Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy by Jessica Pine

in life right now."
     I worked one hand loose and slapped him across his upper arm. "You dick! What kind of snob do you think I am?"
     "I don't. It's just not something I like to admit. People have prejudices."
     "Thanks for including me among those people," I said. What kind of shallow, stuck-up princess did he think I was?
     "I'm sorry. I guess it was just force of habit. Look, we can totally go there if you want."
     I shook my head and carried on walking. A little part of me was ashamed of myself for ruining the evening. I'd been like this all day - raw, edgy and close to tears. It was late in the month and while I knew why I was behaving in this ridiculous way it was as if I lacked the faculties to pull myself back. It was like my skin was too thin and I felt like Byron used to look, like the workings of me were on show - veins, tendons, bone.
     By some titanic effort I managed not to cry. "I just want to sleep," I said, when we reached his car. "I think I'm tired."
     His mouth refused to slant in its usual smile and I knew I'd upset him. I wanted to tell him it didn't matter to me where he lived but I could tell somehow that I'd only make things worse. His unspoken misjudgment of me had hurt me more than I wanted to admit and right now it felt too big and tugged at the frayed ends of all my anxieties. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and kissed me on the side of the mouth. He kept his lips closed and they felt hard, perfunctory. He thought I was stupid. He thought I was a flake, a princess, a drama queen.
     Somehow I managed not to run after him. I went indoors and walked softly past the living room, where my Dad sat watching his nature shows. I went to pee, but when I wiped the toilet paper was still white, which meant several more days of strange behavior on my part. It was weird how it stopped the moment my period started - every single time - as if you could turn craziness on and off like a tap.
     I had a song playing in my head - it had been there all day - one of those old croony numbers he liked to listen to. Sinatra, I think. I've Got You Under My Skin . And damn him, he was. He was needling under my thin, translucent skin, pricking where I was soft and stupid. Why would you bother inventing the telescope? Yes, why would you? When you could sit on your ass, enjoy the view and do the bare goddamn minimum - just like me. Oh, I was my mother’s daughter all right. Didn’t even have the guts to try .
     As if to make a point, I opened my laptop and wrote several hundred words, but when my spleen was well and truly vented I looked back at what I'd written and hated myself so passionately that I began to understand those girls who got so choked with their own rage and self-loathing that they turned razorblades on themselves - not to kill, just to scar and mortify. A kind of secular self-flagellation.
     I deleted the whole thing, snarled 'fuck, no' at my computer when it asked me if I wanted to save changes and slammed down the lid.
     My eyes were still sore the next morning. I looked out of the window and hoped that Clayton might show me some kind of deference by not turning up, but when I stuck my head out and peered down the alleyway I could see the wing of his ratty white Honda. I crept down the stairs and got some coffee, expecting him to wander into the office and start bothering me, but he didn't. I heard the lathe turning in the workshop, then it shut off and all I could hear was the inane jibber-jabber of the local radio station that Dad refused to change.
     Through the store's front window I saw a blonde head bob past Rita's bakery. Rita saved my life - she popped out of the bakery door and caught Aunt Cassandra in conversation, giving me time to flip the sign to CLOSED and dive for safety in the workshop. Of course, it wasn't safety at all because Clayton was right there looking at me like I was some kind of crazy person, but I was far too fragile to handle Cassandra today.
     "Are you still mad