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Logline
A struggling phone sex worker and jaded police sergeant with a connected past unexpectedly and serendipitously find each other again.
Blurb
Can you fall in love with someone at first sound? No, that's silly...
Eight years after her parents died, Juneau's life is a far cry from where she'd hoped it'd be. Under a mountain of student loan debt, she takes a job as a phone sex worker. Instant sparks fly with her new client Damian, a police sergeant whose work has left him jaded, burned out, and impersonal. After repeated hot and heavy conversations, could there be something more between them? Or... is it just phone sex?
First 1,000 Words
Eight years ago, a heavy-handed knock at the front door and ring of the bell took away my entire life. Well, the actual door contact didn't, but the reason that prompted the news delivery did.
At sixteen, I knew not to answer the door when alone. My parents were gone for an end-of summer holiday weekend. I'd assured them I stayed home and ate out of the refrigerator. They hadn't said anything about my boyfriend not coming over, but I hadn't asked and he'd left a few hours ago.
One of my eyes peered through the keyhole, then both widened at the flash of a crisp, navy blue police officer uniform on the front step. My throat tightened, blood surged faster through my veins, and uncertainty washed a sense of panic through me. I'd invited a few friends over last night for music and we swam in the pool, but we weren't that unruly.
Surely it's okay to open the door for the police, right? Maybe that nosy old bat Mrs. Arnold finally died.
"Hello?" I cracked the door open and tension squeezed the space between my eyebrows as I drew them together.
An officer, tall, thin, and who looked close in age to me, returned my frown with one of his own. The midday sun flowed through the crack of the door and cast a golden shadow into the front foyer, filtered off dust particles like twinkling miniature lights. A slight breeze brought inside the last remnants of humidity and the promise that fall soon ended the oppressive late summer heat.
Behind him, small town suburban life continued like normal for a Sunday afternoon. By the appearance alone of our neighborhood's red-bricked, boxy, 1940s-bungalow houses, one wouldn't assume how close this part of New Jersey was to New York City.
Technically, our neighborhood wasn't in Hoboken, a one-mile square block that was so overrun with development that every last blade of grass was now a solid block of concrete apartments or businesses. We lived many streets over near Jersey City, before the sprawl of city development spread to our neighborhood but enjoyed a lot of Hoboken's charm. My first kiss was given on Pier A with the stunning views of Manhattan across the Hudson River.
The last day I lived there, churchgoers had returned home to their smoky barbecues and the buzz of lawnmowers echoed across the neighborhood like mechanical bees. Mrs. Arnold across the street was still quite alive, bent over with her plump ass high in the air while she weeded her flowerbeds. Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Stevens next door threw a basketball at the hoop that hung over their garage. He must've been out there for a while since the stifling wall of humidity made his body movements lazy and sluggish and his hands wiped at his acne-covered forehead.
"Miss... Olstead?"
The officer's voice, surprisingly deep-toned, snapped my attention up to his face. His frown deepened the crease between his dark eyebrows and tugged down a small freckle on his forehead. Under his peaked navy blue hat, his dark brown hair clung damply to his forehead with perspiration. Two golden hazel-brown eyes flooded instantly with a heavy, unreadable emotion. His pupils pooled as they flicked back and forth between mine.
"Juneau Olstead?" If it weren't for these circumstances, the sound of my name out of his thin lips was very pleasant in my ears.
"Yeah?" I wasn't winning any awards for smoothness, but opened the door further and stepped onto our four foot-wide front porch next to him.
On close-up inspection, he was tall and lean, like his body hadn't caught up to his height yet. The bronzed skin on his round cheeks and angular jaw shone with perspiration and dotted with a few acne spots. My eyes noticed the 'Rivera' nametag on his chest, a fairly common name around here.
Behind the officer, my eyes traveled past our unkempt, grassy yard. The mid-shin grass seeds blew like a miniature field of green wheat in a solemn reminder that my boyfriend hadn't completed his end of the bargain when he came over yesterday. The corners of my mouth tugged down. I'd barely cleaned up the leftover remnants of last night's small party inside and now added 'mow the yard' to my chores list.
Beyond those foreclosure-house height grasses and cracked cement sidewalks that remained even after the city had removed the tree whose roots had uprooted them, a police cruiser parked next to the curb. The gleaming white SUV with bold 'NYPD' letters splayed across the side in dark blue slanted letters drew the attention of both Mrs. Arnold and Jeremy Stevens. Both had abandoned their outdoor activities and now stood on their respective curbsides with identical gawking, open-mouthed expressions.
At the time, the fact an NYPD police car was in New Jersey didn't faze me but, like our neighbors, in hindsight I should have suspected their presence.
My eyes narrowed at the messy gray curls on Mrs. Arnold's head. "Did I do something wrong? If the neighbors -"
"There's been an accident," he blurted out, his eyes wide and unblinking as they stared into mine. "Your parents... were in a car accident."
Subsequent words followed, which included 'George Washington Bridge,' but they evaporated into thin air as my brain shut down. My breath was stolen out of my lungs and my chest squeezed around my heart. The world collapsed along with my knees as my world shriveled away and disappeared.
Gravity fooled me with a sense of weightlessness as it took me down until my skin scraped against the rough cement porch. Physically, more than humidity compressed my lungs. Chills, not late summer heat, slicked my skin with a layer of cold, clammy sweat.
I can't fucking breathe.
Mentally, tiny daggers stabbed into any happiness I held inside my heart, until two giant, gaping holes forged themselves into existence by negative thoughts.
One for Mom, one for Dad.
Mama? Daddy?
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