Where Would I Be Without You

Sample Chapters of Something To Talk About

When trouble strikes, Kia is there. If disaster is dealt, Kia holds the cards. If catastrophe is calling, Kia will answer it. All a girl needs to cope with all of this is her three best friends and maybe a handsome hero that's been hired to replace the Sheriff. Old Sheriff Cleat has had his fair share of bailing Kia out of trouble or coming to her rescue, but the last one has put him out of commission. There is a new Sheriff in town, and the local women are all a twitter - literally. Kia gets her first run-in with the handsome new sheriff just after she runs her car into a hillside while watching him jog without his shirt on. By the week's end, the new sheriff is beginning to think that Kia is either short for catastrophe, or she is trying to find ways to spend more time with him. Kia's best friends have spent a lifetime of dealing with Kia and her God given attraction to trouble, but they also know Kia needs a man like the sheriff to keep her in line and bail her out once in a while. While Kia quickly becomes short on patience with the handsome hero, she isn't short on need and quickly realizes that having a man like the sheriff on her side isn't such a bad idea after all, but will they meet on the corner of Trouble and Catastrophe or will chaos keep them apart?



Chapter One

"Did you know there is a twitter following on you?"

"Excuse me?" I practically gagged on my spring lettuce salad with sprigs of things I am sure they pulled out of the weed lot next door. With summer just around the corner and our hearty winter eating habits, this was the new lunch favorite for all four of us. That would be my three best friends and I; they have stuck with me through thick and thin, literally. My three best friends who were practically designed by God to help me make it through life without too much catastrophe aftermath. There was Jodi, with an 'i' but born with the name of Jolene. She didn't like it, so she changed it. She is a take no shit and tell you like it is gal. Then Meg, short for Megan. She too was a tell you like it is gal, but she is sometimes the one right there next to me in the thick of things. She saw no reason for me to go through all the chaos alone. Then Katelyn, dear sweet Katelyn. Sometimes we call her Kate for short. She is the one that would bake the goodies that soothed us over after everything was over. Then there's me, Kia Catastrophe. That's not my real last name, but it might as well be. Starting at the age of three all the way until current, I knew how to attract disaster, cause chaos or just plain make a catastrophe out of things. My average build of five foot six, and single digit size - if it wasn't winter; was accompanied by my fair skin, brown hair and Irish blue eyes. Right now, Jodi was asking me if I was aware of the fact, there was a twitter following on me through my arch nemesis's blog. I did not.

"Well I guess your arch nemesis, Carlene Thomas, has decided that you are worth making a fuss over. And quite frankly, by what I can tell, most of the town has made a comment or two about you. The more she writes about you, the more people go to her blog, the more they go to her blog the, well you get the picture."

This time I did gag on the last bite of salad that looked like a dandelion leaf. It probably was, and I saw a whole slew of those things in the empty lot next door as I came in. Since this is the healthy restaurant Meg insisted we meet at for lunch, it was not the type of place I normally desired to eat at. I took the day off from work to meet with my friends and take care of one last minor detail to my latest, hopefully final, big blow-up of a catastrophe. However, some days around here, nothing surprised me.

Katelyn added her typical repertoire of trying to soothe things over. She was the peacemaker in the group, and she always tried to make us see the brighter side of others. With my arch nemesis Carlene, there was no trying; there was just plain hatred there. "I suppose since Carlene lost her job over at the Booty-n-Busters she has to make a living somehow. I'll have to admit; I caught wind last week but wanted to do a little investigative work first. You know, make sure it's not another tactical maneuver to outshine our Kia." She said it in such a polite happy voice you just had to stare at her as she took a long drink of her water with a pasted smile and then set her glass down as the smile never left her face. It was killing her not to say something mean about Carlene, she has never said a mean word about anybody but there is a first time for everything.

Meg nudged her elbow to Katelyn and proudly instructed Katelyn. "Spill it. I know you want to. First I've heard of it, by the way, but I've been super busy. Since Katelyn here has done the investigation on it, she owes it to us to tell all."

She nudged her one more time with her elbow and Katelyn's smile disappeared, and a stress look grew across her face. She blew out a puff of air through her lips and caused her short loose blonde curls on her head to move. "Alright, she's a bee-ouch. There I said it. Well, as close as I'm going to say it. That woman has some nerve. She has twisted every little thing anyone in this town has ever done into a fairy tale of lies and alibis. Unfortunately, Kia, you are front and center of her blog and twitter following. That woman has people from all over the US following her. I don't get it; I just don't get it. Someone ought to blog about her and that skanky online porn thing she's doing."

Meg, Jodi and I all stared at her with super big eyes and the biggest shocked look on our face. The last thing she said was the first we heard of it. Carlene bashing me or outshining me was not new, but the last part Katelyn just spilled, well that was something we had not heard about nor did we really want to know. Except now, we had some new ammunition for making fun of Carlene. It made me feel better any ways.

Katelyn's frustration over the whole matter was showing her discomfort as she squirmed in her seat. "I really don't want to talk about it. It was my brother who texted me the site and told me that Kia might enjoy the laugh. I don't know why he does those kinds of things. He's a good-looking guy with such potential, and then he goes and looks at sites like those."

In unison, Jodi, Meg and I said it with such conviction. "He's a man!" There was so much truth to those three little words. We three figured it out at an early age. Guys were guys, and they were going to do stupid stuff that we women thought were, well, either wrong, gross or just plain stupid. I for one was willing to overlook all that as long as the man was cute, could kiss well and could accept the fact that a life with me was a life of bailing me out of a bunch of mishaps or misfortunes.

Katelyn looked at us funny and then started to eat her salad. Jodi reached for my hand holding my fork in a stabbing position and about to stab my salad as if it was Carlene. "Look, it's to be expected with that woman. She did however, change your name a bit on her blog and twitter thing, probably so your dad won't sue her dad - boy those two go way back don't they. I think those two hate each other as much as you two do. Any ways, the locales know it's you and from what I can tell they are defending you. People here love you. They know your heart is always in the right place; it's usually your foot that's not."

That caused Meg to start laughing. "Oh my God, that reminds me. Remember the time that Scooter thought he should attempt third base with you. You kicked him so hard in the nuts he had a bag of frozen peas stuck between his legs for weeks. You couldn't get a guy in high school to date you let alone kiss you for two years."

"Ha-ha. I forgot about that. Let's all shall we." I finally stabbed my salad like it was Carlene and then raised my hand to signal to my waitress. I ordered a beer. One for lunch did not make me an alcoholic, just a person trying to cope.

"Make that a round." Meg instructed to the waitress. "I think we all could use a drink."

I watched Meg grab a hair clip out of her bag, twist her beautiful Latino brown hair up in a twist, and clip it. "Change of subject. Ladies, that is the last time you will see my long brown hair for a bit. Love For Locks is doing a benefit at the Indigo Curl-n-Beauty Parlor. Getting it all cut off."

I envied her hair. My hair grew so slow and was so much thinner than her gorgeous thick brown hair. She would cut it and a few months later; it was back. We weren't shocked about it; it wasn't the first time she had done this. The rest of us would if we could. Katelyn's blonde hair had always had this natural soft curl to it, and she could never grow it past her shoulders before she went in for a cut. Jodi had her hair in a short punk style, for as long as we could remember. Her jet-black hair always had some strip of color in it. This month was bright purple. My brown hair stayed in a simple brown shoulder length cut that framed my face with a shag and was usually up in a clip or ponytail. What could I say? I was a simple girl who did not think playing up my features was an important thing. That being, because I was so busy getting myself out of some type of conundrum or another.

The waitress dropped off the four light beers in a bottle and four cold frosted glasses. Not a one of us worried about the glass. Katelyn wanted to, but Jodi was already holding hers up for a toast. "To Kia. May her last disaster, be her last and all her others be forgotten. May luck shine upon her face as the wind blows all her bad luck away. May those that have been misfortune to cross her path forgive you and those that are still recovering, be steadfast and strong."

Our bottles clinked and the three cheered. "Here. Here." I just guzzled the entire beer down in one long drink. I slammed the empty beer bottle against the table and let out a ferocious belch. Just then, one of the local deputies walked by shaking his head in disgust on his way to the men's restroom. I wasn't sure which, but I figured that was my clue to end lunch soon and get as fast away from the law as possible. I had enough of them in the last week and one man in particular, Sheriff Cleat, was finally well enough for me to visit. It wasn't like I tried to blow him up, but I guess that man had spent a lifetime of rescuing me from catastrophes and the last one just almost did him in.

How was I to know that after Sheriff Cleat pulled me up from the rock ledge I had slipped down while hiking by myself, was also located next to an old coal mine? How was I to know that the funny pipe sticking up out of the hillside was also an old airway for miners? Furthermore, I had never smoked a cigarette in my life, but I found a pack with a lighter while I sat there contemplating how I almost died falling over that edge, and if it wasn't for Sheriff Cleat being out on a call for minors - children - tagging a historic rock with spray paint - I might have died. Therefore, I did what any logical person might have done. I grabbed that pack of cigarettes just calling my name, pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit up. It was then, that all my gagging and coughing got Sheriff Cleat off his radio and rushing to my side once more. It was also then, that I flicked the cigarette away as fast as I could, because I didn't want to be smoking by the sheriff. Not that it was illegal; I just did not want anyone to see me do something I had never done before. It felt sinful to me at the time. Once I assured the sheriff that I swallowed a bug, he took the few steps back that landed him right above where that funny pipe stuck out of the ground. Right where that lit cigarette fell down that four-inch hole. Put two and two together, and add my luck, and you can only imagine what happened next.

Yup, that's right. Old Sheriff Cleat needed his own rescuing. The cigarette blew up the old coal; the hillside fell out from beneath the sheriff's feet, and the kaboom could be heard countywide. Lucky for the sheriff, a broken arm, broken ribs, a few black and blue marks and some singed hair, and he was marked for early retirement by the county. The terrible concussion that left him unconscious for a few days was the tip of the iceberg. When he came to, the county told him they needed a much younger able person to handle the job, and the rest of the county staff agreed. Old Sheriff Cleat saw his last rescue with me. He got a very nice retirement package, and I got a case of the guilt that still needed to be cleansed.

My next stop after lunch was the hospital where I had a brand new fishing rod and reel, wrapped up in a silver paper and a blue bow, along with a gift card from my employer Sports Emporium, for a very friendly amount. Being an inventory manager had its benefits, especially when a sportsman like old Sheriff Cleat keeps coming to my rescue.

Katelyn's comment caught my whirlwind of thinking back off guard. She grabbed a small bamboo basket with a handle that was on the floor next to her and put it on the table. "Since you're going by to see the sheriff at the hospital after this, I thought I might just bake up a little something for you to take to help with the apology."

This was so Katelyn. "Thanks Kate." I took a peek inside and out wafted the smell of homemade cookies, chocolate brownies, cinnamon rolls and some kind of chocolate-covered nuts. All homemade, no doubt. Jodi tried to grab at something, and Katelyn smacked her hand.

I knew I couldn't take another bite of salad, and I also knew as soon as that basket sat in the front seat of my yellow Mini Cooper on the drive to the hospital, chances were, my self-control would lose out, and I would sneak a cookie - or brownie. It would be a dastardly decision either way.

I finally put my napkin over my half-eaten weed salad and declared my lunchtime over. "Ladies. I've got to run. Thanks for meeting me for lunch. Thanks, I guess, for informing me that my life is being twisted by my arch nemesis for all to read about." I stood up from my chair, slung my purse over my shoulder while tossing a twenty on the table to cover my fair share and then some. I grabbed at the basket handle and blew a kiss to my three best friends.

It didn't take long for them to come running out to the parking lot when they heard the loud crash. It was only me, running the back end of my car into a wayward shopping cart I had not seen. In my defense, there was not any stores in the area that had shopping carts. I waved at my three best friends with my window down and drove forward with a remark to Jodi. "Mind getting that mangled mess out of the parking lot; it's your turn to clean up my mess."

She saluted me like a soldier salutes a sergeant, and I pulled out of the parking lot, down the street and at the first red light, I devoured a homemade chocolate brownie. I was a weak woman at times like these.