Taylor Fitch and Carolyn Flowers are roommates who become best friends, despite the stark differences in their personalities and approach to life, love, and relationships.
Taylor sleeps with women whom she doesn’t care to remember their names, while Carolyn is dating a man she intends to marry.
While both women attend college, Carolyn studies hard to maintain the GPA she needs to keep her scholarship, and Taylor doesn’t study at all and is barely passing her classes.
But none of that makes a difference in their friendship. They each give what the other needs. Carolyn is nurturing when Taylor is sick, and Taylor is protective when Carolyn is hurt.
Here is an excerpt from my current WIP titled Yet, Here We Are.
It was Tuesday night. Carolyn was finishing a class assignment due the next day. Jeff sat beside her on the couch, studying the pages of a thick textbook, while scribbling notes on a pad of paper.
Rock music blasted from Taylor’s bedroom. Jeff had already complained twice to Carolyn about the noise, and maybe she should have agreed to go to the campus library when he had suggested it, but Carolyn wanted to study from the comfort of her own couch.
She watched Jeff cast another irritated look toward Taylor’s room, and the muscles of his jaw clenched in spasm-like motions. He popped the cap off his pen with his teeth and chewed the plastic like a piece of gum, showing off the strength of his jaw.
“That’s it.” Jeff shot up from the couch, his book and notepad falling to his feet. “I can’t take this anymore. You said to give it time and things would calm down. It’s been months and she has not calmed down!” Jeff screamed over the loud music. “I need to study. You need to study.” He grabbed his backpack off the floor and stuffed his books into it. “We should have gone somewhere else.”
“She was supposed to be at her girlfriend’s tonight, but they got into a fight,” Carolyn said.
“Big fucking surprise there,” Jeff scoffed. “And Taylor doesn’t have a girlfriend. Fuck buddy, maybe, but not a girlfriend.”
“It’s none of our business.” Carolyn lowered her voice.
“Why the hell are you whispering?” Jeff opened his arms to the room. “She can’t hear us with that crap blasting! Someone needs to tell her Guns-N-Roses died in 1994.” He shoved his notebook deeper into the bag and zipped it shut. “I don’t know how you can stand a bunch of lesbians hanging around here all the time.”
“She’s my friend,” Carolyn said.
“She’s someone you split rent with.”
“And now she’s my friend.”
“Well, that’s disappointing.” Jeff slung the backpack over his shoulder.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Forget it.” He turned away. “It’s late. I’m not getting into this right now.”
“No.” Carolyn stopped him. “We need to get into this right now because I don’t like the way you look down on her. What bothers you the most about Taylor? That she’s a lesbian or that she’s promiscuous?”
“She’s a bad influence,” he responded.
“Because she’s a lesbian or because she’s promiscuous?”
Jeff straightened his posture, and his six-foot-three frame towered over Carolyn’s five-foot-seven slender stature. “She doesn’t take anything seriously. She doesn’t have her shit together and I have no patience for incompetence.”
“You’re right. If only she were as put together and mature as the idiots you hang out with. Tell me, who’s winning the ‘I can fuck more bitches than you because my dick is bigger than yours’ battle of the over-stretched egos, Matt or Billy?”
“What are you talking about?” Jeff smirked.
“Don’t do that. Don’t act like you don’t know how they are. Matt videotapes himself having sex with women without them even knowing,” Carolyn said.
“He doesn’t do that.”
“Bullshit he doesn’t. He told me when he was drunk. So you have a lot of fucking nerve judging Taylor with those assholes as friends!”
Jeff took a step back and stared at her. “Before Taylor moved in you didn’t talk like that.”
“Before Taylor moved in, I used to take a lot of shit.”
“I liked you better before,” he remarked.
“Of course, you did.”
Thank you for reading my excerpt from a story that has been over twenty years in the making. I hope to finish it soon and set these characters free.
aliciajoseph 