Page 1 of Hooking Her Up

Chapter 1

Kayla

A loud honk shakes me out of my blank state and a semi-truck rattles my windows as it nearly blows me off the highway. I glance down at the speedometer and realize I’m going ten miles below the limit but can’t make my foot press harder on the gas pedal.

Why am I going home for the summer when I had a perfectly good job offer to work in the kitchen at my favorite bakery in the city? When I take a deep breath, I can almost smell the buttery croissants coming out of the oven, hear the metallic clang of the pan as the friendly and cheerful owner slaps it on the counter before sliding a batch of cookies or muffins in. I’ve been filling in as a barista on the weekends, something my dad already rumbles against.

The pleasant thoughts of the bakery turn to my dad’s voice, that’s been growing increasingly bitter and angry at me over the last semester.

You don’t need extra spending money. Why waste that valuable studying time? If you’re bound and determined to have a part time job, I’ll call up one of my finance friends so it will at least look good on a resumé. Kayla, you need to stay on track! That damn bakery is a waste of time.

A line of cars passes me and I tell my phone to dial my best friend to block out Dad’s imaginary tirade. Despite my foot not pressing harder, I’ll still be home before I know it and then I’ll have to hear it in real life.

“Are you back yet?” Lily asks, her lilting voice making me smile. “How’s everyone? Did they turn your room into a guest room yet?”

“Hmmph,” I say. “As if Mom would stand for that. I’m about a half an hour away.”

My foot eases back some more. I may as well be driving a tractor at this point. Another truck blares its horn since it can’t readily pass me. Instead of speeding up, I merge onto the shoulder and sigh.

“What in the heck was that?” Lily shrieks. “Are you okay?”

“I was driving too slow,” I admit.

There’s a moment of silence. “You really don’t want to go home, do you?”

“It’s not that,” I say, but it kind of is.

“You’re driving the speed limit now, right? Nobody’s going to rear end you into a ditch while I’m talking to you, are they?”

“I’m stopped on the shoulder,” I tell her.

“Oh, Kayla. Hang in there for a few weeks and I’ll be back too.”

This promise gives me my first genuine smile since I had to turn down the bakery offer. I tell her all about it, how it’s just the first dent and pretty soon my dream will be nothing but a battered, unrecognizable wreck in the far reaches of my memory. Something I won’t have time to think about once I’m firmly planted in my father’s world of high finance.

My friends at school tell me to just stand up to him, tell him that’s not what I want. I can still use what I’ve learned from the business degree I was forced into. But Lily knows the deal. She understands what my father is like, the level of perfection he demands from both me and my mother. Mom thrives on the life we lead. She chose it, after all. I was born into it but somehow ended up all wrong. Like a square peg being repeatedly crammed into a round hole, any edges I might have once had were all worn smooth.

Like my perfectly straight hair and flawless skin, the way my clothes are always flattering and stylish but don’t make too much of a statement, never a wrinkle or scuffed shoe. Most people think I have everything, that every wish I ever make will come true. Only Lily knows what’s been stirring within me for years, scratching and scraping to get out. But still just a tiny mouse in a world of lions.

Lily keeps trying to give me one of her patented pep talks, but she starts cutting out and I look up from twiddling my ballerina pink fingernails in my lap to the sky. It’s growing dark for three o’clock in the afternoon and I put my signal on.

“I’m getting back on the road now,” I tell her. Before she can congratulate me on this heroic act of bravery, I see the exit for the scenic route through the forest. “But I’m taking Old Mill Road. Uh, I’ve been wanting to see the bridge.”

She snorts. “Yeah, make sure to stop and take pictures,” she says, and even through the crackling static on the line, her sarcasm makes me laugh. “That’ll add another few minutes.”

She starts breaking up even more as I turn off the highway and enter the thick pine forest. I already feel calmer in the shade of the towering trees that block out the traffic noise from the highway. The fact this will add at least fifteen more minutes to my journey has nothing to do with it. Or not much, anyway.

“I can’t hear you anymore, Lil,” I say. “I’ll call tonight after I’m settled in.”

I think she says okay right before the call drops. With no one riding up my backside or whizzing past me blasting their horns, I think back to all the times we came to these woods on elementary school field trips. While the teacher was trying to point out fern varieties and keep the boys from tearing through spider webs, I was meandering off the path and getting lost in my own little world where I was a fairy. In charge of all the baking, I’d gather up acorns and pine needles and pretend they were ingredients.

“What are you doing with those?” one dark haired boy, a few grades ahead of me, asked when I rejoined everyone. In my daydreams, he was a prince who fell in love with me after he tasted the bread I made from my gathered items.

Like a damn idiot, I told him. “I’m going to make delicious treats with them.”

He raised an eyebrow and pointed to one of the small branches in my hands. “That one’s toxic. You’ll kill us all.”

Before I could answer that I was only playing around, he smirked and joined his group of older boys. A second later they turned and laughed at me. I chucked one of my pinecones at him, picturing it hitting him square in the forehead and knocking him out. Instead, he raised his hand as casually as if he were greeting a neighbor and plucked it out of the air.

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