Moonpennies

By Alanna Rosette

Lina Daniels was eleven years old when her mother divulged that true love doesn't exist and heartbreak is inevitable. Now a late-twenties struggling writer, Lina is terrified of opening her heart to anyone. She fumbles her way through life, battling bouts of depression and avoiding real relationships at all costs...until one too many glasses of wine at a New Year's Eve party weakens her resolve.

She ends up in the arms of an irresistible prospect and decides to give love a chance.

The better judgment of her best friends tells her he's not the right guy. But finding the courage to fall in love is only the beginning of Lina's journey. Uncharted risks and bold mistakes open her eyes to a life-changing realization. She may learn her mother was right about the certainty of heartbreak. Yet she ultimately finds that true love does exist, and it makes the heartbreak worthwhile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alanna Rosette
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301170982

Alanna Rosette

I'm a writer across various mediums of fiction and non-fiction. Copywriter by day, but of course, fiction is my favorite. I enjoy writing prose but also have an affinity for visual storytelling, and thus love screenwriting, too. It sounds cliche, but hey, it's true...I've been writing since I was a kid and don't plan on ever stopping. I do it because I love it. And I will always aspire to get better.

Book preview

Moonpennies

a novel

by Alanna Rosette

Copyright 2013 Alanna Rosette

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Five

Chapter Nine

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty-Three

Final Chapter

Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter One

"Everyone is just too fucked up for true love to exist anymore," my mother fumed, more to herself than to me. I was eleven years old. We were driving home from my Saturday morning soccer practice. I looked out the window and thought of her and my dad, their perfect union, and me, the fruit.

"But Mo-om! I exist!" I said, as if I were living, breathing evidence to the contrary. I held my chin high and smiled, my last consoling effort.

It was in her silence, in the passive, momentary fall of her gaze from the road down to her lap, that I learned for the first time I was a mistake. An accident. It all came together; why, when I had begged and begged for a little brother or sister to play with, I remained an only child with a string of aquarium-sized pets.

My parents never loved each other.

Her silence made me angry. Always the smart-ass, I retaliated with a smug grin, "So then does that mean you're fucked up?" I was fully aware that she could use the F-word and I wasn't allowed. We arrived home about five minutes later. She marched me inside, straight to the bathroom, and washed my mouth out with soap. Then, before allowing me to wander off to my Saturday cartoons, she placed her hands on my shoulders and looked me matter-of-fact in the face.

Yes, Liny-bean, she finally spoke. And you will be too. Love is like a chase, an exhausting chase that never ends well. Like playing hide-and-seek except you're always 'it' and you never find who you're looking for. Then she planted a kiss on my forehead.

I sauntered away, confounded, and sat down in front of the television. Hide-and-seek was never the same after that, and Wile E. Coyote's pursuit of the Roadrunner was similarly tainted. As I watched, his endless misfortune was no longer blindly entertaining but rather puzzling. I couldn't help analyzing why he always got screwed, why the anvil always smashed him to smithereens, and why he would never give up. No matter how fast he ran or how brilliant his contraption, the plan always backfired. Albeit his pursuit was for food not love, I decided that, after all that fruitless chasing, he probably had the thing my mother was talking about. (Once I almost asked her if Wile E. Coyote was fucked up too, but I chickened out.)

I also reasoned that being fucked up might be inherited. Maybe Wile E. was born with this ailment, and so was I. It was inescapable. A genetic predisposition, like being short. I thought I was small, with brown eyes and long black hair and the fastest runner in gym class, and that I would someday be fucked up. I waited in fear for the disease to set in. (My mother also said all the things she was supposed to. Nice things, like that I was pretty and smart. But it's a good thing I really was, because if I had been ugly or dumb she probably would have told it to me straight.)

At the age of fourteen, with a slightly more advanced, post-pubescent take on what she spoke of that day, I concluded it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. An I think, therefore I am. And by not thinking it, I could dodge the anvil. Step out of the way just before it fell on me and think, haha. So I began watching for the two-ton metal brick to fall from the sky. Little did I know I'd already been crushed by it once at the hands of my father, who'd decided, in recent years, to stop pretending to love my mother and abandon us both.

Upon entry to my freshman year of high school, rumors were flying around that the hottest, most popular junior and leader of the coolest clique—The Alliance—wanted to date me. Jason Bader. All the upper class girls despised me, a lowly freshman, for taking him off the market. I was elated when he asked me if I would go to the varsity basketball game after school and then kissed me on the front steps. A public statement. My friend Scarlet, standing beside us, couldn't contain her squeal. She was wide-eyed, perhaps more so than I, as he walked off to join the rest of The Allies.

Jason Bader kissed you! she screamed.

I didn't say much. My smile was so big it hurt my face, which probably said enough. I floated out of the school gates and glowed the entire walk home. Once I'd passed the five blocks, I burst through my front door, flung my backpack aside, and bee-lined it to my Magic 8 Ball.

High school, I whispered to it jubilantly and then spun it around the requisite eight times. (There were different formulas. Some girls blew on theirs, some closed their eyes for eight seconds, some did my spinny trick, and some found a gratifying combination therein.)

Outlook Good.

Never trust a Magic 8 Ball. I should have asked my mother instead. Jason dumped me about a month later, just one week before my very first homecoming dance. I got to watch him crowned as homecoming prince, in all his glory, as I stood beside my date Virgil Joffey; the only boy I knew who was still available one week before the dance. And the only freshman shorter than me.

I cried when Jason dumped me, but the whole thing toughened me up and Tubthumping by Chumbawamba lifted my spirits—I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never gonna keep me down... I listened to that song every morning for a week straight and walked the school halls with a high chin.

It's now been well over a decade since that one-hit wonder topped the charts. As an adult I am a total spaz. Not your full-blown OCD case, but neurotic enough to avoid grates in the sidewalk and never enter the ocean further than hip-deep since sharks are reported to attack in as little as four feet of water. If I really have to pee, I'll make an exception and wade into the water up to my waist, to ensure full coverage. I'll even splash around a bit to make my deed less obvious to the sun-bathing public and salvage a little dignity. (All while knowing this movement might draw the attention of sharks.)

Now, add that my mother was right. It is not genetic; it was not a prophecy self-fulfilled. I never stood a chance against that anvil. Once sufficiently crushed by a significant other, I began to observe it in the world, just like she said.

This is how it goes: You open your heart to one person, who has been fucked up by someone before you, who then pays it forward as part of the diagnosis, fulfilling a twisted destiny and sealing the fate your mother foresaw sixteen years ago. You become a guarded, disillusioned, self-psycho-analyzing mess and inadvertently pass the torch along to the next blindly entering club member.

It's quite the predicament we've gotten ourselves into. But we shall overcome, I keep telling myself aloud, which always goes in one ear and right out the other. I even listen to Tubthumping still for a kick in the pants on a cloudy day, and yet I'm ever-conscious of our plight. My last thirteen years have been filled with varying degrees of Jason Baders.

Tubthumping is rotated between Hold On by Wilson Phillips, Can't Touch This by MC Hammer, and The Sign by Ace of Base; all the songs I took on when the struggle began, which remind me how long I've been able to weather the storm. I have this theory they should start playing more hits of the 90's on morning radio and stop divulging celebrity breakup horror stories, broadcasting—literally—and further injecting the message that love is hopeless...even for the rich, beautiful, and famous. So why try? Why put your heart behind anything if you're assured from the start it's going to backfire and leave you smashed into the ground by the anvil?

This is where prophecy exists, self-fulfilling, foreboding, and relentlessly precise. It's all about anticipation of The Fact.

The Fact |thē făkt| [noun]: A fuck-over; a betrayal while in love, relationship, or marriage. Being crushed by the anvil is directly resultant of an encounter with The Fact.

It is the fearing of The Fact that often brings The Fact to fruition, while, if The Fact is not feared in the first place, it likely will never come to pass. I live this way, knowingly. I've traveled around and around and around the vicious circle, fleeing The Fact. I now have all the stops memorized and know where to proceed with caution and can see, from a great distance, that I am getting back to where I started; where the big yellow sign warns you Not a Through Street. I've gone on like this, sucking more and more people into the vortex with me, because I was so damaged by the anvil that I'm not ready for a Through Street. Through? Through to where? Do I want to go there, do I want to go Through?

No, I am safe here, in my vicious circle, my vicious cul-de-sac. Where I keep passing on the diagnosis so no one can get close to me. Where I avoid real feelings at all costs. Where opportunities may be limited, but at least there are no Mack trucks to blind-side me.

Chapter Two

With my thirties on the imminent horizon, all of my cynical theories about love must be put into question. I must face The Fact. The end of the year arrives and I decide I've had enough of the safe quiet neighborhood and will venture into the big city. Figuratively and literally. My girlfriends and I, who normally ring in the New Year via house party at Brianna's, decide this year we will find an overcrowded, far-too-expensive nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard in which to clink glasses at midnight.

Minutes before the countdown, Brianna, Kristen, Reese, and I stand huddled together, arms interlocked around each other's waists, smiling tentatively and mischievously at the prospect of a new year. New plans, new promises, new hopes, new heartbreaks.

So, ladies, Brianna whisper-shouts, what's it going to be this year? And none of the pacts we've made before. We don't call them New Year's resolutions. We decided in tenth grade to call them friendship pacts because we thought they would stick better that way. I think it's done some good.

We all stand buzzing with deep thought, or as deep as thought can go when you are also buzzing with the effects of your third martini.

Reese yells first, I'm going to give Jacqueline more time with her dad. Tears glisten in her eyes at the thought of entrusting more of her daughter to her estranged ex-husband. Kristen and I flank her on either side. I squeeze her waist and press my head to hers and Kristen responds similarly.

It's quiet for a while. Just the sound of Jay-Z blaring in the background. Okay, I'll go next, Brianna says. I'm going to make more time for the people I love. I know I'm constantly working and I'm sorry you guys. That's changing as of tomorrow. I don't want to hear about your lives through Facebook anymore. Here's to more coffee dates! She raises her glass and we all meet ours in the middle with inaudible clinks.

Kristen goes after. I'm moving out of my mom's house this year. She's going to be heartbroken, but I need my own space. It's time. We each give her a little nod of encouragement.

There is another long pause while they all stare at me, waiting. My heart thumps as I begin to speak because I've never said the words out loud. I haven't wanted to see the other end of a Through Street in a long time. But now, I am going to let myself love, I say simply, without blinking. The words come out unfeeling. I am so used to pushing away sentiment that even now I cover up the wave of fear and the rush of excitement with nine monotonous syllables. But Brianna and Kristen and Reese know what these words really mean to me. That's why they've been my best friends since girlhood. They all angle their heads slightly and smile a knowing smile.

Love you, Lina, Reese says, speaking for everyone.

I love you girls, I reply. The countdown starts immediately afterward. We release each other and bounce giddily on our toes, smiling, looking around to study the moment and retain a mental photograph of exactly the way it is. I note the way all the silver and black and white under the flashing red lights make everything look like sepia tone in the darkness. I note how the endless sea of rhinestones and sequins sparkle and how that same red light bounces off of champagne glasses lifted high in the air.

...Six, five, four, THREE, TWO, ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR! the room shouts in unison. Everyone screams and kisses and jumps into each other's arms. The four of us girls turn back to our huddle and hug and say how much we love each other. We will always be here for each other. We kiss cheeks, clink glasses, and chug champagne.

I turn again to survey the room, a boisterous bunch. The crowd continues celebrating except for one tall, dark-haired man standing alone beside the bar. He isn't smiling but he doesn't exactly look serious. He looks like he is doing what I was doing seconds ago, capturing the moment in a mental photograph. Except he doesn't have a cluster of age-old friends standing beside him. He doesn't appear to be with anyone. And he is drinking some kind of scotch or bourbon instead of champagne. My first thought is that he is far too good-looking to have been stood up. He must have chosen to come alone. My second thought is who drinks whisky during the count down to the New Year?

So, he isn't celebrating. Or maybe he's that guy. The too-cool-for-school guy who struts in, so far above the hype that he boycotts every social norm and just broods in the corner. A mocking display. Now I notice, too, that he is wearing a green shirt. Not your typical black, white, silver, or gold celebratory New Year's Eve attire. And he's taken off the silver and black beads they handed out at the entrance that everyone else is still wearing.

I glance down at the beads around my neck, blurry-ish beads, and feel silly for wearing them. But then I immediately feel angry. Why must he come in here to ruin everyone else's good time? If he's so cool, why didn't he just stay locked away in his overpriced Brentwood loft? I become brazen with indignation and lift my sights back to him, prepared to march over and give him an earful in honor of twelve years of pact-making...how dare he! But when my hazy vision manages to focus on him again, I find that he is looking at me, which I didn't expect. He looks away before I can furrow my eyebrows and turn my mouth into a scowl. I prop a hand on my hip, exhausted from concentrating so hard, and don't realize I'm still staring at him until his eyes flutter back over to me and away again.

At this point, I also begin taking note of the many stumbling, glassy-eyed girls trying to initiate eye-sex as they walk past him. He has ample opportunity to make a fast friend but gives not one of them the time of day. I watch one girl stand a few feet from him, seductively sipping from her glass and licking her lips. She then walks right up to stand beside him but accidentally rams him in her overzealous, drunken state. He looks down at her, slides one telling step away, and finishes off the whisky in his glass. He can't even muster the enthusiasm to look annoyed, which I know he is.

The fact that he is apparently above hooking up and won't just take advantage of a drunk blond like any other guy would, something I would normally consider noble, irks me further. That's it. I am going to give him a piece of my mind. I begin my march over to him, fuming, but as I near him his eyes meet mine again and he smiles slightly. He has dimples. Two incredible dimples that change everything about him in a split-second. They're like parenthesis highlighting a perfectly formed pair of lips. My legs slow their pace and I come to a stop in front of him with no words in my head. My speech has evaporated, my crusade has fallen several steps behind. He glances to the side as if to say, well you walked over here, say something. I raise my hand in the air for a high-five.

Am I high-fiving him? Those are the first words my brain manages to cluster together, which might have been useful before it sent the high-five signal through my central nervous system. But now the words are inane. Disdainful even. He high-fives me back with an odd laugh, revealing a row of beautiful white teeth.

So scotch? is the next gem my brain concocts.

Nutritious and delicious, he says and smiles bigger. His blue eyes twinkle with mischief. His whole face seems to glow now, and is making me dumber by the second. What are you drinking? he asks.

I look down at my empty champagne flute. Uhh, pinot noir? He turns to the bar and orders me a glass, along with another scotch for himself.

I'm Katalina, I say as he hands me my fifth drink of the night. Well, Lina really. I mean, everyone who knows me calls me Lina. I gulp my wine.

Russell, he says, extending his right hand. With the wine glass held in my sweaty right palm, I am unprepared for this formality. I try to switch quickly, but that's not going to work, so after this sloppy little fumble I weakly offer him my left hand.

So, no date, huh? I say, forcing a smirk. I don't feel like being bold. I feel like I'd rather be standing waist-deep in the ocean. But I have to crank up my confidence now, to recover.

He shakes his head and takes a slow sip from his fresh glass of scotch. His face gives nothing away.

I press. Even with all this talent?

He looks around us and raises one eyebrow. A broad is one thing, but a skank is another. I don't do skanks.

I cringe. My skin crawls. I hate him again. Those dimples with that outright crassness is an anomaly. Right, I reply. "So what do you do?" I have no idea why I'm pursuing this conversation. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that he is mysterious and has allowed me into his inner orb and cheaply complimented me by calling me not-a-skank. At least I take it as a compliment; not that he is going to do me, but here he is speaking to me when he hasn't so much as batted an eye at anyone else.

I'm a restaurant manager and caterer, he says, and hands me his card. I look it over and tuck it into my purse, then look up at him. His gaze is fixed elsewhere, aloof. I wait for Russell McClellan, Restaurateur to grasp the concept of a reciprocal conversation. But he doesn't. He doesn't return the question, not even to at least politely feign interest in what I do for a living.

I am about to walk away when he turns to the bar tender and shouts the words another pinot noir! and before I know it he is replacing the empty glass in my right hand with a full one. I didn't even realize I'd drank it all.

This is when the night starts getting hazy. I don't recall how we end up on the dance floor (at first sights I didn't take him for a dancer, but maybe he is just that drunk, too), but we do. I foggily tell my girlfriends, who were frantic before finding me with the hot stranger man, that I will take a cab home and they can go on without me. The crass and then crasser statements Russy (as I now call him) shamelessly makes are the only things clear in my mind. I pretend not to hear him telling me his fool-proof safe sex method, when in doubt, stick it in her mouth.

I feel myself shudder at this remark but, shameless in my own way, keep dancing with him. And at some point, very late when we're among the last people left in the place, we begin making out. I don't know how we've reached this point, who made the first move. I just remember dancing close and then kissing and then suddenly we are standing on the sidewalk, kissing more. I'm aware that I am standing on the curb and he in the street so our lips will match up more easily.

I am blurrily certain he will invite me back to his place, because we danced and danced and he bought me all those drinks and a guy doesn't do that without expecting more. So I decide I will go, even knowing he's the type of guy who'll never talk to me again afterward. I think what the heck! I'll start off the New Year with a bang! No pun intended—too drunk for puns, in fact.

But to my surprise, when I complain of being cold, he does up all the buttons on my coat and then hails me a cab. He helps me in alone,

Reviews for Moonpennies

[terry_mitchell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was giving this book in exchange for an honest review

Moonpennies is a funny and slightly sad story about a girl who couldn't see that the boy next store was the right one all along....She spent many years with the wrong guys, perhaps purposely chasing after the ones she knew she would never go the long hall with. And then she met what appeared by all rights to be the perfect guy...and no he wasn't the boy next door.

The story goes on to tell her tale of a twisted adventure that she ends up in...It was hard not to sympathize with the awkward situation she found herself in when visiting what she believed was a very available perfect bachelor....and his wife.

It was a very sweet story, with a bittersweet end that leads you to believe there will be a second book following it.

I was a little disappointed at the over use of the word "fuck"...I am not against language in books-it's often in my daily dialog, so it doesn't bother me in the least to read it as well.....however it seemed like the author may have gotten stuck on repeat with this word.

Aside from that small issue this book was a great read! I sympathized with the main character, she struggled in her adult life due to her daddy issues. Which let's be honest many of use could write novels on our daddy issues....The bigger part though-is in the end (well sortof) she seems to finally be realizing daddy's issues can not control your life forever or you will never get anywhere.