BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH (Southside Skulls Nomads #3)

Chapter 1

TILLY

I’d finally done it.

I packed up my life in LA, and drove east with nothing but a secondhand hatchback that rattled like a tin can every time I pushed past fifty, a few maxed-out credit cards I was trying real hard not to think about, and a dream I'd been carrying since I was old enough to stand on a stool and stir batter with a wooden spoon almost as tall as I was.

I left behind the noise, the honking, the sirens, and the constant hum of a city that never quieted down.

And the other stuff. The pressure from my parents to be thinner and different. The feeling of not being enough while somehow taking up too much space. Of existing wrong.

Now I was here. Harbor Point.

A working-class town on the Massachusetts coast, where fishing boats crowded the harbor and weather-beaten buildings overlooked the water.

The Atlantic rolled in beyond the breakwater, dark blue beneath a cloudless sky.

Pine-covered hills rose inland, softening the edges of the town without hiding its scars.

The air smelled like salt and diesel. Everything here felt unfinished, balanced between what had been and what might still be.

To me, unfinished meant there was still room.

And right in the middle of Main Street, surrounded by weathered brick storefronts and old New England charm, sat The Sweet Spot.

My bakery and café.

The exterior was bright orange. The kind of color that should be garish but somehow worked perfectly. Teal-trimmed windows that caught the morning light, and flower boxes that overflowed with petunias, snapdragons, and sweet peas, spilling color against the brick.

It looked exactly like the small towns I used to disappear into between the pages of my romance novels. The ones where curvy heroines found love and acceptance and happily-ever-afters.

I used to dream about places like this when the real world felt too sharp and cruel in its determination to make me smaller.

My chance to prove I could make a life on my own terms. That I was more than the girl who hid in the back of every group photo and ate lunch alone in the school library.

I took a deep breath.

This was it.

My shot at the life I'd been dreaming about for years.

I paused at the door, my hand hovering just above the handle.

The metal was warm from the sun, and I could see my reflection in the glass.

My soft curves, and messy hair falling across my shoulders.

My round face with cheeks that flushed too easily.

The body I’d spent twenty-three years apologizing for.

Please let this be different. Please let these people be kind.

Not like the ones back home who saw my curves as flaws to be fixed. Who looked through me like I wasn't even there, or worse, like I should apologize for existing.

I pushed the door open. The bell above it jingled, bright and cheerful, and every head in the café turned toward me.

A whoosh of nerves hit me all at once, so strong it nearly knocked me backward.

My heart started pounding like I’d just been caught sneaking into someone else's dream.

Like I didn't belong here and everyone could tell.

My first instinct was to shrink. To curl inward and apologize with my body language before anyone could say a word. To disappear before they had a chance to judge me and find me wanting.

But something in the air shifted. The energy wasn't harsh. Not the way I'd braced for. It wasn't cold or critical or cutting.

It was warm, curious, and open.

The people inside were scattered at various tables and booths.

A mix of ages and types. Some older folks with silver hair and weathered faces.

Some around my age, maybe a few years older.

A few rugged-looking men who looked like they could lift a tree trunk with one arm and not even break a sweat. The kind I’d only read about in books.

They weren’t staring in disgust. They weren’t whispering to each other or making faces.

They were just looking, the way you look at anyone new who walks into a small-town café.

Some nodded in acknowledgment. One raised a coffee cup in a casual greeting.

Another gave me a small smile and went back to his newspaper.

It was the kind of quiet, casual welcome I never got in California. There, I was either invisible, blending into the background so completely people literally didn't see me, or I was mocked, whispered about, and the butt of jokes I wasn't supposed to hear but always did.

Here? I didn't know yet, but for the first time in years, my spine straightened instead of folding. My shoulders rolled back instead of hunching forward.

I let out a slow breath and did what I always did.

I smiled.

Because that was what I’d trained myself to do since I was young.

When kids whispered behind my back about my size.

When they asked in fake-sweet voices if I really needed a second helping of lunch.

When boys made pig noises as I walked past. When my parents sighed and suggested yet another diet or exercise program.

I smiled through all of it.

I read somewhere that the world reflected what you gave it. That if you put kindness and joy out into the universe, it came back to you eventually.

So I gave smiles. Even when it hurt. Even when I wanted to scream or cry or disappear entirely.

And now, at twenty-three, I was still doing it. Still smiling like maybe if I was sweet enough, kind enough, small enough in personality if not in body, people would accept me.

I didn't take in too much of the café right away. It was overwhelming, honestly, being seen by so many people at once. Being the center of attention even for a few seconds. But the faces I did notice were pleasant. Lined with laugh wrinkles and the kind of softness that came from living a good life. The kind that made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I’d come to the right place.

No one knew who I was yet. I was just a stranger walking through the door. Not even the two older women behind the counter recognized me, which made sense since we’d only exchanged emails and a few phone calls.

One had long gray hair twisted into a messy bun at the nape of her neck, wisps escaping to frame her face.

The other had copper-colored hair, still vibrant despite her age, pulled into high ponytails on either side of her head like she was channeling her inner teenager.

They both looked a little eccentric, a little quirky, and I loved that.

I loved that they were living life their own way, unapologetically themselves.

It had to be Marnie and Pearl. The longtime owners who built the café with their own hands decades ago and were now, somehow, trusting it to me. A complete stranger from California who they’d never met in person.

A tiny voice inside whispered, How do you replace women like that in a town like this? How do you fill shoes that big?

But I hushed it. I wasn’t here to replace anyone. I was here to write my own story, to bake my own recipes, to create something that was mine. And maybe, if I was lucky, they’d let me be part of theirs. Part of the community that already felt warmer than anywhere I’d ever lived.

For a second, I let myself imagine it. A town that felt like home instead of a place I was just passing through. People who saw me as I was, curves and kindness and all, and didn't try to change me. Maybe even people who could love me for who I was instead of who they wished I would become.

A place where I could finally stop holding my breath. Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Stop apologizing for existing.

Because the truth was, I never really had a family. Not one that fit, anyway.

I was adopted at birth. My parents told me the story often, how I held out my arms for them the moment we met. How it was love at first sight, how they knew immediately I was meant to be theirs. They had photos of that day, of them holding tiny infant me, smiling like their dreams had come true.

But the older I got, the more obvious it became that I didn't quite fit the mold they had in mind.

I didn't look like them, with their lean frames and sharp features.

I didn't move like them, all nervous energy and constant motion.

My body was round where theirs were narrow.

Soft where theirs were chiseled. Slow and steady where they were fast and driven.

They tried to change me with personal trainers starting when I was ten.

Weight Watchers meetings where I was the only child in a room full of adults.

Smoothie cleanses that left me dizzy and starving.

A treadmill installed in my bedroom by the time I turned twelve, a constant reminder of everything I was supposed to be but wasn't.

They said they loved me. And maybe they did, in their way. But love shouldn't make you feel like a before photo. Like a project to be fixed. Like I was broken just by being myself.

I'd never had a boyfriend. I'd never been kissed or held hands with someone who wanted to hold mine. I'd never felt beautiful in someone else's eyes.

Sex always seemed reserved for other girls.

The glossy ones with flat stomachs and flirty giggles and the kind of legs that didn't touch when they stood with their ankles together. The ones who looked good in everything and never had to worry about whether a chair would be too small or if they’d fit in a restaurant booth.

But I loved love. I read about it constantly.

I lived it vicariously through the pages of paperbacks with cracked spines and shirtless men on the covers.

Stories where big, rugged men fell for soft girls.

Girls with kind hearts and fuller thighs and bodies that looked like mine.

Girls who got their happy endings not despite their curves but because of them, because the right man saw their beauty.

I used to cry reading those books. Not because they made me sad, but because they made me hope. Because they showed me a world where someone like me could be wanted, desired, and loved.