The Truce: Rose City Romances

By Breanna Riley

Josie
I'm not known for being a shrinking violet. In fact, I'm probably a professional flirt, if we're looking for a definition. But when the next door neighbor gets on my nerves, I take all of my powers and use them for evil. Like having condoms and adult diapers delivered to his house, or putting a suction cup *ahem*eggplant* on the tailgate of his truck before his morning commute. He bats those stunning eyelashes at me, and my whole perception of myself goes ass over tequila bottle. I have to ask myself…is it time for a truce?

 

Levi
I've never met someone who makes me as unhinged as Josie; the fun-sized redhead is just so easy to provoke. A truce? Never. After our pranks escalate so far even my mother gets involved, no amount of tequila shots can stop the naughty capers…even after they've gone too far. Now we have to leave behind the pranks and jump straight into her commitment issues.

 

Note to readers:
The Truce is a steamy rom-com, but my author brand is emotional damage, so make sure and check my website for content warnings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breanna Riley
• Release date: Oct 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215007143

Breanna Riley

Breanna Riley is a millennial mom of four boys, and personal assistant to six overbearing cats. She and her husband raise their kids in the Portland, Oregon area, where Breanna has spent her whole life. A breakout author, Breanna has been a romance enthusiast since before it was appropriate. She picked up writing during the Covid pandemic and hasn’t been able to stop since.

Book preview

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Copyright © 2022 Breanna Riley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form on by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Author cannot be held responsible for emotional or property damage done from replicating pranks described. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Dedication

Content Warn.

1. Knit sweaters for chickens

2. I stopped giving a fuck

3. Four-foot eleven of your worst fucking nightmare

4. Organic tea cozies

5. Dick move, Shortcake

6. I'm a big boy

7. Live stream my Pap smear

8. Harder, Daddy

9. Check. Mate. Asshole.

10. Buried under the high school football field

11. Piece of rotting dick cheese

12. Guys are garbage

13. Do I have egg on my face?

14. More sky, less neck strain

15. Hit my tonsils from my vag

16. Eyeliner running down the drain with my dignity

17. A push into oncoming traffic

18. Shooting a grizzly bear with an airsoft gun

19. Bad-ass bitches do not cry about kinky sex

20. Might need to buy a new BOB

21. Don’t feel sorry for him

22. What do you expect from a product called Elbow Grease?

23. Hump Dumplings

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Breanna Riley

This book is for my Grandma Sue, who taught me all about how love can be unconventional and still be beautiful. Sometimes love is spitting watermelon seeds across a table at a restaurant at your husband of over 50 years. Sometimes it’s trying to convince your 18 year old granddaughter to buy Santa themed lingerie for her boyfriend. It’s a balance.

I miss you every day.

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Chapter 1

Knit sweaters for chickens

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Josie

"I…what? Folding? What do you mean folding?"

Look, I knew I couldn’t stay as the graphic designer for a trendy sock company forever, but I’d hoped to have longer than two months to figure out my life.

I’m sorry, Josie. If anything comes up, I’ll let you know, but for now, everyone will be laid off as of November first.

Fuck a duck.

I shuffle out of my supervisor’s office, my head reeling and my world crashing down around me. I never wanted a career in graphic design, it just so happened I took enough classes in Photoshop and art that when the promotion was offered to me, I took it. It pays better than being an office assistant.

I wish I could claim I get to be creative about my work; the truth is, I take sketches from artists and turn them into usable art for the production company we employ in Thailand. I get no input about what the final product looks like—I’m a cleaning crew for other artists. Which is fine; like I said, this isn’t exactly my dream job. Who has a dream job at twenty-eight anyway? Not me. I have plenty of time.

When I get back to my closet-sized office, I kick off my stilettos that barely bring me to the height of the average woman and dial my best friend, Molly. We’ve been friends since a study hall freshman year of high school, where we took turns brainstorming different names for thong-removal techniques employed by the preppy girls. The Sneak, for example, where you think no one is looking and try to do it casually. The Waddle, when you spread your legs discreetly while tugging it out.

I’ve been by Molly’s side through the aftermath of her mother dying, her father’s shitty relationships, and her finding her ex-husband in bed with a yoga instructor. She’s been with me as a latchkey kid, left alone for hours or overnight while my mother partied away the copious amounts of child support my wealthy, uninvolved father supplied. Held my hand during my first pelvic because my sister had to work, moved me into my apartment when my father stopped taking my calls.

She’s in a great relationship now, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Truly. Her partner consistently comes through, despite the high standard I hold him to, but I don’t fully trust him. I’m not sure I can trust anyone apart from Molly herself.

None of this changes the fact my pussy has developed its own colony of dust bunnies. Or that I get lonely occasionally. Molly is amazing at ensuring we have plenty of girl time, but it’s not the same as it used to be, where I’d sleep with a guy I picked up while we were out and hang with Molly every waking second apart from that. She even lives in the same building as me, only one wall away.

Molly’s phone picks up on the second ring, and I can hear her giggling in the background. Jesus Christ.

"Can you avoid playing hide the sausage for ten minutes while I pout?" I whine into the phone, and I swear I can hear her face turning red as Hawk swears about something.

What’s up? she asks, shushing Hawk.

So…fun times. I’m being laid off in October.

Oh, fuck, I hear in the background, Hawk’s gravelly voice reverberating across the line.

Yeah, oh fuck.

Well, you wanted a change anyway, right? Molly asks, always the down-to-earth voice of reason.

I wanted it to be my choice, though, not forced, I grumble. I wanted to join the circus or be a skydiving instructor or knit sweaters for chickens or some shit. Have a big to-do where I cuss everyone out and throw my papers and tell them all I’m better than they are.

Jose, maybe…

Don’t say it.

But—

I don’t want to!

Josie! You have to fucking grow up. You’re twenty-eight, for fuck’s sake. Maybe get a real job? You’re not Peter Pan.

And there it is, I sigh. "I thought this was a grown-up job."

"You edit other people’s art. You need to do something on your own. You’re not the type to have a boss, or a schedule. Maybe not art, but you’re a joyful person. You need to find something that showcases it."

You’re a great hype squad, Mols. I should go. Don’t want to get fired. I laugh coldly.

Hanging up, I look around my sparse office filled with printouts of work that wasn’t really mine, the tiny room with its tiny window suffocating me.

This day can’t get worse.

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Spoiler alert, it gets worse. First, I get a text from Billie, my roommate, alerting me the internet got shut off. We trade bills; she pays electric, I pay internet. Which means I forgot to pay it. This would be funny…if it weren’t the third time in a year it had happened.

Oops.

Then, I run out of gas…pulling into the gas station. Two attendants have to push my car up to the pump.

"How the fuck do you run a Prius out of gas, lady?" the pimple-faced pump jockey mutters.

As I walk through the door, Billie furrows her brow at me. Did you talk to Paige? she asks nervously.

No? Discarding my keys and purse, I kick off my come-fuck-me heels that have gotten me two dates and a really bad screw from the office but hurt like a bitch by the end of the day. Flopping onto the couch like a flaccid sack of potatoes, I let out a groan.

But for real, just use Molly’s internet, the password is on the fridge.

It’s not that. Building meeting at six. She checks on her kombucha experiment she keeps locked up in a closet like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

What for?

Don’t know, Paige seemed uneasy…

Hmm. Something is up. Paige, twenty-eight like me, lives in the unit below ours with her mother, Maggie, who owns the four-unit building. Two units make up the downstairs, and upstairs is Billie’s and my two-bedroom, with Molly in a studio next to us. The front doors sit in a neat line on the expansive front porch.

The house—a historic 1910 Craftsman—would have been easily a four-thousand-square-foot manor in its prime, but Maggie’s mother became a widow with three small children and had it converted so she could rent out the other three units as income. While the upper units can’t access it directly, we all go in and out of each other’s doors with impunity. It’s generally accepted that if you don’t want to be seen doing something untoward, you lock your door.

The final unit is filled by Denise and her two-year-old daughter, Opal. We all help her out when we can because she doesn’t have much family, even Maggie, who plays mother hen to all of us stray chicks.

Which brings me back to the knot in my stomach. It’d figure Maggie would decide to sell the house and move to Bora Bora or something equally outlandish. With Maggie’s free spirit, nothing would surprise me.

I wash the downtown Portland day off me in a scalding hot shower, dressing in raggedy jean shorts and an even more raggedy tank. The back porch is situated so no neighbors or lookie-loos can sneak a peek. After grabbing a wine cooler from the fridge, I stride into Maggie’s lower unit and through the sliding glass door onto the porch.

Everyone’s already there, even Opal, who’s sitting in a booster seat, blue eyes focused on her tablet. I ruffle her cornsilk-colored ringlets as I pass by. The warm evening air makes me clammy with sweat, and I crack my wine cooler and sink into the last chair around the large dining table, putting my pedicured feet up on the chair next to me.

Paige, always studious and serious, looks like dear old Mia Thermopolis trying to give a debate over school uniforms. Maggie, in her late fifties, looks like she’s seen a ghost in the glow of the fairy lights strung about. Her waist-length silver hair is splattered with paint, probably from painting on the porch earlier.

Come on Mags, out with it. We all know something is wrong. I set my feet down and straighten a little, the mood not nearly as light as I’d anticipated.

She gives a sad smile, then purses her lips. You’re observant, Josephine. I had a doctor’s appointment last week, and a few tests today… She chews her lip, and the pit in my stomach grows into the size of the one in China that can fit the Washington Monument inside it. I have metastatic breast cancer.

Fuck, swears Billie, and we all swivel our heads on a time, because the soft-spoken waif rarely swears. What? This is bad.

We all murmur an agreement, and I let the thing we’re all wondering spill out. Are you going to die?

"She’s going to be fine," Paige snaps, obviously having rehashed this subject ad nauseum with her mother.

I’m straight forward, but I wish I’d leave some things unspoken.

The median survival rate is three years. Still with a sad smile, Maggie gives Paige’s hand a small squeeze. So yes, while we’re all dying, my time seems to have a closer expiration date than expected.

If anyone could handle this, mentally, among our group, it’s Maggie. She has the head on her shoulders we’re all jealous of; she can always keep her emotions in-check. I’ve never even heard her yell.

But Mags— I object.

"There is no but, Josie. It’s just a fact of life. I plan on enjoying my remaining days, and I’ll be undergoing treatment as long as it’s slowing the cancer down. Once it stops working, I’ll stop. I’m planning on traveling while I’m still healthy enough to do so. Which brings us to the reason you’re all here." She gestures to Paige, who pulls out a legal pad and sets it on the table.

YARDWORK

SHOPPING

DOCTORS APPOINTMENTS

POST-CHEMO CARE

This is the list of things we’ve identified as helpful, and we were hoping you would all take one on. I know it’s a lot—

I can do your shopping when I do my own. You’ve all been so helpful. Plus, Opal loves shopping, Denise insists. She came from a tough situation, and she’s working her ass off to make a life for her and her daughter better than her own.

Inspecting the pad, Molly nods. I’ve got doctor’s appointments. When school starts again, I can take PTO. I’ve got a ton saved up. Keep me in the loop about when your appointments are.

I’ll do yard work! I practically scream. I can’t babysit after chemo. Bodily fluids and I don’t get along, and from my knowledge, chemotherapy involves lots of vomiting and god knows what else.

Thanks, dear, Maggie murmurs. I’ve canceled the landscapers to save on the expense. I don’t expect you to keep it up to their standards, but if you could keep the lawn and weeds in check, I think that’ll suffice. Paige can decide what she wants to do later.

Later. Later when she’s dead. I swallow the lump in my throat as I digest this info, then tip back my wine cooler and chug it.

I’m happy to do after chemo care, Billie says quietly. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me at all, what with the goat farm and all. Billie’s parents, amusingly enough, own a goat farm. Yes, the goat farm came before they named their daughter Billie. Hippies, I swear.

We break and head back to our respective units, left to contemplate our own mortality and our new tasks.

All I want to do is go out and party away my problems, but each year, I lose more willing participants. Being twenty-eight and continually drunk isn’t cute anymore. Instead, I have to drag my sorry sack to work and pretend like the woman who’s like a mother to me hasn’t been handed a death sentence. Great. Just fucking great.

Chapter 2

I stopped giving a fuck

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Levi

This house is too fucking big for a single man, I grumble to myself as I attack the hardwoods upstairs with a vacuum cleaner. I have a house cleaner come in once a week, but I prefer a tidy house, so I do a little myself weekly, too. As I use the stick vac on the floors of bedroom number three, the one serving as an in-home office now, I can’t help the loathing permeating me every time I clean.

My ex and I shopped for, bought, and renovated this house, down to the siding and custom tile in the master bath. Luckily for me, we’d put it in my name, so apart from her car, she didn’t take much when she left.

My business partner had a whole home set up for her, anyway. They’d ambushed me in my own living room, her shit packed and a formal withdrawal from our shared company