Taken: A House of York Prologue Read online

  Today, I opt for just an iced latte.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  For a second, I’m tempted to lie.

  I could just say that I’m tired.

  Fake a smile.

  “Actually, no, not really. My job is really bringing me down.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s not really what I thought it would be. I mean, I know that I’m not qualified to do much with just a BA, but answering phones is just…eh. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just having a bad day.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I don’t want to bother you. Thanks for asking.”

  I grab a seat on the big plush orange couch by the window and try to put it out of my mind.

  On one hand, I’m lucky to have a job at all. Lots of graduates nowadays are still looking for work with no luck. But I still can’t help but hate what I do.

  “Here’s a muffin.” The barista comes over. “I thought it would give you a pick me up. It’s on the house.”

  “Oh, wow.” I look up at her. “Thank you.”

  I appreciate her compassion, but I want to resist eating the muffin.

  I didn’t bring anything for lunch on purpose.

  Today, I need to skip it. It’s my punishment for eating two bags of potato chips at ten this morning after dealing with a particularly annoying married couple who kept insisting that their insurance company was supposed to cover their visit.

  In addition to hating my job, I also hate the way I look. I tend to put on weight easily so eating healthy is something that’s a necessity for me.

  For a long time now, I’ve avoided looking at myself in the mirror. You know, really looking. Finally, a month ago, I gathered enough strength to step on the scale. That’s when I discovered that I’d gained thirty-three pounds since graduation. Time passes a lot faster at work when I spend my days munching on snacks and candy.

  Soon after, I decided to start a low-carb diet. Carbohydrates are my weakness and I definitely have mood swings in the afternoons if I don’t have a generous dose of something sweet.

  I’ve had good luck with this type of diet in the past when I only had to lose five pounds for a college formal, but this time, I’m going to have to go all out.

  This time, I’m going to really commit.

  At least that’s what I said to myself two weeks ago.

  The only problem was the execution.

  I would start each day with the greatest of intentions, but one annoying client or a short comment from Dr. Morris, would send me to the vending machine for some relief.

  Not surprisingly, I hadn’t lost a single pound. In fact, I gained two.

  I stare at the muffin and take another sip of my iced latte.

  I’m going to be strong.

  I’m not going to have this muffin.

  What if I just have a taste? It would be rude not to.

  I break off a little crumb and toss it into my mouth. The explosion of sugar awakens my taste buds. My mouth starts to salivate.

  Whatever strength I had to resist only a moment ago, all but vanishes.

  I eat half a muffin in no time flat.

  Another minute later, the whole muffin is gone and I feel even crappier than I did before.

  Shit.

  Why the hell did you do that?

  How can you be so weak?

  I beat myself up over and over again.

  Then I feel guilty for doing that.

  Everyone says that you’re supposed to love your body. You’re supposed to appreciate it no matter what its size.

  But what if you can’t?

  What if I don’t want to be this weight?

  What if I don’t feel my normal self at this weight?

  How can I force myself to love myself?

  One thing’s for sure.

  What’s done is done and I have to find a way to forgive myself for eating that damn thing.

  “Hey there.” A male voice startles me. “You mind if I sit here with you?”

  Everly

  When he asks me out…

  He stands next to me and waits for my answer. I give him a brief nod and he sits down on the other end of the couch. Plopping his bag next to him, he pulls out his laptop.

  “Man, it’s a scorcher outside, isn’t it?” he says.

  I shrug. “I guess. But I don’t mind it.”

  “You don't?” He raises his eyebrows at me. I smile.

  His perfectly messy sandy blonde hair falls into his eyes in that sexy way. His bright blue eyes twinkle as he smiles.

  “I actually like the heat. I get cold a lot.”

  “Oh, that explains that winter sweater there.” He laughs and his whole face lights up.

  I shrug. “I work in an icicle of an office.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he says and plugs his laptop into the nearest outlet. “Oh, where are my manners? I’m Jamie.”

  “Hi, I’m Everly.” I shake his hand.

  “Everly. That’s such a beautiful name.”

  “Thanks. It’s a bit unusual though,” I say shyly.

  I’ve always felt a bit uneasy about my name. It’s actually going up the charts as a popular girl’s name for babies now, but when I was growing up, I was the only one who had it.

  In a small conformist community like the one where I grew up, it wasn’t good to have anything that set you apart from the rest. It was hard to fit into a sea of Ashleys and Jessicas with a name like Everly.

  “Well, I love it,” he says with a coy smile. I can’t help but smile back. There’s something infectious about his attitude. It just puts me into a better mood.

  Even though I try to put him off, we end up talking for a while. I find out that he’s from a small town in New Hampshire and moved to Philly to live and take care of his grandmother. He’s taking classes at Temple and is trying to be a poet.

  “A poet, huh?” I ask. He nods.

  “Let me guess,” he says, nodding. “Your first thought is how the hell am I going to make money doing that?”

  I shrug. “Actually, no. My first thought is that you must be some kind of a romantic.”

  “Well, I am. I love Robert Browning and Emily Dickinson. Shakespeare. Maya Angelou, of course. Dorothy Parker.”

  Those names bring memories of the two English courses that I took in college, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “What? You don’t approve?”

  “No, I’m just surprised,” I say. “Not many guys like to read fiction, let alone poetry; let alone poetry by women.”

  “Oh, well, they’re fucking missing out then,” Jamie announces proudly.

  “So, are you taking poetry classes at Temple?” I ask. He nods. I’ve had my own aspirations to write something one day, but those dreams have been squashed by the drudgery of my daily life. I want to tell him this, but I don’t trust him yet.

  “I love poetry, but I want to be a realist. So, I’m taking classes on short story writing as well.”

  “Oh, you mean as like a backup career? In case, being a poet doesn’t work out?” I joke.

  “Now, there’s a smile!” Jamie announces. I can’t help but blush. His confidence is disarming.

  I look away shyly.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. You just have a beautiful smile.”

  I shake my head.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I mumble. “I’m just not used to having anyone pay me so many compliments.”

  “Well, get used to it,” he says, getting up. “I’m going to get something to drink. You want anything?”

  “Another iced latte would be great.”

  As I watch him head toward the counter, I tell myself to stay calm. But thoughts just keep swirling around in my head.

  What the hell are you doing, Everly?

  You are over guys, remember? No more dating. At least, not for a while.

  I’m very well aware
of the promises that I’ve made myself. It had been six months since I got out of my last relationship and, after everything that he put me through, I needed a break. A good long break. I’d sworn off guys for good.

  But looking at Jamie’s perfectly toned ass and wide shoulders as well as his infectious personality and sweet smile, I couldn’t help but notice all the ways in which he was different from Damien.

  For one thing, Damien thought that all literature was a joke.

  What’s the point of reading novels? It’s all made up. He used to say.

  When I tried to explain that the point of reading books is to put yourself into another person’s experience, he would just laugh and say, what’s the fucking point?

  For some reason, he not only didn’t like reading fiction, and romance in particular, but it actually irked him on some other level. He would go out of his way to put me down for reading the types of books that I liked to read.

  My favorite books are the ones written by indie romance authors. You know, the ones that do it all on their own. They write the stories they want to write, they publish them, they market them.

  They are the types of authors you can just reach out to on Facebook and tell them how much you loved their books and they will actually write you back. They are basically women just like me.

  Well, maybe not exactly like me. They are the ones who actually have the initiative to write down the stories that swirl around in their heads.

  It’s embarrassing to even think about it now, but I dated Damien for close to a year. Our relationship was good, and healthy, for maybe three months, and the last nine were just a slow descent into anger and resentment.

  He never supported me in anything I wanted to do. If I even had an idea for something that I would want to try to make, like baking a cake from scratch and decorating it, he would make fun of it.

  Why do you want to waste your time doing that? He'd say. You can just buy one at the store.

  It’s not going to work out, you’ll see. It will be a waste of an afternoon.

  Frankly, I don’t know why I let myself stay in that toxic relationship for that long. Talk about a waste of time.

  So, after one particularly brutal and ugly fight that lasted well into the night but luckily stopped short of violence, I’d called it quits. I’d gathered everything I had in his apartment and left. This time, for good. On the way home, I’d sworn off men. Not all of them are like him, of course, but I knew that I needed to take the time to myself to figure out how to avoid this kind of a relationship in the future.

  “Here, you go.” Jamie comes back.

  Our fingers meet as he hands me my drink, sending a shock of electricity through me.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  We drink in silence for a moment. Oddly, comfortable silence. I’ve just met him and yet, I feel very much at ease. Calm. Like I’ve known him for a long time.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have any plans Friday night?”

  I look straight at him. Deep into his eyes. Is this a game? Or is he genuinely interested?

  “No,” I finally say.

  “Good, because I’d like to take you out.”

  I take another sip without saying anything.

  “Will you go out with me, Everly?”

  “Yes.”

  Everly

  When we go on a date…

  The decision to go out with Jamie was a split second one. But sitting here across from him in a dimly lit French restaurant, I know that it was the right one.

  Sometimes, you just have to throw away your rules and take a chance on someone.

  As we talk, our conversation flows naturally. I ask him about his life growing up and he asks me about mine. We get each other’s references and we find out that we both love the same shows and movies.

  “So, what do your parents think about you wanting to be a poet?” I ask, tapping the top of my crème brûlée. It makes a crackling sound as it bursts in two and the goodness inside oozes out.

  I’ve decided to make this a no-guilt dinner.

  There’s no way I could say no to any of the delicious food on the menu, let alone the desserts.

  The only thing I can do is not feel guilty about it afterward.

  “Eh, they aren’t pleased,” he says with a shrug. “As you can imagine. They don’t know anything about poetry and don’t really care. My mom’s a nurse and my dad’s an engineer. They are very science-oriented people. Results-oriented. If you know what I mean.”

  “I do.” I nod. “Unfortunately, I do.”

  I tell him that my parents were also somewhat perplexed by my decision to go to Middlebury. They didn’t care that it’s one of the top five liberal arts colleges in the United States. To them, Penn State was just fine.

  “They just couldn’t understand why I would want to take out loans to pay for ‘some prissy little school’ and get a useless Bachelor of Arts degree.’”

  “Isn’t it disappointing when your parents don’t support you?”

  I nod. Actually, it is. I haven’t really thought of it that way before, but now that he just came out with it, that is the right word for it.

  I used to write it off and rationalize their position as something that they simply didn’t understand, but now I think that it’s something that they just didn’t want to understand.

  “I think to them, Middlebury and Oberlin and other liberal arts schools like that are just for debutantes and people from high social classes. Not something that someone like me should have bothered with,” I say.

  “What do they do?” he asks.

  “They are both insurance adjusters,” I say. “They used to lecture me about how I would never fit in with those girls no matter what I did. They have rich families and will marry rich men.”

  One time, I made the mistake of asking them why they thought so little of me, maybe I would marry a rich man, too. The joke backfired. It resulted in a number of talks with my mother about the importance of marrying for love rather than money. But when I asked her why I couldn’t choose my career based on love rather than money, her only answer was that you need security. Love doesn’t pay the bills. Unless you marry a rich man, I joked, unable to resist. And a new loop in the conversation began.

  “I think they just wanted me to know for sure that they would not be supporting me after I graduated,” I conclude.

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie says, tilting his head.

  “No, it’s fine. I don’t expect them to. Not at all. That’s why I’m working now. I just wish that they were a little bit more supportive of where I went to school and what I majored in because it was important to me.”

  I take another bite of my dessert.

  “So, you really want to get your PhD then?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  Those words hang in the air between us. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted that to myself, let alone to someone else. For two years, I have been telling everyone that all I wanted to do was save up some money, get some experience in the field, and start graduate school.

  But now? Well, I’m not so sure anymore.

  “The thing is, that I really don’t like my job,” I say.

  “You’re just a receptionist. I’m sure that it would be totally different to be a licensed psychologist. Therapist.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I shrug. “Except that I know what it means now, and I’m not sure if I can handle it."

  “Really?”

  “Well, the thing is, I know exactly what Dr. Morris does. I have sat in on a few sessions to take notes. It’s hard. People come with all of their problems and issues. At first, it was interesting. You sort of get this inside glimpse into who people are behind the mask they wear in the outside world. But after a while, it’s…tedious. Tiring. Exhausting, really.”

  “That sucks,” Jamie says.

&n
bsp; I shrug again. “I have no idea why I'm telling you this. This is the first time that I’ve even really had the courage to say any of this out loud.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m here for,” Jamie says, putting his hand on mine.

  Shivers run through my body.

  A jolt of electricity.

  “So, if you don’t pursue your studies further, what is it that you do want to do?” he asks.

  I think about this for a second. I want to say something sensible. Realistic. But he just makes me feel so at ease. So comfortable and unafraid.

  “I want to be a writer.”

  His eyes light up.

  His excitement gives me a bit of a jolt. I’ve never said these words out loud, and I have no idea why I have this ache to tell him.

  “At least, I want to write a story,” I say, trying to diminish the gravity of what I had just said.

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Everly. You should. If that is what you really want to do, don’t let anything or anybody stop you.”

  I cower a little. How can he just believe in me like this?

  “You really think I can do it? You don’t even know me.”

  Jamie leans back in his seat a little.

  Then he looks me up and down.

  “I think you can because you want to. If it’s something that you have thought about even a little bit, if it’s something that you are passionate enough about, if you love words and language and reading, then I know you can write. It may take you a bit to find your voice. To find out exactly what kind of stories you want to write, but I know you can do it. And more importantly, you should.”

  I smile and take his hand. I didn’t realize it until this very moment how much I needed to hear that.

  At the end of our date, Jamie walks me home. We talk and laugh all ten blocks back, with our hands intertwined.

  Right when we turn onto my block, he swings me around and gives me a big kiss. His lips are soft and delicious and I can’t help but kiss him back.

  “Are you for real, Ms. Everly March?” he whispers in my ear, wrapping his strong arm around my shoulder. “Because I’m not sure you are.”