Anyone up for reading 2k words of original fiction?
As most of you that know me know, I’ve been working on some original fiction that I hope to self publish sometime in the next year.
Well...I have the first 2,000 words of my debut novel ready to be read and would love to hear some feedback! This is just a little sneak peek, the prologue of my book, but I’d like to hear some honest feedback from my followers. For example, after reading these 2,000+ words, do you even care what happens next? Are the characters interesting? Funny? Lovable? Totally unrealistic? These are the things I’d like to hear from you!
What to know:
This is a second chance romance, set in flashback and present day form. Roxy is a college sophomore with big dreams and a ten year plan. When Silas, her summer fling from two years before, shows up in her life unexpectedly again she is forced to deal with the way she ended their relationship. New Adult/Contemporary romance that will be aimed for a mature audience. The sneak peek however takes place in a flashback, so it only contains strong language.
Any feedback is welcomed! If you love it, tell me! If you hate it, tell me! I’ll respond to any messages privately and just would love to hear what you have to think!
Prologue
Roxy
The summer before I turned eighteen started like every summer that came before it.
School ended, days turned hotter. Jeans and hoodies were traded in for short shorts and bikini tops. Cheap flip flops in every color of the sun stayed in a mismatched pile on the floor of my closet, their thin plastic straps threatening to fall apart every time I slipped my feet into a pair.
The sunny beach town where I’d grown up went through a transformation at the end of every spring. The first day of summer vacation was like a flood, visitors from all over the country pouring in, filling the cracks with their spending money and sunburned faces. Our businesses flourished while the townies complained. Townies like my parents and the self-proclaimed hippies they played bingo with every Saturday night of the off season.
The first day of that summer was brutal, in that the weather was too hot and the streets were too full. My white tank top was sticking to my skin and I regretted, not for the first time that day that I didn’t think to throw anything on top of it. Walking around half naked and sweaty was not my idea of a good time but neither was dying of heat stroke.
I waved to Mrs. McDougall, our eighty year old and slightly deaf neighbor, as I passed by her house.
“Good morning, Sherry!” She called out to me and I answered in kind, even though it was nearing two in the afternoon and my name is definitely not Sherry. My mother always told me to be nice to the elderly because one day I too would be eighty years old and slightly deaf, waving to neighborhood kids and calling them by the wrong name, and would I want them to treat me poorly?
So I did what any nice person would do and I waved, said good morning as the afternoon sun beat down on my neck and continued my walk downtown.
Downtown Seaview, which isn’t really a downtown by any definition of the word, is a long stretch of beachfront shops, restaurants and hotels on the right with the wide expanse of the Atlantic on the left. Our tiny North Carolina town might be aptly named, albeit a little on the nose, but it’s a go to spot for the wealthy and privileged three months out of every year. The boardwalk dead ends at the main attraction, a 65ft Ferris wheel that conjures up memories of my childhood. My friends and I racing towards the entrance, our fingers sticky from cotton candy and our laughs loud enough to hear from the other side of the boardwalk. First dates with boys that didn’t know the first thing about kissing, but still tried when we reached the very top because it was romantic and cliché. Swirling lights, pinks and purples, blues and greens, lighting up my grin as I soared high over the little town that raised me.
I was born there, had lived there all of my life but I was determined not to die there. Unless a freak accident whisked me away from this Earth before my eighteenth birthday, I was getting out of that beach town if it was the last thing I did.
Not that I don’t love it because I do. I walked down the busy street, smelling the delicious smells of the boardwalk. Churros from Mr. Cruz’s beachside stand. The scent of fresh lemonade, always squeezed daily with just the right amount of sugar, wafted through the air when I passed Lucy’s Sweet Shop. Lucy Reynolds’ daughter Emma has been my best friend since birth. I saw her through the window of the little café and waved at her to come meet me out on the street.
“Where are you going dressed like that?” Emma’s eyebrows were up so far I thought they’d disappear into her hairline. “I thought you were starting at Mickey’s today?”
Mickey’s Ice Cream Shoppe, one of the oldest relics of our small town, had been my summer job for the past three years.
“I am,” I said, shielding my eyes despite the fact that I was wearing sunglasses. My five dollar aviators were no match for the sun that day. “You and I both know I’ll get stuck wearing the uniform de jour and frankly, it’s too fucking hot to wear anything else.” I looked down at my outfit, simple cutoff jean shorts, white tank and purple flip flops. “Why?”
Emma shrugged. “I’m just so used to you being all,” she waved a hand up and down in front of my body. “You know, buttoned up and not showing these off.” She poked me in the boob and I slapped her hand away.
“Well, it’s hot. Do you expect me to wear flannels? Leave me alone,” I said laughing. “Don’t you have some work to do?”
“Bitch, you called me out here,” she said with a chuckle as she headed back towards her family’s shop. “Stop by after work and I’ll hook you up with some fries.”
“Better make it a burger too,” I called as she skipped her way through the front door. “A burger, Emma!”
I laughed as I made my way back down to Mickey’s, not really paying attention to where I was walking because I had walked that same route practically every day of my life. And it was because I wasn’t paying attention that I walked smack dab into a wall.
Okay, not actually a wall but the chest I ran into was as hard as one.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Strong hands steadied me, warm palms grazing my arms, as the owner of the deep voice chuckled. “Alright there?”
“I’m fine,” I said as I pulled away. My skin tingled from his hands. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“No, it was me. I wasn’t paying attention at all. I’m sorry,” he apologized again.
When I finally looked up at him, and I mean I really had to look up because he was tall, I was stunned to see the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen smiling down at me. Dark hair, cut short on the sides but longer in the front, pushed out of his face in this sexy perfected way that made me want to bury my hands in it just to mess it all up. Honey brown eyes that were sparkling with amusement set under an arched eyebrow that screamed trouble.
Everything about this boy embodied money. From his designer board shorts all the way up to his two hundred dollar sunglasses. A soft grey t shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders and I briefly thought about how his shirt alone probably cost more than my entire outfit. Wealth clung to him like the expensive cologne I could smell when he leaned close to me.
“I’m Silas,” he said, holding his hand out in the space between us. He laughed when I looked at it like a foreign object, reached for mine and made a show of us shaking hands. “And you are?”
I’d seen guys like Silas before, hell I’d dated guys like him before. Gorgeous tourists that think pretty local girls are there for their entertainment like the jet skis they can rent down at the beach. I wasn’t looking for romance, not from him. Not from anyone.
“Late for work,” I retorted as I backed away from him, a slow smile forming on my face. “Nice to meet you, Silas.”
“That’s it?” He called after me as I turned around. “After almost knocking me over, I don’t even get your name?”
I snorted when I faced him again, my feet carrying me backwards without needing to watch my steps. “You ran into me, remember?”
“At least tell me where you work!”
A group of freshman age kids walked past him then and Silas scowled when they laughed at him, one of them coughing out the word, “Desperate!”under their breath before scurrying off towards the beach.
“I guess you’ll have to find me,” I said as I raised my hand in a wave. “Later, Silas.”
I left him stunned into silence and smiled all the way to Mickey’s, the small ice cream shop already packed full with a mid morning rush. On days like that, when the temperature reached ungodly levels it didn’t matter if it was eight in the morning or eight at night, everyone wanted ice cream.
“Morning, Louie,” I said as I lifted up the counter to head towards the back of the shop where the lockers were.
Louie Monroe, owner and proprietor of Mickey’s, grinned at me as I walk past him. “Morning, Sailor. How’s my favorite employee doing this morning?”
“Hey!” I laughed as Ronnie Miller, another Mickey’s alum, punched Louie in the shoulder. “I’ve been working here just as long as she has.”
“Sorry, Ronnie. I’m just prettier than you,” I teased before giving Louie a delayed glare. “And what I have told you about using my real name? It’s bad enough my parents named me that in a damn beach town, I don’t need the tourists thinking of me as some novelty item they can fawn over.”
Louie laughed as he motioned towards two girls I didn’t know that were scooping ice cream into waffle cones. “Then you’re going to hate today’s uniform.”
I groaned when I finally took in what everyone was wearing that day. Navy blue shorts with wide buttoned fronts, white shirts with red ties and actual sailor hats.
Fucking sailor hats.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, turning to glare at Louie who was now bent over laughing so hard his face was as red as the raspberry ice cream we sold out of every day. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s in honor of you Sail…” I raised an eyebrow and he conceded. “Roxy, sorry. It was just a little joke to welcome you back. Uniform’ll change tomorrow, don’t worry.”
The only constant about working at Mickey’s was that there was no constant. Every day was like Halloween with a new theme and uniform to shake things up. Some days we wore crazy hats, some days we dressed like our favorite superheroes.
And apparently some days we dressed like fucking sailors.
“I’m only doing this because I need this job,” I said as I headed to the back where the lockers were. My locker every summer was number 21, which made no sense because there were only six lockers total. My sailor costume was hanging in the locker already, in my size, and I grumbled and complained the entire time I put it on.
My parents naming me Sailor wasn’t the only ridiculous thing they had done. They used to be investment bankers in New York but when my mother got pregnant with my older brother they decided to start their own business and work from home in the beach town my mother visited every summer as a child. When my brother was born my parents decided to name him Anchor, in honor of the ocean and their love of the water. Then came my older sister Coral and then finally me, Sailor Roxanne Reynolds.
It didn’t take me long to hate my name in a small town like Seaside. By the time I was nine I was going by Roxanne and by twelve I was just Roxy.
Which is why it annoyed me so much that Louie refused to call me by my preferred name. Being a townie in a beach town was bad enough. Add on top of that a novelty name and I was nothing more than a shiny seashell you could buy for twenty five cents at the corner gift shop.
But I wasn’t lying when I told Louie that I needed the job that summer. I was saving up to buy myself a car before college started and I refused to buy one until I earned every dollar myself. My parents had money, not a lot but enough to support our family in a tourist town year round, and while they would have happily purchased a car for me to take to Boston in the fall I wanted to earn it.
West Bridge University was my dream since childhood. I had everything planned down to the letter. Double major in psychology and criminal justice. Date a few cute boys, go to some parties. Graduate and become the best forensic physiologist in North Carolina. Live a long and happy life.
Easy, right?
So that day I stood in the back room of my neighborhood ice cream shop, my annoyingly accurate sailor costume in hand and vowed to work my ass off that summer to make my dreams a reality.
Come hell or high water, I was getting out of that town and nothing and no one was going to stop me.
