Yak E-Book

Lois Cloarec Hart

• Herausgeber: Ylva Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 105

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Falling for Yak might be the riskiest move of all. Leni, a small-town, blue-collar lesbian, despairs of ever finding true love—or even just a Friday night date. Pickings are slim, but romantic woes aside, she's happy living in the place she was born and raised. Then Leni gets a new job as a nightshift cook at The Jester's Court, a bustling roadside truck stop, where she encounters an enigmatic colleague nicknamed Yak. Finding herself fascinated with the woman, Leni disregards all advice to the contrary and attempts to befriend her fellow chef. Yak proves to be a hard nut to crack, but what's harder still is deciphering why everyone lives in fear of her. When events spiral out of control and Leni learns the dangerous truth, she must decide if winning Yak's heart is worth the price she might have to pay.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Yak

About Lois Cloarec Hart

Excerpt fromWalking the Labyrinthby Lois Cloarec Hart

Other books from Ylva Publishing

Coming from Ylva Publishing in fall and winter 2013

Yak

by Lois Cloarec Hart

Yak

Lois Cloarec Hart

“What d’ya mean Cara’s gone to be a nun?” I stared at my best friend, Yvonne, in disbelief. “We made a date for this Friday.”

“I suspect she’s not going to keep it.”

I hate it when she gets sarcastic on me. “How you do know for sure she’s gone? Who told you?”

“Marlon’s Aunt Jean ran into Cara’s mother at Bingo last night, and she told her that Cara had just gone off to some place in Montreal—a school run by nuns or something. Jean told Marlon, and he told me at work this morning.”

Yvonne looked awfully smug, but she always did like to be first with the latest news bulletin. Personally, I think that’s why she went into hairdressing. Marlon’s shop is gossip central in this one-horse town.

“I don’t believe it. Cara would’ve called me. She wouldn’t just go off and not tell me.”

“She would if inheriting her daddy’s money was in jeopardy.”

Callous, but, I had to admit, probably true. “I just know Mrs. Richardson is behind this. She’s hated me from the get-go. She’s been trying to break us up all along.”

“What ‘breaking-up’? You’ve had all of what...five or six dates? It’s not like you even got past first base.”

That hurt. The subject of my unwelcome, unplanned, unbelievably annoying celibacy was a definite sore spot. Besides, Cara was the one who asked me out in the first place, so she must’ve been interested, right? Who knew what might’ve happened with enough time.

“Anyway, Leni,” my former best friend went on, “don’t you start your new night shift on Friday? How were you planning to have a date with Cara?”

I waved that off. “I don’t have to be at work until eleven. Lots of time to wine ’er and dine ’er.”

If one could stretch that concept to include having a couple of beers I’d smuggled out of my brother’s stash and a late night pit stop at Mickey D’s. I wasn’t exactly flush in the money department these days, and it was putting a severe crimp in my love life. My current lack of wheels didn’t help either, but I planned to use the extra pay I was to get for working nights to fix up my ’93 Corolla. I’d be off those buses in no time, then—ladies of Langston Heights, watch out!

I could see Yvonne was struggling not to laugh. The worst thing about having a best friend who’s known me since I was in diapers is that I can’t put anything past her. Yvonne, who started dating when she was fourteen, was usually pretty considerate about not teasing me. After all, we’d agreed that it was way harder for me than for Von. She’s had boys falling all over her ever since she grew boobs at age eleven, and she was practiced in the art of keeping their interest.

The only time boys were of any interest to me was if they had an extra glove or stick so I could play in their games too. But I was sure getting tired of being alone—romantically speaking. In my house, actually being alone was a statistical impossibility. My parents believed in large and extended families, and at last count there were two parents, one grandmother, a great-aunt, and five siblings living there with me. I was lucky to get to use the bathroom alone.

At the other extreme, Cara was an only child, and if Mrs. Richardson hadn’t been so paranoid about leaving me alone with her daughter, there were any number of places in her father’s nineteen-room Colonial where we could’ve found some privacy. Then it would’ve just been a matter of letting nature take its course...I think. Truthfully, sometimes I suspected Cara hung out with me more to piss off her mother than because of my charms.

But it sounded like it was all moot now. Morose, I tapped a cigarette out of my nearly empty pack and lit up. I didn’t even have to look to know Yvonne was frowning at me.

“I thought you told me you were going to quit for sure this time.”

“I am, honest, Von. I’ve already cut down to under a half pack a day.” I carefully blew the smoke away from Yvonne. We were sitting outside Marlon’s shop on a bench, but fresh air or not, she’d freak on me if the smoke got in her face.

“My break’s over. I’ve got to get back to work.” Yvonne stalked off, deliberately stepping in a wide circle around me so she didn’t get in my smoke zone.

It didn’t tick me off. I knew where she was coming from. Her dad had died of lung cancer five years ago when we were seventeen, and she’d been a rabid anti-smoker ever since. If I hadn’t begun smoking a year before her dad kicked it, I’d never have started. As it was, I just hadn’t gotten around to quitting yet. I did try not to indulge when I was around Yvonne, but I think that learning your girlfriend has left you to go be a nun is pretty good justification for a smoke.

The rumble of one of Langston’s ancient buses sounded from down the street. It bore my route number so I carefully butted the cigarette, put it back in the pack, and stood to catch my ride.

On the way home to the old, two-story Victorian that had housed my family ever since my folks tied the knot almost twenty-five years ago, I gloomily pondered my next move. I knew that even if I went to confront Mrs. Richardson and demanded to know Cara’s whereabouts, all I’d get was a triumphant smirk and an order to get my sorry ass off her property, so I guessed me and Cara were history.

I thought about that for a bit. It wasn’t like I was head over heels in love with Cara or anything, but pickings were pretty slim hereabouts. Langston Heights had more than tripled in size since I was a kid, but I seemed to lack the secret password that would allow me access into the local lesbian network—if there was such a thing. I could leave here and go into the city in search of women, but I loved this sleepy old town, and my family and friends.

On the other hand, I’d be twenty-three come my next birthday, and I was really bummed about being without a partner. Still, if I moved to the city, would it be any better? What if the city women wouldn’t give me a chance? What if the only dykes they’d look twice at were career-driven, college-educated, big-money-making women with cool apartments and hot rides?

It wasn’t like I qualified on any of those grounds, though I had graduated from high school and worked steadily ever since. It’s just that money seemed to have a way of slipping through my fingers; even the paperboy would’ve scorned the current puny state of my bank account.

By the time I reached my stop, two blocks from home, I had depressed myself into a deep funk. Life sucked.

* * *

Friday came, and instead of making out with Cara in the alley behind Langston’s new multiplex, I spent the evening playing canasta with my great-aunt Helene, for whom I’d been named. Me and her get along like peas in a pod, but playing cards with my aged relative wasn’t exactly my idea of a hot Friday night.

After she beat me for the sixth straight time, I looked up at the clock. “Gotta go, Auntie H. I gotta get to work.”

She chuckled. She knew as well as I did that I didn’t have to be at work for another hour and a half, but she was merciful. “Run along then, sweetie. You don’t want to be late for your first shift.” As I slid my cards across the table to her, she added, “When you go up to change, see if Ronnie is interested in taking your place. I feel like I might even be able to beat her tonight.”

“Okay.” It was mildly depressing that my baby sister could out-card shark me on her worst day, but twelve-year-old Ronnie, who was always at the top of her class, was regarded as the family brain. I’m not sure what I was regarded as—the family failure? The family freak?

Apparently I hadn’t quite shaken the melancholy I’d been in all week as thoroughly as I’d thought. But damn it, even Ronnie had some pimply-faced pipsqueak mooning after her. Where was my other half? I had to have one somewhere, didn’t I?

I summoned Ronnie away from the family computer, much to the delight of our brother, Kevin, who’d been pestering her for his turn, and then got dressed for my new job.

One advantage—if you can call it that—of being the second oldest, was that my mother taught me to cook early on. Nothing fancy, mind you, but good, rib-sticking stuff that would feed a table full of hungry mouths. Which led to me becoming a short-order cook at a local diner before I even left high school. Which in turn led me to my new job as a baker at the Jester’s Court, the busiest restaurant and bakery in the town.

The Jester’s Court was pretty much the only decent place out on the highway for a hundred miles in either direction. It got a ton of business from travelers who wouldn’t have given Langston Heights a second glance if they weren’t dying for a pee break, a sugar high, and a caffeine fix before covering the last stretch of Route 93 into the city.

It was a change from flipping burgers and making chili to producing doughnuts and cakes and pies, but I figured I’d handle it all right. Cooking and baking are pretty elemental, and my only real concern was how to get a decent eight hours of daytime sleep in my noisy house now that I was working midnights.

I looked in the mirror, shaking my head at the image reflected back at me. I’m skinnier than a toothpick, so the brand new shirt and pants weren’t exactly flattering. And the hat I had to wear... Geez, why didn’t I just wear a sign reading “dork.”

Sighing, I tucked the cloth hat in my back pocket and grabbed my old trench coat out of the closet. At least it would cover up most of the uniform.

My sister, Dylan, came in just then. We’d been roommates since she was born, 18 months after me, but we wouldn’t be much longer. She’d just gotten engaged to Bernie, her high school sweetheart. She had a big calendar hanging over her bed and was marking off the days until the wedding. I was watching the countdown too, because when she moved out, I’d have a room to myself for the first time in my life. It would be a great relief, if you know what I mean. The only thing that had saved me from tearing my hair out all these years was that a force five hurricane wouldn’t have woken my sister once she started sawing logs.

“Wow, aren’t you the height of fashion!”

I sneered half-heartedly at my sister. It wasn’t like I could argue. Besides, we actually got along pretty well. There were only two real bones of contention between us: she tried to hog more than her fair share of the limited closet space, and she was way too gleeful that she was having sex and I wasn’t.

Dylan flopped on her bed with her head down at the wrong end so she could see the sacred calendar. I finished buttoning my coat and was about to leave when she emerged from her pre-connubial bliss just long enough to call after me.

“Herman told me to tell you that the next time you steal any of his beer, he’s going to take a crowbar to the Corolla.”

Damn it. Herman was the last one I wanted to piss off, since I was counting on my older brother’s mechanical skills to help me get my car road-worthy again.

“Wasn’t me.” My denial was automatic, born of a lifetime as one of six kids.

Dylan rolled over and regarded me with amusement. “Of course it was. Mom, Dad, and Grandma don’t know where he keeps it. Aunt Helene does, but she’d never take it cuz she only drinks gin. I don’t need to steal it since Bernie will buy me anything I want, and Eric is too damned scared to cross Herman. Kevin and Ronnie are too young, so that just leaves you.”

It was hard to argue with her logic.

“Leni, Leni, Leni, when are you going to realize that you can never get away with anything? Everyone in this family can read you like an open book. For that matter, everyone in this town can read you!”