Quirks & Kinks
Authors: Laurel Ulen Curtis
Quirks & Kinks
Published by Laurel Ulen Curtis
Copyright © 2015, Laurel Ulen Curtis
Cover Design by Stephanie White of
Steph’s Cover Design
Formatting by
Champagne Formats
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Table of Contents
To the ladies of Bx3. You guys are
legiterally
a bright spot in my day and kept my chin up during the writing of this book. All of my love to the neighborhood.
PS- Don’t let this dedication go to your head, bitches. I’m still clearly the most important person. ;)
PPS- Fuck Isaac!
Author’s Note
Dear loyal and brand-new readers alike,
When I got the idea for and started writing this book, I saw it going a very distinct direction. Lighthearted. Easy-reading. Funny as hell and riddled with slightly uncomfortable, untapped situations.
What the characters gave me was something a little bit different and a whole lot more. While I’m still hoping this book makes you laugh out loud and reads easily, the story isn’t what I’d call lighthearted. At least not for the entire book. What it is, is Easie and Anderson’s. I hope they stick with you the way they ended up sticking with me.
Also, now that I’ve prepared you for the unexpected serious nature of portions of this book, please be aware that it briefly features clowns. I’d tell you that no clowns were harmed in the making of this book, but I’m pretty sure that’d be nothing but a disappointment.
All my love,
Laurel xx
PS- When you get done reading, come hang out with me in a very relaxed setting in Books, B*tches, & Balderdash.
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“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”
~ Criss Jami
“I JUST GOT WIND
of a great part. A really great opportunity,” my sister Ashley chirped through the speaker of my phone smashed firmly to my ear.
Glancing over my right shoulder to check for traffic, I swerved my rusted out Honda Civic from my lane to the next. A cigarette hung precariously from my mouth, and since my right hand held my phone, that left only my left one to do the steering. A mirror probably would have been helpful too, but it had long since been busted off.
Money didn’t come easy, and as long as my old beater was still coughing and sputtering its way from one place to the next, I pretended I couldn’t hear the hiss of its barely there exhaust or see the proverbial lung it hacked up on the asphalt right in front of me.
Expert multitasker that I was, my eyes narrowed regardless of the fact that no one could see me. At least,
Ashley
couldn’t see me. I wasn’t fucking invisible. Though, if I could swing it, I was pretty certain that would be a handy little trick.
“I know this voice,” I mumbled, belatedly grabbing the cigarette with my left hand and steering with my knee. “This is your fake voice. The one that tells me every time you say great, I should replace it with shitty. So tell me. What’s this shitty part? This really
shitty
opportunity?”
“Okay, look,” she conceded immediately. She had always been the good girl to my bad. The Angel to my seriously deranged Devil. “So it’s not one we’ve been specifically going after—”
“What is it?” I cut her off just as I did the same to a car blocking my way to my exit. Forefinger and thumb tightly clutched on the smooth paper of my smoke, I threw up my middle finger in the Southern California Salute. Flipping people off on the freeway was practically part of the driving test. His horn barely even squeaked in response. Obviously, his level of commitment to being pissed at me was substantially low.
“It’s a recurring spot. A whole season deal,” she hedged, doing her best to make it sound better than it was.
“Ashley!”
“It’s the lead reenactment actor on Quirks and Kinks.”
What the? What in the actual
fuck
was a
lead
reenactment actor?
“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
Her voice was solemn. “Probably because you have more than one working brain cell.”
“Ashley—”
“Look. You need this.
We
need this.” Normally, the desperation in my agent’s voice would have gone unnoticed.
Normally,
I would have snapped at her for putting a fancy spin on something in order to con me into it.
But that would have been in the days when my agent wasn’t my sister, and I wasn’t spinning a tale of my own by calling her both.
“Fine. What are the details?”
“Honestly, I don’t know them.”
“Okay—”
“But Larry does, and you have a meeting with him in two hours.”
“Wahhhh,” I whined dramatically, making use of my one free foot by stomping it on the floorboard like a petulant child. “Larry? That guy is
such
an asshole.”
She scoffed. Choked a little on her saliva. Apparently, what I’d said was
that
funny. “You don’t get along with anyone.”
In other words—the punch line—maybe
you’re
the asshole.
True.
It wasn’t intentional, but that’s the part of the Easie pie chart I seemed to show everyone. I was sixty percent self-preserving humor and forty percent unrealized vulnerability. So far, I hadn’t been able to figure out how to reload the scales.