No Fool For Love Songs (Spruce Texas Romance #11)

Chapter 1.

Timothy

It’s on a bench outside the Visual and Performing Arts Center under the shade of a sycamore tree that I pull out my pink-and-red notebook and matching pencil.

At the top of the page is a title: Things I could be instead of Timothy “TJ” McPherson.

Below it, twenty items. Among them: National park ranger.

Professional ghost tour guide (with a doodle of a ghost).

Barista in Bangkok (with a note to learn Thai).

Iceland-based wedding DJ (that one is enthusiastically circled ten times, then crossed out).

Guy who lives in a van making sourdough.

And on one especially despairing night after returning to my dorm from a tough exam I was sure I had bombed, I added: “literally anything but taking over McPherson Tractor I’m a lefty. But it is my jerking one, and I doubt that’s information Professor Patel needs nor cares to have. Yes, I use my right to poodle my noodle, sure, unexpected, but as masturbation commonly goes, no one’s there to criticize how I do it.

When I’m outside again, heavy clouds have brushed aside the afternoon sun, and my bench is covered in a ton of birds whose wrath I’d rather not incur.

They cleaned the grass of the Cheetos.

Professor Patel’s haunting words about paths and doodling and adventure don’t get to me.

I’ve got Project Spruce Jailbreak, the greatest adventure I’m about to embark on.

It’s more than just a road trip; it’s a chance to prove to myself that I have authority over my own life.

That I can be my own man. That I can be free.

Also, less delicately put: it’s going to be fucking fun.