Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Pine.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover photograph by Cody Wheeler, licensed by Shutterstock.

  Just A Small Town Girl

  A New Adult Romantic Comedy

  by

  Jessica Pine

  Chapter One

  Lacie

  I stood and stared up at the sign above the door. It was brand-new - gothic letters burned skillfully into the wood. The old one used to have a dent in the middle where my Dad's foot had sent a paint can flying; there it had landed and took a chunk out of the ampersand, as if in losing a boy he had negated the idea of children altogether.

  It still read JONES & SON. RESTORATIONS.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. "It's nice," I said. "Looks good."

  "Yeah. It was worth it, definitely," said Dad. "Not cheap, but you got to grab the customer's attention, you know?"

  "So I'm guessing this would be a bad moment to point out that I'm actually a daughter?"

  He sighed and gave me a reproachful look. "Lacie, the store was Jones and Son back when I was the son in Jones and Son. When has anywhere been So and So and Daughter?"

  "Never," I said. "I guess. Maybe it's time they started."

  "Oh sure, she talks a big game," he said, slapping me on the back of my shoulder to show there were no hard feelings, but I knew what this was about. I'd graduated magna cum laude and he was still bitching about medical school. He strode off within the store and part of me wanted to pursue him. After all, when I'd announced my intention drop out of pre-med and take up an English Major he'd been furious, and when I told him I wanted to write for a living he had said nothing at all - just given me a long, weary look as if the pie-in-the-sky dreams of daughters were so far beyond his comprehension that I may as well have been speaking Martian.

  No, it wasn't worth it. Instead I wandered down the side alley, where in my worst teenage moods I would lurk and smoke the cigarettes I'd filched from my Aunt Cassandra's purse. I always thought she didn't know because I was careful to take only one at a time, but one day she came into the kitchen with her nerves on edge and a piece of nicotine gum pounded flat between her restless molars. "It was time I quit anyway," she said. "And time you stopped trying to start."

  I remember thinking that moment was Westerwick in a nutshell. I remember the towering shape of my teenage outrage, the kind of snorting, deep-down, resentful disgust that nobody over the age of about twenty-one can ever accurately replicate. This town, I thought. This fucking town. You couldn't walk two yards down Main Street without everyone staring straight through your skin and trying to figure out your inner workings. If someone rolled over in bed on one side of town they’d be talking about it next morning on the other. In one of my more overwrought moods I remember complaining that everyone wanted to yank out my guts and rummage through them for answers, like I was some kind of sacrificial animal. I may have even been driven to commit that most disgusting of teenage crimes; angsty poetry.

  I carried on down the alley into the yard. The big red metal door of the workshop was furled up high. When I was a child I had used to hang around in here every chance I got. The alternative was the smell of hospital hallways and watching my mother freak out at every bruise, scrape or cough. My brother's bald, veiny head reminded me of a fragile flesh balloon that might burst and spill fluids both familiar (blood) or mysterious (plasma). The workshop was warm and safe, smelling of wood shavings and varnish. When I was a very tiny girl, perhaps before Byron even got sick, my father brought me in here and in whispered, awed tones told me about another workshop, one miraculously located at the North Pole. With the sweet smell of pine in my nose and my as yet unfinished rocking horse looking on, I drank in his tale of elves and reindeer and all of the reasons why I must be very, very good.

  Someone had brought in a table – a topless set of Queen Anne legs that might once have held glass. There was a pretty but scuffed black Chinoiserie cabinet and a solid Welsh dresser that looked as though it had suffered more than its fair share during the late 1990’s DIY craze. Some well-meaning but clueless owner had sanded it down, painted it an orangey shade of terracotta and stenciled blotchy Fleur de Lis all over it.

  I was still looking at it when my Dad came in through the store exit.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, spotting my expression. “I’m not sure what happened there. Good lines, though.”

  “I like it. Pine?”

  “I guess, although the door panels are plywood. Probably someone replaced glass.”

  “Glass would be better. Maybe leaded.”

  “That was my thought too. Great minds think alike, huh?”

  “You want me to start stripping it down?”

  “God no. Four years of college and she wants to strip furniture?”

  “Well, you don’t want me to write,” I said. “That much was obvious.”

  He sighed. “So sue me. I want better for my kids than I had myself – is that so bad?”

  Once again he acted like he hadn’t even heard the word ‘write’. The second time I broached the subject he’d muttered vaguely about small towns and Emily Dickinson and changed the channel on the TV.

  “Fine,” I said, and went back into the store. There I would sit, I knew, hour upon hour, smiling vaguely at ‘just browsing’ customers who were trying to avoid my eye and my sales pitch. Not that my sales pitch was much good. While I usually knew the provenance and influences of a piece, I sucked at the hard sell. I needed several drinks before I was even halfway close to confidence.

  Besides, my best friend Courtney had always had enough confidence for the both of us. On my very first day at college, piled down with booklists and ID cards and with a howling pit of fear where my stomach used to be, Courtney came breezing into the hall like an even pinker version of Elle Woods, looked at me and said "Are you going to puke and should your face even be that color?"

  After a lifetime of people treating me like I was made of finest porcelain, her forthright rudeness had been a breath of fresh air. We had several classes together (freshman biology saw her even greener around the gills that I'd been the day we met) and sophomore year saw us sharing an apartment with a near silent Anglo-Indian med-student named Meera. It was lucky she was easy-going, since Courtney never went anywhere without a string of infatuated boys trailing in her wake. One flip of her long blonde hair and one flutter of her lashes and they were putty in her hands.

  In junior year one of the college's biggest football stars (and one of Courtney's ex boyfriends, natch) was diagnosed with lymphoma and there was a huge charity drive to raise money for cancer research. I remember the gasps when Courtney walked into class with her head shaved down the skin; she had donated her hair to a charity that made wigs for chemo patients. And yet with her high, wide cheekbones and sweetly tilted green-blue eyes she had looked as striking as Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection. When her hair started to grow back the resulting fine, feathery crop somehow made her look even more beautiful than before.

  The customers, a 'just browsing' couple in late middle age, offered me a sheepish smile and shuffled out of the store. I should have brought a book, or my Kindle - business was seriously slow for this stage of the summer, although the real big bucks were to be made in the fall, when half of New York, Boston and New Jersey came north to gawk at the leaves.

  Courtney, I knew, was in New York now - a location that coupled with her name seemed as strang
e as the surface of the moon. She was, in her own words, a Silicon Valley Girl, California from the top of her blonde head to the peppermint pink tips of her toenails. Her parents were super rich geeks, software developers who looked as though they couldn't quite believe they had produced the kind of girl who, at least superficially, resembled the ones who were mean to them in high school. I knew that thanks to them Courtney would never have ended up in one of those brown-tinged New York apartments that always looked as though they smelled faintly of canned soup, the kind of apartment that the heroine takes in Act One of rags to riches stories. All the same it was strange to think of her there.

  My phone rang and to my surprise, there was on her name in the window.

  "You're a spook," I said. "I was just thinking about you."

  She laughed. "I always said you were psychic. How's things?"

  "Oh, you know. The usual. Slow. Wooden. That's the magic of second-hand furniture."

  "Well, okay, so..."

  I couldn't help but laugh. The way she said a simple word like 'so' was weighted with funny memories. I remember playing her one of my Dad's old favorites - Frank Zappa's Valley Girl - when we were high as kites one time in Soph year. She'd laughed fit to pee her pants and her Moonunit Zappa impression was flawless.

  "...sooo," I mimicked.

  "So listen, you terrible wench. I thought it would be fun if I came up to Vermont for a long weekend?"

  "Oh my God, please. I'm going out of my fucking mind already. Make it a week. Make it two."

  She laughed. "Honey, I'd love to, but I'd be cutting it fine with three days as it is. It's everything they told you in The Devil Wears Prada and then some."

  "Ew. Really?"

  "You have no idea. If someone wants you then you have to be ready to jump when they say jump and ask how goddamn high. Lucette at the agency said that half the business of making it as a model in New York is making sure you are always available. There was this one girl last week, Kiki - she'd been penciled in to do a shoot for fucking Vogue, but on the day she got there and was too sick to work. Photographer didn't even blink. There was a replacement standing right there ready to go."

  "Sounds kind of harsh. Are you sure you can spare the time?"

  "No, but my sanity demands it. I spent all week shooting a commercial for a discount sofa chain. Do you know how difficult it is to sit on a couch and look like it's the greatest couch you ever sat on in your life? But in a subtle way."

  I laughed again, picturing a director in old-fashioned jodhpurs, yelling "LOVE THE COUCH! LOOK LIKE YOU LOVE IT!" through a bullhorn.

  "Okay, listen," she said. "I have to go, but I'll call you tonight to let you know more."

  "Okay. I'm so looking forward to seeing you. Hurry - before I die of boredom."

  I often said things like that; it was my way of tempting fate. You see, in books and plays when a character says 'Everything is going so well!' the convention of dramatic irony means this is the point where the reader realizes that character is well and truly fucked. Similarly when girls in novels say 'I'm about to die of boredom', or 'I believe I may expire from lack of diversion' (Regency romances and so on) that's usually the cue for the tall dark stranger to come striding in and sweep her off her dainty little feet.

  The trouble with fantasy is that it can only carry you so far, and the man who came next through the shop door was in no position to come and sweep me off my Doctor Martens; he was at least seventy-five and so unsteady on his feet I feared for some of the more delicate pieces. He was also 'just browsing'. After him came a young mother with a popsicle-smeared child, who was so sticky that she begged me to distract him for the ten minutes it seemed to take her to find the wet-wipes in her Manhattan-sized purse.

  This way I was kept pretty busy until it was time to close, in which time I'd only sold a self-published volume of local history for four bucks fifty, and that was only because Popsicle Mom felt guilty that her kid had got sticky red fingerprints all over it.

  I was in a bad enough mood when I went to announce the day's takings, but it took a turn for the worse when I went back in the workshop and saw my aunt there. Aunt Cassandra (never Cassie) was my Dad's youngest sister and in an unguarded moment he'd said that she'd never quite gotten over being the baby and the pretty one in the family. She was pushing forty now and her sylphish figure had given way to almost cartoonish curves. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a striped Breton t-shirt, and when she turned I saw the neckline was scooped low enough to give even Katy Perry cause to pause. The long bangs of her chin-length blonde hair were combed carefully upwards and trained to fall over her eyes in a Monroeish tangle; the other year on her thirty-sixth birthday she'd remarked that this was as far as poor Marilyn had come, at least in this life. Her boyfriend of the time failed to point out the comparison she was fishing for and so was now an ex-boyfriend.

  "Here she is," she said, when she saw me. "How's the next Great American novel coming?"

  Cassandra had always had a way of needling me, but it was like she knew that this was the particular combination of words that made my spine stiffen. The other favorite of hers was "Lacie is creative," the adjective larded with a mocking distinction.

  "I was minding the store," I said, trying hard to keep my cool. "Working."

  "Was it busy?" asked my Dad, looking up from the door he was sanding. I knew he was only asking because he wanted to know but right away I saw the flash of apology in his eyes when he realized he'd dumped me in it with Cassandra.

  I felt my lips form the word 'no' and Cassandra arched an eyebrow. "You could always write in the store," she said, with maddening predictability. "Everything has a keypad on it these days. Or just use a notebook. Have you heard of those? They used to have those back in prehistoric times, when me and your Dad were at school."

  I ignored her as best I could. "Dad - Courtney's thinking of coming up from New York for a weekend. I thought we might go up to Burlington. Can you spare me?"

  "Sure, Pumpkin. Which one is Courtney?"

  "The blonde. You met her at graduation."

  "The real pretty girl?"

  "That's her."

  "What's she doing in New York?" asked Aunt Cassandra, who was never happy unless comparing herself to someone else.

  "She's going to be a model."

  Cassandra shook her head. "Leaving it kinda late, isn't she? Most agencies like to start them at fifteen or younger, if they can get them. That way they can make sure they give up food before they develop proper curves."

  "Courtney's gorgeous," I said. "She'll do well."

  "It's not a case of gorgeous," said Cassandra. "Most times it's a case of thin." She spoke with a certain bitterness. She had won a beauty pageant as a baby and gone on to smile cutely in advertisements for apple-juice and jump about in neon-bright kids clothes. Her career had been cut short by her failure to grow much above five foot three, a trait I'd also inherited from my grandmother.

  "I'm glad you were too short for all that crap," she said, as if reading my mind. "It's no world for a young girl. From what I've read it's all heroin and eating disorders."

  "Jeez Cass," said Dad, who preferred not to hear about the seamier side of life.

  "What? They do. It keeps them thin. I'm told they shoot it in the soles of their feet so nobody sees the marks. Or under their toenails."

  I shuddered, my teeth itching at the thought of it. Cassandra laughed. "See?" she said. "There's always a bright side, Lacie. Sure, you're probably never going to set the world on fire but hey - at least you won't be shooting heroin under your toenails."

  Even my father winced at that one.

  I figured Aunt Cassandra was as good a person as any to blame that night, although part of it was Courtney's fault. After all, while Cassandra had made the remark that had rankled with me all week, Courtney was still the one who talked me into believing it was about time I wore a skirt.

  Well, kind of a skirt. As much as a skirt can be called such when it barely covers y
our ass and leaves your whole thighs on display. Before we left I'd almost believed I could get away with it, since Courtney had these amazing 'control top' panty hose that made my legs look pretty decent. And since I'd managed to get them on without sticking a finger through them or wrinkling my not-quite-dry nail varnish, I figured the omens were good.

  Courtney had bought miniature bottles of champagne for us to drink while we were getting ready to go out, a tribute to our freshman days when on big nights we had never left the house sober and always carried hip bottles of vodka to sneak into our Cokes. We would always drink through a straw - "It gets you drunker faster," - although four years later I'd still never taken the time to examine the science behind Courtney's theory. When we put straws in champagne it came frothing up the straws and spurted out like a tiny, very expensive fire hose; we laughed as we tried to catch the ends of the straws between our lips.

  I was giggly before I'd even started drinking in earnest, and laughter is always a great confidence boost. So I guess that's why, when I stood in front of the mirror, that I'd been pleased with what I saw. My legs did look good. And my upper arms weren't nearly as bad as I thought they were. Courtney had taken hours working on my hair with expensive ceramic straighteners, as used by all the best hairdressers in Manhattan. Her suitcase was filled with things like that - just like her room had been in college. Everything she owned - the thick, soft brushes, the pearly-gold pots of bronzing powder, the gleaming goo of lip-gloss - all held the fairy-godmotherish promise of improvement.

  It was only when I was in the bar and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror that I realized I'd been a sucker. Midnight had struck early for my new sleek, sophisticated hairstyle. I'd gone out for five minutes with Courtney so she could smoke a cigarette and that five minutes had proved fatal. The kinks and frizz were returning with a vengeance.

  I'd been drunk enough on arrival to imagine I could blend with this crowd - the handsome young men and the doll-faced girls on their stilt-like heels, their shiny manes of pampered hair swinging between the wings of their delicate, half-starved shoulder blades. Courtney had told a guy named James that I was an English Major and from that moment on he wanted to talk about Fifty Shades of Grey, no matter how many times I said I hadn't read it.