I didn’t know what it meant, the way Tallulah made me feel. Until fall break, when my family made a long-weekend trip up to the A-frame, where I was poking around its bookshelves. I yanked out a small, worn mass-market paperback historical romance, and the back copy caught my eye. Loathing. Lust. Unrequited, burning desire. Burning. Desire. Those were words I’d been struggling to find, feelings I hadn’t known how to identify. I picked up the book, turned it over, dropped to the floor, sat with my back to the bookshelves, and started reading. That was my first romance novel.
