The Midpoint #4: NEW ROMCOM NOVELETTE
Welcome back to The Midpoint, my serial fiction section here on Substack! This month I have a romcom novelette. The story was originally included in Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 6 (if my memory serves me right.) It’s okay if you never read it since I spent this week completely re-writing it as an exercise, and now it’s triple the length. (Also, why am I giving me homework when I have other work?)
Next Monster House chapter is also coming a little later this month. But I thought I’d switch it up. If you’re not subscribed, enjoy the first chapter. It will go up for sale as an ebook on 7.18.25, but The Midpoint subscribers get it automatically! Any support is welcome.
Happy reading.
What’s The Far Side of the World about? Veronica Solas wanted an adventure. She left her entire world in New York City to “reconnect with herself” by hiking across the Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland. She’d a day away her terminus when the weather has another idea.
Caught in a sudden rainstorm, Vera is saved by the very man who nearly ran her over—Finley MacLeod. A former rugby player, Finley knows a thing or two about starting over. What started out as seeking shelter from the rain turns into a night (and morning) of passion.
Vera might be off course, but perhaps she found exactly what she’d been looking for.
This one-shot short story is a standalone in the Modern Love romances, a contemporary romance project I’ve been working on. This is a peek into the style and vibes.
Read if you're into:
* Open door
* Travel stories
* Insta-attraction
* Sex-positivity
* She comes first
* Sexy Scotsman
* Latina heroine
* Bite sized smut
Word count total: 9,400
Chapter OneVeronica Solas knew she was lost again when she saw the same two blue sheep humping next to the rock formation that resembled a troll doll. One of the ones that had lined her big sister’s book shelves.
The sheep in question glanced up once to bleat at her voyeurism. Despite the blisters rubbing against the insides of her hiking boots, Vera couldn’t keep standing there. She adjusted her massive backpack and trudged through the soggy hills that blanketed the isle of Harris, jabbing her trekking poles into the soil ahead to make sure she didn’t fall into a bog. Considering how her wild Scottish hiking adventure was going, getting swallowed by a murky pit seemed par for the course. When the muddy ground swallowed the aluminum rod, it ate the rubber tip of her trekking pole clean off, letting go with an immature slurping sound, and Vera let loose a strangled, disgruntled cry of her own.
“Just the tip,” she said to the heather, to the sheep, to the perfect blue sky that felt like the only blessing after a couple of weeks of misfortunes. She missed her chaotic friends and cousins who would have beaten her to the immature punch if they’d joined her like they’d said they would. But after all the planning, the maps, the hostel reservations, the meal prepping—all those city bitches had bailed on her. They were waiting at the luxury hotel and spa at the end of her trail, and she thanked the old gods of these islands that she didn’t have cell service to receive the photos of their clean beds and hot tubs.
Vera had walked just over a hundred and ten miles, spanning nine of the Western Isles off the coast of Scotland. There were forty six miles to go, and Vera was bone tired. She’d been on Golden Road for hours and hours, and she was afraid she’d missed some turn. She sat down on a moss-covered boulder, her backpack digging nearly permanent red marks into her shoulders. There was half an Oreo-flavored protein bar in her pocket. When she tried to unwrap it and take a bite, the melted chocolate slipped out of the packaging and into the mud between her feet. She glanced around, and she swore the copulating sheep were now staring at her. Would she? Had she thoroughly become #HikerTrash enough to eat something fallen on the ground?
And because she already smelled, and had been wearing damp clothes, and this was the first break of sunshine she’d felt, and the next restaurant didn’t show up on her map for another five miles, she plucked the protein bar and ate it. Honestly, her hunger was so voracious that she hardly tasted the mud.
If Vera’s ex-boyfriend could see her in that very moment, he still wouldn’t look up from his video game console. The thought was oddly reassuring, since she’d wanted this trip to be just for her. Six months prior, her life had been at an impasse. She was middle management at a clothing store she’d worked at since she was fifteen, and had applied for a corporate promotion. She’d been with her college boyfriend for twelve years. Her lease for their Brooklyn apartment was about to double. Things were technically fine, like when the only meal option was a salad bar. Fine. But she’d really been craving a fat, juicy steak with a side of fries and a dirty martini.
Then, five months and twenty nine days later, she’d been passed over for the promotion for a twenty-four-year-old nepo baby, whom she had to train. She’d quit immediately. That was the first domino. When she’d gotten home, Chris was right where she’d left him—in front of the TV. He worked from home, keeping his work computer on in case there was an HR emergency (there never was). When she’d told him what happened he’d said, “That sucks babe. You’ll be all right. What’re we having for dinner?”
She supposed he had been encouraging, even if he hadn’t understood why it had hurt so much that she’d been passed over after all the years she’d put in. She realized, her relationship had been the same. She did all the work and, in the end, got crumbs for appreciation. “But you’re so good at the local level.” “That sucks babe.” That realization was the final straw. It had been like she’d been offered a parachute, and though she hadn’t know exactly where she’d land, she was glad she’d taken the plunge.
Now she had nothing. No boyfriend. No job. No apartment. And it was so damn freeing. She’d traveled the world and was on the fourth item of her three page long checklist. The first had been to take a break on dating.
The things she did have were a backpack, a sleeping bag, three liters of water, three protein bars, a tarp, a gas canister, a portable stove, a first aid kit, a fat paperback novel, her cell phone, a solar charger, headphones fraying at the ends, two changes of clothes (none of them clean), a map that had seen better days, and a fifth of fancy whisky she’d been saving for the terminus.
She took in the smooth crags of rock that peaked beneath choppy stretches of grass ahead; breathed in so hard it hurt her city-conditioned lungs. All she had to do was follow the trail markers to the main road to the next town. Surely the storm brewing in the distance wasn’t heading her way. The sun was still out, after all.
Part of Vera wanted to give up and hitch a bus and take as far as possible to meet up with her friends. She’d proven her point. But that was a slippery slope. She hadn’t left everything behind simply to quit on herself. She’d wanted adventure and she was going to get it.
There was a strange euphoria that happened when she hiked long enough. It started to kick in, and she rode that second wind and got back on track, keeping an eye on the horizon as her respite of good weather evaporated. Clouds were rolling in quickly, a windstorm pushing her along the road. She kept close to the grassy side, and hoped she was going the right way.
Vera screamed as lightning struck way too close for comfort. And because it felt good to let out that terrifying, beautiful, cathartic scream, she did it while stomping across the worn path. Mist rolled in, and she flicked on her headlamp, feeling like a land-angler fish. There was supposed to be a bus stop on route, and she’d hide under the shelter and wait out the rain.
After another hour, when she finally saw the intersection to the main road, she thanked the turbulent skies and quickened her pace. Vera didn’t see the car heading right toward her until it was too late. She couldn’t believe her last thought was, “I’ll never get to taste that whisky.”
Moment before getting all muddy.
Chapter TwoVera was saved by her backpack. She didn’t move, her arms and legs splayed like someone had flipped over a turtle. She groaned at the pain on her side.
Above her, someone shouted, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Where did you come from?”
“Where did you come from?” she yelled back, then winced as she tried to sit up.
“Whoa, steady there,” said a deep, inconvenienced voice. He knelt beside her and assessed her injuries. “Are you hurt?”
She took a moment to inventory her body. Legs and arms moved. Her pack, for the albatross it was, had saved her. The car had slid and braked inches from her. Through her delayed reaction, Vera had flung herself as far as she could, not accounting for the weight of her backpack. She’d somehow managed to get sand in her mouth in the process. She really must stop consuming the ground, even if it was technically organic.
“I think I’m fine. Just my pride.”
He helped her to her feet. He had dark brown hair that curled from beneath a wool beanie. How hadn’t she seen the glow-worm green color from a mile away?
“Are you sure? Because your eyes aren’t focusing up very well.”
She’d grown to love the rounded Rs of the Outer Hebridean accent she’d encountered, and his was no different. His alto voice made her feel warm inside.
Or was that a concussion?
“Seriously. I’m fine.” She blinked, her sight a touch fuzzy, then tapped her own face. “My glasses.” She took one step, and then it was like the ground was vanishing from beneath her. “Oh no, a bog!”
“‘Yer definitely seeing things.” The stranger in the neon beanie caught her, and exhaled a strangled curse. “Let’s get you somewhere dry.”
“Okay but don’t kill me.”
“If I wanted to kill you, or both of us, I’d keep driving in that piece of shite car.”
“Likely story,” Vera said, as she tried to get her vision to focus on his face (there were two of them). This happened when she was dehydrated and her sight was strained from not wearing glasses. She touched his cheeks. The stubble along a very sharp jaw. He seemed affronted when she bonked his nose with the flat of her palm. “I think I can walk to Tarbert from here.”
“Do you know how far we are from Tarbert?” he asked.
She was so used to using that tone on Chris, she grimaced. “Okay, stranger who almost ran me over.”
“Are Americans all so loud and angry?”
“Most of us, yes.”
Thunder crackled again and she almost jumped onto him if not for her backpack keeping her center of gravity. Steam rose from the car’s engine. She’d never seen the model, not that she knew much about cars. She’d describe it as boxy and European, like her first Floor Supervisor, Petra. Then she settled her attention on the man holding her upright by her shoulders.
Vera had never paid attention to a man’s Adam’s apple. They looked sort of like weird marionette nubs. But this one, because it was directly in front of her, was nice. More than nice. She felt the urge to brush her thumb across and over it. She was very proud that she didn’t. Instead she tilted her head back as if she was welcoming the rain. The two faces she’d seen became one single beautiful face. Big eyes, blue-green like sea glass. Golden freckles scattered across the broken bridge of his nose. He grinned at her with full pink lips as if he’d stumbled on a three-legged puppy—pathetic but in need of help and maybe cute.
“I’m late for work enough as it is,” he told her, “but I’m taking you with me. Bekah will come have a look at you. Take off your rucksack.”
Vera had never been spoken to that way. It was the command in his voice that had a befuddling effect. When she didn’t move, he walked behind her and held it by the side straps. She slipped out of it arm by arm. Walking without her pack for the first time since she’d started hiking that morning was freeing. She almost fell forward by the shift in equilibrium. He tossed it in the trunk of the car, grabbed a lamp and an orange bundle, and returned to her.
“Put this on.”
“Orange is not my color.”
“It is if you don’t want us both to get run over.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she slipped the vest on. “How far can you walk?”
Vera stood in the middle of the road. She was drenched through to her underwear, covered in mud, starving, tired. But in that moment she felt light enough to get carried by the wind. Unfortunately, with the pain that lanced through her toe, she wasn’t going to make it very far. She started to bend down for one of her trekking poles, then simply sat and said, “I think I’m good here.”
“Oh no, you’re not. We haven’t had a dead tourist here since 1970, and I’m not letting you be the first.” He grabbed one of her wrists and heaved her onto his shoulder, carrying her off into the mist.
Storm is a-brewing
Chapter ThreeHis name was Finley MacLeod. He’d said it in a rush as he sat her down in the mud room of a house down the road and shoved a water bottle into her hands. They’d shouted things at each other most of the way.
