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Just Good Friends
Friends Book One
Friends Book One
S.L. Siwik
Genre:
Romance
ISBN:
9781480271487
Number
of pages: 180
Word
Count: approx. 77,000
Book Description:
Juggling
two jobs and mounting bills, Audrey decides she doesn't have time for a
boyfriend, but contemplates a friends plus situation. After placing a personal
ad, she meets Mike, a local cop, former Marine. He's old fashioned and
overbearing, but she just can't walk away.
Unfortunately
for her, Michael is an expert marksman, and her heart never stood a chance. Their
tumultuous love affair crashes to an ending neither foresaw, and Audrey is
forced to make a decision that will change both their lives forever.
Excerpt:
The burglar’s hands grabbed her waist. His fingertips dug
into her skin, and her hands covered her mouth to keep from screaming. His body
pressed against hers, not an ounce of softness to be found. He whipped her body
around to be facing the cash register.
“Empty out the register, old man, or she’s done for.”
Audrey would have laughed at the line, finding it comical.
Under normal circumstances, she would have probably asked if he heard the
cheesy line in some poorly written movie. The fact that she was now being held
at gun point, and her boss, whom she loathed, would supposedly be her savior,
was far from hilarious. Imminent and painful death had a strange way of
leeching humor out of a given situation. She needed to make sure she didn’t
turn to hysterics out of fear, and cause the robber to become trigger happy, or
her few remaining seconds would end even quicker.
The barrel of a gun slammed against her temple, and she kept
her eyes on her idiot boss, Mr. Constantine, notorious for trying to argue his
way out of everything. Audrey prayed he’d keep his fat mouth shut and hand over
the money. The metal pressed against her skin chilled her to the bone, odd
since it was ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit outside. She mentally calculated
the degrees into Celsius to keep her mind busy and not contemplating her
current predicament. Thirty degrees Celsius? No, her math seemed off.
“Any day now!” The man shouted. Audrey heard a clicking
sound, the revolver now cocked and aimed at her head. Urine trickled down her
inner thighs as hot tears streamed down her face.
“Any last words you want to tell your boss?” The man
whispered in her ear.
She didn’t have any particular words for her underpaying,
pain-in-the-butt boss, nor did she really have anything to say to her co-workers,
waitresses who she never spoke to more than a few moments. What did come to
mind, however, was Mike and the sudden, acute regret over never confessing what
he meant to her. Tomorrow she would be lying in a coroner’s office, and he’d be
left to believe that they were just good friends.
At least she wore a matching black lace bra and panty
set. She always feared dying while wearing granny panties, a serious
deep-seated fear of hers. During her freshman year at college most teachers
made the students fill out ice breaker questions. What’s your biggest fear
always made the top of the list. Most people wrote normal stuff: spiders,
heights, failing their first semester. Audrey wrote down dying while wearing
granny panties. Other students might have laughed, but she knew deep down they
thought the same and weren’t brave enough to admit it.
She also wondered if the coroner would be so kind as to omit
from the autopsy reports her peeing incident. The truth was too
embarrassing to have on permanent record anywhere.
But, right now she was still alive, and she wanted to stay
that way. She had to tell Mike once about how he made her fall in love with
him. It suddenly became the grossest injustice in the entire universe, even
though somehow it was his fault. Maybe all of his absurd idealism had
finally rubbed off on her, but he needed to know the truth, because it couldn’t
die and be buried with her.
“Why are you doing this?” She asked him as a stalling
tactic.
Sergeant Scarface sat in the back corner of the restaurant, and with a
little bit of luck…
“Why am I doing this?” He asked, slamming the metal into the
side of her head. She bit her lip hard to keep from screaming out. That was
going to leave a bruise.
“I’ve been cleaning up this town for a while, sweetie. This
will be my last job.”
Cleaning up the town… His words triggered in her
memory the night lying with Mike spent from their lovemaking as he confessed
his frustration at not catching the thief.
“Do you mean house robberies or other stores like this?” She
asked trying to draw him out.
“What are you, a reporter?” He shouted.
Mr. Constantine stood in front of them, frozen in fear still
not moving.
“Well, it seems your boss doesn’t want to part with the
dough. Tough luck for you.”
Religion had never given Audrey any comfort, so she didn’t
pray for her soul. It seemed hypocritical to her, since she had never prayed
before. Why start now? Instead, Audrey spent what she believed to be her last
moments alive thinking about Mike. Every look, every kiss, every gesture ran
through her mind since the moment she laid eyes on him like a silent film.
If these were her last seconds of life, she chose to spend
them with him.
I love you, Mike.
Bang.
Audrey doesn’t have much time for anything other than her
two jobs and dog, Baron, except on Tuesdays.
After realizing her chance of companionship without any strings is
dismal, she places an online ad, with every specific instructions of what she
is looking for. After placing several
responses in her junk folder, she does run across one that peaks her
interest. It is an unusual way to meet
someone, but after a few interesting emails she agrees to a blind date.
On a scale of 1 to 10 of blind date experiences, Audrey is
at a -1. The date was insulting, embarrassing,
and regretful to say the least. Mike, a
former Marine and cop, comes off like a raving lunatic. After a ridiculous amount of apologizing,
Mike and Audrey form a friendship of sorts.
With the cop friends in tow and Audrey as their waitress, Mike uses his
patience to show Audrey how right he really is, but both Audrey and Mike have hang-ups
from being hurt before and need to
decide if it is worth taking a chance on one another, after all they are Just
Good Friends, right?
Highly entertaining.
I was cracking up with Mike in the beginning, he is a brooder of sorts
but he has set his sights on Audrey and takes an unexpected route in trying to
get to see him in the same way. Audrey
is unique, she is a bit of a free spirit and unlike most heroines you read
about which was refreshing. An enjoyable
romantic story.
About the
Author:
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S.L.
Siwik lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.
She
loves going to NJ diners on the weekend for inspiration, drinks a pot of coffee
a day, and loves finding new music to add to her list.
Just
Good Friends is her debut book.
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