New adult, p.1
New Adult, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2023 by Timothy Janovsky
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover and internal illustrations by Monique Aimee
Internal design by Laura Boren/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410
(630) 961-3900
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
CONTENTS
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part One: Black Obsidian
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two: Clear Quartz
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Three: Pyrite
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Part Four: Rose Quartz
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Part Five: Malachite
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Part Six: Hematite Stone
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Part Seven: Citrine
Chapter Forty-Four
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
THE LAW OF ATTRACTION:
Thoughts are a form of energy…
Like attracts like.
PART ONE
BLACK OBSIDIAN
Face your true self
Chapter One
Jokes, they say, are a lot like life and love: all in the timing.
Right now, I should be planning out the jokes for my next open-mic stand-up set, practicing the punch lines that are going to bring the house down, but no. Instead, I’m doing this.
Come quick. It’s an emergency, I type before throwing my phone on the bed like it’s a bomb and assessing the unmitigated disaster that surrounds me.
Ever since my sister announced her surprise engagement and subsequent blowout wedding, my timing has been way off. Like, life-in-utter-disarray off.
Case in point, I’m midcrisis on a Saturday night, running majorly late to meet someone, and banking on my best friend to come through with a fix like he always does.
Footfalls bound down the hall to my right. The door flies open, and a frenzied Drew—all six-foot-three of him (90 percent limbs, 10 percent miscellaneous) thrusts the fire extinguisher we keep stashed under the kitchen sink into my bedroom, nozzle first. “I told you not to light any more of those Doop candles if you’re going to take a nap,” he shouts. “You flail in your sleep. You’re a flailer!”
He points and weaves, clearly trying to decipher where the fire is.
There is no fire. Not this time, anyway. Just socks. Lots and lots (and lots) of discarded socks, dumped from an overturned drawer and sprawled all over the floor. Tall socks. Short socks. No-show socks. Socks with zany patterns and TV show quotes and corgi butts printed on them. But sadly, detrimentally, no dress socks.
There is, however, dress sock. Singular. And I am now dejectedly holding it up for Drew to see.
“It’s not an I-accidentally-started-a-small-fire-by-flailing emergency. It’s a do-you-have-a-clean-pair-of-dress-socks-I-can-borrow emergency.” I look back down at my mess and correct myself. “Even dirty dress socks would suffice at this point.” I’d buy my own if I were in any kind of financial position to do so. Perks of being a struggling stand-up comedian with a tip-based survival job.
Drew retracts the extinguisher, powering down from red-alert mode. “You couldn’t have texted me that instead of making me think our entire building was going to burn down again?”
“Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the drama in that?” I waggle the sock in his face for emphasis, which he swats away, left eyebrow twitching. The one with the tiny scar above it from when he had to get stitches in high school after a bookshelf-building attempt gone wrong. “Sorry, but in fairness, how was I to know the Go to Sleep, Bitch candle was going to put me to sleep in literal seconds? I don’t fuck with witchcraft.”
Drew snorts. “Of course, blame witchcraft and not your shifts that sometimes last until 3:00 a.m., or your off-again, on-again insomnia.”
“I know you don’t believe me, but there is totally something weird about where my sister works,” I protest. Doop claims to be a lifestyle brand, and yet they operate more like a cult. A very trendy, very wealthy, very health-conscious cult. It’s creepy. “And they definitely put something in that candle.” What else would I expect from a company that started as a popular anonymous blog and rapidly became ubiquitous in the world of “wellness”?
“I bet the Doop higher-ups possessed your body in your sleep and forced you to knock it over too.” Drew’s accusatory expression is completely unwelcome here.
“At least I acted quickly!”
“Yes. Your prompt yelling of ‘Drew! Drew! Fire! Fire!’ was both chivalrous and helpful.”
I would dispel that absurd rumor if it weren’t completely true and I weren’t talking to the world’s leading Nolan Baker Bullshit Detector. “At the very least, nobody was hurt and the damage was minimal.”
“True,” Drew concedes. “But we definitely lost our security deposit.”
“Which is not a problem, considering we’re going to live here together forever and ever until we’re gray and wrinkly and senile, and then nobody will ever know about the unsightly singe marks until we’re dead and buried.” I shoot him with my most winning smile. “Won’t need that money when we’re in side-by-side burial plots somewhere shady and beautiful, perhaps with an oak tree and a bench.”
Drew’s expression warms. Red rising to the tops of his cheeks, matching the stark red of his hair that has always made him easy to pick out even in the largest of New York City crowds. Well, his hair and his previously mentioned height.
He’s basically a giant. A gentle giant. A gangly gentle giant who is looking at me like I just solved the universe’s oldest riddle. “You have it all figured out, huh?”
“Indeed.” I give his cheek a light, friendly smack. “What I don’t have figured out is what I’m going to do about this sock-cession…”
“Are you saying ‘succession’?”
“No. Sock. Cession.” I chop the air with each syllable. “A recession of socks.”
Drew goes from looking at me like I hold the key to enlightenment to looking like I’ve swallowed said key and now we’re going to have to wait days to weeks for me to poop it out. “Clue me in here.”
“As in the value of my socks has greatly declined due to the fact that half of them have holes in them.” I gesture to the pile on my left. “And the other half don’t have a match.” The sad, single socks sit on my right. An apt metaphor for my life.
Drew assesses the situation before dropping to his knees and doing his damnedest to find a perfect, put-together pair. How sweet and naive he is to think I haven’t scoured. Haven’t hunted. Haven’t prayed to Saint Anthony even though I’m as unreligious as they come. “How did such a deficit come to be?” He’s evidently flummoxed by this, even if my general brand of disorder is commonplace by now. “Did you buy a million single socks or something?”
“Honestly?” I give him my best deadpan. “I blame the candle.”
That gets a laugh out of him. “I’ll be right back.” He edges out of the room slowly. “Don’t cause any more chaos while I’m gone.”
I cross my heart with my pointer finger and wait seconds for him to return from his own bedroom. It’s a sneeze-and-it-shakes small apartment.
“What do you need the dress socks for?” he asks once he’s back, gracing me with a neatly folded pair of navy blues.
I flop way down onto my mattress, which doesn’t have a bed frame (I like it like this, I swear), and slip the socks on, pausing over what to say. Drew and I have a no-lie policy as all the best best-friendships do, but in this case, I have to tread lightly. The last thing I want to do is let Drew, the bestower of blue socks, know that I’m slightly embarrassed and a little miffed over my evening plans. “I’m, uh, meeting someone.”
His expression sours. “I thought we had plans to catch up on Drag Race tonight. This is the second time you’ve canceled this month alone. You didn’t put anything new on our Google calendar…”
It’s funny how so much of my life is ours regarding Drew and me. This is our apartment. What he’s referencing is our joint online social calendar. These blue socks, for all intents and purposes, are now ours.
A lot of ours, but there is no we.
“Sorry. It was a last-minute thing,” I say, not meeting his eyes while pretending to be amused by how big his socks are on me. You know what they say about guys with big feet…
“It takes two seconds to update our calendar.” Big amounts of skepticism.
He’s right on all counts. It would’ve been exceptionally easy to add a blue color block, the same shade as these socks, to the shared calendar that’s meant to make our lives easier by blocking out work shifts (red), nap schedules (purple), nights we may want to bring another person home so the other should make themselves scarce (blue), et cetera, et cetera.
But the truth is, Nolan Baker using the blue is a rarity. Almost unheard of recently. “I have a…date.” I nearly choke on the word.
There is an excruciatingly lengthy silence. “What happened to the whole I’m not going to date anyone until I’ve become a successful stand-up thing?” he asks with a jagged edge to his voice.
The other truth is, Nolan Baker using the blue is a rarity (almost unheard of) because he’s been in love with Drew Techler for a little over two years. But that’s an admission only someone with a decent pair of matching dress socks is allowed to make. Love is not for those without a bed frame. Or so I’m told.
“That was all before my sister decided to be selfish and go and get herself engaged.” I groan, crawling over to the open closet. I struggle to prepare myself for the onslaught of shoes. Being crushed by Mount Ve-shoe-vius sounds better than having to face Drew about my feelings.
“Ah, yes. Love. The most selfish thing you can give another person.”
I don’t even justify that with a proper response because I can’t. I snort…or grunt…or something else stupid comes out of my mouth while I sort through the wreckage that is my belongings and try not to think about the inconvenient, nebulous love lodged in my stupid heart.
When my sister and her coworker announced their engagement to my whole family and told them Doop was footing the bill for an all-expenses-paid wedding as a marketing stunt, everyone else shrieked with excitement while I dutifully smiled, participated in the toast, and then sprinted to the bathroom to comb through my contacts for a suitable date. Even though the little audience in my brain was chanting: Drew! Drew! Drew!
Ted Grindr was a no-go because of his BO. Bill Tinder was a ghosting situation. Lamar Bumble was a chronic dick-pic sender. My phone was a long list of failed connections and missed opportunities, but I couldn’t give up the search so easily.
Baker family functions, for me, go a little something like this:
Well-Meaning Family Member: “Are you still doing that comedy thing?”
Me: “Yes, Great-Aunt (think of the oldest, crotchetiest name you can think of), I am.”
Well-Meaning Family Member with an Old, Crotchety Name: “That’s nice. Your Uncle (insert creepy, generic name here) showed me one of your videos on the Facebook.”
Me: “Oh, that was nice of him.”
Well-Meaning Family Member with an Old, Crotchety Name: “Yeah…it wasn’t my cup of tea.”
That’s not even to touch upon the “Isn’t New York City expensive? How do you afford it?” and the “Isn’t New York City dangerous? Do you carry pepper spray?” and, by far my favorite, “Isn’t New York City full of the gays? Shouldn’t you have a boyfriend by now?”
All that passive-aggressive care is uncomfortable. I need a buffer by my side. Especially for an occasion as lovey-dovey as my sister’s wedding to her well-to-do, Connecticut-bred boyfriend. Without a plus-one, I’m going to stick out like the black sheep who can’t stop baaaaaaaaah-ing loudly for attention.
“So, you’re dating again because your sister is getting married?” Drew asks, obviously not grasping what I’m getting at.
As I carefully inspect the precarious shoe situation, I say, “I don’t really think of it as dating. It’s more like…shopping. Shopping for a wedding date. I’m basically going to the mall.”
“As someone who lives and dies by romance novels, I don’t love where you’re going with that analogy.” Drew has always been the one in our friendship with the mushy, hopeful heart, and honestly, that’s part of the problem.
Not that he has a mushy, hopeful heart. I love that about him. Gah, love. Jesus.
It’s more that he’s a lovebug through and through, and if I take the wrong step toward him while bumbling my way through adulthood, he could end up splattered on the sole of my shoe. A fate far worse than loving him from afar. At least from afar, I can’t fuck it up.
That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. A smaller than small part of me knows I’m being governed by fear here.
Fear of awkwardness, rejection, having to find a new living arrangement because I’ve irrevocably fucked up the best friendship I’ve ever had by choosing to catch feelings after one almost-magical New Year’s Eve.
Drew wants it all. The commitment. The cute Instagram photo shoots. The getaways and late-night phone calls. The whole works.
I think I want that stuff too. I think I want to give him that stuff. But I can’t plant romantic roots until I’m firmly progressing on my career path toward comedy stardom. With my family breathing down my neck, seemingly ready for me to fail, I need to prove that this move to New York City was for something.
For now, I’m fine—or pretending to be fine, depending on the day—with casual, don’t-bring-him-back-to-the-apartment flings. It all provides ample fodder for my stand-up material. Leave the strings for the puppets, I always say. (I don’t really, but maybe I should start?)
Which is why when I turn around with two pairs of matching shoes, one in each hand, I’m hit with a niggling sense of mourning.
There’s Drew. Handsome as ever, even in a pair of pale-pink sweatpants and a matching crewneck. Someone who would make an excellent wedding date, and an even more excellent life partner. Someone who supports me and loans me socks and has kissed me on exactly two occasions (once for practice, once for…pleasure?) and hasn’t curled away in disgust—which has happened to me in the past, mind you! But in fairness, I had eaten a shitload of garlic knots before said kiss, so I was basically vampire-repellent and this dude was wearing guyliner and a vintage My Chemical Romance T-shirt. You do the math.
I can’t even keep a pair of damn socks together. How on earth could I keep a couple together when one half of that couple is me? Drew deserves more, better, the world. All I have to offer is this: half-heartedly begging for a pair of clean, matching socks on a Saturday night mere minutes before I need to leave for a date I don’t even want to go on with a guy named Harry who’s way out of my league. Honestly, Harry and I might even be playing two different ball games, but he asked me out and I’m really in no position to upset a potential wedding date at this juncture.
“Which pair?” I ask, forcing myself back to earth.
Drew deliberates with keen eyes. “Neither of them match the socks. And, now that I’m looking, the socks don’t match the pants. Do we need to get you a sticker system so you know what goes with what?”
