Exit
Signs
by
Patrice Locke
Genre:
Romantic Comedy
Researcher
Tracy Price is trying to find a dead writer and forget a live
musician.
Rock
star Jesse Elliot is sure Tracy is demented, and she believes he
wouldn’t recognize the truth in a lineup of Bibles. Their only hope
is to stop trying to read each other’s minds and start speaking
their own.
Anyone
who has ever had a crush, felt betrayed, or been forgiven will
appreciate Tracy's struggle to claim the life she never knew she
wanted.
Jesse lunged toward
me. It was too late. I had already launched. He reached out but
didn’t connect. Instead, I broke the trajectory of my upper body by
grabbing him at chest level and sliding down. He was pushed backward
into the table, which stabilized our ungainly host-parasite tableau.
He softened my landing so that physically I was fine, but my pride
was ready for intensive care.
Heaped at his feet,
like a demented penitent, I hugged his knees, my face pressed flat
into his thighs. I might as well stay down. What’s worse? To
stand up and face you, or remain here, nestled between your legs?
What do you think?
Then, the finishing touch: I erupted into
nervous, snorting laughter. He guessed there was no serious injury.
“It’s nice to
see you, too. You are okay, aren’t you? Can you stand?” He
reached for my arms to unwrap them from his legs and help me up. I
jammed my eyelids together to conjure up a do-over, but no such
luck.
I would have to deal
with it.
He held my elbows in
his hands. “I guess we were both in a hurry to see each other.”
I do appreciate
your attempt to lighten the mood, but you are standing SO close. I
can feel your body heat. Or is that mine? By the way, you smell tart
and fresh, like a lime.
I stared at his
shoulder. My dignity meter was stuck on empty.
“Enthusiastic
greeting. Thanks for that.” He was blatantly amused.
“It was nothing.”
I stepped backward to regain a semblance of independence. Don’t
mock me. But, you did go to all the trouble to bring your hair. And
your eyes. I might forgive you for witnessing my disgrace. That
hair.
As
a journalist, Patrice Locke wrote a lot of stories with unhappy and
even tragic endings.
Facts
are facts, and a writer doesn't mess with facts.
But
fiction is another world. Patrice began writing novels, where she can
control the endings and make them as happy as she wants. The best
thing about fiction, she says, is having time to think before her
characters speak, so they can say the things most of us only come up
with after the perfect moment has passed.
She
loves to write, read, and watch romantic comedies where life always
turns out the way it should. Her only obsessive relationships are
with semicolons and Oxford commas.
Though
she doesn't like to brag, Patrice is an award-winning artist. She won
a gold and diamond watch when she was 13 for decorating a turkey
drumstick bone to look like Batman. Alas, that was her last
recognition in the fine arts.
Patrice
lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from her daughter Kaitlin,
eight hours from her son Trevor, and way too many miles from amazing
grandsons Alexander and Zackary.
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