Dream On, Ramona Riley

Chapter One

Chapter

One

Ramona Riley wasn’t prone to astrological panic.

She wasn’t prone to any kind of panic, really. In her thirty-one years, she’d learned that everyone’s life—including her own—ran a lot smoother when she kept both feet planted on the earth. So the fact that April—her best friend since fourth grade—was currently reading Libra’s fate out loud for the second time in ten minutes with her eyebrows vaulted into her short crimson-streaked hair did very little to stir Ramona’s sense of urgency.

“Did you hear that?” April asked, tapping at her phone from her perch on a desk in the backstage area of the Clover Lake Middle School auditorium.

“I heard it,” Ramona said as she pinned a ribbon of teal lace onto a twelve-year-old’s shoulder. “Camila heard it too.”

“I did,” Camila said, fiddling with the lace and smiling at herself in the mirror. Her long dark hair was hoisted into a high ponytail, and her all-black-and-teal costume—torn jeans, ornate lace, glittery teal lipstick and eyeshadow—had turned her into a perfect steampunk Peter Pan, if Ramona did say so herself. “You’re going to have a life-changing week.”

“How exciting for me,” Ramona said, winking at Camila and moving on to securing the black belt covered in soda bottle caps with a seat belt buckle around her waist. It hung low, and with the girl’s lanky frame and big stomping Doc Martens, she looked fucking badass.

Not that she’d ever say such words in front of one of her father’s preteen students, but she could think it.

“Okay,” April said, crisscrossing her own black-jean-clad legs on the desk and folding her heavily tattooed arms over her chest. “Clearly, neither one of you were actually listening. Madame Andromeda’s uncanny insight into Libra this week does not involve anything life-changing.”

“Life-affirming?” Ramona asked.

Camila giggled. “Life-giving.”

“God, that sounds like I’m going to get preg—” Ramona froze, meeting Camila’s precocious expression in the mirror. “You know what, let’s go with life-affirming.”

“It says,” April said, tapping violently at her phone again, “and I quote, This week, as Venus moves into Cancer, be prepared for challenges and opportunities that could shift your perspective and deepen your understanding of your life’s purpose. ”

Camila shrugged. “Sounds life-changing to me.”

“Of course it does!” April said, throwing up her arms and letting them flop back down onto her thighs. “Of course it’s life-changing, but Madame Andromeda didn’t say life-changing. She said could . And could is what you make of it, isn’t it?”

And with that declaration, April let out a huffy breath and went back to scrolling through her phone.

“Is she okay?” Camila whispered.

Honestly, Ramona wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want to get into the intricacies of how her BFF thought Ramona was wasting her life in Clover Lake, New Hampshire, with a middle schooler, now or ever. She’d had plenty of experience with the age group, from her own sister Olive’s tumultuous time at Clover Lake Middle to her father’s position as an eighth-grade English teacher and drama club director, and Ramona had learned that this particular species of human didn’t exactly do nuance.

“She’s fine, love,” Ramona said, then took Camila’s hands and held them out. “And you, Peter Pan, look amazing.”

Camila beamed, then skipped off to stage right to join her Lost Boys, a gaggle of students that Ramona had outfitted to look like degenerates from a posh private school with distressed plaid skirts, torn stockings, boots of all colors, seventies band tees—pretty much anything she could find for five bucks or less at Thayer’s Sift-N-Thrift shop downtown.

“You’re up, Tink!” she called to a kid named Bellamy. They bounded over, already wearing a fitted brown leather vest over an ivy-pattered green skirt that Ramona had made herself, and their brown arms were streaked with a bit of strategic glitter. All they needed now were the gossamer wings, thick belt full of gadgets—dull garden shears and a magnifying glass—and a pair of vintage leather goggles atop their head.

April observed Ramona coolly while Ramona fussed over Bellamy’s final touches.

“What?” Ramona asked, smearing some glitter over Bellamy’s cheeks.

“How many is this?” April asked.

“How many is what?” Ramona asked, even though she knew. And from the way April lifted a single eyebrow, she knew that Ramona knew.

Ramona sighed, gave Bellamy a fist bump, and sent them along to join the rest of the cast awaiting their Saturday afternoon matinee curtain call. Since Steven Riley, Ramona’s dad, had taken over the drama club eight years ago, the group put on a spring play every May. The entirety of Clover Lake came out to at least one of the four shows over the course of the weekend, even those without any kids enrolled at the school or acting in the play.

Steven’s productions were that good.

And Ramona’s costumes were half the draw.

At least…that’s what she’d heard.

“Nine,” Ramona said.

“ Spring plays,” April said. “At the middle school. Don’t get me started on the high school and how much free labor you give Jane Davenport every fall. Oh, and let’s not forget Clover Lake’s preeminent community theater. Priceless opportunities found in those Broadway-esque productions. Jesus, if they do a cabaret this summer, I’m going to fucking lose—”

“What is your point?” Ramona said, adjusting her utility belt around her soft hips that held her measuring tape, safety pins, Velcro, and anything else she might need during a show in case a costume went awry.

“My point?” April asked. “You don’t already know it?”

“Apes, come on.”

“It’s May.”

“This I know.”

“Olive leaves for Nashville at the end of August.”

Ramona looked away toward the stage, her cheeks immediately hot. She didn’t automatically start crying anytime she thought of her little sister graduating from high school and leaving for Vanderbilt University at the end of the summer, but her body definitely reacted as though entering fight-or-flight mode.

“Honey,” April said more softly. “She’s going to do great.”

Ramona nodded, didn’t trust her voice yet. Except for the single year Ramona had spent at the Rhode Island School of Design, she had rarely been away from Olive since her birth when Ramona was thirteen. Their mother had been gone since Olive was six months old—apparently motherhood wasn’t all she dreamed it would be, and Rebecca Riley took off for a better life god only knew where. So, near the end of Ramona’s freshman year at RISD, when Ramona and Olive’s single dad suffered a shattered leg in a car accident they were all lucky didn’t kill him, there was nothing else for Ramona to do but come home, get a job at Clover Moon Café while her father learned how to walk again, and help raise six-year-old Olive.

That was twelve years ago.

Twelve years of Olive’s scraped knees and softball games—including the three years she did travel ball in high school, which meant Ramona was constantly driving all over the state. Twelve years of Olive crying over mean girls into Ramona’s lap, then Ramona’s intense relief when she became friends with Marley Bristow in eighth grade and they both left the mean girls behind for pitching strategies and ornate braids for game days. Twelve years of Olive’s myriad crushes on boys Ramona was convinced weren’t good enough for her sister, walking in on Olive making out with Ethan Townes in her bedroom when she was sixteen, and a conversation about condoms, which ended with Ramona setting a box on Olive’s nightstand while her sister fled into the shower.

Twelve years of laughter and tears and questions, and now all of that was coming to a close. Ramona no longer had to worry about her schedule at the café conflicting with one of Olive’s away games. Soon, she wouldn’t have to stay up until Olive got home from a party or take Olive to the gynecologist.

Olive was an adult.

Olive was leaving home.

And she wouldn’t be coming back like Ramona did. Ramona would make damn sure of it.

Still, in all her excitement over Olive’s future, she had to admit, facing an empty nest at the age of thirty-one was a bit overwhelming.

In April’s opinion, Olive’s departure was Ramona’s golden ticket. April adored Olive, had helped Ramona and Steven raise her for god’s sake, but April was passionate about passion. She’d studied at RISD too, then came home with a degree in illustration and immediately opened her own tattoo shop, a dream she’d had since she got her first tattoo at eighteen—a black-and-gray woman sporting a scorpion’s tail on her inner forearm for her Scorpio sun, moon, and rising signs—and had been happily inking tourists and locals alike for nearly ten years.

“You at least need a list,” April said when Ramona still hadn’t responded.

“A list.”

“A list ,” April said again. “A goal. A five-step action plan or some shit.”

“What’s this about an action plan?” Ramona’s dad asked, walking over from where he’d been reviewing some cues with the school’s art teacher, who was running the lights. Steven still had a bit of a limp in his left leg, and he always would. Still, he was tall, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a real catch for the over-fifty set.

“You need one too, Mr. Riley,” said April, who could never quite get used to calling him Steven. “Ever heard of Bumble?”

Steven frowned. “As in the bee?”

Ramona laughed. “It’s a dating app, Dad.”

“Oh,” Steven said, cutting a hand through his hair, cheeks going a little pink. “Well, um, you know, that’s—”

“Ridiculous,” Ramona supplied for him. Her father did not need help dating. If he wanted to date, he would.

April tilted her head at them both with that potentially terrifying look in her eyes, the one that meant she was plotting.

“Anyway,” Ramona said, tightening her belt even more. “It’s showtime.”

The play ran for only an hour, and Ramona had a shift at the café starting at four. After helping the kids store their costumes on hangers instead of the dressing room’s poured-cement floor, she and April walked toward downtown.

“Okay, hear me out,” April said, turning around on the sidewalk to walk backward. The watery May sunshine sprinkled gold through the flowering trees, the clear blue sky making Clover Lake glitter like a sapphire in the distance. The lake was huge—not quite Winnipesaukee huge, but close—and the entire town wrapped around it like a crescent moon. Summer people were already starting to move in, lake houses shut up for the long winter airing out, shiny cars in once-empty driveways. Ramona loved summer in Clover Lake—she loved all the seasons, really, but summer held a certain magic to it, a freedom and possibility.

“Don’t you have someone’s body part to draw on?” Ramona asked, but she was smiling.

April grinned, the Nirvana tee she’d cut the neck out of dropping down her tree-inked shoulder. “Not until six, so you’re stuck with me until then.”

“Never stuck ,” Ramona said, looping her arm with April’s. “Just…attached.”

“Nice spin, but that’s half the problem.”

“What?”

“You’re too fucking nice!”

Ramona sighed. “I like doing costumes.”

“Yeah, I know. Costume design was your endgame. LA, New York, stages or films full of actors who’ve actually been through puberty. You know, dreams?”

“Hmm,” Ramona said, tapping her chin. “Think I had one last night where my hands had turned into crab claws. Wonder what that means…”

“We’ll google it,” April said, stepping around a turquoise bike leaning against a lamppost. “In the meantime, you need to do something that doesn’t involve safety pins, prepubescents, or pouring bad chardonnay for tourists who don’t realize all chardonnay is disgusting and tastes like butter. I’m thinking some dates.”

Ramona nearly choked on the air. “Dates?”

“Yeah. Romance. Hot people. Sex?”

Ramona opened her mouth.

“And not Logan Adler,” April said.

Ramona snapped her mouth shut. Logan was Ramona’s on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last five years or so, a lifelong Cloverian just like Ramona. He was a nice guy—a hot guy—who ran his family’s furniture shop in town, and with whom Ramona had very good sex and very little else, which was why they kept breaking up and then falling back into bed with each other.

Over and over again.

Needless to say, April did not approve, said that Ramona needed someone more emotionally stimulating than a celery stick in human form.

“Logan is a good guy,” Ramona said.

April groaned and Ramona laughed. It wasn’t like she hadn’t dated anyone else in the last few years, she just hadn’t dated much. As for sex, there had been hookups, which April knew, but yeah, the last one had been…last fall? No, last summer, that tourist named Andrea who came into the café twice a day because she thought Ramona was cute.

Okay, so it had been a year—with a little Logan sprinkled in here and there, maybe, probably—and Ramona was in a bit of a dry spell, but Olive’s senior year had been busy. Landing a full softball scholarship to a top-tier private university was no small feat. But they’d done it. And now…

And now what?

Ramona felt a wave of nerves crest in her stomach.

“Dating people not named Logan is a baby step,” April said. “Something to get you out of your comfort zone so you can get serious about getting out of the café and into an actual design job. It’s easy.”

Ramona laughed. “Oh, easy as pie, huh? I think you know better than that, April Evans.” April hadn’t dated anyone seriously in over a year, when her fiancée, Elena Watson, dumped her a month before their planned and paid for spring wedding. Not only that, but she did so for another woman, a twenty-two-year-old painting student named Daphne Love, and April had not reacted well. She’d met Elena three years before at a bar in Boston, then spent a magical night together—they walked the cobblestone streets hand-in-hand, took a ghost tour, shared their life stories, then went back to Elena’s posh apartment and had, in April’s words, DNA-altering sex . Even April’s stoic parents—the Drs. Preston and Jacqueline Evans, who rarely understood anything April said or did—had adored Elena. The whole town had. Elena was beautiful and elegant, a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and she had loved April’s wilder, darker personality. She’d celebrated it, even, which was all April had really ever wanted.

Since the breakup, April had reverted to her pre-Elena ways, sticking to hook-ups and casual dates, rarely seeing anyone more than once. That was all well and good, but Elena was the only person April had ever truly fallen in love with, and Ramona worried April was simply too scared to try again.

“If I date, then you date,” Ramona said softly. “And not fuckbois like Leigh Reynolds.”

April narrowed her eyes—Leigh was an old high school friend of April and Ramona’s, and April’s favorite hookup whenever Leigh swaggered back into town to see their mom.

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” April said, then shoved a single finger into the air. “Oh wait, you already have.”

Ramona scoffed. “I haven’t slept with Leigh!”

“I’m referring, of course, to the Golden Fuckboi of Clover Lake, Logan Adler.”

Ramona fought to hold in a laugh. “My point stands.”

“Fine,” April said, shoulders drooping in defeat. “If not dating, then what? Trip to New York? LA? Re-enrolling in RISD? You can—”

“I am not going back to RISD,” Ramona said firmly. She could think of nothing more humiliating. Plus, she could never afford it—or any school for that matter. She’d attended on a full scholarship before, something she was pretty sure RISD didn’t hand out to thirty-one-year-olds in the food service industry.

“Fine,” April said. “But have you even sent your portfolio to anyone? Agents? Talent scouts?”

Ramona pressed her eyes closed for a second, took a deep breath. She loved April, dearly and deeply, but Scorpios were all about transformation—at least, according to April—and Ramona was the kind of person who ate a turkey sandwich with avocado, spinach, and Havarti for lunch every single day of her life.

“I’m still perfecting it,” she said to April, thinking about her digital portfolio sitting on her iPad, half-finished, half-dreamed. “Plus, the chances of—”

“What the hell is happening in this kooky town now?” April asked. She’d stopped on the sidewalk about a block away from Clover Moon Café, brows furrowed. Ramona looked around, shops with awnings in deep hunter green, navy, and gray lining both sides of Lake Street. It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, so there were a lot of people out, but nearly everyone was clustered in groups of two or three, hovering over their phones and gesticulating excitedly.

“God only knows,” Ramona said, pulling April along, stopping in front of the café and checking her reflection in the window. Last week, she’d finished a dress rehearsal at the middle school and come into work with a fake eyelash stuck to her cheek and glitter in her hair. Honestly, she didn’t trust April to point out any irregularity in her appearance—April loved a good laugh too much and thought Ramona took herself too seriously anyway.

Ramona pulled her wavy brown hair up into a high ponytail and fluffed her fringe. Her myriad freckles were glitter-free, her dark brown eyes clear of any mascara smears or extra lashes. She had on a high-necked black-and-white top, abstract patterns swirling over the fitted cotton. It was one of her own creations, designed years ago when she was still working on her portfolio on a daily basis. Also, she had such a hard time finding unique pieces to fit her plus-size figure—her boobs in particular—she designed most of her own clothes back then. Luckily, most of them still fit. She smoothed her hands down her jeans just as April smacked her on the butt.

“You look hot,” April said. “In fact, let me get a shot for your dating profile—”

“Oh, what’s that? Oops, can’t hear you,” Ramona singsonged, then swung open the café’s door and let it fall closed in April’s face. She winked at her best friend through the glass and received yet another middle finger.

Clover Moon Café was a diner, coffee shop, and bar all in one. The atmosphere was warm with an amber wood bar top and tables with mismatched chairs, and Mason jar lights hung down from the pine ceiling in various shades of blue and green. Ramona loved it here, and as she and April sat at the bar so Ramona could eat before her shift, she reminded herself of just how lucky she was.

She loved her town.

She loved her café, even if she didn’t always love the work.

And she had a best friend who loved her enough to be a pain in the ass about, well, everything.

Ramona Riley was just fine, thanks very much.

“It’s happening in here too,” April said out one side of her mouth.

Ramona flicked the corner of the plastic menu she knew by heart, taking in how at least three-fourths of the diners were also staring at their phones and chattering a little louder than normal.

“Hey, dolls,” Marion said from behind the bar, setting glasses of water down in front of them. “The usual?”

“Marion, what the hell is happening around here?” April asked.

Marion popped her gum, her eyes going wide. “You haven’t heard?” She was in her fifties and had been working at Clover Moon since she was a teenager. Thus, she knew everything about everyone.

“Heard what?” Ramona asked.

Marion grinned. “You’ll like this, Mona.”

She took her phone out of her apron and clicked around, then handed it over to Ramona. April leaned in close to read one of Penny Hampton’s daily posts on her blog about the goings-on in town, aptly named Penny for Your Thoughts . Clover Lake had a town newspaper, but if you wanted the gossip, the true stories , as Penny said, Clover Lake residents knew just where to find it.

“Holy shit,” April said, always a speed-reader. Ramona had barely made it past the first couple of sentences.

For several months now, Clover Lake’s mayor, Amira Gates, has been in secret—very tricky, Mayor Gates!—negotiations with Skylark Studios regarding the possibility of a feature film coming to Clover Lake’s shores. Well, those negotiations are at an end, and Hollywood is indeed arriving in our beloved hamlet in three weeks’ time.

That’s right, Cloverians, the full cast and crew for As If You Didn’t Know , a romantic comedy based on the bestselling book, will arrive at the beginning of June. Prepare for celeb sightings and possible shutdowns for a few of our small businesses and a more-clogged-than-usual downtown. It might not be convenient, but it sure is exciting! Sources close to the mayor say the studio is paying handsomely for our cooperation, and we all know money makes the world go round. So buckle up for a summer like we’ve never had before!

“Is this for real?” Ramona asked. Penny didn’t lie necessarily, but she’d been known to stretch the truth for the sake of drama. “This sounds—”

“Perfect,” April said, already on her own phone and tapping away.

“Oh, it’s true,” Marion said. “The movie is one of those ‘love is love’ stories, so you two ought to like that.”

Ramona and April—bisexual and pansexual, respectively—shared a look, though Marion had a point. Plus, in a small town like Clover Lake, where minds could be, admittedly, a wee bit small, a queer movie taking over the streets for the summer was a pretty big deal.

“It’s based on that book that famous book club picked a while back that hit all the bestseller lists,” Marion said. “Can’t remember the author’s name, but—”

“Iris Kelly,” April said, who had returned to typing furiously on her phone. “Queer romance author, total Leo, love her.”

Marion shrugged. “Anyway, Owen confirmed it when I came in at noon. Apparently, one of the main characters is a waitress, so he’s getting paid the whole hog to close the café here and there for filming.”

“Really?” Ramona said, wondering just how much the studio must be paying Clover Moon’s owner. This place was Owen’s whole life, had been in his family for three generations.

“Really,” Marion said, taking a pen out from behind her ear and tapping it on her order pad.

“That’ll be interesting,” Ramona said.

“Sure will,” Marion said, then sauntered away to put in Ramona’s turkey sandwich order.

Ramona took a sip of water just as April grabbed her arm, nails digging into the soft flesh above her elbow.

“Ow,” she said flatly, but April didn’t budge, her eyes glued to her phone.

“Noelle” was all she said.

“As in…Christmas?” Ramona asked.

April finally looked up. “As in Yang.”

Ramona felt her breath go still in her lungs. She blinked, but couldn’t seem to get her mouth to close, her brain to properly compute. Noelle Yang was a costume designer. A legend. Had studied at RISD as well, decades ago, then moved to LA and famously camped out in front of Emmeline Roth’s trailer on the set of When Skies Collide until the iconic designer agreed to speak with her. Noelle was even escorted off set in handcuffs a few times, though Emmeline never pressed charges. As the story went, Emmeline finally grew so fed up with seeing Noelle’s face peering into her windows, she let the twenty-two-year-old present her portfolio just to get the girl out of her hair.

What Emmeline saw changed both of their lives. They started a mentorship that lasted five years until Noelle got the chance to lead a design team for Better Off Dead and promptly won an Oscar for the costume design. Since then, she’d dressed actors in rom-coms, science fiction adventures, indie films no one understood, and mythological fantasies. She was Hollywood costume design.

And Ramona’s idol since she was nine and fell in love with the costumes in Greatness , a sexy romp of a movie about Catherine the Great that won Noelle her third Oscar.

Now, Ramona finally managed to swallow. “What about her?”

April couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “You know what about her.” She turned her phone so Ramona could see the Variety article she was reading about As If You Didn’t Know , a paragraph that featured Noelle’s name and the words leading the design team for the queer rom-com highlighted by April’s cursor.

“This is it,” April said, turning her phone back around and scrolling.

“This is what?” Ramona said.

“The thing ,” April said, waving a hand around. “The thing that’s going to shift your perspective and deepen your understanding of your life’s purpose.”

“I thought that was supposed to happen this week,” Ramona said. “Cast and crew don’t show up for another three.”

April stuck out her tongue.

Ramona chuckled, but inside, her stomach was in knots. Noelle Yang. In Clover Lake. In this café even, getting coffee to get through her day. Or maybe a croissant. Clover Lake’s famous honey whiskey pie, which Ramona had recently perfected baking.

Ramona’s mind flashed to her portfolio, the designs filling her sketchbook, the myriad files on her digital program, the fully realized garments she’d sewn herself, crowding the spare room in her father’s house, no one to wear them, no one to flourish inside their seams.

Once upon a time, she dreamed about exactly this kind of opportunity. As a RISD student, walking the same halls as Noelle had years before, planning out her own destiny to get herself to LA, get herself noticed, refusing to take no for an answer. Dressing actors in ornate gowns, warrior garb, or even a simple pair of jeans and a cardigan—the clothes that made actors come alive, made stories feel real .

And then her dad got hurt, her family needed her, and all that just…faded.

And now it was too late.

Wasn’t it?

“Who else is in the film?” she asked April, just to give herself something else to focus on.

April scrolled and paused, scrolled and paused. She smiled. “Aubrey Daniels. She’s playing Mallory. God, I’m so excited this book is going to be a movie.”

Ramona snapped in approval, as Aubrey was a vocal lesbian who’d recently started dating the singer Reneé Ramirez.

“Who’s playing the other character? What’s her name? Elise?”

“Eloise,” April said.

Ramona nodded, vaguely remembering the name as she laid her napkin in her lap. She’d read As If You Didn’t Know last year, just like everyone else in the world once it was picked up for the book club, but she’d been an Iris Kelly fan for a few years, both she and April devouring any queer romance they could get their hands on.

April’s eyes narrowed, scanning her screen, then widened. “Oh, shit.”

“What? Who is it?” Ramona picked up her water and took a sip.

April looked up, mouth hanging open slightly. “It’s Dylan,” she said softly. “Dylan Monroe.”

And with that, Ramona not only spit her beverage all over her lap, but also dropped her drink, sending ice and water and shattered glass all over the pine floors of Clover Moon Café.