There were so many things popping into Emily’s mind that she wanted to do and see that she started to get overwhelmed. She decided to make a list since she would never see all the sites without getting them out of her head and on to a piece of paper. There were some other things on there too like buying some new clothes, getting a hair cut, etc. that she had neglected to do over the years but wanted to make sure she stayed on top of. The list took her all of five minutes to do but she knew the longer she lived in the city the more things she would find out about and want to add to the list. But before she headed out she took a pen and crossed through the top thing on the list. Some things were more important than waiting for a plan because sometimes the universe just knows.
Emily smiled and picked up her phone ready for this specific baby-step before she made her way out to the park. She scrolled down through the numbers and pressed send. The phone rang a few times, and Emily’s heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t believe that today was the day she decided to make such a huge change in her life. Bridgette was not only a professional role model, a personal friend, but she was also a shining beacon showing Emily the path out of her rut, her tunnel vision, and her wastefulness of life and towards the future where she learned you don’t have to settle for just one thing. Fulfillment seemed as if it was the key to everything that Emily had missed in her messages to herself. While she was busy planning every step of her work she completely missed out on everything else calling her name. Emily was shaken from her thoughts by an answer on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Rosalie?” Emily said. A smile lit up on her face, and she was determined to have it all, something she never thought she could have.
Emily’s life was changing into something amazing and the crazy thing is she didn’t even know she needed the change. As she sat in her New York City apartment talking to the first girl who ever stole her heart, the world was really starting to beat around her.
Bridgette had been her key, and though she was on a long flight to the city of love, a part of her would always be sitting right there with Emily. And who knew what would happen, maybe Rosalie would feel the same exact way.
The End
I wanted to thank you for taking the time in reading Price of Love. We hoped you enjoyed reading this happily ever after story.
It brought me great joy to write this as I love writing stories that entertain readers and draws them into another world with characters you love and hate. They say great books are those that evoke emotion out of you and I hope that’s what it has done for you.
Thank you once again, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Rescuing Her Heart
A Lesbian First Time Office Romance
By Elle Crosby
© Copyright 2016-2017 by Elle Crosby
and Second Chances Press
All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited, and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher. Names and persons in this eBook are entirely fictional. They bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead. To protect the privacy of certain individuals the names and identifying details have been changed. This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but we can’t allow ourselves to get caught up in it. Looking back on my life now, there were so many indications, hints, and clues that the path I put myself on was not necessarily the one I should have been on.
I was raised by liberal creative parents, who would have been willing to accept me whatever form I took. My father taught English at the university in our town, and my mother was a sports journalist, traveling the state and country several times a week to report on whatever sport needed her attention. Hindsight being what it is, I think my mother’s job was what created the distance between her and her children, me in particular. Most days she missed breakfast, dinner, bedtime and the little things we all take for granted.
My mother loved the rest of her family and me, but she loved her career too, and despite the glaring gaps between her and her children, my father would not allow her to quit.
He would always say to us, “Your mom is more than just your mother.”
She was. She was an award-winning journalist, a vagabond, and a free spirit. She did not fit the stereotype of the other Stepford women who lived around my father, and we did not fit the male stereotype of the men around us.
For one, my dad didn’t drink beer, preferring wine and whiskey. He preferred to taste what he was drinking, to hear the story behind the grapes in the bottle. He would tell us that the men in the town enjoyed beer because it was a bland and got you drunk fast.
“Fine wine,” he would say, “opens up your senses, tingles your creativity and allows you some headspace to relax.”
Whiskey was the drink of choice after a bad day. “The edge needs to be taken of this day,” he would proclaim.
Thankfully, he didn’t have too many bad days, averaging two a month. Socializing in my town, particularly for the men, was based around the bars and sports. Despite falling insanely in love with, marrying and procreating with a sports journalist, my father had no interest in sports whatsoever. We were atypical, and we loved it.
Then how did I become so conservative, so wrapped up in what everyone thought of me, in what everyone believed I should do and should be doing? Other children were being abandoned in front of their televisions, watching a variety of teenage shows that promoted heterosexual relationships and women as a stay at home mothers who lived to please their husband and children.
I was never granted that opportunity in my own house. My father never watched television. He harbored a deep-seated hate for, what he called, “the trollop that has the nerve to center itself in every living room in our country.”
He would spend his time reading, listening to music, playing his piano, or watching films. He would tell us about the different types of love and relationships that people can have in their lives. He would encourage us to read, to write, to ask questions. He would remind us that we could be whoever we want, and that caring too much about what others think is all that would stand between us and who we wanted to be.
My oldest brother left for college when I was nine, and the next one left when I was eleven, so for a long time, it was just my parents and me in our house. The years after my brothers left were the years that strengthened the relationship between my dad and I. My mother had gotten promoted and worked out of town from Monday to Thursday. I remember on the first week of her new job my dad took me out for dinner and promised me he would work hard on not making me socially awkward. He laughed and told me I was doomed on account of there being nobody else in the house to listen to him ramble on. Little did he know I was thrilled to not have to share him.
My early teenage years were bizarre. I struggled to relate to anyone in my school and found socializing tiresome. The girls my age were completely obsessed with attracting boys and created a battlefield to win the affections of the most popular ones. Skirts got shorter, and tops got tighter as we aged, and we became more and more dependent on what males thought of us. I felt uncomfortable, not just at being surrounded by girls who craved the attention of boys so desperately they were willing to physically and emotionally abuse their friends, but at knowing there was more to life than this. Perhaps I wise beyond my years, but I had read enough and been taught enough by my parents that grappling for sexual justification is not the secret to finding happiness.
Valentine’s Day was carnage at school. The build-up would start not long after New Year’s, (another day which y
ou dare not be single), reaching its climax somewhere around February 10th. If you weren’t lucky at finding a Valentine by then, the chances of finding someone by the 14th were slim to none. Valentine’s when I was 15 was the start of my solitary social confinement. Some things occurred that did not fit within the realms of the schoolgirl psyche.
When confronted in the corridor about who I hoped to receive a gift from, my response sent shivers down the spines of my peers. “Nobody, I don’t care about Valentine’s at all,” I told her. Her jaw, quite figuratively, hit the floor. Realizing she had no retort to my statement, she left. With every step she took down the corridor, she spread the word that I didn’t care about Valentine’s. Within minutes, the popular girls had gathered around me, vying for information. I explained to them that loving yourself meant much more to me than depending on other people’s perceptions.
“You are a COMPLETE freak,” Queen Bee told me, laughing and looking towards her minions for reassurance. “Yeah,” they jibed, “you are a total freak, who would ever love you?” they said, cackling at this point.
I tried to ignore it, to not let their words sit in my head. I wanted to stick to my guns, stick to my beliefs. The school is a terrible place to be when don’t follow the crowd, but I didn’t want to let them win. I maintained my stance that I didn’t think Valentine’s was a big deal, but my internal monolog was calling me a freak, much like Queen Bee, and I could feel myself cracking. Valentine’s Day came around, the school was decorated with pink, red and white love hearts.
Girls began streaming in, also dressed in various shades of pink, red and white, some wearing quite an intense layer of fake tan and foundation, bounding towards their lockers to see if their Valentine had arrived. Keeping my head down amidst the jeers of “freak,” I walked to my locker where there was a little white card sticking out of the side. My heart dropped.
The popular group who had been so repulsed by my lack of Valentine’s participation must have planted it there. My hesitance had been noted by Queen Bee, who began marching in my direction.
“A card, freak?” she asked, her head hung to the side, rolling her eyes, disgusted at my very existence.
“Hysterical, Millie. I know it’s from you”, I responded, urging my voice to keep calm.
She frowned, and glared at me, “why would I send you anything?” she laughed.
With that, she came over to my locker, looked me up and down and grabbed the card before I could stop her.
Ripping the card out of its plain white envelope she began to cackle, “This is good. This is so good”.
My cheeks began to burn, had my father sent me a card, my mother, maybe one of my brothers?
“To Katie, I really admired how you stood up to those girls and told them that Valentine’s is ridiculous. I completely agree, but I’m going to take this opportunity to let you know I think you’re beautiful. Mai. MAI. You don’t like Valentine’s because you’re a dyke!”
That was when I became so cripplingly overwhelmed with worrying about everyone else’s opinion of me.
Mai never left my thoughts. I never thanked her for the card, in fact, I was incredibly cruel to her about it. I implied that she was obsessed with me, that she craved me, and I chanted along with everyone else who called her a dyke and belittled her for her sexual orientation.
Behind it all, I longed to tell Mai that her card, her declaration, her honesty had stirred sensations in me that had been lying dormant, waiting to be uncovered. I fought so hard against these sensations, against my curiosity, against feelings that felt so natural to me. Wanting to be liked, I went against my better judgment and fell into the exact path of life that my father had tried so hard to steer me away from.
I abandoned books for an excessive amount of clothes and makeup, spent as little time as possible with my father knowing that he could talk sense to me. My evenings were spent lingering around public spaces with other girls, vying for male attention and belittling the uglier of our peers.
The girls I made acquaintance with shared the same goals as the women on the television shows my father had forbidden me to watch. These girls cared very little about their academic careers and more about finding a man to please and a man who could buy them a nice house, and a nice car. Their goals soon became my own.
Chapter Two
One Friday night, at the tender age of 17, my father asked me if I would stay in with him and my mother and watch a film.
“I don’t enjoy the person you’re becoming, Katie,” he told me.
My heart crushed, but I rebelled against him. I felt that the person I was, the person I could have become, was not a person who would succeed in life.
“You don’t need a man to live a happy life, Katie. What happened to your dreams of going to college, your wanderlust, your self-preservation? Look at you! Look at what you’re wearing. That’s not who you are. That’s not my little girl”, tears were filling up in eyes and my own.
Perhaps it was the certainty that my father would always love me and the uncertainty that my acquaintance would that made me say what I said. I’ll never truly know why, but I will always regret it.
“I’m not your little girl, Dad. You made a promise that you wouldn’t make me weird, but that’s all you did. I was weird, now I’m not. Now I’m normal and have a chance at living a normal life”, I screamed.
He turned away and closed the door to his study behind him. Our relationship from then became nothing more than pleasantries.
I met Robbie when I was 18. He was in his final year of Law and tipped to graduate top of the class. He was, as my acquaintances called him, a Grade-A Catch. Getting Robbie to would mean a nice house, a nice car, a beautiful wardrobe and beautiful circle of acquaintances. He would create a comfortable existence for me, and I would create a beautiful home for him.
Millie, the most vocal of all my acquaintances, was so impressed with my catch that she asked me to ask Robbie if any of his friends would be interested in her. Such was my success that she wanted to mimic me, the freak. I was so elated at the prospect of being considered a success that I worked harder on suppressing my desires for Mai and convinced myself that I would much prefer a sexual relationship with a man.
My mother was insistent that I get a college degree, regardless of what the degree was in. She told me that finding employment would be impossible it I didn’t have one. I laughed in her face, in such an obnoxious manner, and informed her that getting a job was not an issue for me.
I would marry a wealthy man and never have to worry about having a job, a career. My mother, the woman who had carved a path in a professional Vista traditionally dominated by men. Who acknowledged that she wanted love, family, and a career and made all three work harmoniously?
The woman who never thought she would have to convince any of her children that they needed a college education and career aspirations. Infuriate, she lashed out, hitting mine across the cheek. “We have done everything for you. We created a balanced environment for you and your brothers to ensure that you never succumbed to what society expected of you and that you would become your own person.
“We put a roof over your head and food on the table, and this is how you repay us?” she shouted, every bone in her body shaking.
I had my hand cupped to around my cheek. It pulsing from the sheer force that went into her slap. I didn’t say anything to her, and much like my father had done the previous year, my mother turned her back to me and walked away. That night was the first night I had sex with Robbie.
Chapter Three
I went to the house he shared with some of his college friends. I asked him if he had any alcohol, hoping for something strong. He came back into his bedroom with a bottle of wine.
“I’m not sure about this, it could be awful,” he laughed handing it to me.
I poured a bit into my glass, swished it around the glass to open it up a bit. I brought the glass up to my nose taking in what the wine had to offer.
It smell
ed fantastic, “Dark cherries on the nose with the faintest hint of vanilla behind it. Exactly what you would expect from a Rioja”, I told Robbie before taking a sip.
“Oh, a connoisseur are we?” he asked with one eyebrow arched.
“Well, not particularly, but my dad has a big interest in wine, so he taught me a lot. Taught me mostly when to know a bad bottle”, I told him, feeling a pang of guilt at the mere mention of my father.
“Well,” he started sitting down on the bed, “you’re not as common as I assumed. There won’t be much training you in, will there?” he laughed.
The guilt inside me was growing stronger. I realized now that I was as much of a game to Robbie as he was to me. It suited Robbie to marry a little below him and to marry a woman who would simply be a housekeeper cum mother to his children.
At that point, I should have bolted, run for the hill, begged my family for forgiveness and applied to any college that would have me. But I didn’t. I was so consumed with what the rest of the world thought of me that I didn’t allow myself to accept my family despised me.
I should have defended myself, and my family, when Robbie said I wasn’t as common as he had thought. I should have told him how wonderful my parents were, how intelligent they were, how successful my brothers had become in their chosen fields. I stayed quiet.
One Little Letter_A Bad Boy, Second Chance Romance Page 54
