If the Fates Allow by Annie Harper

Author:Annie Harper [Harper, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Gay, Gay & Lesbian, gay fiction, gay romance, Holiday, Lgbt, lgbt fiction, Love & Romance
ISBN: 9781945053481
Publisher: Interlude Press
Published: 2017-12-01T21:08:11+00:00

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About the Author: Erin Finnegan is a former journalist and a winemaker who lives in the foothills outside Los Angeles. Her novel Luchador was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2016, and along with her 2014 debut novel, Sotto Voce, received both a Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year award and a PW starred review.

Halfway Home

by Lilah Suzanne

Chapter One

Avery Puckett has no personal items on her desk to pack away. The woman from Human Resources offered her a box, along with a small severance package, while she stood, her face struggling to convey sympathy, at an uncomfortable distance from Avery’s tiny cubicle. She’d fired a dozen people that day alone, the HR lady whose name Avery never learned, with Avery gone today in round three of a never-ending cycle of layoffs at the company. Avery doesn’t blame the HR lady for her lack of sympathy. Such are the cold, churning cogs of corporate America. So no, she doesn’t need a box. She leaves the high rise building in glossy Uptown the way she came: empty-handed, unaffected, and wearing the same tan blazer with a mustard stain on the sleeve.

The traffic on her way home is bad, because it always is, and the radio plays one song for every seven commercials, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all noise. Avery inches along the commute that’s become second nature over the past year and two months. It’s mostly city streets, which is better than her last commute, which was highway. Avery slows to a stop across from the red glow of a traffic light. Maybe the highway commute was better. It doesn’t matter; a commute is a commute is a commute. The light turns green. Headlights flash in her rearview mirror, charging too fast and too close.

A tow truck takes her home.

“Sorry I’m late,” Avery calls, entering her apartment and being surprised, once again, to come home to lights on and the TV murmuring. Mary Anne moved in three months ago. Avery still isn’t sure if she likes it. She doesn’t dislike it, which is close enough. “I got into a car accident.” Avery sets a plastic bag on the kitchen counter as Mary Anne emerges from the bedroom.

“Oh, my god, are you okay?” Mary Anne likes vintage eye glasses, high-waisted A-line skirts, and NPR. She knows a great deal of 80s pop culture trivia, which is how her team won trivia night at the bar where she and Avery met—where Mary Anne walked up to Avery and announced they were a good match and should go out. Avery couldn’t find any reason to object.

“Hmm? Oh yeah, I’m fine.” Avery removes a carton of ice cream from the bag; it’s gone a little soft in the time it took to get home. She should have eaten it right away. No matter, melted ice cream is still ice cream. “Is vanilla okay? The store didn’t have a lot to choose from.”

Mary Anne sighs. “I don’t like vanilla. We have this conversation literally every time you buy ice cream.

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