I finally get to meet Miranda at a small gathering Millie is hosting, more a card game than a party. Having ridden over together, as Dylan and I arrive, Millie is sitting here with her 19 year old sometimes boyfriend Jacob, and Marvin, and Robby, and then also this tall, buxom blonde with a fantastic smile and sparkling blue eyes. Her hair is a curly, billowing, Marilyn Monroe-esque cloud, and it’s immediately apparent what Dylan sees in her. For she’s not only incredibly attractive — enough so to overcome the height disparity, standing well above him, which is often a turnoff for us guys — but possesses the easygoing manner of a working class Southern gal, thankfully and rarely free of pretensions for someone as hot as she.
Better still, Millie did all the heavy lifting, attempting to hook the two of them up, and seems determined for some reason to make this happen. It began with a happy hour afternoon at Edgecrest Café, which I was invited to but declined to join them on — feeling like a fifth wheel considering the entire stated purpose had been for Dylan and Miranda to meet. Like a debate moderator, with the three of them sitting at some table, Millie steers the conversational topics so these two potential lovebirds can get to know one another. Which is maybe not a bad idea considering one exchange that Dylan initiates and later tells me about.
“What do you make at the factory?” he asks Miranda, in reference to the job she shares with Robby and with Millie’s brother, Teddy, as well as a few other associates who frequently come around.
Miranda clicks her tongue and furrows her brow, protesting, “I’m not gonna tell you that!”
“No no no!” Dylan shakes his hands, as if to ward off her wrong impressions, “I meant what do you make. In the factory.”
After this, she laughs and relates to him the pieces coming down her assembly line. And so everything went well enough from there for them to agree to that “date” of her sitting around doing coke with the Mexicans. So even if her personality is checking all the agreeability boxes, there’s still that potential huge red flag, the drug usage, threatening to bring a swift end to this entire enterprise. Yet Dylan’s hopeful enough to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Just because a chick seems laidback on the surface, though, and is seemingly the rare bombshell who doesn’t think she’s hot shit, this isn’t to say she’s not capable of the same moodiness spells plaguing most females we know. This is often a hair trigger impulse, opening fire if the tiniest breeze blows the wrong way, and we get to see firsthand evidence of this tonight.
As we gather around the dining room table, knocking back beers and taking turns in various configurations for two-on-two euchre, it’s only natural that the new girl is grilled most of all. Even Dylan doesn’t know a ton about her backstory at this moment, only that she moved to town from Georgia maybe six months ago, and a couple other surface bullet points. Now we learn for example that she’s just twenty, and popped out a kid, her daughter Brittany, at the ripe old age of fifteen.
“Day-ummm!” Marvin blurts out, eyebrows raised, the lone noteworthy comment. Then again, unique among us, he is not trifling with cards in the least, is content to merely sit ringside, sip his beer and observe. Therefore is that much mentally freer to absorb her tales than some of us are.
And this is all it takes, as Miranda pops out her chair — currently not playing, either, therefore requiring no apologies to a would be partner — slings on this bright yellow backpack she brought with her, and bolts out the front door.
Only when Millie races after her and they hash this out for a good ten minutes in the front yard is Miranda persuaded to return. Marvin apologizes profusely, insisting he didn’t mean anything by it, and even I find myself going to bat sticking up for the guy. It’s obviously a hot button issue, though, some of us can see from just one meeting, as Miranda admits she gets the vibe that we don’t approve of her.
Everything is smoothed out in reasonable enough fashion for the night to continue unfettered. Highly atypical for him, Robby somehow passes out on one couch, despite the open option of his bedroom upstairs. Jacob, as always, is seemingly hellbent upon puffing weed from his bong around the clock, only drinking a little for variety’s sake. As for the rest of us, we’ve all long decided that we are just going to crash here, rendering us that much more capable of continuing to pound sodas, crank tunes on the living room stereo, and deal countless yet games of cards. Nobody has to be up for work in the morning, with one notable exception — Miranda is due at the factory a scant few hours from now.
With Jacob stretched out on the loveseat, idly flipping TV channels now in favor of his beloved hiphop jams, Miranda therefore passes out for a spell sitting bolt upright on the couch, at Robby’s feet. This occurs near 3am, and she asks us to wake her up at 4. As we do, at which point Dylan and I somehow get on this kick singing Sunshine Days from the ol’ Brady Bunch gang by way of her wakeup song. She seems perplexed, though also vaguely amused, slinging on that yellow backpack again, with a mild though throaty chuckle, as she splashes some water on her face and trudges out the door.
Later the following week, she and Dylan will go out on an actual date, and then another and another. He remains highly ambivalent about her manic, partying lifestyle, but otherwise believes that their personalities mesh well. Plus, nobody could ever realistically say that she isn’t gorgeous.
Recommended Book of the Week:
The Witch of the Prophecy by Victoria Jayne
Having a choice and having a good choice are two very different things…
The players of the prophecy are all in place. The vampire, the werewolf, and the witch. The fate of all paranormal beings hangs in the balance.
Too bad Divina, the witch in question, wants nothing to do with any of it.
She’s not about to let some ancient prophecy dictate who she’s going to love. She’ll be the master of her own destiny, thank you very much.
But the intense connection she feels to each of her sexy prophecy counterparts is making it difficult to avoid potential magical disaster.
And as everything continues to get more and more complicated, she’s starting to wonder — is she really the witch of the prophecy? Or is she something else entirely?
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Witch of the Prophecy, book 1 in THE PROPHECY TRILOGY, features a strong heroine, an angsty love triangle, and plenty of spicy, supernatural goodness. Download today and let the exciting journey begin!
If you enjoyed this book, be sure to check out the rest in this magical series:
The Wolf of the Prophecy
The Vampire of the Prophecy
