art could’ve spoken to someone else, and now he’ll never know because he spent too much time trying to please me.” He returns to my manuscript. “Instead of asking what tense I like to read of yours, ask yourself which one you like to write better.”

I chew the corner of my lip, thinking. “I don’t know yet. I think that’s why I keep writing in different ones.”

“So keep writing in all of them. Who’s stopping you?”

My self-doubt.

But I just shrug as a reply.

I realize I was hoping Charlie could make this easy for me. I wanted him to just steer me down the path that I need to be on, but he’s telling me this isn’t for him to decide. I have to discover it for myself.

He glances up in the direction of Beckett’s bedroom.

Beckett hasn’t come out since Donnelly left the apartment, but Charlie makes no move to trek over there. He keeps reading the new chapter, and Eliot trudges out of his bedroom with a lengthy yawn, only in blue plaid pajama pants.

Seeing me in the living room, he rolls to a stop with a burgeoning grin. “Truly, such a surprise. I am floored. You shouldn’t have, Luna.”

I told him yesterday I’d be here this morning, so he’s only pretending to be shocked. The elation is real, though. It makes me smile. “Many greetings.” I give him the Vulcan salute.

He points to the binder in Charlie’s possession. “New story?”

“Yep,” I nod.

His interest piquing, he comes over and sits on the armrest of a Queen Anne chair. “Read me a passage, brother.”

Charlie barely looks up from the manuscript.

“No, no,” I say quickly, face hot.

“Is it a sex scene?” Eliot wonders. “I love a good—”

“It’s not that,” I interject and sink further into the couch. There are some steamy parts, but I’m not ashamed to hear them, even amongst my cousins. I’m lucky that they wouldn’t judge me or make me feel like I should hide in shame.

“I just don’t like hearing my writing out loud. It makes me feel like…” Like I’m a terrible writer. Like my words don’t sound right. Like they could be better. I struggle to voice all of this, but maybe Eliot already knows. This isn’t the first time I’ve made a quick exit while Tom started reading a passage of my fic to Eliot.

“What if you read it to me?” Eliot suggests. “You know how you’d want it to sound.”

I can see myself overanalyzing everything, and I try not to drop my gaze. “Just ask Tom to read it to you later. I’m leaving the binder here.” Eliot’s dyslexia makes reading more arduous and difficult, and none of my work is published, so there aren’t audiobooks to help him.

Charlie scribbles another note in the margin.

Eliot watches his older brother but talks to me. “Whenever Tom reads your stories out loud, he’ll start reading silently to himself, and then he forgets to continue on. His narration makes me want to rip my hair out.”

“We should get him to read you everything,” Charlie says nonchalantly with a page flip.

“You would love for me to be bald, dear brother,” Eliot mentions. “Then you’d be left with the best hair for once.”

“I already have better hair than you, brother.”

“What lies,” Eliot grins.

Charlie nearly smiles. “The only lies are the ones you tell yourself.”

“Touché.” Eliot stares more intently at the binder.

“Charlie could read it to you later,” I tell my best friend.

“I’m busy.” Charlie closes the binder shut and caps his pen.

“He’s busy,” Eliot notes with a narrowed eye. “Doing what, no one knows.”

Charlie doesn’t share. He just goes to the kitchen, binder protectively under his arm. And Eliot whispers to me, “He wants me bald.”

I smile.

He smiles a little more, too, and then he stands up. “I wish I could read it out loud to myself,” Eliot tells me with a heavy breath. “That’s what I truly wish. Because no one would perform your work better than me.”

“Perform what?” Tom squints at the morning light streaming through the window. He’s in black pajama pants, just woken up. “Hey, Luna.”

“Howdy.”

“Her fics,” Eliot says.

Tom swings his head to the kitchen, where Charlie pours himself an orange juice. He sees the binder. “I’ll read it to you, dude.”

“Absolutely not.”

Tom gapes. “I’m not that bad.”

“You’re terrible, and I say this kindly.”

I don’t get in the middle, but neither pull me into the debate, especially as Beckett walks into the kitchen. His mere gait from there to here is so graceful. Tom has joked that Beckett might be vampiric. He walks like he’s an ancient, immortally lithe soul.

“How’d it go?” Charlie asks his twin brother.

“How’d what go?” Eliot is more interested, taking a seat on the barstool.

Tom goes to the kitchen too and leans on the stove.

I stay at the couch in view, but I’d rather not butt into Cobalt brother dynamics. And, also, I have way more information than my best friends. Info that I can’t really share, so it’s better if I just stay quiet.

“Donnelly stopped by,” Beckett says casually, like it’s not such a big deal, but I also can’t see his face. He’s returned to his cereal and sits on a barstool beside Eliot.

“Donnelly?” Eliot casts a quick glance at me, his brows raised like, Is it true?

I nod. “I saw him earlier.”

“What’d he say?” Tom wonders, his brows furrowed.

“Does he want back on your detail?” Eliot asks.

Beckett just shakes his head and eats a spoonful of cereal. After a quiet beat, all of us waiting for an answer, he swallows his cereal and sighs heavily. “He just stopped by to say hi.” His eyes flit to Eliot. “Sorry it couldn’t be more dramatic for you.”

“An impromptu visit from your former bodyguard is drama enough,” Eliot says casually. “But I am glad it went well.”

“It went well, didn’t it?” Tom asks.

Beckett just nods. Doesn’t say more. Eliot and Tom share a look. I have the urge to go ask Donnelly for even more details, but maybe he’ll just tell me in his own time.

Charlie swigs his OJ and rests a hand on Beckett’s shoulder as he passes him. His hand slips off, and he returns to the couch beside me as his brothers start discussing Audrey’s Instagram skills.

Charlie reopens the manuscript. “See what I mean?” He shows me the red markings where I tripped up and wrote in present tense multiple times in one section.

I lean over the binder and eye the sentences. How didn’t I catch that? I must’ve been in the zone. Or maybe I’m just gravitating towards present tense. I suddenly have the urge to keep on writing.

Thank you so much for reading this month's bonus scene! It was so much fun writing a bonus from Luna's POV. The first but definitely not the last! (We are obsessed with her POV!) We love getting to show a glimpse of what happened when Donnelly left the Hell's Kitchen apartment. 

We wrote this bonus (and the July extra bonus) before Misfits Like Us released but after we finished writing the book -- so we knew these likely wouldn't be included inside the novel because of pacing/page count, but this is really why we ADORE Patreon. Because it gives us the space to add more to the world. And in our minds, every bonus we ever write feels like it could be a part of a novel, even if it has a home here. 

We really hope you enjoyed this one!

There's still another bonus coming very soon! This one will be in Donnelly's POV from Misfits. Keep on the lookout! 

xoxo Krista & Becca

"Fiction Feedback" Copyright © 2022 by K.B. Ritchie