Blown Away (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 1)
Read Blown Away (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 1) Online
Authors: Elise Sax
BLOWN
AWAY
(
Five More Wishes – Book 1
)
elise sax
Blown Away (Five More Wishes – Book 1) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Elise Sax
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Elise Sax
Cover design: Elizabeth Mackey
Formatted by:
Jesse Kimmel-Freeman
Edited by:
Novel Needs editing team (Aemelia Manier & Alyssa Palmer)
and Lynn Mullan
Printed in the United States of America
http://elisesax.com/mailing-list.php
https://www.facebook.com/ei.sax.9
Also by Elise Sax:
Five Wishes Series
Five More Wishes Series
Open Wide
Smokin' Hot
The Matchmaker Series
Forever Series
For the dreamers…
Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening. Anything but this. Butt acne? Fine. Tuberculosis? Not pleasant, but I’ll take it. Permanent halitosis? I’ll sign up right this second. But not this. Not—oh, crap—this.
I’m cursed. I mean, I’m not cursed…with the curse. In other words, Aunt Flow hasn’t visited me, and I had no time of the month this month.
My little friend didn’t bother showing up.
The little bitch.
In plain English, I was supposed to get my traitorous period ten days ago, but I didn’t. Yes, I’m sure. Not a drop. I only realized this disastrous hiccup in my life two days ago. What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I notice ten days ago when I was supposed to get my period? I’ll tell you why. I’m too distracted by things, like my life and my career, to notice that my life and career are about to go way down the toilet.
Like swimming with the alligators in the sewers kind of down the toilet.
But I’m not ready to throw in the towel. I’m not going to admit that I’m pregnant. Those words are not going to come out of my mouth. I don’t care if I have four pregnancy tests in my purse that all say I’m preggers. Science can kiss my ass. I mean, science has been wrong before, right? For example, are we really locked down on the whole gravity thing? I think there’s some wiggle room, there. The Pythagorean theorem? Sounds fishy to me.
So, that’s why I’m here, staring at this rundown wishing fountain, which my town on Summer Island decided to save from being destroyed. The fountain, with its cracked plaster and lopsided construction, looks like it’s halfway to destroyed, anyway. It doesn’t work, and even if it has seen better days, I’d bet that in those better days it wasn’t anything to write home about, either. But I live in a crazy place filled with well-meaning do-gooders. They couldn’t let a historic fountain get tossed out with the garbage. And that’s how we wound up with a dry, useless well in the center of downtown.
It’s called downtown, but it’s really just the center of our village. Like a wheel with spokes, the center is a circular plaza with six streets emanating out from the center. Summer Island is the definition of a sleepy town. There isn’t a locked door anywhere on the island, and most of the excitement revolves around various town events, parades, and the high school prom. I guess the wishing well does kind of belong on Summer Island because it’s quiet too. There isn’t any water in it, but the bottom is coated with a light layer of assorted coins. Each coin represents a wish, if you believe in those sorts of things.
Today I’m a true believer of those sorts of things because I am going to throw in my luckiest coin, the silver dollar my grandfather gave me twelve years ago for my sixteenth birthday. Up yours, gravity. To hell with you, Pythagorean theorem. Science has let me down, so, I’m going for a wish from a broken well.
I rub my lucky coin between my thumb and my forefinger. I close my eyes tightly. Please don’t let me be pregnant. Please don’t let me be pregnant. Please, oh please, oh please, don’t let me be pregnant. I crack open my eyelids to make sure that my aim is true, and I throw the coin into the well, hard like a major league baseball pitcher. It hits the plaster with a loud noise and cracks the paint. I watch as the silver dollar bounces and rolls its way down the side of the fountain, shoving aside lesser coins until it reaches its final resting place.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I tell the fountain. I don’t usually cuss, but you can imagine how stressed I am. None of this is in my plans. I have very detailed one-year, five-year, and life plans. So far, everything has gone to plan. That is until now.
I was born and raised on Summer Island, which is located off the coast of Southern California, but I went to school at UCLA. After I graduated, I came home to work at the local paper, but I’ve got my eye on the LA Times. I figure I’ll be able to seal the deal for the new job soon, since they’ve already published a few of my articles. I practically drool when I think about working for them. I could use the better pay, and it will be heaven to be away from the wackos of my small town. That’s my plan.
Until now.
My phone chirps and I take it out of my purse in order to read the text. Where are you? You’re going to miss it, I read. It’s from my colleague and nemesis, Cade Reed. That’s okay. I’ll take the exclusive. Fine with me, he continues. Cade has been a thorn in my side since kindergarten. If we had ink wells in school, he would’ve dipped my pigtails in it. He pulled every dirty prank on me for years, never leaving me alone. He T.P.’d my house, froze my bras, and called me to see if my refrigerator was running and to chase it at least a dozen times. And all of that was just in the past six months.
Somehow, we’ve wound up working for the same paper in our hometown, competing against each other like we’re in the Olympics of journalism. Each story about a cat caught in a tree, the mayor’s bunion surgery, or the library getting a fresh coat of paint is fought over between us like it’s the Battle of the Bulge. Obviously, in this example, I’m Patton and he’s a Nazi, but he’s a tough competitor and each story is a hard-won enterprise.
And I’m so going to beat his ass today.
Mind your own business. I’ll get there when I get there, and the only exclusive happening today is mine.
I click send and hop into my electric golf cart, which is the only acceptable means of transportation on the island, except for bicycles, feet, and Segways. Hover boards were popular for a while until the mayor took a tumble on San Felipe Street and needed thirty stitches on his forehead. Since then, hover boards have been banned on the island, except for a brief hover board rebellion a year ago by the Women-For-Free-Speech group, but that was short-lived since the members never could get the hang of balancing on them. Cade got that rebellion story and ran with it. It still stings thinking about his byline above the fold when I was only on page three with a pathetic story about the run on organic radishes at the Summer Mart.
I can’t let that happen again. Pregnant or not, today I’m going to get the story before Cade does, even if I have to kill him to get it. Olivier Samba, a deposed dictator who’s living on the island, has something to say, and I’m going to be the one he says it to. Seven minutes later, I arrive at Summer Field to cover my story.
I see Summer Field long before I get here, because there’s a huge, multi-color hot air balloon sitting right in the middle, and there’s a large group of spectators surrounding it. Well, a large group for Summer Island, which in this case is about forty people. Some are holding protest signs against Samba and others are here just because they’re curious. I don’t blame them. This is the biggest news to hit Summer Island since a German U-boat was spotted off the coast in 1943. That turned out to be a whale, but there’s no doubting that today’s news is totally real.
I spot Cade in the group, close to the main action by the balloon. I’m dressed in a tight black business suit with a short skirt and high heels, which sink into the damp ground as I walk. It’s definitely the wrong thing to wear for this assignment, and I’m about to take off my shoes when Cade shouts at me.
“You look like you’re doing some kind of weird new aerobics activity,” he says. “Up down. Up down. Are you aerating the ground with those shoes? Digging for worms? I didn’t know you wanted go fishing. I’ll go with you, if you want.”
Here’s the problem with Cade. I mean, here’s the problem with Cade besides his mouth. Cade is a dead ringer, switched at birth, doppelgänger twin for Hugh Jackman. Not today’s Hugh Jackman. I’m talking about Hugh Jackman from the first X-Men movie when Wolverine walks in, your panties magically drop to the floor, and you begin to drool like you’ve got a bad case of rabies.
I’ve spent over twenty years defying Cade’s powers of attraction and his off the charts sex appeal. It’s been more or less easy, since he’s been the thorn in my side even years before he froze all my bras and short-sheeted my bed.
But as far as I can tell, I’m alone in my ability to defy Cade’s whoa-Mama good looks. There’s always a long line of females trailing him to try to get his attention. I know that he had a serious relationship with a woman named Cynthia in college, but other than that, he’s remained on the prowl, ever single for his whole life. His casual sex resume is legendary on the island, and I think he’s in the town’s historical records as the only citizen to have bonked two women at once while floating in the water tank, which hovers over the island thirty feet off the ground and is painted with a rainbow and Summer Island in neon blue paint.
After that escapade, the town had to drain and sanitize the water tower drum. I heard it ate into our Fourth of July fireworks budget for three years.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I sneer.
Cade points down at my muddy shoes. “Your Donna Summer disco shoes. You’re having a hard time there.”
I refuse to admit that I’ve worn the wrong shoes. Normally, I’m not this stubborn. Normally, I’m not this combative. Because the truth of it is that despite the competition and the frozen bras, Cade and I are grown-ups. Well, at least I’m a grown-up, and he has a driver’s license and pays taxes. In any case, we’ve more or less put aside our past in order to work together.
And we’re always working. We practically put out the entire newspaper on our own, spending an inordinate amount of time together. In addition to work, we regularly do Netflix binge sessions together at my place and ping-pong tournaments at his place. In other words, we’re generally tied at the hip.