Anywhere You Go - Softcover

Morrissey, Bridget

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593817125 ISBN 13: 9780593817124

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Two women discover love after swapping their homes. Fleeing the messiness of their personal lives, a small-town waitress and a big-city Broadway press agent swap addresses and lives in this “sparkling” (Alicia Thompson, USA Today bestselling author) queer contemporary romance.

Tatum Ward and Eleanor Chapman lead totally opposite lives. Tatum’s never left her Midwestern hometown. She resides in a quaint guest cottage on her parents’ property while working part-time as a waitress, where she spends most shifts ignoring her feelings for a beautiful regular named June. Eleanor dedicates every waking hour to her high-profile press career, sacrificing personal relationships for professional success, save for the occasional hookup to fight off her loneliness. When both women’s lives unexpectedly blow up at the exact same time, they each need an escape, and fast.

In Tatum’s hometown, Eleanor expects a quiet hideaway where she can recharge. Instead she gets wrapped up in the family drama that Tatum left town to avoid, pulled in by Tatum’s charismatic older sibling, Carson, who charms Eleanor at every turn. Tatum ends up in Eleanor’s New York high-rise apartment with June. One week together in the big city might make it impossible for Tatum to avoid not just her true feelings for June, but her real dreams for her life.

Amid a friendship with a reclusive Hollywood actress and a complicated family reunion, Tatum and Eleanor each discover much more than they bargained for away from home. Their house swap won’t last forever, but it might be just long enough for both women to surrender their defenses and finally fight for the life—and love—they deserve.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bridget Morrissey lives in Los Angeles, California, but hails from Oak Forest, Illinois. When she’s not writing, she can be found coaching gymnastics or headlining concerts in her living room.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Tatum

My favorite shift at Rita's Diner is noon to six, right between the lunch and dinner rushes. There's a sweet spot around three thirty. Only the regulars are here, plus a few random stragglers. Light streams in through the tall windows that run the length of the building, pouring golden magic onto every cracked vinyl booth and checkered floor tile. The outdated things in this place look lovely at this hour. And the lovely things look even better.

Like June Lightbell. She may as well be surrounded by a choir of angels at this time of day, sitting like she does with one leg crossed atop the other, her head propped up in her hand with an elbow on the table. The sun slices a delicate beam across her face, accentuating the sparkling highlighter on her cheeks.

She glances up to wave. I wave back, nonchalant, as if these small exchanges don't hold much weight. As if it didn't alter our dynamic at all when she asked me out and I turned her down. So what if the sight of her continues to make my stomach do a cartwheel? That will go away.

It's just taking a little longer than I expected.

My phone pings-an email to my special inbox.

"Tatum," my manager, Denise, says. "Devices away."

"One sec," I tell her, reading quickly. "I've got a new client asking for a one-day turnaround. Looks like they want a breakup text."

My loved ones used to joke that I could make a living off writing other people's difficult messages for them. Resignations, breakups, family fights, that kind of thing. It seemed like every other week I was helping someone draft a life-changing document. What would start as What do you think I should say to my boss about deserving a raise? would turn into me sending over my fourteenth revision in an email detailing my cousin's intrinsic value to the front-desk team at the hair salon. About a year ago, I decided it was time to expand my reach and set up an actual website.

I certainly don't make a living, because I don't charge anything, and these days, people love to tell me that AI has replaced my unique gift anyway. Good thing it's not about money. Drafting messages for other people gives me a sense of purpose. I can gift them the words they struggle to find. I get to feel good about helping someone else put their best foot forward in the world. And really, it's nice to solve someone else's problems. Mine are unsolvable. It would be like trying to remove the flour from a loaf of bread. The issues are all the way baked in.

My clients submit anonymously through my website, and their information is encrypted. Occasionally I have to follow up with questions about what kind of tone they're hoping for, or some details that will really make the message sing. Sometimes they reveal personal information in that process. Most of the time, I never find out who it is I'm pretending to be.

Every so often, someone is upset, and they email me to complain. It's usually about a breakup that's gone south, and it never has anything to do with my expertly crafted message. I can't control what happens after someone else presses send. That's life. We can say every single thing exactly right and still not get the result we imagined from it. That's the part that AI will never understand-the complexity of being human.

"June's looking at you," Denise says.

My eyes dart to June's table again. Her hair is always changing, and for the last two weeks it's been in a sleek black bob that comes in just above her chin. It looks perfect on her, but I could say the same of every style she's worn. The natural curls, the braids. All of it looks incredible. There's a coyness to this particular hairstyle. She's paired it with a long beige trench coat and black Mary Janes, and she looks very Parisian chic for someone who lives in Trove Hills, Illinois.

She is looking at me. Waving again. Except it's not a wave hello. She's waving me over.

"I brought you something," she says, pulling a tiny vial out of her bag. "I think I finally got your mix right. Bergamot, vetiver, and fig are the base." She pinches the tiny container between her long brown fingers, popping the lid off to smell what she's made. "With some patchouli and cedar as the middle notes. A little bit of black tea on top. There's a milk scent in there too, but it was hard to get it to show up with everything else. Let me know if it comes through for you."

June Lightbell has made me my own perfume.

She pushes the open vial toward me, wafting the scent up to my nostrils.

"Smells . . . earthy," I say, remembering her using that word once. Asking me if that's what I liked. I told her I did, because I didn't really know what it meant when it came to perfumes. In truth, this smells . . . strange. Like someone sprayed a tree-scented air freshener over mildew, then tried to cover that scent up with something sweeter.

"I wanted it to be like getting lost in the woods during a storm," she says, "then finding a tiny house to hide inside, where there's already a fire going and tea brewing on the stove."

God, her voice is something. It's coy, but it has these occasional low notes-a darkness that simmers beneath the surface of her gentle coolness. I'd love to have that voice right up against my ear, telling me I'm a good girl.

I shudder, hating my mind for how it wanders. June has come in to the diner a few times a week for over a year now. By this point she must agree with me that my artful rejection was the right move for us both.

She has a girlfriend now. Her name is Vanessa. Vanessa is incapable of letting a small moment embarrass her. Not when she got my name wrong for the third time in a single day, or when one of the cooks accidentally walked in on her in our bathroom because she forgot to lock the door.

June and Vanessa are a perfect match. They wear trendy clothes together and talk about astrology at a level I don't quite understand, obsessing over how someone's eighth house Venus would totally overwhelm a tenth house Sun, or something like that. They sometimes touch each other's hands as they eat, laughing in this hushed, private way that tells me their relationship is full of inside jokes no one else could possibly comprehend.

It's the way all of this is meant to be.

In fact, I find Vanessa's presence in June's life to be motivating. Around them both, I become the most heightened version of myself that exists-the sweet, quirky waitress who flits by to drop off their drinks, saying silly little things to pad out their cute life together. "Don't forget to put on your coat! Can't have you both catching a cold on me!" I tell them when it's chilly outside, or "This one's on the house" with a joking wink when I refill their waters.

It's my favorite part of this job. Every day, I get to make something special out of the mundane, sprinkling good cheer atop someone else's scrambled eggs and toast. I have the constant opportunity to fill other people's lives with charm, and because I do so, my life feels charming too. It's simple and sweet. Uncomplicated.

When Vanessa isn't here, my personality is a little more subdued, but it's still an enhancement of sorts. Safe in the world of Rita's wood-paneled walls and yellow vinyl booths, June doesn't complain when her burger is overcooked or her coffee tastes burnt. I've never once told her about the countless times my shift's already ended and I've been waiting for her to finish up so I can close out her check. She can ask me out here, and I can turn her down, and it doesn't change who we are to each other, because the bubble protects us both.

That's the magic of a good diner.

"It's so nice," I say to her, leaning down to waft the perfume's scent toward me again. Maybe it's an acquired taste, like olives.

Unfortunately, I've yet to acquire that taste.

"It felt like you,"...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593817125
• ISBN 13: 9780593817124
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 353
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
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