If the Shoe Fits (Meant to Be, #1)

by Julie Murphy

Mean teenage girls and awkward interactions with living, breathing Prince Charmings. Some things never change.

You know, the exsqueeze me had almost endeared him to me, but then he had to go and call me babe.

want to eat your brain,” Beck says with complete sincerity. “Mommy!” Jack screams, instant tears running down his cheeks as he darts around the table to Erica. “Don’t let Beck eat your brain!”

“I think fairy tales might be more like cautionary tales than anything else. And fate is just an excuse for people to be inactive participants in their own lives.”

Country boy with family values looking to settle down? He’s really a right-wing nut with mommy issues. Free-spirited adventure seeker looking for his soul mate to plant roots with? Immature daredevil who thinks he’s more special than everyone else.

I don’t believe in fate. I can’t. I refuse to believe that first Mom and then Dad dying was part of some grand scheme. If that’s true, whatever’s at the end of my rainbow isn’t worth what it will have cost me.

When someone calls me brave for going out or wearing a fitted dress or for some other normal thing that every other girl does, what it really means is: I would be mortified to look like you, but good for you for merely existing even if all I can think about is how fat you are and how I’m terrified I’ll one day look like you. So brave.

Don’t you see how belittling this is! I’m not brave for wearing a dress. I’m just living!

“It’s a pun! Puns can be sexy.” “Sure, Jan,”

When Dad died, I heard so many people tell me they were sorry over and over again to the point that the word doesn’t even carry meaning anymore. It’s just a cloud of a word. You can hear it. You can see it. You just can’t feel it.

“Good luck, babe.”

CHAPPELL ROAN REFERENCE

“Is it weird that bossy Beck is a turn-on?”

Not at all

I grin down at her as I take out my mouthpiece. “Just playing by the rules. Moo, bitch. Moo.”

My stepsister is in the pool, her hair piled high into a messy bun, her legs wrapped around Zeke’s waist with her arms wound around his neck.

Besides, queer people deserve to have their bad romantic decisions documented for the whole country to consume, too.

The truth, though, is that clothing is fashion and fashion should be for everyone because clothing should be for everyone.

“I think it’s time we take this international. I hope you’ve got your passports, because we’re going to the villas.”

A hot new bombshell enters the villa (cindy)

“I’d walk into a brick wall for you,” he tells me. “Fall into a manhole. My accidental tendencies are at your service.”

“He’s dead to me,” Drew says, like a switch has flipped in her brain. “Scorched earth. Dead to me.” Anna nods. “His pulse is nonexistent. The doctor is pronouncing the time of death as now o’clock. They’re calling the morgue. He’s dead.”

And there it is. I fell in love. I’m in love with Henry Mackenzie. I always assumed I would have a difficult time knowing if I was in love. What if I didn’t recognize the signs? Or what if it wasn’t as intoxicating as the whole world has built it up to be? But, for me, it feels very simple. It’s the kind of thing I know with just as much assurance as my birthday. It’s not something I feel lost in or confused by. It’s a truth, and some truths hurt more than others.

Choose what makes you happy. Things, places, people. Only choose the ones that bring that delight to you. Don’t be a hostage to duty or obligation. I didn’t carry you and birth you and raise you to waste your precious life on anything except unbridled joy. Choose joy.

The best part about crossing any bridge is the chance to look back and be able to fully understand where you came from. You’re not a machine. You’re not a computer. You’re an artist, and any good artist knows life feeds into art and art feeds into life.”

“If the shoe fits,”

There it is