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Getting Ready
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All Grown Up At The Party
Audrey“I’m in flat shoes,” I reminded her. Her shoes. She shouldn’t need reminding.Annabelle shrugged. “Come on, get in,” she said, walking over to the van.I stared at the door that she held open for me. I wanted to argue, but the words wouldn’t come. And anyway, I could tell that this was the kind of battle that I just wouldn’t win.I slipped inside. When Clayton put it in drive, the van lurched, and I winced. It made a terrible sound as it drove through town, and I felt more and more embarrassed. Finally, we came to a sputtering stop outside the bar. People were definitely staring as Annabelle and I got out.I cringed, but I was surprised to see that Annabelle didn’t seem to care about the attention. Instead, she smiled and chatted to a few people she knew, talking about how nice the evening was and how good it was to be done with winter finally.We headed inside. Gabby’s was nicer than Finnegan’s, but it was still definitely a dive bar by anyone’s reckoning. You would never find
All Grown Up Buy Her a Drink
JesseI glanced around as I walked into Gabby’s with Joe. I still couldn’t believe that I had let him talk me into coming out with him. The Long Blue or not, was it really worth it? Sure, this place wasn’t too terrible, all things considered. A bit loud. And probably only going to get louder as the night went on. I recognized nearly everyone in there. It was a pretty good crowd, though, especially for a Sunday night. Not like anyone had anything else to do on a Sunday night in Aberdeen.But I couldn’t help remembering what Joe had said about getting me to dance with someone pretty. I was so not interested in that tonight.We grabbed drinks first and chatted for a minute with Annabelle Buchanan. God, when had she gotten old enough to serve drinks behind the bar? I’d known her back when she was a kid, but she’d been so much younger than me that I’d known her sister better. But Audrey disappeared when she went off to further her ballet career, and I doubted we’d ever see her around town
All Grown Up Matchmakers
JesseAudrey cracked a smile at that. “Sounds great,” she said. “Thanks.”I got her drink ordered and then sat back, unable to tear my eyes away from her. “So how long have you been back in town for?”She grinned again as she took a sip of her drink. “Long enough to have lunch at the Sub & Surf, but not long enough to run into anyone I know, I guess.” I laughed. “So, what, ten hours? The sub shop was probably the first place you hit on the way into town, wasn’t it?”“Nah, I went by Mom’s first,” Audrey said, laughing. “I got here yesterday evening, but I was pretty exhausted. Long flight.”“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said.“Wouldn’t have expected you to still be bumming around here,” Audrey said, peering at me. “Weren’t you voted most likely to, what was it? Get involved in an international bank heist and flee to a remote island with the authorities on your tail?”I gave a surprised laugh. “You remember that?” I asked. “I don’t even know how the hell that got into the nomination pool.”Audre
All Grown Up Time To Go
AudreyOf all the people to run into at Gabby’s, Jesse Miller was probably the last person I would have expected. I had never expected him to hang out around Aberdeen for as long as he had. I would have thought he would be long gone by now. But when he mentioned his dad dying and the fact that he had taken over the hardware store, it suddenly all made sense. Jesse had always been the sort of guy that you could rely on.And plans had a tendency to change.I tried not to be too gloomy, but I couldn’t keep thinking about my own change in plans. If I were back in Paris right now, I’d be asleep, just waiting for the next morning. Then I would get up, eat a light breakfast, do my stretches, and train like I did every morning. Part of why I felt so out of place here in North Carolina was because I was missing my routine. When had I become one of those people who couldn’t live without their routine? Where had my spontaneity gone?When Jesse asked me to dance with him, I leaped at the chance t
All Grown Up In Her Bedroom
JesseShe kept talking as I drove her home.“I can’t wait until summer,” Audrey said. “I’m going to go to the beach every day. Maybe I’ll start surfing again. The director would probably kill me if he found out about that. All my focus is supposed to be on dance. But you know, he told me to use this time to focus on my other hobbies, so it’s kind of his own fault.”I blinked over at her in surprise. I hadn’t expected that she would be sticking around for that long. Her still being there for the summer made me think that she must be retiring from dance or something. But then she had said that thing about the director being mad if she was focusing on something other than dance, so she must still be employed. It made me wonder.Audrey was still chattering away. “Surfing’s just like dancing anyway, isn’t it? Just a dance with the waves. And I bet my balance is way better now than it used to be. Bet I can do all sorts of tricks that I never used to be able to.” She frowned. “Of course, I’l
All Grown Up Not A Possibility
JesseI knew that I was going to get shit from Joe on Tuesday morning as soon as he showed up for work. He had been texting me since Sunday night, his texts getting increasingly lewd. My departure from Gabby’s with Audrey hadn’t gone unnoticed, and for the first time, I started to think about what the town would think. Everyone knew that she and I had been close before. Would they think that something more had happened?I felt embarrassed at the thought of it. Not because I cared what they might think of me but because Audrey didn’t need them all thinking that she’d slept with someone on her second night back. She didn’t need to be in the gossip mill already.Joe had had his day off on Monday, so I hadn’t seen him since Gabby’s. Now, I was sure that I would hear about his speculations in person.“There he is,” he said with a broad grin as he came in on Tuesday morning. He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’ve been quiet. You guys go for round two?”“There was never a round one,” I mutte
All Grown Up Not My Life
AudreyI wandered into a late breakfast on Wednesday morning. Annabelle was already at work at the bookstore, and I’d kind of been hoping that Mom and Clayton would leave as well. It wasn’t like I was trying to avoid the two of them. There was no avoiding them when we all lived together in such a small space. But I’d kind of been hoping to have a quiet breakfast by myself. A breakfast that my dietician would approve of, too.As it was, I was already starting to feel the effects of eating unhealthy food since I’d arrived here. I’d tried to limit myself, but there was only so much that I could do without offending Mom. I couldn’t seem to get it through her head that I couldn’t eat like I used to when I was a teenager. Not while maintaining the level that I wanted to maintain to go back and get the sort of roles that I wanted to.Of course, part of the trouble I was having at the moment was just motivating myself. Homesickness had sunk in hard, and I couldn’t help but want to be anywhere
All Grown Up Have To Get Back
AudreyI had to get out of the house, I decided. I couldn’t sit here wallowing, or I was going to drive myself crazy. What did I used to like to do around town when I was younger? I thought back.Then, the perfect idea came to me. I headed to Annabelle’s room. I thought about it as her room now, even though the queen-sized mattress had been temporarily removed and twin beds had been put back in, just like when we were kids.I perused the shelf of books that she had on display. There were tons of them. She said she got a lot of them for free for working at the bookstore. I hadn’t heard of half of them, but finally, I found one that I vaguely remembered having wanted to read at one point in my life. I grabbed that, dropped it into a bag, and headed into town. Even with my ankle, it wasn’t far to walk, and I used to do this all the time.I looked down main street, which looked different in the daylight than it had when I had gone out to Gabby’s the other night. I hadn’t really been payin
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