Strawberry Milk: a novella

By Rowan Paige and Shreya Gupta

Strawberry Milk is a colorful, nostalgic novella about taking the dive and discovering your true self. Set against the sunny backdrop of Santa Cruz, CA in the year 2004, this poetic novella is a fresh take on what it's like being a 20-something: navigating the unknown, and falling unexpectedly in love. Packed with relatable, diverse characters and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rowan Paige
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087862361

Rowan Paige

Rowan Paige is best known for her poetry collection Whilst Gazing Through a Window. She lives in Oregon with her partner and their family of pets. This is her debut novel.

Book preview

One

The Moon Never Answers

Sherri, my childhood next-door neighbor, told me that I was an ‘Autumn’ when we were fifteen years old. Sherri and I would spend hours taking quizzes in the backs of magazines and checking our horoscopes. I'm a Capricorn (loyal, driven, but stubbornly pessimistic). Every fifteen-year-old girl is running around searching for her identity, shouting Who the hell am I? until the sun comes up. I thought she was just talking about my coffee-brown hair and powdery-white completion, but even then, I knew she was looking deeper than that; Sherri always looked deeply into things. (She also said I would be a boy magnet in adulthood, so Sherri didn’t know everything.) Ten years later, I am still that fifteen-year-old girl running around yelling at the moon to tell her who she is–and to my dismay, the moon never answers. 

***

It is only late April, and I am absolutely dying. I’m not physically dying, but my will to go outside this apartment any longer is. It is unbearably hot this spring. Summer is going to be impossible. I detest living in the south just a little more with every passing miserable summer. Alabama is no place for an Autumn. My therapist says that I have SAD (yes, I know), Seasonal Affective Disorder. For most people, it is most prevalent during the colder, darker months when they get less sunlight, less serotonin. But for some, it can be just as severe during the hotter months as massive amounts of sunlight trigger depressive episodes. To me, SAD episodes tend to feel as though I am being hit by waves of electric, bright yellow when all I want is to rest in a dark, cool room. I don’t know how to really put it adequately. All I know is that an eternal October would be nice.

I have lived uncomfortably under the thick humidity of Mobile County my whole life. I grew up in a little town called Grand Bay, right off of the Mississippi state line. It’s a charming, quaint small town- very peaceful with the sound of gossip hanging in the air over colossal oak trees. I lived there, quietly holding my breath until I went away to college and could finally exhale, although the breathing got difficult again soon after. I now live downtown, where you can smell the paper mill for miles, but it is just far enough away from endless cotton fields and dirty small-town rumors and close enough to concert venues and half-decent coffee shops. I love the scene here. The local restaurants, the eclectic shops and bars, and the city lit up at night, reflecting on the bay. The people are different here in the city. They are diverse, and they are loud. Everyone speaks their mind. Everyone but me, anyway. Most of all, I love my friends--my only two friends. Carolina and Gregg.

* * *

Carolina, Gregg, and I sit on the concrete rooftop edge of Gregg's apartment building. The spring air smells of wet magnolia and salt. It's humid as hell, and the wind plays with our hair and tosses around pollen like confetti.

Y'all, who watched American Idol last night? Carolina is drooling over tabloids, flipping through this week's People magazine featuring Prince William on the cover.

Gregg is looking up at the RSA Tower. Yes! he says, clapping his palms together. Okay, that Jennifer Hudson can siiiing.

Not to mention, she's so beautiful, I say while tossing my hair into a scrunchy, inhaling the azalea-scented warm air.

You know who's beautiful? Britney freaking Spears. Carolina flips to the spread of Britney in the center of the magazine and shows Gregg and me. I wonder how one goes about becoming her backup dancer...

You have the worst taste in music, you know, Gregg pipes in. Gregg is the only gay man I know who does not adore Britney Spears. You know who I am obsessed with right now?

Gregg is Vietnamese-American, not as tall as he would like to be (he often wears platform shoes), flamboyantly gay, undeniably ostentatious, and a total know-it-all. With a sharp jaw and piercing black eyes, he truly is beautiful. Gregg is a true friend. He will lend you the shirt off his back while in the same breath telling you that your hair looks like a crow’s nest. He means well, but he has absolutely no filter. He is annoyingly honest, yet I adore that he doesn’t think too hard about what to say. I wish I had a sprinkle of Gregg’s confidence and charisma.

Sometimes, I go to the gay bars with Gregg as a wingman, and without fail, it always ends with us back at Gregg’s downtown studio apartment- wine drunk. The night leaves us sitting fully clothed in a dry bathtub, listening to Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn (The Three Queens, as Gregg coined them). He’s a mess romantically, but we’re working on it.

You mean besides yourself? Carolina laughs.

Oh, how funny. No, John Mayer. Gregg sighs, fanning himself with the magazine.

What? You're kidding, I shout, watching the stars peep out from behind the clouds.

He is gorgeous, and you must admit you liked that one where he's eating a hot dog...  Clarity!

It's okay. But, he's just so damn cocky.

Cocky or not, he's hot-hot-hot. Carolina opens her can of vanilla Coke.

Carolina is peppy ginger with long legs, a pointy nose, and smiles for miles. I believe Carolina may literally have a heart of gold. She gives entirely too much of herself and has a way of listening to you as if she’s known you her whole life.

Carolina is a barista at the Port City Coffee House. That’s where we met. She is also a closeted, fabulous dancer. Carolina danced throughout middle school and high school, and when she showed me some tapes from old competitions, I was shocked she never applied for a big-shot dance academy like Julliard. For such a tall girl, she really sells herself short. She says she’s going to move up to New York City one day and teach dance. She’s been claiming that ever since we met, but five years later, she is still behind the bar slinging drinks for stone-faced attorneys, starving artists, and the thirty-something mama gang. I hope she makes it out of Mobile.

I’ve never met a kinder soul than Carolina Leanne Bosarge. We’ve been good friends ever since I spilled my guts to her while she made my Americano one rough Sunday morning. I was talking very fast like a Gilmore Girl but very quietly, almost whisper-like. I’m surprised she didn’t think I was a meth addict. Maybe she did. Carolina would never say so.

A large Americano, please... My ex turned me on to Americanos, and I hate that I love him. I mean them! I don’t think I have ever loved anyone in that way-- God, I'm pathetic. No, I really am... I’m so sorry; you didn’t ask to hear me ramble. Please, ignore me. Anyway, I’m Paige. Like, to write on but with an 'I.' Sorry, I'm doing it again. I’m not good with the people thing, and I just need some coffee because I am extremely hungover thanks to Gregg and The Three Queens, and I’m not myself today--

It’s okay, Paige. I’m Carolina like the states, and boys suck. Here’s your Americano. I added an extra shot. She winked. She’s the type that’s cool enough to pull off a wink.

And from that moment on, with a wink and a cup of coffee, we were friends.

You know who I like? I ask them.

Who? Gregg and Carolina lean forward curiously.

You guys, I respond with a grin, lifting my can into the sticky Alabama sky.

We sit, looking up to the stars, enjoying the silence. The three of us will probably be stuck here together for the rest of our sad lives, but at least we'll have each other.

Two

Avoiding Tom

I work full-time at a local grocery store called Greer’s as a check-out girl. I know how lame it sounds, but I genuinely like my job, and Gregg will not accept that answer. He’s continuously ragging on me to do more with my life, live a little.

Gregg is a graphic designer, and he does a lot of work for local magazines making logos and creating advertisements. Do you know those purely white, religious ones with a happy family of four on the front wearing matching khaki outfits complete with a golden retriever and an overused Bible verse? Gregg has a burning hatred for khaki. It’s not the ideal environment for Gregg, but it's a job, and he kicks ass.

Gregg is bigger than Mobile and small-town southern living. His dream is to move to California and work for a big-time magazine and access the best gay clubs in the country. The thought of living in a place like SoCal makes me nauseated- so much sun. Greer’s is a safe job. I have my routine.

I wake up at 6:30 a.m. dry-eyed and frizzy-haired to my clock radio. I throw on my green uniform, pulling my mane back into a ponytail. After feeding my cat, I leave my apartment at seven sharp. Come 7:10, I grab a coffee and bagel at the coffee shop and say hello to Carolina, who always has my order waiting for me. Then, I head off to work, punching my card at 7:25 on the dot. Monday through Friday, I turn lane five’s light on at 7:30 a.m., and I bag groceries until my lunch break at 1 o’clock, which is when I avoid seeing my ex, Tom. It’s a routine, and I like routines.

How best to explain Tom? Thomas Mathew White was a football player, a tight end at Mobile City High School, and his perfect little southern family's pride and joy. He now stocks meat and poultry and pretends we never coexisted. 

His father, Jason White, is a long-time deacon at the Baptist church and a history teacher at the