Why I Love Singlehood:
Read Why I Love Singlehood: Online
Authors: Elisa Lorello,Sarah Girrell
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Women
Why I Love Singlehood
(A Novel)
Elisa Lorello and
Sarah Girrell
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright ©2010 Elisa Lorello and Sarah Girrell
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonEncore
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN: 978-1-935597-57-5
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following deserve our eternal gratitude:
Terry Goodman, Sarah Tomashek, and the team at AmazonEncore for believing in our novel before they even saw a word of it.
Kate Hagopian (aka “Cool Kate”), who read the manuscript and gave us fabulous feedback.
Glenn Volkema, who gave us the guy’s perspective.
Eda Lorello, who was generous enough to share her home and heart with us.
Jim Paquette, whose profound patience, support, and ability to share allowed us to write.
Our parents: Michael and Eda Lorello, and Kris and Celeste Girrell, fans from the start.
The Lorello siblings: Michael, Bobby, Ritchie, Steve, Mary, and Paul.
Mary Mottola, who taught her granddaughter Elisa that the key ingredient in any recipe is love.
Rebecca Clark, equal parts friend and sister to Sarah.
The Undeletables, who made sure the coffee cups were full and were more often than not the intended readers.
Elspeth Antonelli, whose blog
It’s a Mystery
offered smiles and sage writing advice at just the right moments.
Numerous coffee shops in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, especially It’s A Grind! in Cary for their input and service, and Crema Coffee for making a vanilla chai latte as good as Mirasol’s Café and Uncle Jon’s in southeastern Massachusetts.
Libraries and independent bookstores everywhere, for all they do.
Kindle owners who put
Faking It
and
Ordinary World
on the map.
Our friends, families, support networks, creative minds that have inspired us throughout our lives, and all the other people who are forever in our hearts.
~ Sarah and Elisa, October 2010
With respect and gratitude for all of the teachers and mentors I’ve had over the years, especially:
Sue, who let me read in class,
David, who made classic lit cool,
Magali, who taught me to think,
question, and think again, and of course,
Elisa, who helped me find my voice.
~ Sarah
For my sister Mary, with love
~ Elisa
Contents
Valentine’s Day
I LOVE THE
smell of freshly baked anything.
Bread, muffins, cookies, cake—
especially
cake—the smells of vanilla and yeast and butter and chocolate can be an aphrodisiac one day, a childhood memory the next, a promise of prosperity the day after that. Freshly baked anything is the smell of love.
The scents of vanilla and hazelnut lassoed me in the parking lot and pulled me toward the open doors of my café, The Grounds. Rather than use the back alley entrance, I passed through the main door and was greeted by Spencer, Tracy, Jan, and Dean—the Originals—from their corner window table. As Spencer and Tracy resumed recapping last night’s episode of
The Office
, I passed Minerva buried under her anatomy books at the table directly across from them. She’d moved a vase of faux roses to the empty chair opposite her.
On my way to the counter, I stopped to re-stick the hand-made paper and lace doily hearts to the walls before moving on to the self-service bar and disposing of stray napkins, empty sugar packets, and used coffee stirrers. In the back corner near the entrance to the seldom-used reading room, Car Talk Kenny sat in his usual upright chair sipping a mocha hazelnut latte and scribbling something in the margin of the book he was reading. He looked up long enough for me to make eye contact and wave to him, which he returned with a grin.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Norman,” I called as I circled around and behind the counter, grabbing an apron from a hook on the wall.
“You’re early,” he called back from the kitchen.
“I missed you,” I teased.
“Good. You can start on the muffins.”
My afternoon shift underway, I immediately went to work on a batch of jumbo chocolate chip muffins while Norman took his break and the lunch rush slowed to a lull. Just as the muffins finished baking and I removed them from the oven—swollen, luscious, seductive—a college student and his girlfriend walked past The Grounds’s open door, arm in arm. I could see the moment they smelled it: his spine straightened, and she slowed to crane her neck in the direction of the doors. The girl stopped and pulled her young lover inside by his arm, her ponytail swishing back and forth. They held hands while I retrieved their order—hers, a sweet iced tea; his, a large black coffee that he nearly flooded with sugar—and a freshly baked muffin for them to share. He let go of her hand only to pay for the order while she held the muffin close to her nose, breathing in its scent, the pleasure registering on her face.
The Originals seemed captivated by the young lovers, conversation stopping momentarily in order to observe them. And yet, the couple remained unaware of their observers and exited The Grounds the same way they’d entered—blissful and obliviously in love.
“The Topic of the Day is first loves,” Spencer announced seconds later, his arm resting naturally around Tracy’s shoulders.
On cue, Dean spoke first. “Nineteen-ninety. I was eleven. Janet Jackson in that video that’s all sepia-toned, after she lost all that weight and got really buff. I think I became a man that night.” He turned to Jan and tugged at the sleeve of her pastel pink scrubs. “Babe?”
“Spin the Bottle party at someone’s house—I can’t remember the date,” said Jan. “Jason Belk. He was my first kiss, too. I guess I lumped the two together.”
Spencer followed. “Angela…holy crap, I can’t remember her last name! And she was the love of my life at fifteen. I think I even proposed to her.”
“And you can’t even remember her last name?” teased Tracy. “Geez, it’s gonna be like that with every wedding anniversary, isn’t it. I’m going to have to tattoo the date on your forehead!”
Jan asked Tracy, “What about you? Who was your first love?”
“Robbie Smitts, my next-door neighbor,” Tracy answered. “He used to walk me home from the bus and carry my books.”
“I didn’t know people still did that,” said Dean.
“I carried Tracy’s books all throughout college,” said Spencer.
“That’s ’cause you’re a gentleman,” said Jan to Spencer, eyeing Dean as if to imply that he could take lessons in such thoughtfulness.
“Minerva, you’re next,” called Dean.
“Jay,” a voice chirped from behind an anatomy book that had been propped up against two other textbooks. She held up her hand and flashed her wedding ring as she spoke her husband’s name, at which Jan cooed.
Minerva, my best friend, was as much a fixture at The Grounds as the Originals, Norman, the lumpy reading chairs in the corners of the café, and the Cookie of the Week. I’ve never known how she managed to switch her concentration from coffee shop banter to the functions of the circulatory system, but she aced every exam and lab, even after swearing the next one was going to be the end of her. After soaring through nearly three-quarters of an intense program to become a midwife, I was amazed that she still worried.
“That is so sweet,” said Jan. “What, were you high school sweethearts or something?”
“What about Sebastard?” I called from behind the counter. It didn’t occur to me until after I blurted his name that she might not want that that bit of information getting out. She turned around in her chair to face me, tilting her head so that her eyes looked over her horn-rimmed glasses, and shot me a death stare. I sheepishly shrugged my shoulders and ducked behind the cappuccino machine, my face flushed with foolishness.
“Who?” the others asked. “Spill it!”
“Sebastian,” she corrected. “Just a guy I dated in high school, before I met Jay.”
“Dumped him for Jay, eh?” asked Dean.
“Actually, he broke up with me,” said Minerva. “Don’t get me wrong—I thought I loved him. But Jay’s the real deal. That’s why I call him my first love. Nothing before him can possibly count.”
The women ooo-ed and awww-ed while the guys rolled their eyes and informed Norman that he was next.
Norman yelled over the cappuccino machine, “I don’t kiss and tell, but I will say that I promised to name my firstborn after her, even if it’s a boy.” He then turned to me. “Eva?”
Finally, I chimed in. “You mean aside from Nicky Bates, my boyfriend from nursery school who always shared his cookies with me at snack time?”
“So that’s how the whole baking thing started…” Dean interrupted.
“Eight years old. My sister Olivia’s friend Kevin. He had a mullet. He also, I later found out, became a pothead,” I said as I placed a freshly baked jumbo chocolate chip muffin, still warm, on a white plate and sprinkled red sugar crystals around it in the shape of a heart. Smiling in satisfaction at my design, I emerged from behind the counter and presented it to Spencer and Tracy.
“A two-year dating anniversary deserves a complimentary muffin,” I said to them.
“Aw, thanks Eva,” said Tracy. She separated the muffin’s top from its bottom, then further split the top in two before passing it to Spencer and taking a bite, making a thumb’s up sign as she chewed slowly. I beamed. First bites, first sips, first batches are a lot like first loves—so savory, so pleasurable a moment that you want it to last an eternity. Compliments and accomplishments were nice, but nothing quite matched seeing people enjoy something I made, especially when I made it just for them.