Wingman (eBook)
286 Seiten
Warren Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-966343-40-0 (ISBN)
Meg Rosenthal lives in Charlotte, North Carolina in a house decorated with vintage thrifts and fake plants. Her debut novel, The Right Words, was published in 2022. When she's not moonlighting as a novelist, Meg can be found working her day job as a professional horseback rider and trainer. She is an Enneagram Type 3 (The Achiever), has five tattoos, and never turns down a coffee with cream and Splenda.
Talia Scott is a spontaneous Southern girl whose dream is to become an artist, despite her family's innate skepticism at her career choice. When she leaves her small town to attend Bridgeport College on the other side of the country, she meets Archie Morgan: a quirky, thoughtful boy who quickly becomes her best friend-and wingman. But Talia is hiding a secret that even she wants to run from ... a secret that drives her out of Bridgeport after graduation, thinking she can protect Archie (and herself) from her own inner turmoil and struggling mental health. Now, two years later, Talia is back. This time, she is on a mission to leave a coast-to-coast street art legacy, starting in the college town that first nurtured her love of art in the classroom. But she's going to need some help from her wingman. Returning to Bridgeport means Talia must face her biggest fear: letting Archie and her friends "e;see"e; and "e;hear"e; the real her the person she has suppressed for so long. Can Talia and Archie face their demons, forgive, and finally understand each other? Or will their pasts continue to haunt their futures?
Archie
Present Day
I checked my phone again, making sure I was at the right address from Talia’s napkin. Saving her contact in my phone again last night felt weird. The number was different, but the name was still the same. Just Talia.
I looked up at the numbers printed above the door and confirmed that I was, indeed, at the right place.
When Talia told me last night that this meeting was to convince me to help her with her return, I didn’t know what to expect. But I certainly hadn’t expected walking into The Glass Menagerie, a literal glass building downtown usually reserved for museum exhibitions. I glanced quickly down at my sneakers, and a brief spell of anger whipped through me that Talia hadn’t prepped me for what I should’ve worn.
“Oh, hold the door,” her very recognizable voice chirped as I was opening it.
I started to cut her a hard glance, but the bitterness melted when I saw her. She was wearing a black dress. It left her shoulders bare but covered her neck and hit her legs mid-thigh. She paired the dress with black boots that covered her knees. Her dark hair was coiled at the base of her neck, with several pieces escaping confinement and framing her face. Her light-blue eyes were stark against the thick eyeliner.
“Are you going to go in or going to the gym?” some guy dressed in a suit asked, eyeing my shorts and T-shirt.
“Oh, um, s-sorry,” I stuttered. I guess I forgot I was holding the door because it closed right in the man’s face.
Talia stifled a laugh and looked away, smiling.
The guy muttered a few choice words that I didn’t register because I was still looking at Talia as a small crowd approached the building. I was like a salmon swimming upstream, moving toward Talia against the flow of bustling people.
“Hi,” she said, beaming as we stood alone outside.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was where we were going?”
She didn’t miss a beat. She just stepped around me and reopened the door, gesturing for me to go through. “Because then you wouldn’t have come.”
I took one more look through the door at the glass walls and the shape of paintings hanging inside the building. An art show. Or a gallery. Or a museum. Maybe they were all the same thing. Since I wasn’t in the art program like Talia and Grady had been, I certainly didn’t know the difference. Regardless, Talia was partly right. I wouldn’t have wanted to come.
I mean, I probably would’ve come anyway.
But she didn’t need to know that.
I looked at her as she stood next to the open doorway looking like a gothic goddess or something.
“You could’ve at least told me to wear my nice shoes,” I grumbled as I walked through the door.
It was kind of amazing that, inside an all-glass building, I could still manage to get lost in the maze of the artwork.
After Talia had closed the door behind us, she told me that she was “going to find Joe” and that she would “be back soon.”
I didn’t know who Joe was, but twenty minutes later, she was still nowhere to be found.
I was standing in front of a painting that spanned the entirety of one back wall when someone I didn’t know appeared beside me.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” said a very pretty someone dressed in slacks and a blazer. The button-down underneath her jacket was pink, as were her glasses that she pushed a little farther up the bridge of her nose as she turned toward me, smiling.
“Um,” I said. “Very. Magnificent.”
The woman laughed. “Mr. Conrad is quite the visionary. Every time I see his work, my own imagination runs wild. I wonder what it would be like to live in his head.”
Creepy, I thought, but I smiled politely. She didn’t notice. She was looking back at the painting again.
Honestly, it made zero sense to me. It looked like a landscape from a distance—if you closed one eye and tilted your head sideways, maybe. But then there were purple waterfalls where there should’ve been clouds in the sky and red fire hydrants where there should’ve been trees on the rolling hills.
I leaned closer to the painting.
Nope. Those weren’t hills. They were ears, human ears, painted green. One even had an earring that was supposed to look like a leaf.
“There you are, honey. I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Talia said, practically skipping up behind us, threading her arm through the space between my elbow and my side. I froze; the graze of her arm felt like a jolt of lightning. If she noticed my reaction to her touch, she didn’t acknowledge it.
I made a fist with my hand tucked in the pocket of my gym shorts as Talia leaned over to the woman and said, “Pardon me, but I do have to steal him for one second. Joe is about to give his speech.”
I tried to look sheepishly at the woman, but she was still ogling the “masterpiece.”
“Who is Joe?” I asked as Talia whisked us away.
She kept her hand on my arm. “Joe Conrad. The artist.”
“You know the artist?”
“So do you.”
“What?”
“Good evening, friends!” A voice boomed through the main foyer, and I winced, turning to see the speaker.
I squinted. “Wait. Is that—”
“Yep,” Talia quipped, proudly. “Bridgeport College’s own director of studio art, Joe Conrad.”
“He was your art teacher.”
“Well, yes, if you have to put it that way.”
“He’s wearing a baseball hat.”
“And you’re wearing gym clothes” was Talia’s response.
“Again, your fault,” I murmured.
She continued on, ignoring me. Something she was also good at. “Plus, he always wears a baseball hat.”
“Thank you all for joining us here tonight,” Joe, the art teacher, continued. “It means so much to me to have such a great group of people here to celebrate my recent tenure position. And endless thanks to Bridgeport College for sponsoring this exhibit tonight for the neighborhood.”
“Ten year?” I whispered. “What’s a ten year?”
“Ten-ure,” Talia enunciated. “Essentially, the university can’t fire him.”
“Oh. He’s that good?”
“I think Joe is a very good teacher.”
I paused. “That’s a big compliment from you.”
Talia looked at me and then glanced away, embarrassed.
I sighed. “I really don’t get the ear fetish.”
Talia withdrew her arm from mine and crossed both of hers in front of her chest. I pretended that I didn’t feel the loss like a vacuum in space.
“Mr. Conrad!” someone from the crowd cried. “What can you tell us about your inspiration for your work?”
“My inspiration?” Joe asked. “Well, isn’t it obvious? It comes from dreams.”
“Dreams?” I whispered to Talia. “He dreams about ears?”
“It’s called surrealism.”
“It’s weird.”
Talia bit her lip and admitted, “I don’t disagree.”
“So why are we here?”
“Because,” she said, “he told me he would help me with my dream.”
Joe’s voice rang out on the microphone again. “I have always been a firm believer that the biggest power we have as artists is the ability to look at our dreams as more than just colors and patterns swirling behind our sleeping eyes. I believe that it is our job, and our duty, to pry them apart with our pens and our paints and our hands in an effort to find more meaning. That is my goal with my art. To find meaning for myself, and to inspire others to do the same.”
I whispered to Talia once more, “I think he’s pretty brave, putting out his ear fetish for the world to see.”
She shook her head and lightly shoved me.
“Mr. Conrad! I have a question for The Digital Art Show. What’s the biggest dream you’ve ever had?” someone else asked from the crowd.
Talia perked up at that. “I didn’t know The Digital Art Show was covering his exhibit.”
“What’s The Digital Art Show?” I asked.
She looked at me like I had just asked what color the trees were outside. “Only my most favorite blog in the entire world.”
“Wow,” Joe said, addressing the spokesperson from Talia’s most favorite blog in the entire world. “That’s a tough one, but I think it would have to be …”
I tuned him out. “What’s your dream, Talia? The one he’s supposedly going to help you with.”
“I mean, he’s already done his...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 7.7.2025 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen |
| ISBN-10 | 1-966343-40-X / 196634340X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-966343-40-0 / 9781966343400 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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