The Off Limits Rule (It Happened in Nashville 1)

To the real hero of my books: Sugary cereal

I’m splayed out like a starfish ripped from the ocean and dried up on the carpet of my new bedroom. I’ve been here for an hour, watching the fan blades go round and round, thinking I could have turned on a show by now, but what’s the point anyway? My fan friends are just as entertaining as anything on TV these days. Besides, fan blades don’t fill you with romantic illusions about this crappy, crappy world and make you feel that you will get everything you’ve always wanted. No, Fanny, Fandrick, Fantasia, and Fandall don’t tell me I’ll get my happy ending in this life. They just—

“Oh my gosh.” The sound of my older brother’s voice pulls me out of my fan entertainment, and I roll my head to the side, squinting at his blurry figure filling my doorframe. “This is next-level pitiful, Luce.” Drew strides into my room, literally steps over my useless body covered in candy wrappers, and mercilessly rips back the curtains.

I hiss like a vampire that’s just been easily beaten in an overcomplicated plot when the light falls onto my body. Light was the key the whole time! My muscles are too puny and wasted away from my 48-hour feeling-sorry-for-myself binge to even throw my hand over my eyes. “Stop it, jerk. Close those and leave me be!”

He towers over me and shakes his head of brown hair like he can’t believe the pitiful excuse of a human I am. I peek up through my melancholy just enough to register that I should give him a trim soon. “Look at you. Your face is covered in chocolate, and you smell.”

“Rude. I never stink. I can go weeks without deodorant and still—” I lift my arm and wince when I get a whiff of myself. “Oh yeah, shoot, that’s bad.”

His brows are lifted, and he’s nodding his head with a humorless smile. “You need to get out of this room. I gave you a few days to pout that things didn’t turn out like you wanted, but now it’s time to get up and get moving.”

“I don’t pout.”

“Your lip is actually jutting out.”

I suck the offending lip back into my mouth and bite it. Drew extends his hand, and I take it, only because I really have to pee and not at all because I secretly know he’s right and I’ve wallowed long enough. When my world went south a few days ago, the first thing I did was call Drew to come get me and my son, Levi—not like, come get us from the restaurant, but come get us from Atlanta, Georgia, where I was paving my own way, making my life happen for myself, living the dream, and FAILING MISERABLY AT ALL OF IT.

Drew didn’t even bat an eye when I asked him to come help me pack up my dignity and haul it back home. From the beginning, he wasn’t thrilled about my decision to move out of Tennessee and away from our family, so without hesitating, he said, “Be there tomorrow, sis. I’ll bring a truck.” And he did. He spent the whole next day helping me pack everything in that dinky (very smelly) apartment, and then he drove me back to his house in Nashville where my son and I will be living (rent-free, bless him) for the foreseeable future.

The only reason I’ve been able to spend the past few days interviewing my fan blades is because my amazing parents took my four-year-old for a few days while I get unpacked and settled. I don’t think they meant get my butt settled into the carpet and lie here for the entire weekend making excellent fan friends, but it’s what I’ve done, and no one is allowed to judge me because judging isn’t nice.

Once I’m standing, Drew sizes me up, and let me tell you, he does not like what he sees. “I think you have a bird’s nest in your hair. Go take a shower.”

“I don’t feel like showering. I’ll just spray some dry shampoo to kill the stink. And maybe the birds.”

He catches my arm when I try to turn away. “As your older brother, I’m telling you…get in that shower, or I will put you in it, clothes and all, because goodness knows yours could use a wash too.”

I narrow my eyes and stand up on my tiptoes to look more frightening—I think the effect would be better if I didn’t feel chocolate smeared across the side of my face. “I’m a grown adult woman with a child, so your older-brother threats aren’t effective anymore.”

He tilts his head down slowly—making a point that he’s, like, 19 million feet taller than me—and makes direct eye contact. “You’re wearing dinosaur PJ pants. And as long as you call me, pulling that baby-sister card when you need my help with something, the older-brother threats count.”

I raise an indignant chin. “I never do that.” I definitely do it all the time.

“Take a shower, and then put on a swimsuit.”

I make a disgusted ugh sound like the mature adult I am. “I am NOT going swimming with you. All I want to do is eat disgusting takeout, fill my body to the brim with MSG, and then crawl under the covers until next year rolls around with new shiny promises of happiness.”

He’s not listening. He’s turning me around and pushing me toward the bathroom. “Get to it, stinky. Like it or not, you’re putting on a swimsuit and coming with me. It’s been too long since you’ve seen the sun, and you look like a cadaver.” I’m feeling blessed that he didn’t mention I smell like one too.

“I hate the pool.” I’m a cartoon now, and my arms are long droopy noodles, dragging across the floor as I’m pushed toward the bathroom.

“Lucky we’re not going to one then. My buddy and I are taking the boat out to wakeboard for the afternoon. You’re coming too.”

I’m standing motionless in the bathroom now, eyebrows-deep in my sullen mood as Drew pulls back the shower curtain and starts the water. He digs under the sink and pulls out a fluffy towel, tossing it onto the counter. He’s giving me tough love right now, but I know underneath all this dominance is a soft, squishy middle. Drew has one tender spot in life, and it’s me. The tenderness also extends to Levi, by association and because his cheeks are so chunky and round you can’t help but dissolve into a pool of wobbly Jell-O when he smiles at you.

“Isn’t it, like?

??frowned upon to skip work on a Wednesday?” I ask, trying to needle him so he’ll leave me alone with my candy bars and sadness.

“Yes, but it’s Sunday.” The judgment in his voice is thick. “And unless one of my patients goes into labor, I have Sundays off.”

I blow air out through my mouth, making a motorboat sound because I’m too braindead and wasted on chocolate from my pity party for snappy comebacks. Which is sad because snappy comebacks are my thing.

“Lucy,” Drew says, bending to catch my eye like he knows my thoughts were starting to wander back down the dark tunnel to mopey-land. He points behind him to the steaming stream of water. “Lather, rinse, and repeat. You’ll feel better.” He leans forward and gives a dramatic sniff. “Maybe even repeat a few times. Then move on to the toothbrush, because I think something crawled in your mouth and died.” Siblings are so sweet.

I punch him hard in the arm, and he just smiles like he’s happy to see me showing some signs of life. “But seriously, thank you,” I say quietly. “Thanks for taking me in too. You’re always rescuing me.” The day I realized I was a week late for my period, Drew was the one who drove to the store and bought my pregnancy test. He’s the one who held me when I cried and told me I wouldn’t have to go it alone because I’d have him (and then my parents quickly hip-checked him out of the way and reminded me I’d have them too). This is part of the reason I moved to Atlanta a year ago—not because I wanted to get away from them, but because I wanted to prove to myself I could stand on my own two feet and support my son.

Spoiler alert: I can’t.

I’m a twenty-nine-year-old single mom and unemployed hairdresser (I got fired from the salon I was working at) who’s having to live with my older brother because I don’t have a penny in savings. Turns out, kids are mega-expensive. And when you choose to live away from your support system as a single parent, you have to put your child in daycare (which costs your arm), and hire babysitters when you want to go out on the weekend (which costs your leg), or hire a full-time nanny (which costs your soul). Although Levi’s dad, Brent, pays child support, it’s just not quite enough to help me get ahead of bills and debt. Brent is not a bad guy or anything, and he’s even offered to pay extra to help give me a financial cushion, but for some reason, I’d rather start wearing tennis shoes without socks and selling them to creepy people on eBay who want them extra sweaty before I take money from Brent. He’s always had too much emotional pull in my life. At one point, I might have held out hope, dreamed of us actually becoming a family one day—but not anymore. Those dreams have long since evaporated, and now, any time he texts me after midnight saying something like Why don’t we ever get together, just the two of us?, I know better than to respond.

Also, don’t ask how I know about the sweaty shoes thing.

Drew gives me a soft smile and really doesn’t have to say anything because we have that sibling telepathy thing that lets me see inside his head. He speaks anyway. “You’d do the same for me.”

“Yeah. Of course I would.” But I’d never need to because Drew has his life together all of the time.

He pulls me in for a hug and kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry you’re bummed, but I’m glad you’re home and you and that idiot broke up.”

“He wasn’t an idiot!” And just like that, I’m annoyed and want to wiggle out of his arms, but he doesn’t let me—just holds me tighter.

“Yeah, he was. You just need some space from him to see it.”

“No, Andrew, he just wasn’t smooth and super cool like you, and that’s why you didn’t like him. But he wasn’t an idiot.”

I really don’t know why I’m defending Tim so much. I wasn’t in love with him or anything. In fact, that’s why we broke up. There was no spark, and we were basically friends who kissed (and not all that often). I’d never even introduced him to Levi because somewhere in the back of my mind I always knew our relationship wasn’t going anywhere. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I only dated him because he was there and available. I was new to Atlanta, having taken an open position at a new salon, and he was one of my first clients. We hit it off, started dating (if you can even call it that since we barely saw each other due to me not having any friends or family around to help babysit), and, for a few months, fell into a comfortable pattern of going out on Saturday nights when I could afford to hire the fifteen-year-old down the street. She had a more active dating life than me, though, so I had to book her weeks out and pay her a fortune.

Then, the roommate I moved to Atlanta with got engaged to her boyfriend and asked to break our lease agreement early so she could move in with him. I, being a woman deeply afraid of confrontation, agreed wholeheartedly before remembering that I didn’t trust anyone else to live with me and my son. I tried to make it work financially on my own for a while, but then the burden just got too heavy. I was two months behind on rent, and then I lost my job at the salon because I continued to cancel on too many clients. Did I mention it’s super hard to be a single parent without a nearby support system? Turns out, most bosses really don’t give a crap about your child at home with a stomach bug, unable to go into daycare that day. They really only care that you didn’t show up to work and earn them the money they were counting on.

So, I got fired, and then the next week, Tim and I broke up, and then I got the official eviction notice from my landlord. I didn’t need any time to think about what to do. I called Drew and told him to come get me, and then I cut Atlanta off like a bad split end.

Now, I feel depressed, but not because I miss Tim. I’m depressed because I don’t miss Tim and my life feels like way more of a mess than it should at age twenty-nine. It’s like I’m mourning something I hoped could happen but didn’t.

“No,” says Drew, “I didn’t like him because when I came to visit and we three went to dinner, he said he was cold and accepted your sweater when you took it off and gave it to him.”

I feel a familiar defensiveness boil in my chest. “He has a thyroid problem and also doesn’t feel confined by gender norms. And I told you, I wasn’t even cold!”