by Lisa Acerbo
TWELVE MONTHS OF AWKWARD MOMENTS
by
Lisa Acerbo
TORRID BOOKS
www.torridbooks.com
Published by
TORRID BOOKS
www.torridbooks.com
An Imprint of Whiskey Creek Press LLC
Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Acerbo
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-68299-293-7
Credits
Cover Artist: Kelly Martin
Editor: Katherine Johnson
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Dominique—the best daughter and all the motivation I need.
Prologue
There was never supposed to be a fairytale chance that I’d be the one in serious trouble. I’m the studious introvert. The college student who actually went to school to get a degree in something I love. The rule follower. The good girl. The last one asked to the party.
Evil doesn’t care when bad things happen to good girls.
Someone like me isn’t supposed to have a stalker, a man who makes panic track through me like a virus, a man who devours me like the cat in the Grimm fairytale. But here I am.
I try to twist my head away, his palm smashes into my face, hitting my cheek and ear. Pain rings through my head. He draws back, knowing I’m trapped in my own living room. Dread coils in my stomach. Nausea ripens like week-old bananas.
“This is what you want.” He spits the words. “This has always been what you wanted from the first day we met. I hate when women play games. For a while, I believed you might be different, but you’re not.” He inches towards me again, his fist raised, clenched and trembling.
I’m unable to speak. I gag on my breath.
“Or is this what you want?” His hand squeezes my arm so hard, I yelp.
One small part of my brain realizes this might be my last chance to act. A sob escapes as I rip my arm away and run. But where can I go? I’m terrified of what follows.
“Damn it, Dani! There is nowhere to go. What do you think you’re trying to do?” His voice is placating and whiny at the same time. Time slows as I sprint from the living room to the bedroom. My thoughts flee back to my ordinary life a few months ago.
Chapter 1
August 21
Family drama is normal, or you think it is when you’re growing up. As a young child, you believe others share similar experiences. Every person has an eccentric uncle who can no longer take care of himself, or a father who needs medications with names you cannot pronounce. You envision all children having the freedom to ride their bikes for hours or play in the woods without anyone checking up on where they have escaped to or who they are consorting with. All children live with craziness. It’s perfectly normal. Right? You’re wrong. It’s shocking when you enter a friend’s house, observe the stately decor, have a delicious, home-cooked meal, and realize your life is nothing like theirs. You want a do-over.
* * * *
My cell phone rings. Disoriented for half a heartbeat, I swim out of the tangled sheets and gaze blurry-eyed at the screen, only to realize it’s not even nine in the morning. A groan escapes.
Mom. I don’t have to see the number to know. She is the only person who’d call me this early. I’m sleeping in the same house as her. Not a giant house, mind you, just an ordinary two-story, three-bed, one-bath in the suburbs. Mom is just downstairs in the kitchen, maybe twelve whole feet below me. She could easily traipse up one flight of stairs. But no, she calls to wake me.
“What?” I ask after I answer the phone. My first words of the day come out grumpier than intended, but, hey, she’s the one who called.
“Listen, Dani, I realize you were up late packing for college, but we have to be at the doctor’s office at ten and then meet Uncle Ed for lunch. He wants to say goodbye before you head back to Central State.”
“Right.” I sit up straighter in the mess of sheets, pushing frizzy, coffee-colored hair with dyed blond ends out of my eyes. “I’ll be down soon.”
That satisfies her. I toss the phone on the nightstand and thrust the bedding away.
A whine emerges from the bottom of the bed.
“Hey, Bitsy.” I find the long-haired terrier cocooned in the sheets. “Sorry. Guess you were sleeping good, too.” The words earn me a tail wag.
After a quick belly rub, I scoot Bitsy off the bed and let her scamper out of the door. This morning, I’m ready for my last year of college at Connecticut Central State College to start. I had spent the summer with the family. Coming home was fine, mostly boring, but leaving makes me nervous. Packing my duffle bags yesterday and contemplating heading back to college made my vision blur and my breath come in gasps.
“Today will be different,” I console myself as I stretch and prepare for the appointment, putting thoughts of moving back to college out of my mind.
I sit at my desk and apply makeup in a small mirror. The Red Hot Chili Peppers thrum through my earbuds. It’s easier to get ready here than to share the single downstairs bathroom with Mom and Bob. A picture of me in my high school cap and gown, surrounded by my few friends, sits on the desk. I’m staring straight into the camera while my friends make goofy faces or duck lips. The picture feels like a distant memory after three years of college. In the mirror, I can also see my favorite novels, the ones I couldn’t get rid of, piled high on top of the brown bureau.
I focus and apply liquid eye liner to hazel eyes colored like a butterscotch candy with flecks of green and gray. Armored for the day with Cleopatra eyes and cherry red lips that amplify my pale skin, I slink into black skinny jeans and brown boots to complement my beige T-shirt. I brush my curls, taming them before heading downstairs.
“How are you?” Mom scrutinizes me as I enter the kitchen. She flips the French toast on the stove without a backward glance. Her salt-and-pepper hair is close-cropped, and at five feet five inches, she’s shorter than me. She’s plump around the middle, and her mom jeans accentuate this. Otherwise, she’s in good shape.
My stomach growls at the smell of frying butter, bread, and eggs. “I’m fine. Don’t burn the food.” I say this out of habit. She’s notorious in the family for destroying innocent meals, turning nutritious edibles into fossilized charcoal briquettes.
“I won’t.” Mom purses her lips. “You sure you’re feeling okay?” There’s a hint of concern buried under her morning cheerio cheerfulness.
“I’m fine.”
But I contemplate the previous evening when she came in my room to say goodnight. Being chatty thanks to a little too much wine, she tried to tell me a story about her book club, but I brushed her off, saying I needed to be alone to finish my school packing. It was more important. When I finally found my bed, I stared at the ceiling for hours, racked by guilt.
“Sorry I was rude last night.”
“I know it’s just your…” She searches for a word she doesn’t think will offend me. “…n
ature, dear. Remember, I’ve lived with you a long time.” She hands me a plate of French toast and moves in for a morning hug.
“Please, no.” I sound like a petulant three-year-old.
“You love it.” She laughs off my discomfort and squishes me to her.
“I do, but we’ve already hugged a million times this year.” I balance the plate of food in one hand.
“One more can’t hurt.” As usual, she’s right.
I squeeze her back, and my eyes tear up a tiny bit. I blink a couple times and blame it on being overtired.
Her smile when she releases me is sad. “Let’s chat.” She sits down in one of the four hard-back, scratched chairs.
A place setting waits for me as I ease down next to her. I slather my French toast with syrup and slice it into pieces. “About what?” I ask with my mouth full.
“We need to talk about meds,” she says.
“What about them?” I shrug off the idea.
“Do you want to start them again, even if it’s only short-term? This summer hasn’t been a good one, especially after all you had to deal with thanks to your father. I’m sorry I can’t help more, but the restraining order and all…”
“No! I told you, I’m done with medicine.” I sit straight and jam my fork into a piece of toast. It oozes syrup.
My life has been transformed by anxiety. Having lived as a partner to it for years, my mom understands how a change like heading back to school or problems with my dad affect me. And that’s why I’m visiting the doctor. A therapist, to be exact.
“Just asking.” She doesn’t make eye contact. “Don’t chew my head off.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t be sorry, be okay.” Concern is etched in every word. “Let’s get going then. Appointment first and then grab some food with Uncle Ed.”
“No coffee?” I ask as I thrust my half-finished plate aside. I’m not really hungry anymore.
“We can get it on the way.”
When we stroll into the non-descript office in the non-descript complex, we both hold large coffees. The waiting room walls are white, the leather couch brown with a beige cushion. A dispenser for hot and cold water is against the wall, with cups, tea packets, sugar, and milk substitute. The only vibrant colors are on a vase made with brightly-colored string woven together. It stands tall and stiff in its hourglass form on a side table, plastic yellow daffodils exploding from the inside of it.
Sandra Piccolo, my therapist, poses in the entrance of her office. Her previous patient has exited through the door in back for privacy.
“Norma, Dani. How are you?”
Her smile is bright. She’s young and perky for a therapist. Her shoulder-length, dark-blond hair bobs in a high ponytail as she strides toward us, hand extended. After being saddled with dour men gazing at me from behind horn-rimmed glasses or old women who should have retired years ago, Sandra is a pleasant alternative, and the one reason I let Mom drag me to the appointment before leaving for school.
“Together or separate today?” Sandra asks.
“Just me,” I say. Most times, I have a session alone, but once in a while, my mom needs to talk it out as much as, if not more, than I do.
Sandra and I enter her office, which is decorated in a similar manner to the waiting room except for the shelves full of toys. Legos sit next to crayons and markers, stuffed animals, and dolls.
Sandra deals with a lot of children.
I am a little old to be here, but I sit on one of the couches and grab a pillow to hug. It comforts me.
“How’s it going?” Sandra asks.
I’ve done this enough to know that if I say, “good,” she will ask me what is keeping it from being great. I try and be more specific. “I’m nervous about heading back to college, but I’m not as overwhelmed as other times. I’ve done this three times before.” I shrug. The waves of tension in my stomach make me sea sick.
My mind flashes back to my total disaster of a freshman year, which I wish I could have done differently. I stayed in my dorm room except for classes. Scared to make my way into the crowded, student-filled dining halls, I subsisted on Dunkin, Domino’s Pizza, and Subway for the first semester and gained my freshman fifteen. The isolation and anti-social behavior contributed to my remarkable lack of friends and made my roommate, a gregarious, former high school basketball player, slowly distance herself from me. We did not room together sophomore year.
But then I met my best friend Tanya in my Contemporary Literature class when she needed help decoding themes and symbols. She stuck to me like gum on my shoe, even when I explained my mess of a life. And here I am. If only I could return back to that time, redo things. Then I remember Sandra’s mantra to never go back, learn from the past, keep moving forward, and always strive to make the present better.
“That’s good,” Sandra says.
Her words pull me back into the present. “Yup.”
There is a pad of paper in her lap, and she’s rolling her pen between her fingers. “I sense a ‘but’ coming at the end of your sentence. Are you thinking about Jace?”
I take a minute to consider last year and my crazy, scarf-wearing ex-boyfriend. “I guess it’s still a little raw.”
Sandra’s eyes meet mine. “You both stopped calling and texting, right?”
I glance away. “That’s what I tried to do at the end of last year, but I saw Jace everywhere. At least it felt that way. It was scary.”
“Did he contact you over the summer?” She shifts towards me in her seat, concerned.
“No.” I avoid her gaze. The whole situation is so embarrassing.
“Then it’s time to change the tenor of your life.” Sandra fixes me with a sincere expression.
I stare. “Excuse me?”
“Move on. It’s senior year! Time to have fun.”
“That’s what I want to do, but the chance of running into him on campus makes me so anxious.” My shoulders sag when I think about the upcoming year. Could Jace be why I am so unsettled? “He’s so intense. Or at least he was when it ended.”
Sandra stretches out her legs and crosses the ankles. “Is this the only thing bothering you about senior year?”
I’m happy to change the subject. “I’m also worried about what I’ll do with an animal science degree. What happens if I can’t find a job at the end of the year?”
“You worked hard, and you’re great at planning for your future. You’ve been taking a lot of steps already to make sure you’re prepared. You’ve updated your resume and wrote a cover letter,” Sandra says. “While you can’t control everything life throws at you, I’m sure you will plan for the contingencies. How are the pro/con lists working?” She appraises me.
“Lists are good.” I can actually smile at myself, comfortable with my need to make lists. I use pro/con lists as one strategy to control my anxiety. Any type of list makes me feel organized and more in control. We talk about these and other strategies and then the conversation turns to a personal nature.
“Have you been dating?” Sandra asks. There is a sparkle in her eyes.
I peer down at my hands, needing to twist my fingers together, ashamed even though I have no reason to feel that way. Before Jace, my previous sophomore relationship with Bogden met its untimely demise at the end of that year. “I plan to make dating more of a priority this year, but no, not much.”
“Why not?” she asks. Her smile is genuine.
“I’ll just ruin it like I did with Jace and Bogden.” My hands twist like a snake.
“Nothing is ever one person’s fault,” Sandra says, sounding wise and mature, everything I am not.
“I don’t know.” I wait a beat and then the words tumble out. “I tried dating after Bogden. It was a mess. After every date, I’d stay awake all night, tossing and turning, reliving every moment, wondering how the guy felt about me or if I said something stupid. Then Jace came along, but that ended worse than I could’ve ever imagined.”
“What you need to r
ealize,” Sandra pauses to make sure I’m listening, “is that everyone has horrible dates, and everyone says stupid things. It’s part of the process. It’s part of being human.”
I understand this on a rational level, but that doesn’t matter. I wasn’t born under a lucky star. I’m no Cinderella and have a lot of work to do on myself. “But does everyone stay awake all night, questioning their dating skills? Can people concentrate in class the next day because they haven’t heard back from the guy, and all these horrible thoughts take over?” I shake my head. Those thoughts make me fidgety and uncomfortable.
“You are more normal than you give yourself credit for.” Sandra scoots her chair closer. “Anxiety in the beginning stages of a relationship can be a struggle, but there are strategies to deal with the feelings just like you do in other areas of your life. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I can ruin things before they begin,” I say. “What if I make the same mistakes over and over again and end up an old lady alone with one hundred cats?”
Sandra laughs. “I guarantee that will not happen to you.”
“Dating is so hard. If I actually get excited about a date, I’m sure they’ll cancel or run out in the middle of it. I’ll be obsessing on my phone for hours beforehand, waiting for the text or message saying it’s not happening. I’ll screw it up.” I throw up my hands in frustration.
“Do you listen to me?” Sandra asks the question with a smile so I will realize she isn’t taking me to task. “It is never one person’s fault. You aren’t the only one in the relationship. That’s the part you keep forgetting.”
“I just feel like no one wants to get involved with someone with so many issues and such a messed-up family. They’d have to be a saint or something.”
“Lots of families have problems. That’s why I’m in business.” Sandra’s laugh is warm and friendly like gentle sun shining in a window. “But you’re a caring, beautiful young woman. Don’t sell yourself short.”
