EXCERPT FROM THE ORIGINAL SUMMER SERIES
(before it became A Little Like Destiny):
The Original Prologue
© Lisa Suzanne 2017 [Unedited]
Have
you ever created a profile on one of those dating websites?
Me
neither.
Yet
I have one.
One
night when I drank too much wine, my best friend talked me into creating a
profile. Tired of being single and having exhausted the familiar haunts near
home, Jill thought it would be “fun” for us both to get on one of those sites
just to “see what happens.”
She
started firing off the questions at me. All I wanted to do was get drunk on
wine in peace, but we had both just gotten out of relationships and she was
determined for us both to jump back in.
I
wasn’t sure why.
I
was kind of happy just being single for a while. My heart had been broken when
Justin, my ex-fiancé, ended things a few weeks earlier. We were planning our
wedding, ready to make that lifelong commitment to each other, and he
apparently got scared.
I’d
been fairly numb ever since.
But
back to this dating profile thing.
“I
filled in the basics, but I’m gonna read them back to you just to make sure I
didn’t make any mistakes. Okay?” Jill asked.
“Jill,
this is stupid.”
“Your
name is Reese Jensen and you are twenty-four. You live in Tempe, Arizona. You
have long blonde hair, blue eyes. You’re 5’8” and you have huge tits and a nice
ass and you’re kind of a bitch.”
“Perfect.”
“You’re
not even listening to me.”
“That
is correct.” I flipped indolently through the copy of the US Weekly magazine sitting on the end table, stopping to study a
picture of Mark Ashton. He was my number one celebrity crush and lead singer of
my favorite band, Sugar Grove.
“Ideal
man?”
I
held up the magazine to show her the picture of the sexy rock star, and we both
sighed dreamily. He was her number one celebrity crush, too. He took first
place on both of our “Lists” – you know, that list of five celebrities who you
could screw with no consequences if the opportunity ever came up.
“Let’s
look at his Twitter and see if there have been any updates today,” I said.
“You’re
too obsessed.”
“You’re
no better.”
“You’re
right. I looked about an hour ago. He’s got a show in Nashville tonight.”
Even
though I wanted nothing to do with the online dating profile she was filling
out for me, she still managed to make me laugh. Jill always managed to elicit a
giggle out of me no matter what was going on in my head. That’s probably why we
had been best friends since we met on our very first day of kindergarten nearly
twenty years earlier.
“First
question: Do you like to plan? Scale of one to five with five being that this
really describes you,” Jill said, reading from my laptop.
“Are
you kidding me?”
“Answer
the question.”
“Five.
I’d be the worst fucking teacher in the world if I didn’t do things according
to a plan.”
“And
if you used that language in the classroom,” she countered. She had a point.
When I drank wine, the f-bombs tended to emerge a bit more than when I was in
front of a classroom full of fifteen-year-old sophomores.
She
scanned the questions, clicking buttons.
“What
are you clicking?” I demanded.
She
laughed. “You don’t seem to into this, so I'm just taking care of some of the
basics.”
“Great.
I’ll end up getting winked at by some circus freak who has a foot fetish.”
“Could
be worse. Here’s a good question: What’s a piece of advice your mother gave you
about dating?”
“Jesus.”
I thought about my mom. She was endearing, really the best mom in the world,
but she was too innocent for her own good. My younger sister and I used to say
the dirties things we could think of in front of her to see if we could get a
rise out of her, but we never did… because she didn’t know what any of it
meant. My personal favorite was when my sister told me she was going to “donkey
punch” me if I didn’t stop teasing her, and my mom thought that meant she was
going to kick me. Urban Dictionary had become my best friend as my sister and I
traded insults back and forth.
“How
is Barb?” Jill asked.
“Good.
She and Tom are heading to Vegas for the weekend.”
“They’re
adorable.”
“They’re
not your parents,” I grumbled, but she was right. My parents were pretty
adorable.
“So…
advice your mom gave you?”
I
had to think about that one. It seemed like the only advice I could pull up on
the spot was stuff about personal hygiene or keeping my house clean. “Put
lotion on your face every night!” “Mop once a week!” “Sheets twice a month!”
Stupid shit I probably should’ve paid more attention to as I glanced around at
my floors. It was really time to sweep.
At
least I listened to piece about lotion. And the result? No wrinkles. Yet.
“Got
one. ‘Don’t talk to strangers.’ Following her advice, I don’t know if putting
my profile on a dating site is such a great idea.”
“You’re
impossible sometimes. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,”
I smiled. “I know. That’s why you love me.”
Jill
smiled affectionately at me. No one knew me better than she did, and I was glad
to have a best friend who was like a sister to me. I had my real sister,
Rachel, but she was off in Dallas living her own life, working as a buyer at JC
Penney’s corporate headquarters, and I was stuck at home, chilling with my BFF
on a Friday night after a long, demanding week of teaching.
Summer
was less than two months away, and never had I been more ready for the break.
Jill
shut the laptop, finally giving into what I had been wanting for the past half
hour. “Dance Party?” she asked.
I
grinned. Dance Party was a stupid, girly tradition we had made up when we
roomed together at Arizona State University. When we were freshmen, I had a
crush on a guy and saw him making out with someone else at a party. I went home
dejectedly, and Jill blared my favorite music and danced around our room like
an idiot until I joined her. It became our thing. We danced every day that
year, and in some ways, it was meant to keep off the freshman fifteen, but in
other ways, it was meant to just be a fun time dancing with my best friend.
Anytime either one of us was sad, depressed, complacent, or just needed it back
when we were in college, we would have a Dance Party.
We
were older now, and we should have been long grown out of our Dance Parties. Jill
could always sense when something was up with me, though, and the cure for that
was dancing like idiots around my house.
She
stood up and walked over to my iPad, scrolling through my songs until she found
what she was looking for. I heard the familiar strains of Sugar Grove’s “In
Mexico,” an upbeat song that was a hidden track on their first album, blaring
through the speakers of my docking station. She came over to me and set my
wineglass on the table in front of me, and then she grasped my wrists and
yanked me to my feet.
And
suddenly we were dancing, belting out the words to our favorite song at the top
of our lungs.
“In
Mexico, in Mexico, the place where all the ladies go…” we sang. “Palm trees,
sunshine, everybody looking fine. Paradise, feeling nice, sipping whiskey over
ice. Heading there without a care, spending every summer in Mexico, in Mexico…”
“I
have a question and an announcement,” Jill said when the song was over.
Both
of us were breathless. I collapsed on the couch, trying to regain steady
breathing after jumping around like a maniac for the four minutes and
twenty-two seconds of my favorite song.
I
glanced over at her with a look of curiosity.
“Which
do you want first?” she asked.
“Announcement.”
“I
got a summer internship.”
“You
did?” I squealed. She had stayed at ASU to continue on for her Master’s degree
in Political Science, and she would be graduating the next month. “Congrats!
Where is it?”
“In
Mexico.”
“In
Mexico?” We both echoed the song we’d just been singing.
She
nodded. “It’s June and July. It’s an exchange program at Roca Hermosa’s Chamber
of Commerce. If it works out, I could end up with a job at the Phoenix Chamber
of Commerce.”
“Holy
shit, Jill! That’s the dream!”
She
giggled. “And I wasn’t sure if it would work out or not, but I figure, what the
hell? I want you to come with me!”
“To
Mexico?” I asked. The thought of just getting away from it all for the summer
sounded like heaven, and I had June and July off of work, anyway.
It
was an impulsive decision, but I really couldn’t think of any reason not to go
with my gut. “Where would we stay?” I asked, trying to maintain some semblance
of logic despite my sudden need to agree to this adventure.
“My
cousin’s beach house in Roca Hermosa.” She answered like it was obvious, like I
hadn’t been paying attention.
“Isn’t
she using it?”
“Nope.
She emailed me a few days ago. She said she’s working all summer and it’ll be
vacant.”
“I’m
in. Let’s do it.”
We
could figure out the logistics later. I was tired of mourning my broken
relationship with my ex, and an adventurous summer sounded like just exactly
wanted I needed.
“Really?”
Jill asked.
I
grinned, and it felt good to smile again after the fog of sadness had engulfed
me for so much of the past month. A trip to Mexico, a vacation for the entire
summer, gave me something exciting to look forward to, something to focus on
besides my breakup.
Maybe
even just looking forward to summer would be enough for me to stop thinking
about what went wrong with Justin.
Maybe
I’d find a way past the numbness I’d felt since he abruptly ended things with
me.
Besides,
what’s the worst that could happen?
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