Sample Chapters

Falling for the Girl Next Door

#5 in the Creative HeArts series

··· ★ ··· ★ ··· ★ ···

CHAPTER ONE

A few months ago, if someone asked me to name one good thing about Austin, Texas, I would have laughed in their face. Serious, can't control it, gut-wrenching laughter. Never in a million years.

Apparently a lot can change in a short time, because now I can name three.

1. The food. As a vegetarian, Austin is a wonderland. There is a seemingly endless array of meat-free options. Back home in New York I had my favorite haunts, but here I'm finding new places to yum practically every day. Plus, there is my new obsession: Tex-Mex. There is no such thing as too much guacamole.

2. The school. When I first saw Austin NextGen Academy, all shiny and modern, I thought it would never compare to the School of Drama and Art where I spent my first three years of high school. I was wrong. Between the advanced-level classes and the experimental teaching methods, NextGen has totally blown my mind.

3. The neighbors. Or, more specifically, the neighbor boy. Tru Dorsey. He didn't exactly make the best first impression—climbing up onto my roof to disrupt my angry solitude had not endeared him to me. And thanks to a bunch of propaganda from my mom and his parents, I'd been pre-disposed to dislike him, anyway. But the boy has definitely grown on me, so much so that he's been elevated to full-on boyfriend status.

So there it is. The three reasons why I'm not unequivocally hating my parent-enforced exile in the Lone Star state. Enough to make my sentence here more than bearable. Dare I even say enjoyable? I'm not saying I'm ready to apply for permanent Texas citizenship, but sticking it out here in weirdsville for the duration of my senior year won't be the worst thing in the world.

Cue the guilt. I feel like I'm cheating on my hometown with another city. A girl can't spend almost eighteen years as a New Yorker and then just walk away. But Austin makes me want to try.

There's also the family guilt. While Mom and I are living it up in Austin, Dad and Dylan are back in our Big Apple brownstone. Dad is a workaholic who is almost never home. It's kind of hard to miss him when I never saw him much anyway, but my baby brother is another story. He's like the missing puzzle piece in my daily grind. I know Mom feels it, too.

The guilt was bad enough when I could blame my parents for sending Mom and me away. It was me against them. I was the sane one who wanted to go home.

Now that I'm actually content to stay in Austin...now it's kind of my fault, too.

My family is broken in two, with half a country separating us. And I'm partly to blame.

❤

"You need more than water for breakfast," Mom says as I grab a bottle from the fridge.

I shake my head. "Tru and I are stopping for coffee."

She crosses her arms over her chest. Her brows frown into that look of disapproval that means a lecture of some sort is coming.

I'm not interested.

"You need more than coffee for breakfast," she corrects.

"It has more than coffee," I counter. "It has steamed milk, too."

I don't tell her that it also has an extra shot of espresso. That would only earn a sterner glare.

"How exactly are you paying for this caffeine habit of yours?" she asks. "You're not letting Truman pay for it all?"