If you don’t, you’ll be living in a perpetual third act break up instead of finding the happily-ever-after you deserve. At least that’s what all those classic nineties romcoms have taught me.
And I’m desperate for a HEA of my own.
I race over to my house, telling my mother as I pass that there’s somewhere else I want to be (hint: it rhymes with Crashville Spennessee).
As I stuff all my worldly possessions into suitcases, my dad threatens to disown me, reminding me that, as their only child, it’s my responsibility to take over the funeral home that has been in our family for three generations. They spend the rest of the night trying to talk me out of leaving.
When I wake up the next morning to get an early start, my mom cries on the stoop, sobbing loudly enough for the neighbor we have left to hear.
But I’m following what could be true love.
And when you follow your heart, nothing can go wrong.
CHAPTER 2
LOREN
Mom
You’re making a terrible mistake.
Come back home.
Everything is going wrong.
Not only did my poor car break down on the side of the highway an hour outside Nashville, it’s going to cost an arm and a leg—and probably a lung or two—to fix the freaking thing. I thought my day couldn’t get worse, but every time I try to get ahold of Josh, the call goes straight to voicemail.
This is where impulsiveness gets you. Leaking sweat on a curb outside a Waffle House, questioning your life choices and being dive-bombed by gnats.
I know what you’re thinking: Things can’t get worse. This is as bad as it gets. Rock bottom. Nowhere to go but up.
You’re wrong.
My heartbroken mother keeps leaving tearful voice notes filled with all her bitter disappointments.
I can’t take much more of her wailing, begging me to come back home “where I belong.”
I may have told myself that this move was for a guy I barely know, but spontaneously relocating to “Music City” was for me too. I have lived in the same town since I turned four. Went to high school there and attended community college thirty minutes away while still living with my parents to save money. After that, I went straight into full-time employment at Piper’s Funeral Home.
Even I’m putting myself to sleep thinking about my life.
I was a twenty-five-year-old woman facing a future of dead bodies and grieving relatives.
Don’t get me wrong, the world needs people to run funeral homes. Helping folks say goodbye to their loved ones is an important role in society. I’m not knocking the job, but it’s not for me.
That’s part of the reason I got a degree in marketing. Not to work for my parents, but to work somewhere else.Anywhereelse.
I got this degree to do more with my life.
To prove to my parents and to myself that I can make it on my own.
Instead, I’m going to melt into a puddle on this curb.
It’s almost November. Doesn’t Tennessee recognize autumn as a season?
When I press the button on the side of my phone, the little battery icon in the top right-hand corner flashes an alarming shade of red.
This is what I get for forgetting to grab my charger before the tow truck took my car.
