Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy by Jessica Pine Read Free Book Online Page A

Burlington?"
     Aunt Cassandra arched a well-waxed eyebrow. "You met a boy," she said. "Didn't you?"
     "No," I said, and it was the truth. He wasn't a boy. He was very much a man. And I didn't meet him. I fucked him. In a parking lot. Nope. Still didn't get any less weird saying that, even in my own head. Still weird and still thrilling. It was the kind of thing that happened in books and movies, not to me. I didn't even know his name.
     I went back to my laptop and feigned fascination in price-tickets. Maybe the font should be different. Was it Helvetica that drew hipsters like a fly on poop? And were rich hipsters really the kind to come storming north to stare at some leaves? Probably not, I decided. It was usually the over-forties, burned out workers desperate to make the most of that Labor Day last hurrah.
     Chopin was definitely too froofy, and Garamond done to death. That way led to death, destruction and Comic Sans, and nobody wanted that. I wondered what wild impulses possessed people whenever they settled on Comic Sans, or Papyrus. Presumably the same crazy bad-decision making that led others to think stirrup pants were due for a revival, or that banging total strangers in parking lots was a great idea.
     The worst part was that I didn't regret it nearly as much as I should. Secrets were a luxury in a town like this, and possessing one made me feel special. Besides, part of me wasn't even sure it had happened at all; it just wasn't the kind of thing I was supposed to do, getting drunk, getting high and hooking up in parked cars. But it had - I knew it had. It kept coming back to me in pieces - a frantic scramble of hands and thighs, the smoky taste of his mouth, the high-schoolish way he'd said 'It's okay - I'm clean', which was as deep a discussion of safe sex as we'd had. I knew it was stupid as hell but everyone else did it, didn't they? And they got away with it, so why shouldn't I?
     Like I said, Papyrus, Comic Sans, stirrup pants and parking lots; our lives are made up of these little wrong turns.
     I was preoccupied, trying to convince myself that Impact didn't make the tickets look like cat macros from about 2005 (I can haz anteek?) when a voice above me said "Whatcha doin?"
     It was such an uncustomerish thing to say that I didn't look up, or notice that Aunt Cassandra's voice had apparently broken since we'd last spoke about fifteen minutes ago. "I told you," I said. "Price tags."
     Then I noticed the hand on the edge of the counter, which definitely wasn't Cassandra's dainty little pink-tipped paw. It was long-fingered without being spidery, knotty without being gnarled, and it led to a graceful wrist lightly dusted with red-gold hair. As male hands went it was a beautiful hand, and as soon as I looked up it made a strange kind of sense that I should find it appealing. After all, I'd had it on me. In me. Oh shit.
     He stared at me for a moment and I wondered if I could brazen this out and pretend I hadn't recognized him. Or maybe he wouldn't recognize me; I'd been wearing a lot of make-up at the time and my hair had looked completely different.
     No. Didn't work. The arch of his eyebrows said it all. "Hel-lo," he said, stretching out the syllables and lending them the lilt of a playful question.
     "Hi," I said, and felt my face turn hot. The mouth/brain interface thing was clearly not getting any better because I heard the words "That is, I was. High, that is," come out of me without any intervention from my slipping sanity. "Very high. Blazed. Not that you're..."
     He held up a finger and winced. "Yeah. No. Please stop, because this is..."
     "Bad?" I said.
     "Horrible." He shook his head. In the cold light of day I saw his hair wasn't brown at all - rather a sort of dark auburn. His eyes were blue-green and although I didn't think he was much older than me I could already see how the fine laugh lines would one day deepen and set his expression to one of permanent gentle amusement. His smile