On this post, if you leave a comment about an airport experience (in keeping with The Cell Phone Lot theme), you'll qualify another day to be in the grand prize drawing for the June Promo.
HOWEVER, if you haven't yet purchased a copy of The Cell Phone Lot and you would like to do so, of course I would love for you to buy one -- even if you don't have a Kindle (which I DON'T!) you can upload the Kindle app to your laptop/desktop/smartphone for free RIGHT HERE.
AND, if you BUY a copy of The Cell Phone Lot OR leave an honest review of it on amazon here, I'll enter you in a separate drawing to receive a $15 gift card of your choice: Target, iTunes, Starbucks.
If you do both (buy a copy AND leave a review, you get two entries)... you will have to email me proof of purchase from amazon by sending the email receipt from amazon to stephanieelliot@gmail.com. As for the reviews on amazon if you post one, I know how many are up there, and you can just email me once you put one up there that it is you who posted it.
If you tell your friends, I will give you my first-born, my complete book collection, all of my acquired Starbucks points and have all the book publicists send books directly to your house instead of mine from now on ... I will be forever and ever and ever grateful to you!
So, any questions?
If you already read and reviewed it, just send me an email with subject line CELL PHONE LOT DRAWING and let me know which review you put up! And thanks in advance for your support! I can't tell you how much this means to me as I try to get my writing out into the world!!! THANK YOU!
Here's a recap:
*Buy The Cell Phone Lot at amazon.com HERE. For only 99 cents!
*Email the amazon receipt to stephanieelliot@gmail.com. Put in your email subject line: CELL PHONE LOT DRAWING. (Make sure to include your full name in this one!)
*Leave an honest review of it on amazon here.
Random winner will receive $15 gift card of their choice.
ALSO, leave a comment here about an airplane experience to continue to earn entry for the June Grand Prize.
It sounds pretty easy right? I hope so because it's like past midnight and I just came up with all of this stuff.
And here are a couple of opening pages of The Cell Phone Lot to hopefully entice you into wanting to read more! Thanks, and we will be back to our regularly scheduled program on Monday, and I will choose more winners by Sunday night so check back to see who has won MORE books!
THE CELL PHONE LOT
Grant signed onto the computer and there was an email from Melissa. The subject line said: Flight Itinerary to Chicago. His first reaction was, “Uh-oh, here we go” which then turned to immediate dread, filling his gut. He wasn’t sure about this. Still, he clicked the message.
Hi Grant, really excited about seeing you this weekend. Here’s my flight info. Thanks so much for wanting to take the next step. I think we’ll have a really great time. ♥ Melissa
Maybe it was the heart, or maybe it was the fact that she thought he was ready to “take the next step” that freaked him out a bit. After all, they’d only been communicating via email for two months, and had spoken on the phone maybe a halfozen times, and four of those calls had been spurred on by alcohol. He thought of this weekend as just a chance to hang out with a girl he had met online who might be pretty cool, but he wasn’t sure about a long-distance relationship, especially not with someone who lived as far away as L.A. And he didn’t think she was the type of girl who he wanted to “take the next step with” either. But how would he know if he never met her? Life was all about taking chances though, and in the past thirty-four years, he hadn’t taken that many. He wasn’t much of a risk taker. Maybe it was time.
After Grant read Melissa’s email, he thought for a moment and shot one back to her:
Hey Melissa, it’ll be a fun weekend. Got some exciting things planned –
No, that sounded too elusive, too much like he was leading her on. He deleted that and moved toward something a bit safer:
Hi Melissa, looking forward to spending some time with you. Can’t wait to show you the city. Grant.
There. Safe. Friendly. Nothing insinuating anything he wasn’t prepared to deliver. And if anything happened when he met her, well then, that would be great, but he wasn’t expecting to fall in love.
Grant hadn’t been in love in a very long time. The past few years he had been so focused on building his architectural business, he hadn’t had time for relationships. He had tried meeting women in the usual places – bars, or through well-meaning friends who knew the perfect woman for him, but they usually turned out to be women who were only interested in his mutual funds and his six-pack abs, which should have flattered him but instead made him wonder where the women with substance were. He met women at the gym, but they were superficial too – hard-bodies who worked out all day and then strapped on the four-inch heels and micro-minis at night, in search of the perfect man and martini. This wasn’t what Grant was about. This wasn’t the lifestyle he wanted. Well, maybe when he had been twenty-six, but not now. He wanted something different now. He wanted something more.
So, he had turned to the internet. So many of his “now-happilyworn-by-the-internet-match-made-friends” had invested their time and money in the sites and had found the perfect person. He had thought, “What have I got to lose?” He was done spending his money at the loud obnoxious clubs on the loud obnoxious women who ended up being nothing more than a waste of his time and money. He wanted substance.
Maybe Melissa was substance.
They clicked almost immediately online.
She was the one who “winked” at him first, the online signal that she had seen his profile and was interested in learning more about him. He had been more passive on the site, scrolling through the profiles, looking at his possible matches. The site he placed his profile on was called PlentyOfFish.com. He decided to go on that one, rather than Match or eHarmony, because it seemed to be the underdog of the match-making sites, and he liked the idea that he might find more substance, more real people on that site. People with less flash, people who were more honest.
When Melissa first contacted him, he liked what he saw. Despite the fact that she was from L.A. and blonde. She exuded a Midwestern feel in her profile, and when they began corresponding, his assumption was right – she was originally from St. Louis, had moved to L.A. to study photography, but was considering a move back to the Midwest. She loved the beach, but missed her family back home.
She sent pictures during their fourth or fifth email exchange and her blonde hair appeared darker in them. Grant assumed she must have used a blonder California version of herself in her profile photo. They both loved seafood, the ocean, and wanted to travel to Italy. They shared similar tastes in music and preferred red over white. It was no wonder they were matched.
He didn’t remember if, during one of those drunken late-night phone calls, Grant suggested she visit or if she brought it up first, but the next time they spoke on the phone, Melissa mentioned it and he couldn’t really think of a reason why she shouldn’t come. So they figured out a weekend that would work, and that was that. He just hoped that when she got there … well, he didn’t know what he hoped. He had no idea what to think at all.
Two
Bridge answered her cell phone and was surprised to hear sobs coming from her younger sister Ally. Her immediate thought was car accident.
“Oh my God, Ally, calm down, I can’t hear you. Are you okay? Were you hit, have you dialed 911? Is John with you?” Bridge could barely breathe as she paced her apartment.
“John! It’s John!” Ally sobbed louder.
“John! John’s been in accident?” Bridge wished she could understand her sister through the cries. “You have to calm down, Ally. I cannot help you unless you stop crying. Where are you? Are the police with you?”
The mention of the police must have stunned Ally because Bridge heard her sister suck in deeply and then there was nothing for three or four seconds.
“Are you okay?” Bridge finally asked.
“It’s John,” Ally whispered.
“What happened?”
“He bro … he brooo … he broke up with meeeee!” Then the tears started again.
Bridge exhaled into the phone. “Oh honey. I’m so sorry.” But inside, she was saying all sorts of prayers to God, thanking Him that there was no car wreck, that John was not dead, that her sister was not laying in a pool of blood on Route 1, that there had not been a crazy serious accident. That it was only a break-up. Probably one of their quarterly arguments on whether or not they should move into a condo or continue to save for a house, or a wedding date debate. Her sister probably had a meltdown because she changed her mind on a winter wedding and John finally got sick of it. But Bridge knew he’d come around.
“ … and then he said, ‘Forget it, it’s over. I can’t handle this anymore’,” her sister said.
“Wait, I missed that first part,” Bridge said.
“Aren’t you listening?” Ally cried.
“Of course I am,” Bridge lied. “So then what?”
“He said he’d been thinking about it for a while, and he’s changed his mind. Then he left. Oh my God, Bridge, if he’s serious this time, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I love him so much. I know I can be difficult, but I can’t live without him!”
“Look, why don’t you give him some space.” Bridge knew how to talk her sister down, she’d done it plenty of times. “Maybe he just needs some time, you know, to miss you. Come visit for a while, even if it’s just for a long weekend. Give him some time to cool off. Maybe that’s what you both need. Some space and time to miss one another. The wedding’s not for another eleven months. Everything will cool off. He’s just angry.”
“You think?” Ally asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Bridge said.
But Bridge wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She hadn’t been in a serious relationship since Darren, and that had been right after college, so long ago – eight years. He had been so good to her, and she was sure he was her forever after, but then they just grew apart.
It hadn’t been a bad break-up. They had loved one another, she was sure of it. But Darren went into the medical field to become an EMT, and then he had moved out east, and the long-distance thing had not worked out. Remaining friends hadn’t worked out either, and from then on, whenever Bridge would date a new guy, she always compared him to Darren. He wasn’t as tall as Darren, he wasn’t as funny as Darren, his hair wasn’t as thick as Darren’s. He just wasn’t Darren. Plain and simple.
She guessed, deep in her heart, she truly wasn’t over Darren. Maybe she needed therapy, but she wasn’t about to seek help for a long-lost love she wasn’t really sure she wanted to let go. She liked the comfort of his memory too much. It had felt safe knowing he had loved her and they hadn’t broken up on bad terms, just unfortunate circumstances.
Once Bridge had looked him up on Facebook, and discovered he was in Florida, training to be a helicopter medic. She wondered what her life would be like had things turned out different, had she taken chances. If only he had asked her to go out east with him when he first went; if only she had been brave enough, at such a young age, to have said, “Let me come with.” But she hadn’t taken the risk, and since then, no one had been good enough for Bridge.
“Okay,” Ally said into the phone.
“Okay what?” Bridge said, thoughts of Darren interrupted.
“Okay, I’ll come. I’ll come this weekend.”
