Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
* * *
There are a number of other establishments and places in Spruce, including countless other characters, but this about covers the basics of who and what everyone in town talks about the most. But who knows? Spruce is a growing town, and there’s always space for more places to visit, friendly faces to meet, and memorable times to be had. By the way, have you tried some of Jacky-Ann’s lemonade? Really, you should go to one of Nadine Strong’s big parties at her ranch and sneak yourself a glass. It’s to die for, and the parties are never uneventful. Anyway, sit back, relax, and enjoy your time in Spruce, Texas! After all, that’s kinda the point, right?
NO FOOL
FOR
LOVE SONGS
Chapter 1.
Timothy
It’s on a bench outside the Visual and Performing Arts Center under the shade of a sycamore tree that I pull out my pink-and-red notebook and matching pencil. At the top of the page is a title: Things I could be instead of Timothy “TJ” McPherson. Below it, twenty items. Among them: National park ranger. Professional ghost tour guide (with a doodle of a ghost). Barista in Bangkok (with a note to learn Thai). Iceland-based wedding DJ (that one is enthusiastically circled ten times, then crossed out). Guy who lives in a van making sourdough. And on one especially despairing night after returning to my dorm from a tough exam I was sure I had bombed, I added: “literally anything but taking over McPherson Tractor & Finance and pretending spreadsheets have personalities for the rest of my life.”
It’s the last item on the list. Written the smallest, like a tiny, shameful little secret.
My mom once said nothing written down is a secret anymore.
A cute, chipper squirrel hops onto the other end of the bench. Likely after one of my tasty Cheetos. I smile at my new pal, pluck the perfect one out for him, and offer it.
He snatches the whole bag instead and flies away.
I watch him go, bewildered. Still holding the single Cheeto.
Half of them end up in the grass.
After popping the lonely orange bite into my mouth—I did make a New Year’s resolution to cut back on stress snacking, after all—I flip my notebook to its last page, which boasts a far less depressing title: Project Spruce Jailbreak, or How To Avoid Another Summer Trapped in Texas By The Well-Meaning-Yet-Suffocating Embrace Of My Parents. Next to the title, an entirely unrelated recipe for “magic eye tiramisu”, only because my phone was dead and the girl who sat behind me in class spoke a mile a minute and it sounded so yummy at the time because I was going through a breakup.
But underneath that are details (and doodles) of a road trip I meticulously planned with my bestie AJ. Yes, we’re besties because of the “J” thing—AJ and TJ, though now I go by Timothy. There’s a CJ as well—also from Spruce, believe it or not—but he graduated last year. At the tippy-top of the page is one more of my doodles: me and AJ as cats, squeezed together on a bookshelf, asleep.
AJ is seriously one of the coolest dudes on the planet. The day he found out I was gay, I swear he grew even fifty times closer to me, always wanting to know my love life, determined to find me my special man—but mostly just to take the credit for doing it.
Probably should’ve left the matchmaking to him, because my last boyfriend—a guy I proudly met all on my own at the gym—went from being a dream boy to a soul-sucking nightmare. He may literally have sucked my soul straight out of my bones while I slept, for as empty as I felt the weeks after we broke up. AJ razzed me for ages, saying I can’t be trusted to find guys on my own.
AJ and I ended up rooming together for half of last year, but then some other peeps at his engineering school pooled money for a big studio apartment, and he “totally fuckin’ couldn’t turn that shit down”. I felt kind of rejected at first, but my new roommate turned out to be a shy Korean guy named Taemin whose (single and lonely) LA-based mom has tasty food delivered every weekend to us, and we get along well, and how dare I complain about that? Besides, AJ now lives with his esteemed “gear crew”—that’s what he calls his engineering pals—and we still hang out when we can.
I later learned one of his “gear crew” is a hot girl named Paris, who I’m pretty sure he’s gonna marry, even though she doesn’t give him the time of day and he’s too chicken to ask her out. For all his hard-earned cool points, he sure turns into a knob around the girl he’s allegedly dreamt of since freshman year.