sort of. so you get another excerpt today. lucky you. so maybe you've read about seth and august. if so, i should mention that their story comes a bit later. so when you read about matt and august here, just know that before gus can fully appreciate seth, she's gotta get out of the gutter first.
Isabel had never been very lucky.
The mother she had wanted so desperately as a child to know had only recently shown an interest in knowing her.
She couldn’t be sure if the friends she had were truly her friends or if they were kind to her because they felt sorry for her, or because August had forced them to accept her.
Her father had been lying to her for twenty-two years.
And the man she wanted didn’t want her.
She leaned her head against the headrest, let the tears slide down her cheeks, chewed on her lip. Drove another hour before realizing the anger wasn’t going to fade. She sped to IHOP with the idea of writing it out.
Oh, the things she’d written.
The moment she had opened her spiral, she’d scrawled across pages, her hand barely able to keep up with the speed of her thoughts. She wrote, without caring about form and content. Any thought she had, regardless of whether or not she had already expressed it, found its way onto the page. She wrote, without caring about misspellings and grammar.
When she got tired of venting on paper, got tired of thinking, she pulled out her phone and called August. “Hey, there,” she said as she shoved her things into her backpack. “Whatcha doing?”
“I was just about to call you. Wanna rent a movie or something?”
“Sure.” When she would have gone running to August’s, to cry on her shoulder, to get advice, to find some way to cope with her father’s lie and her mother’s neglect, some way to remember all the things she had rather than all the things she lacked, she chose instead to pretend things were normal. Rising, she hefted the bag over her shoulder, went to the register to pay. “What movie did you have in mind?” Nothing scary. Please, God nothing scary. I can’t handle scary tonight.
“Come get me, and we’ll go to Blockbuster. I’m feeling sappy, actually, so a cheesy little love story. That okay?”
Isabel paused, holding the door to IHOP open, her brow furrowed. “A cheesy little love story? What the hell happened?”
“Excuse me,” someone said from behind her.
“Sorry,” she muttered, stepped out and held the door. With a shake of her head and a sigh, she hurried to her truck. “Like Steel Magnolias kinda cheesy? Something funny with a chunk of drama thrown in, or something stupid, like Sixteen Candles?”
“Sixteen Candles would be good.”
Isabel pulled her smokes and keys out of the bag, tossed it onto the backseat, then climbed in. “Damn, Gus.” Frowning, she pulled out of the parking lot. “What’s going on? Where’s Matt?”
“Out. He said he was gonna go meet Reese for a few games of pool. But, um, Reese is here. Cate, too. So, who knows.”
She closed her eyes. “You don’t need a sappy movie, Gus. I’ll go pick something up.”
“Get Sixteen Candles.”
Isabel shook her head. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” She clicked off the phone, sighed. Men are pigs.
Isabel sped to Blockbuster, quickly rounded the new release walls and picked up a couple, then after debating, she grabbed Sixteen Candles and hurried to the checkout, waiting impatiently when the clerk took longer than she thought necessary to ring up her purchases.
On the way to August’s, she thought of all the evil things she would like to do to the world's best example of sleazy, slimy bastard.
She’d like to, but wouldn’t. Because, for some reason, August loved him.
“Here you go,” she said when August let her in, handed the movies over, smiled. Followed August into the living room, where Cate and Reese sat on the sofa, talking. The smile faltered, and she fought to steady it. Her stomach, already in knots, tightened. “Hey, guys,” Isabel said, then went into the kitchen. “How goes?”
“Okay,” Cate called. “How are you?”
“Stuck again. I spent the past two hours writing and it was all crap.” Okay, so it was more like forty minutes, and I wasn’t working on my book, but it’s not a complete lie. All the stuff I have written lately has been crap. And the stuff I wrote today is the crappiest by far. She yanked the refrigerator door open, frowned. “Gus, there’s no beer in here.”
“Bottom shelf, back. I think there might be two. You’re drinking?”
“Just one.” She thought of her mother, her father. Reese. “Maybe two.” She found one, twisted the top off and took a long drink, grimaced. “Maybe not.” Sauntered into the den. “I haven’t been able to write much. Maybe I’m not meant to do this. God knows what I’ll do instead.” She dropped into a chair, gulped down another swig of beer.
“You’re just blocked,” Cate said. “I’ve read some of your stuff. Damned good stuff. Keep at it, okay?”
“Okay.” She drank some more, cast a quick glance at Reese, then at August. “You gonna pick one, or are we gonna spend all night talking about how grand a writer I am?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m thinking. You hardly ever drink. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
August stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Uh huh. What happened?”
So much for pretending. “My mom called,” she said with as much indifference as she could muster. August started to say something, but Isabel waved her off. “Not now, Gus.” When she caught Reese watching her, she quickly looked away, frowned, picked at the seam of her jeans. Unsettled, she rose, went back into the kitchen. He didn’t usually look at her that way. Hardly looked at her at all, actually. Unless she was talking to him, which was practically never. Weird.
She blew out a breath, found a bag of pretzels in the pantry. Stood at the bar when the movie began, watching him, her brow furrowed. Way too weird. And I’ve already got enough stuff crammed in my head without this, too. With a sigh, she carried the bag to her chair, sat back down and tried to think of nothing at all.
Which was pretty hard to do, considering she kept catching him watching her.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment