Free Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy by Jessica Pine Page B

up to the air, left to the elements and the birds.
     "Everything," he said. "I never saw a sky like this until we moved to Vermont."
     "Wait, I thought you were from here?"
     I felt his head move. "Nope. Chicago."
     "Ah. That's the accent."
     "I have an accent?"
     "Not much. I guess I just have an ear for these things. When did you move here?"
     He took a deep, satisfied breath, as if he could inhale the stars. "We were eight - me and Bryan. My Mom used to buy me these coloring books of the planets - galaxies, alien suns, space stuff." I saw his hand move above us as he gestured. "I made all these mobiles of the solar system. Wanted to be an astronaut. I never really believed in it, though. All those stars and planets and constellations and maps - it was never real to me, because every time I looked up all I fucking saw was just...light pollution. It was never really dark enough in Chicago to see the stars."
     "And then you moved to Vermont," I said.
     "Yep. Then it was real. Huge. Big enough to make you crazy. And there it all was. Pegasus. Andromeda. The Pleiades. Mars. Venus. Jupiter. Orion. Red giants, novas, the Milky Way - so clear and so crisp."
     "So why did you give up wanting to be an astronaut?" I asked.
     The car creaked gently underneath us as he laughed. "Are you kidding me? I could have studied until I was eighty and never made the grades. You could, though."
     "Me? Don't be ridiculous."
     "You could. You're smart."
     I remembered what Courtney had said, when she was trying to explain her world to people for whom the New York fashion scene was as remote and alien as the surface of Mars. I hadn't quite grasped her meaning then but now it made perfect sense to me.
     "There's more than one type of intelligence," I said. "And I'm not that type. They're like engineers and physicists, not to mention scary fit. Anyway, the view's good enough from Earth."
     "Right," he said. "Why would you bother inventing the telescope?"
     I didn't care for his tone - it smacked of Aunt Cassandra's - so I said nothing for a while. At least, I thought, I knew who invented the telescope. Hooke? Halley? Wren? Someone like that - a bunch of men in heavy-bottomed periwigs poking apart the natural world, kicking over the traces of superstition. I wanted to say something, but everything I thought through sounded sour, or like an excuse. This was so fucking ridiculous - all this lying around on junked cars like we were children, sneaking around in the workshop.
     "Why can't we go to your place?" My words came out irritable and to my further annoyance he laughed.
     "There's a sweet nothing if ever one was whispered," he said.
     "I don't care if you live with your parents. Are they super-religious or something?"
     "God no. They're Catholic." He sighed. "And I don't live with them."
     My stomach turned to ice. "Oh my God - you're married." I tried to sit up, but the roof of the car was narrow. He caught me before I fell and for a moment it was like I hung there in mid-air, torn between the desire to fight him off and knowing that I was about to hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. As soon as my feet touched the earth I yanked my hand loose from his.
     "Lacie!"
     I kept walking. How could I have been so stupid? I heard him coming and broke into a run, but he was too fast.
     "Will you listen?" he said, catching hold of my arm. "I don't live with my parents and I'm not married. Jesus, what is it with you and leaping to conclusions?"
     "Then why did you lie to me?"
     "I didn't," he said. "You assumed I lived with my parents. I didn't get to answer one way or the other."
     I knew he was right. I was glad of the dark because I was probably the color of a beet right now. "You're splitting hairs," I said.
     "I'm not and you know it." He squeezed both my hands and ducked a little to touch his forehead to mine. "The reason I didn't take you home is because I live in a trailer," he said. "In a trailer park. That's where I am