A Love Like the Sun - Softcover

Neilson, Riss M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593640497 ISBN 13: 9780593640494

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

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"Extraordinary... a raw, vulnerable, breath-stealing love you can feel as you read."
—Emily Henry

"Dazzling, tender, and romantic." —Carley Fortune

Lifelong best friends spend a fateful summer discovering what might happen if they were to be something more in this radiant, heart-clenching adult debut.

Laniah Thompson is a homebody who craves privacy. Issac Jordan is internet famous and spends his days followed by paparazzi. She runs a small business with her mom in her hometown. He runs an international brand.

And they’ve been best friends since childhood.

When Issac comes home to Providence for the first time in months and discovers Laniah’s dream is slipping out of reach as she and her mom struggle to pay the bills at Wildly Green, their natural hair store, she refuses to take a dime from him. And so, he does what any self-respecting best friend would do: tells the world they’re dating.

Suddenly business is booming, and Laniah agrees to his ridiculous plan to pretend to be lovers for the course of the summer. Just long enough to catch the eye of an investor and get her dream back on track, like she helped him do so many years ago, he reminds her.

Too soon, though, Laniah knows she’s playing with fire, because for as long as they’ve been friends there’s an undeniable pull they’ve never given in to. And as the lines between art and life—real and pretend—blur, it becomes harder and harder to see where friendship ends and something else begins....

Told over the course of three sizzling summer months, A Love Like the Sun is about shared history, those who make us our bravest selves, and love in its many forms.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Riss M. Neilson is a magna cum laude graduate of Rhode Island College, where she won the English department's Jean Garrigue Award, which was judged by novelist Nick White. Her debut young adult novel, Deep in Providence, was a 2022 finalist for the New England Book Awards, and her forthcoming novel I’m Not Supposed to be in the Dark is set to publish in 2023. She is from Providence and lives for the city’s art and culture scene. When she’s not writing, she’s watching anime or playing video games with her two children. A Love Like the Sun is her adult debut.

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1

The way it
shouldn't be done

If my calculations are correct, I'll be alone in the shop for at least ten minutes before my mom comes back from the bakery, which is plenty of time to take a sexy picture. I sit in a chair at the break table in the back room and slide my pants down. Not all the way, just enough to expose my soft belly and the black panties creased between my hips and thighs. I take a few shots and stare at them, positive that they're sexy enough to entice someone and leave them wanting for more. The someone is a guy I've been on five really good dates with but have only slipped some tongue before we said good night. His patience with me not wanting to rush sex is attractive, but this morning he asked if I'd send him a little something, and I've been distracted all day thinking of taking risks. I pick one, take a breath, hit Send.

Darius looks at the picture immediately but doesn't answer back with the same energy. My heart races in my chest while I wait. And wait.

Read. Read two minutes ago.

The bubbles finally pop up. Darius is typing. He stops. Starts again. And then . . .

"Laniah Leigh Thompson, why in the world are your pants at your knees?"

I startle, drop my phone onto the table, and scramble to my feet. I'm twenty-five years old and the tone of my mother's voice can still strike fear in my heart. "I . . . uh."

She takes a step forward, a paper bag and cup tray in her hands, dark penciled-in eyebrows low on her face. "Were you taking a . . . a nude photograph?"

The back of my neck burns while I pull up my pants and button them. A heartbeat. Two. "I was . . . checking for swelling, actually," I say.

"Swelling?" she repeats.

"Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just thinking of my doctor's appointment in a couple of days."

I've been having headaches, and I think it's from elevated blood pressure, so this seems like a believable lie. Still, we stare at each other for the longest thirty seconds of my life-her top lip curling a little, suspicion in her eyes, a small smile on my face, convincing enough I hope. So much for Seven Stars Bakery being lunchtime-rush busy. She finally sighs and places the cups on the table. I hurry to snatch my phone and pocket it, even though she's not wearing her bifocals to see anything that might be waiting on my screen.

"You swear I was born yesterday," she says. "I just hope you're not being stupid, but whatever."

Whatever has been her general mood lately, and I briefly wonder how she would have reacted to me sending dirty texts if things were different. My mom and dad were always openly flirtatious, which was awarded with many eyerolls from me as a kid. But my dad died nine years ago, and I sometimes wonder if her playfulness died with him.

She takes a cookie out of the bag, her coffee from the tray, then leaves me. I know better than to stay in the back, she'll think I'm looking at my phone, and though I'm tempted to do just that, I grab my cup of tea and follow her. As soon as I'm in the front of the shop with its half-empty shelves, I feel the same whatever mood my mom does. We opened Wildly Green three years ago, giddy to have a storefront for the natural body butters and hair oils Mom had been mixing in our kitchen since I was a little girl. We'd had big plans, but reality struck, and instead of building our dream, we've pulled in serious debt.

Only a week ago this place was teeming with the smell of coconut and fresh flowers, there was art on the walls and a neon sign that blinked hello, gorgeous in bright green letters. But we've been packing for a few days to close its doors-plants in boxes and all the cardboard at our feet-and we haven't even played music over the Bluetooth speaker to do it. The once colorful space has been leached of life. Most days, I prefer coming after working my second job at the hotel, when my mom's not here, so we don't have to pack in misery together.

My phone dings in my pocket and I bite back a smile, anticipating sweet words that Darius seems to have a knack for, but I begin clearing off the conditioner shelf as a distraction.

"You can check your messages, you know," Mom says from behind me. She's sitting on the floor, looking through old paperwork to see what we should keep, and I can hear the curiosity hiding in her voice. This is a trick. If I look at my phone now, she'll know I'm anxious because a response to a nude is on it. But if I don't look at my phone, she'll know I was avoiding it because she's here. It's a lose-lose. So I do what any reasonable, anxious, and sweaty person would do: put the products in my hands down and pull out my phone.

Except it's not a message. It's a thumbs-down reaction on my picture.

My stomach sinks slowly while my brain rushes to make sense of what I'm seeing. Did Darius just react to my sexy picture with a thumbs-down? He had to have hit that by accident. He definitely did. But then he texts, Wow. I waited all day long, and this is what you have to show me? I'm starting to think you're playing games.

The jump from confusion to disappointment is immediate.

"You good, baby?" Mom says, cutting through the noise in my head.

I turn to face her and hope she can't see my annoyance. "I'm fine, Mom. It's nothing."

She nods. "Well, come help me with these papers, then."

While I'm sorting through receipts on the rug, my mind is working overtime. Darius is the first guy I've gone on more than a few dates with since a long relationship in college. It's hard explaining that I'm mainly looking for companionship with the potential for more-in a sea of people on dating apps asking for sex or something serious straightaway. My best friend, Issac, calls me a hermit crab because I avoid social media, limiting my dating pool even further, but I was just bragging to him about how I met Darius the old-fashioned way: while buying samosas at Kabob and Curry downtown. Darius told me to cut him in line because I was in a rush to get back to work. On the way out, I wrote my number on a napkin and handed it to him.

As if reading my mind, Mom asks, "Have you told Issac we're closing the shop yet?"

The question makes my throat thick. Before I can respond, my phone vibrates on the floor beside us and my eyes dart down to another message from Darius. The preview on my lock screen reveals a picture of his . . . Oh. My face burns hot. I hurry to tuck my phone under my leg and look at my mom, praying she didn't see the photo I just saw. But she's busy squinting at a utility bill. I laugh a little, selfishly relieved.

"You really should start wearing your glasses, Mom."

She sulks and picks up another piece of paper, hating the reminder that her eyesight has changed in her midfifties. I sometimes tell her Dad would've thought she looked cute in glasses, and she'll temporarily soften to them, but I'll get sad inside that he's not here to tell her himself, then days later she'll be walking around without them. "Don't ignore my question," she says.

"I haven't talked to Issac about it yet," I say, "but I will."

"Tell him before I do," she orders. "I'm not going to keep lying to that boy."

"Yes, ma'am."


Two hours later, I say bye to Mom and haul another box to my car. The early-June weather is perfect in Providence: high seventies with a breeze wafting through the treetops and sending a fresh scent of green and coffee and baked goods toward me while I walk. When I first found the space for Wildly Green, Mom was ecstatic. It’s in the heart of the city, between all the diverse neighborhoods that make up much of our clientele. The building sits on semi-busy Broadway Street, right beside shops we already loved. There’s Seven Stars Bakery and Julian’s for lunch and Schasteâ for tea and crepes. Columbus Theatre was renovated and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593640497
• ISBN 13: 9780593640494
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland