Stranded in Salina: A Lesbian Romance

By Shea McBride

It's the summer of 1998, and Delilah Wade is on a mission: to get as far away from her abusive ex-boyfriend as possible. With just a few bags and her dilapidated car, she leaves Chicago and sets out on what she thinks will be a journey of healing and self-discovery—right up until a flat tire foils her plans and leaves her stranded in the dusty heart of Kansas.

But when Lou Tanner, an older butch woman with experience and kind eyes, comes to her rescue, Delilah realizes she wasn't just running away from something painful—she was running toward something better than she ever imagined. Set over the course of one fateful night, Delilah will learn what it feels like to be wanted for the first time in her life, and that sometimes the only way to find yourself is to get lost.

The debut novella from author Shea McBride! For readers 18+!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shea McBride
• Release date: Jul 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463402832

Shea McBride

Shea McBride hails from a small town where it was easier to be gay on paper than in person, so you could say she got a lot of practice in early. Before her Big Dramatic Coming Out, she spent her time crafting gay romances in her head and is just now putting them into words for you to read and enjoy. With a mental backlog of about twenty years' daydream material, sources say she'll be writing the steamy romps of star-crossed gay and lesbian lovers until the cows come home. She lives in the American desert with her wife and three cat children.

Book preview

STRANDED IN SALINA

WHEN DELILAH’S CAR tires skitter over some spiked plant in the road, popping the front left tire that had already been sagging for hours, all she can think is how much sense it makes for her luck to run out in a town named after a woman. Salina, the sign had read a few miles back.

The first girl she’d ever crushed on was named Selena. First period English, seventh grade. They kissed as a joke at a sleepover and Delilah had wandered in a lovesick daze for a week straight, chalking it up to being very good friends.

And now look at her. Stranded in Kansas like Dorothy in a J.C. Penney sundress.

Delilah clicks her heels just once, despondent as the car comes to a rolling stop at the side of the road. The radio keeps blasting the Top 40 of 1998; I Don’t Want To Wait is playing for the second time. Delilah stares out the window and mouths along for a few blank moments before she sighs and rests her forehead on the steering wheel. Brown hair spills down her shoulders and curtains her eyes. She bets Tim would really be enjoying this, a flat tire foiling her runaway trip after leaving him high and dry without a word of warning. He’d make some quip about how how knows how to change a tire and she doesn’t, how she needs him to get from point A to the entire damn alphabet.

Well, she mutters, sitting up straight, you can go fuck yourself, Tim.

It can’t be too hard, swapping out a busted tire. Delilah turns off the engine, pops the trunk, and hops out of the car, flip-flops clapping against the cracked asphalt. When was the last time this road was tended to? The roads aren’t like this in Chicago, where she’d started this hellish journey of renewal and self-discovery or whatever. Irritable and sheened in sweat, she scuffs her heel against the road as if to punish it as she finds her spare tire and lugs it out of the trunk. So what if Tim knew stuff about cars. He couldn’t fuck to save his life, or kiss, or hold a hand, or do much of anything without hurting her. And now you’re all alone, she says, straining a little as she sets the tire down. "And you’re never gonna—ow, ow—see me again, you dick."

She must look crazy, huffing and talking to herself like this.

At least no one is around for miles to see her. She’s either lucky or lonely for that.

After taking ten minutes to realize you can’t pull a tire off of a reclining car with your bare hands, Delilah bursts into laughter that borders on crying and flops onto the dry grass. Her hands are stained gray and brown with God knows what. Roadside repair kit, she laughs out, eyes welling with tears. In the trunk. C’mon, Dee.

She tries to move, but the exhaustion of the trip hits her all at once with a force that keeps her seated in the grass, dirtied and embarrassed. Chicago feels entire lifetimes away by now, and she isn’t sure if that’s a good or bad thing just yet. She’s suspecting good, because she’ll never have to feel Tim’s hands on her again, or step foot in their shitty apartment infested with ants and bad memories.

But then there are her friends. Favorite diners. The water.

Delilah knits her brow in a stubborn crinkle, refusing to cry.

The sound of an approaching vehicle grabs her attention, and she sees a large white truck trundling down the road, slowing as it approaches. Delilah immediately tenses, expecting trouble, but the face that greets her from the open window is a pleasant surprise: an older woman, grizzled and gruff like she belongs in a leather jacket on a motorcycle in some black-and-white film about gangsters. One tough arm hangs out of the window, the sleeve of her white t-shirt rolled to the shoulder. You in need of some help, ma’am?

Her voice is nicer than Delilah had expected from such a hardened face, drawling and hoarse. Delilah squints through the haze of Kansas heat to make out a curly mop of ash-blond hair swept back from the woman’s forehead. Her eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses. A skittishness takes Delilah by the throat and pulls out a laugh. I’m in need of a lot, she says.

I hear you. The woman shuts off the truck engine on the opposite side of the empty road and steps out. She’s a large woman, built like a barrel with hard arms and a strong stomach pushing out from underneath her shirt. Delilah vaguely thinks of dead-lifting, how much this woman could hold above her head. She bets it’s a lot. You oughta get up out of that grass, she says, nodding to Delilah. Got snakes in there. Ants.

Delilah curses beneath her breath and scrambles to her feet. That’d be just my luck, wouldn’t it? An abduction of fire ants up my dress.

The woman comes closer to the car with her hands in the pockets of her blue jeans. Oil stains mark the thighs, then grass stains on the shins. There’s a rip just above the right knee,