The Good Life

A Novel

By Jodie Beau

* * * *

Copyright 2013 by ©Jodie Beau Cramer

Edited by
Madison Seidler

Cover design ©Sarah Hansen of
Okay Creations

Photography by
Lise Gagne

Formatting by
JTFormatting

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It is not transferable. It cannot be sold, shared or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For Ian, the little boy who turned my cup half-full

PROLOGUE

It was late August. The air was warm and humid. Even at 3:30am it was still over eighty degrees. The young couple lying in the bed of the pickup truck threw their blanket off of them in an attempt to cool down. The move was a little risqué since they weren’t wearing any clothes underneath.

They had come to the lot near the airport after the bars closed because they needed a place to be alone. She lived with her parents, and he shared an apartment with her older brother. There was a super-icky factor about being caught naked by any of those people. They preferred not to risk it. It was more fun to chance being caught by the police instead.

The lot was deserted; the restaurant it belonged to closed hours earlier. The girl had discovered the location about five years ago, shortly after she got her driver’s license at sixteen. It was serendipity, she’d thought at the time, having just learned the word. That was before the movie came out and everyone else learned it, too. A happy accident it was.

The engine had been overheating on her old POS Buick and she’d pulled into an empty run-down parking lot next to a boarded-up restaurant to give it a drink. As she lifted up the hood, a plane flew right over her head after take-off. It was so close she felt she might have been able to touch it if she jumped high enough. She’d never seen a plane so close before and was amazed by its size and power. The best part of all was the blast of air she felt. It was only enough to mess up her hair and blow her skirt up a tad, but that small blast of air gave her a huge rush of adrenaline and she was hooked.

For the next few years she parked in the lot quite often. She would come after school and lie on the hood of her car while she listened to music and studied. Sometimes she watched the planes and fantasized about being on them, especially if they were going to New York City. She’d been fantasizing about New York City since the first time she’d seen the movie
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
when she was nine. The city seemed so alive and the people who lived there so glamorous.

One day she would live there, too. One day she would be glamorous. She would wear liquid eyeliner and big sunglasses and smoke cigarettes out of one of those long cigarette holders. She would attend the best parties, wear the best clothes and would make walking in high heels look easy. She would make it happen. One day. New York City was her soul mate. She knew they would eventually meet and live happily ever after.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Michigan. It was fine. It had four distinct seasons, five Great Lakes and one fantastic hockey team. It was home to her family and friends and a perfect spot for watching planes land. Even if the abandoned restaurant was now reopened and the previously vacant lot was now occupied during business hours, she could still use it as a secret place to hang out with the boy late at night. Because Michigan also happened to be the home of one really sweet boy with a smile that made her heart do somersaults. And when she was lying under the stars with him in the back of his truck, she had no thoughts of moving to New York to flutter around the city in a tiara. As she watched the planes fly above them, she didn’t think about where they could take her one day. She only thought about where they could go together. The only place she cared to be was in his arms. But she seriously needed to cut that shit out. It was totally cheesy, and people all over the world would be swallowing their own vomit if they knew what she was thinking.

This was only a summer fling. That was the plan. They were only hooking up because he was her safety guy. You know, like a safety school is not your first choice but it’s a sure thing? A safety guy was a guy who was sure not to hurt you. He was her safety guy because it was a sure thing she would
not
fall in love with him.

And that’s not what’s happening now
, she told herself.

It didn’t matter anyway
.
She was leaving for North Carolina the next morning to begin her final year of undergrad at UNC and this – whatever it was – was over.

“I was kinda thinking…” he said. He had one arm under her neck and one arm under his head and looked as cool and laid-back as the Marlboro man used to look back when smoking was still cool. “It might be fun if I drove down with you tomorrow. I’ve never been to North Carolina, and it’s so long for you to drive by yourself.”

A sunny 700-mile road trip with him sounded absolutely amazing to her. Since classes didn’t start until Monday, they could take their time, maybe stop at a flea market, and eat lots of gummy worms and rock candy. She could show him the mountain that looked like a giant boob with a nipple on top. She could introduce him to her friends at UNC and spend just one more night in his arms. Yes, it sounded like the best frickin’ idea ever.

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” she lied. “That’s something boyfriends and girlfriends do, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

It was too dark for her to see the disappointment on his face. But when he pulled his arm out from under her and let her head hit the hard plastic of the bed liner, she could feel it, the difference.

He sat up and tossed over her Carolina-Blue tank top and they got dressed in silence.

CHAPTER ONE

Eight Years Later

I was sitting on the toilet when he told me he wanted a divorce. This wasn’t the way I imagined it would happen. In fact, I didn’t
ever
imagine it would happen, which is odd because I’m the kind of person who likes to be prepared. I consider myself a hardcore planner. Not the kind who takes a list to the grocery store or sticks a chore chart to the refrigerator. That’s too easy. I’m more of a life planner. I don’t sit by and idly watch life happen to me. I grab the wheel and let
me
happen to life. I imagine every possible scenario behind every corner and by planning ahead I make the ordinary moments extraordinary and the disasters more bearable. It’s not because I’m a total control freak or anything; it’s because, well, I guess I am a bit of a control freak. And if we’re dissecting my personality here, I should probably admit to being a tad bit neurotic because you’re going to find out anyway. But not in a crazy, spastic kind of way. I like to think of myself as more quirky than crazy.

As a film junkie I had a habit of expecting my life to resemble a Best Picture nominee. Or maybe a Golden Globe or MTV Movie Award would be more my style. But nevertheless, I wanted a life filled with edge-of-your-seat excitement and the kind of comedy that makes people shoot soda out of their noses. I wanted witty dialogue, romance and suspense in all the right places and a perfect soundtrack playing in the background. It’s a lot to ask for, yes, but we only get one shot at life. There are no second takes. If I find myself in a crappy moment, I can’t just “fix it in post” or delete the scene like I can with editing software. So I simply don’t allow crappy moments. That is all.

This obsession with perfection started when I was a teenager. There are certain things little girls look forward to as they’re growing up. For example, their first kiss. My big moment happened when I was fourteen. I was walking home from school with my brother, Adam’s, best friend, Jake. Jake Odom had lived around the block from us for as long as I could remember. He spent so much time at our house playing Nintendo (the original Nintendo) with my brother he was practically another member of the family.

Adam and Jake were both juniors that year and I was a freshman. Jake and I walked home from school together nearly every day. We weren’t exactly friends but since we both went to the same school, lived in the same neighborhood and he didn’t have a car and I wasn’t old enough to drive, we ended up walking together by default. I guess we ended up friends by default, as well.

Adam did have a car but he also had football practice after school in the fall and basketball practice in the winter and baseball practice in the spring so I never got to take advantage of that particular older brother perk.

There we were, two non-athletic high school kids stopped at a crosswalk, when he suddenly turned to me, grabbed my head on both sides by my ears, pressed his lips on mine and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I was so shocked and disgusted by the slimy violation that I gasped in shock and got my raspberry-flavored bubble gum caught in my windpipe.

It was the closest I’d ever been to death. I was unable to make a sound so I started flapping my arms around like a panicking penguin until Jake realized he had literally taken my breath away. Fortunately for me, he had taken a first aid class in middle school. He got behind me and Heimlich-ed the gum right out. Unfortunately for him, a lady who happened to be looking out her window at the time thought he was assaulting me and called the police. The cops found some rolling papers in his pocket and busted him for paraphernalia. Magic moment? Hardly.

Girls also think losing their virginity is going to be a sacred and special memory. I was sixteen and one of the last of my friends to take the plunge. After hearing the horror stories from everyone else, I knew better than to expect roses and candlelight. But when my boyfriend led me into his bedroom after school while his parents were at work, I
was
expecting something at least a little bit sweet, like maybe some Boyz II Men on the CD player. What happened instead is he never even took his shirt off. He dropped his pants and went at it looking like Winnie-the-Pooh in his red polo shirt. And the worst part of it all – he farted! Loudly and intentionally, at his moment of climax (about fifteen seconds in), he farted. He said later he thought it would be a good way to break the ice.
Break the ice!? Really? Your penis is in my vagina! We’re like six months and three layers of clothing past ice breaking!

I don’t consider myself to be an unreasonable person. I could make do with a less-than-perfect moment every once in awhile as long as it was something I could laugh about later. The kissing scene, for example, was quite funny in retrospect. Jake and I have laughed about it on more than one occasion. And I can deal with a man being in such a hurry to get in there that he can’t even take three seconds to get his shirt off. That kind of urgency can be sexy at times. I also understand that accidents happen and sometimes things just slip out. But a flatulent ejaculator is unacceptable. Fart jokes stop being funny to girls when we’re about six. I understand boys mature at a slower pace, but farting should stop being funny for them by at least age thirteen. And farts are never funny when your penis is in my vagina.

After the fart fiasco I was determined to make sure I had no more blooper-reel moments on my DVD. That’s when I became a bit obsessed with directing – I mean
planning
. I realized my experiences could not be put into the hands of others.