1. In Which Juniper Defeats Inertia #2
“Your brother ,” Matilda says again, her wide-eyed gaze looking at me and then at the front door and then back to me again.? *
“I’ve shown you pictures of him,” I wail to her. “I know I have. You have to have seen him before?—”
“Not in person!” she protests, putting her hands up. “And it was just the one picture that Ned showed me, and it was from when they were roommates?—”
“You said his name was Daniel!” I say. Except, I realize, I’m the only person who calls my brother by his first name. His friends all call him by some version of his middle name—Dan or Danny or Daniel. Why didn’t it occur to me that Roland might be the guy Ned was bringing?
Because no one expects to be set up with their little brother. That’s why.
“Okay, sorry, that one isn’t your fault,” I say, letting my head drop onto the table. I roll my eyes as the noise in the coffee shop gradually returns to a normal level, ignoring the snickering sounds I hear coming from the tables around us.
What, like they’ve never been a hot mess in public? Like they’ve never been set up on a blind date with their own brother? Geez.
I groan, my mind racing and my stomach twisting as I listen to Ned direct his awkward apologies to somewhere around the back of my head.
“You don’t even look like siblings,” he keeps saying, as though that will fix everything.
He’s wrong. We totally look like siblings. But I don’t have it in me to argue. “We have different dads,” I say instead with my forehead still resting on the table. I ignore the familiar twinge that comes up whenever I think about the mystery man who gave me half of my DNA.
I don’t need to know who my father is. I really don’t. And I can’t think about that right now, anyway.
I have to get out of here. I have to leave this coffee shop, this town, preferably this state . This Bean is no longer an object at rest.
She is in motion, and she is moving— stat.
Autumn Grove, Idaho, is a little bitty town tucked just to the west of the Tetons, nestled right up against the Wyoming border.
Despite the misleading name, there’s very little by way of actual autumn in Autumn Grove; at most it sees a month and a half of crunchy leaves and brisk days before the first freeze hits.
Then everything dies all at once, and the trees are left bare and skeletal, scratching at the low-hanging clouds like nails snagging fabric. ? *
It’s been approximately six years, four months, and ten days since I was last here—not that I’m counting—but as of today, this is my new home.
It seems the leaves on the trees are well into their fall cycle now, yellows and oranges and blood reds all shimmering in the crisp wind.
This is how I remember the town I grew up in; chilly, overcast, and just on the precipice of winter.
The drive down Center feels strange knowing that I won’t be turning left at the third light anymore.
I put my childhood home up for sale not twenty-four hours after my mother passed from a heart attack six years ago.
Call me callous; you’re probably right. I’m not bothered.
That home holds no happy memories for me. I don’t want it in my possession.
My new home, on the other hand, will be wonderful!
I tell myself this over and over again as I drive, mostly to convince myself it’s true, and that everything will be fine.
My hands clench tighter on the steering wheel—white knuckles, chipped black nail polish—as I swallow.
Then I flick the turn signal and turn from Center onto Main.
Behind me a little sedan makes the same turn, riding my tail, and I glare at it in the rearview mirror before returning my gaze to my surroundings.
Main Street hasn’t changed much. I’m not sure any of Autumn Grove has.
I posted on the Autumn Grove community forum two weeks ago, the day after the Blind Date Incident, asking if anyone knew of available housing.
It took several days, but a nice lady finally responded to my post with a listing—a loft bedroom in a house in the suburbs.
The price was reasonable, the home looked nice, and she said the roommate was low-key.
I told her my preferred move-in date, she responded that it would be available then, and that was that; she sent me the paperwork a few hours later.
We set up a meeting through the forum—something you could never safely do in a big city, by the way—and here I am, making my way there, trying not to be nervous.
To distract myself, I call Roland.
“Ew, Juniper,” he says when he answers. “Every time your picture pops up on my phone I feel like barfing all over again.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” I tell him for the millionth time.
“I know,” Roland grumbles. “Doesn’t change the fact that I can feel my lunch turning over in my stomach.”
“Did you find someplace to stay?” I say instead of replying, because it feels prudent to change the subject.
“Eh,” Roland says. “Not really. I think I’m just gonna go stay with my dad for a while until I figure out my next steps.”
Roland is about five years younger than me.
He and I share a mother, but we have different fathers.
However, while I was conceived from a one night stand that my mother barely remembered—her words, not mine—she was actually semi-dating Lance when she got pregnant again.
As a result, Roland grew up with his father in the next town over, though they gave him my mother’s last name; meanwhile, I don’t even know who my dad was.
My mom had visitation rights, though, so I got to see Roland sometimes on weekends.
It was always a bright spot. He was the cutest baby, with these fat cheeks and thigh rolls and dimples where his knuckles should have been.
I, on the other hand, was less cute. Not many baby pictures of me exist, but I’ve seen the ones that do.
I look skinny, bordering on underfed, with a similar air of discontent to the one my eighteen-year-old mother gives off in those same photos.
“What about you?” Roland says, pulling me from my thoughts. “You sure you want to live in Autumn Grove again?”
“Truthfully, no,” I say. “I’m not sure. But I’m doing it anyway.” I’m not sure how to explain it to Roland. I’m not even sure how to explain it to myself. But there’s something inside me that wants to conquer this town—not in a Genghis Khan kind of way, but in an overcoming-the-past kind of way.
“And when do you move in?” Roland says.
“I’m meeting my new roommate soon,” I say after glancing at the dashboard to check the time. “And I—sorry, hang on. This car is still tailgating me—stop it!” I say, looking in the rearview mirror at the sedan behind me.
The sedan does not stop it. I roll my eyes.
“I’m back,” I say.
Roland hums thoughtfully. “No one is going to be a better roommate than me”—I snort—“but let me know how that goes,” he says. “What about the writing thing? Are you really gonna change genres?”
“Meh,” I say. It’s something I’ve been debating over the past few weeks or so.
With characters that keep taking over and murdering each other, how am I supposed to continue writing romance?
I’m not sure I’m that great at it anyway.
I’ve got a large folder of rejection emails and marginal indie sales; I’m barely making enough to pay my bills, much less save for the future, though I know I’m lucky to even be making that much. “It’s a very real possibility.”
When I first decided I wanted to be a writer, I was planning on traditional publishing. Send the query letters to New York, get a billion form responses, send out another round, on and on until someone liked my work enough to represent me.
But that dream slowly shriveled as the rejections kept coming in, and it began to look less shiny when I began comparing it to other avenues.
I ended up finding a little niche in the indie market, publishing my books myself in online marketplaces.
It gives me control over every aspect of my work, from my schedule to the covers I use, and that’s something I don’t think I could give up now that I’ve experienced it.
“You’ll probably need a new pen name, then, right?” Roland says, pulling me back to our conversation. “Can you sell romance and mystery with the same name?”
“No one would stop me from using the same name, but I would probably want a new one,” I say glumly. Setting up new personas is kind of the worst.? *
“You want something a little darker, but not too on-the-nose?—”
“SpookyPants McWhodunnit,” I cut him off.
“Subtle,” he says. “Understated. I like it.”
I grin. “Tell Lance I said hello. I need to go; I’m here.”
“I will. Don’t call me again too soon.”
I shake my head and hang up before maneuvering my beat-up old Volkswagen Beetle into a parking spot in front of one of the town’s only coffee shops.
I’m coming from the wrong direction for the angle of the parking spaces—my bad—so I end up executing a million point turn before I get into the space.
Then I sigh and get out, locking the car and taking a few steps back to check my parking job.
It’s still crooked.
And, I realize with a start, the same little sedan that was driving an inch behind me down Main has pulled in next to me; a couple people in bright pink, staring at me and my car.
Like they know I’m new in town. Like they know I’m not great at parking.
I resist the urge to tell them off, going inside without a backward glance. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m inside the lines, anything goes.
The coffee shop hasn’t changed much in the last six years.
There are people I don’t recognize working behind the counter, but the tables are in the same place, and the same artsy pictures still adorn the walls.
The menu looks exactly like it used to as well, down to the ninety-nine-cent mini muffins they bake and sell every morning.
I inhale deeply and smile at the scent of hot chocolate and scones.
My feelings toward Autumn Grove are complicated, but I have only love for Grind and Brew.
I give the girl behind the counter a vague, nodded greeting before ordering one steaming mug of raspberry-infused hot chocolate and two cranberry-orange scones. Then I find a seat at my favorite corner table and plop down into the chair.
“Three-ninety-nine for the world’s best hot chocolate,” I say to myself as I think back to the cafe where the Blind Date Incident occurred.
“And that place wanted nine dollars.” I shake my head and take a sip of my drink, despite knowing better; sure enough, it burns going down my throat.
I take another sip anyway, just one more, because it’s been so long since I’ve had Grind and Brew’s raspberry hot chocolate.
Then I put my mug back down and wait for my drink to cool like a sane person, smiling as I watch the wind and the leaves dance outside the window.
Yes, I’m currently failing as a romance writer, and yes, I’m currently living out of my car, but I’m also sitting in my favorite coffee shop on the planet, drinking my favorite drink.
I have two delicious scones sitting in front of me.
I’ll meet my new roommate in a bit, and then I won’t be homeless anymore .
After that? Well, the world—or at least Autumn Grove—is my oyster.
So watch out, oyster.
Juniper Bean is coming for you.
* ? Ultimately I wrote this book in first person, but I debated between third and first for quite a while. I also had this introduction written before I ever had Juniper as a character—just the concept of someone who kept killing off her characters.
* ? Part of the premise for this book came from the idea of a romance author testing out different romance ideas with the love interest, something I’d seen many times. I wondered how it would look if an author from a different genre did the same thing.
* ? Every now and then I write a line that makes me laugh out loud, and this was one of them.
* ? The idea for this disastrous blind date actually came differently.
I pictured two people flirting over text only to discover they were brother and sister—which sounds like a gross thing to imagine, but my job as a rom com author is to put my characters in awkward, wacky situations.
A blind date gave me more to work with on page, so I went with that scenario instead.
* ? One of my goals was to make this book as atmospheric as possible, which meant leaning into the fall theme in little ways as well as big. Autumn-themed names, lots of weather descriptions, and other phrases viewed through a gloomy, overcast, or even spooky lens.
* ? Someday I’ll probably set up another pen name because I want to explore more genres, and I’m dreading it.