Happenstance

Jamie McGuire

Also by Jamie McGuire

The Providence Series

Beautiful Disaster

Walking Disaster

A Beautiful Wedding

Red Hill

Beautiful Oblivion

Happenstance

A Novella Series

Jamie McGuire

Happenstance

Jamie McGuire

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, or events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Lori Bretch.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Coming July 1, 2014

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter One

“Go home. Turn off the lights. And kill yourself.”

Erin Alderman glowered at me, pure hatred in her beautiful honey brown eyes. She was spearheading a group of nine cheerleaders on the other side of a small, rectangular window. But the glass wasn’t the only thing that separated us.

Nine pairs of eyes danced between each other and me in my black apron splattered with chocolate milkshake and fudge sauce. They were enjoying the show, but not one of them looked directly at me.

Erin Masterson, Erin Alderman’s best friend and co-captain of the cheer squad, was holding the banana split Blizzard I’d just made for her, with vengeance in her eyes. She was as beautifully put together as her best friend, but instead of long, flowing golden hair like her friend, she had long, flowing chestnut hair. “I said with walnuts on top. You have a simple function: put ice cream in a bowl, cup, or cone, and mix ingredients. If you can’t perform a minimum wage job at a Dairy Queen at seventeen years old, how do you expect to operate in your daily adult life? You should give up now, Erin. Die with dignity.”

Erin Masterson wasn’t speaking to her best friend. She was speaking to me, Erin Easter, the third Erin in our senior class. They weren’t always my enemies. In kindergarten and first grade, we tried to spend every waking moment together; our teachers and parents came up with nicknames to eliminate confusion. Erin Alderman was known as Alder. Erin Masterson was Sonny. My name was simple: Easter. The three of us didn’t share only names, we also shared a birthday: September first. They went home with their parents, who were country club members and would eventually be heads of the Free Masons and the PTA, and I went home with my mother, who was barely twenty and had no one to help, not even my father.