The New Girl

By Lydia Westing

Leather and Lace is a collection of romantic short stories from Bryant Street Shorts. We recommend starting with "The New Girl," the first story in this series, and then reading the rest in order. To find more stories in this series, simply scroll to “Titles In This Series,” located just below this description.

About Leather and Lace

The Ruby City Roller Girls are a small Midwestern roller derby team previously ranked 250 in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, but a new coach and a fresh batch of players gives the team the opportunity to go all the way to playoffs. Will the small team achieve big things this season? Or will they get too distracted by all of the fun, flings, and real romances they experience along the way?

Grace was kicked out of her extremely religious family when she decided to flee her loveless engagement to go to college. Isolated from her large family by her parent’s anger, she found herself drawn into a new sisterhood, The Ruby City Rollers. On the day she officially makes the team, she also finds herself drawn through circumstance closer to the cute ref she’s had a crush on forever.

About Bryant Street Shorts

Bryant Street Shorts is a new publisher specializing in exciting short-form fiction from talented and emerging writers. We’re passionate about creating immersive works that represent our readers and celebrate what matters to them, which is why our catalog of stories reflects a wide range of experiences and voices.

Many Bryant Street Shorts are collections of stories that follow ensembles of characters across multiple storylines. We suggest reading these stories in order to get the most out of your experience. Simply scroll down to “Titles In This Series,” located just below the description of every Bryant Street Short, to find the stories in their correct order.

To find more short stories and novellas on Scribd, simply search for “Bryant Street Shorts."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094408965

Lydia Westing

Lydia Westing is usually a comedy and pop-culture writer for websites like Reductress, Bunny Ears, Cracked, and The Modern Rogue. She has a small dog and a large husband, and they all live together in Nashville, Tennessee. She played roller derby for several different teams on and off for over five years. She’s much better at writing than she ever was at roller derby.

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The New Girl

Grace was so sick of tangling with her hair, pun fully intended. Putting it up for practice was the worst part of her day. Twisting it, and twisting it, then rolling it into a bun and securing it with two hair ties and as many bobby pins as she could scavenge. She thought once again about cutting it, but that would just be another thing further separating her from the rest of her family. She imagined that they might invite her over for dinner some night to talk and if she showed up still looking how they wanted her to look, dressing how they wanted her to dress, well, then maybe everything would be OK again.

Not that she wanted things to be OK exactly, at least not their version of OK. The only OK life for Grace, according to her parents, was one where she married a man that her father approved of and spent the rest of her life popping out baby after baby. She hadn’t wanted that for herself, so she’d chosen a different path.

She’d gotten a full scholarship to Illinois State University and worked in the school cafeteria to afford rent. Her parents had kicked her out with absolutely nothing, but her sister Hymn had smuggled her a suitcase of clothing and a few books to start her new life. Now, three years later,

Reviews for The New Girl

[Wendy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This series is SO FUN and makes me want to strap on my skates!