F Word - Softcover

PALMER, LIZA

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250083478 ISBN 13: 9781250083470

Verlag: Flatiron Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

"Fresh, frank, and fearless. Liza Palmer is a road warrior of contemporary fiction." -Georgia Clark, author of The Regulars

Olivia Morten is perfect. Maybe she's constantly hungry, but her body is to die for. Maybe her high-flying publicist job has taken over her life, but her clients are L.A.'s hottest celebrities. Maybe her husband is never around, but he is a drop-dead-gorgeous doctor. And maybe her past harbors an incredibly embarrassing secret, but no one remembers high school...right?

When Ben Dunn, Olivia's high school arch nemesis and onetime crush, suddenly resurfaces, all of her hard-won perfection begins to unravel. As she finds herself dredging up long-suppressed memories, she is forced to confront the most painful truth of all: sometimes who we become isn't who we really are.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Liza Palmer is the internationally bestselling author of Conversations with the Fat Girl and several other novels. An Emmy-nominated writer, she lives in Los Angeles and works for BuzzFeed.

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The F Word

By Liza Palmer

Flatiron Books

Copyright © 2017 Liza Palmer
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-08347-0

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Epigraph, 
A Thousand Pounds, 
Swedish Fish, 
Tomato, Tomahto, 
Rookie Mistakes, 
The Adventures of Super Hobo and Sweaty Marble, 
You Look Lost, 
Roommate Issues, 
What the Stained Shirt Says, 
Petty, 
Rocket Needs a Groot, 
Hamburger Night for Vegans, 
Even Idiots Can Be Right About Fifth Chakras, 
Hulk, 
Maybe We Start There, 
Alex, I'll Take Gluttonous and Selfish for $400, 
On Wisconsin, 
You Look Way Different Is All, 
Acknowledgments, 
Discussion Questions, 
Also by Liza Palmer, 
About the Author, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

A THOUSAND POUNDS

"There's the truth and then there's the lie that people want to believe."

I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot of the coffee place near my house, on the phone with my assistant.

"The editor says they're going to pull the story," Ellen tells me. "She says the deal was that they had an exclusive and all that went out the window when she saw your client on the cover of GQ this morning. They were supposed to have the only cover of him this month." I turn my car off.

"Did you tell her it was supposed to be an inside piece that got moved up to cover last second?"

"Yeah, she's not buying it. I don't understand what the big deal is anyway."

"She's pissed they no longer have the get." I check my face in the rearview mirror.

"The get?"

"GQ was first, so by the time people read her interview with Gus it'll be old news. Literally."

"She's gotta know that GQ is so much better than her magazine."

"Well, that's her fear, for sure. Okay, she wants to believe this was a terrible misunderstanding. All we have to do is give her what she wants," I say.

"How do we do that?"

"We start soft. How hard this is on her. How sorry we are. How disappointed we are in ourselves. Are you writing this down? Then we talk about how we're okay with their story about our client being pulled or just relegated to digital content only."

"Are we okay with that?"

"Fuck, no." I grab my purse from the passenger seat and climb out of the car.

"Oh ... okay. Right."

"Stay with me. Then, if that doesn't work we segue into how unfortunate it is that because of our unintentional — really stress that word — misstep, all of our clients will ... how do I put this —" I open the door to the coffee place and stand off to the side for a quick second as I get my head together. Ellen waits. "Because of our unintentional misstep, their access to our clients will be blocked until we figure out how this terrible mishap came to pass."

"Blocked? All of them?"

"All of them." I walk over to where the line is forming and scan the food options.

"Okay. I'm on it," she says.

"And remember. She wants to believe you. And all you're doing —"

"Is giving her what she wants," Ellen finishes.

"Right. Talk soon. Oh, and Ellen? Send some flowers to the editor over at GQ. The cover is beautiful."

I hang up with Ellen feeling the smug satisfaction of someone who's just placed the last piece into the puzzle. I breathe a contented sigh as I drop my phone into my purse and fall into line right behind a father and his two daughters. The eldest can't be more than maybe six or seven — I'm not good with kids' ages, so she could be four for all I know. Maybe she's in high school. She's wearing a purple cottony dress and beat-up tennis shoes with giant flowers threaded into the laces. Her white-blond hair is messed up, and she's posing in a weird lunging position and looking at herself in the reflection of the stainless-steel base of the coffee bar. And she is having a very passionate, very detailed conversation with her father about carne asada tacos. He is holding the littler of the girls. She is gnawing on the top of a sippy cup and making an uncomfortably intense level of eye contact with me. I try a smile. Nothing.

"Honey, you're scaring the poor lady," the father says, turning around. "I have nightmares of waking up to that stare and just her little sticky hands tightening around my neck." He swipes the flame-red wisps of hair from her face with a sweet gentleness. The little girl doesn't take her gaze from me. I look at her father. Pins and needles radiate through my entire body. I try to regain control, but all my self-assurance and dignity have vaporized as if I've been walked in on in a public bathroom, pants around my ankles, helplessly reaching for the door and squealing some iteration of "someone's in here!"

"You're Ben Dunn," I say, before I catch myself.

"Do we know each other?" he asks.

"We went to high school together," I say. He looks exactly the same as he did in high school. The reddish-blond hair. The blue eyes. He was always so painfully masculine. I hate how well I know his face. I hate that I only know his face because Ben Dunn is as close as I've ever come to having an actual comic-book-level nemesis. How set his jaw was, how furrowed his brow, how that crooked smile told me if I was about to have a very good day or a very bad one. I studied him as if my life depended on it, because in many ways it did.

The last time I saw him was the day we graduated. He was surrounded by admirers and didn't even register me as I disappeared into the crowd.

That was twenty years ago.

"Ah," he says, his entire being deflating. "Well, let me apologize now, then ...," Ben trails off. He shakes his head, looks down at his oldest daughter, and with a long sigh finally speaks: "I don't think I remember your name."

"Apologize for what?" I ask, purposefully not answering his question. We all shuffle forward in line.

"For whatever terrible thing I did to you back in high school." His daughter looks up at him. "Daddy wasn't always the nicest guy, honey."

"Oh, I ... you were always ... you don't need to apologize," I stutter.

"What's your name?" the little girl asks. Ben shoots her a look. "What?"

"It's Olivia. Olivia Morten," I say. Ben's eyes jolt up to mine as if he's heard a loud bang. He looks away quickly, his face flushing.

"I'm Louisa." She points at the little girl in Ben's arms. "That's Tilly." Death stare. Louisa points at Ben. He can't look at me. Won't look at me. "You know Dad." She sighs. A glance back over at her own reflection in the stainless steel. A quick lunge. She makes a bored staccato farting sound with her mouth.

"Olivia Morten," Ben repeats.

"I know. I've lost about a thousand pounds," I say, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, unable to make eye contact. I clear my throat.

"A thousand pounds?!" Louisa says, laughing. "You can't lose a thousand pounds!" She stretches her arms wide and weeble-wobbles from one foot to the other. "A thouuuuuusand pouunnnnnds!"

Oh my god.

"Lou? Honey," Ben says, stopping her with a gentle hand on her shoulder and putting an end to my living nightmare.

"It's fine. It's actually a pretty spot-on impression," I say.

"A thousand pounds," Louisa repeats with a melodic sigh. "That's crazy."

"What can I get you?" the girl behind the counter asks. Ben and Louisa order as I quietly panic, Tilly's eyes now boring into the girl taking their order. He pays and Louisa takes the receipt and runs to an empty table. Tilly bullies her way out of Ben's arms and totters over to the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Flatiron Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250083478
• ISBN 13: 9781250083470
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland