Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)
Smartypants Romance & Karla Sorensen
Dedication
To my mom, the biggest cheerleader in my life.
Author's Note
Approaching the character of Joss, it was very important to both me and Penny to make sure that she was honestly written and an accurate reflection what life might be like for a young woman living with Transverse Myelitis. I could probably fill an entire chapter talking about the research that took over my life while I was working on this book, the women who inspired Joss and what she's physically capable of, and how she lives her life. I could fill another chapter talking about Brittany, the amazing young woman who offered to be my sensitivity reader for Baking Me Crazy. Because of Brittany, and our conversations, emails and online chats, I changed the reason that Joss is in a wheelchair. I could talk to you about Steph, a wonderful, kind blogger, who took the time to make sure that I was telling Joss’ story in a way that respected her own journey.
Joss is a fictional individual that is directly inspired by a couple different women, and that inspiration plays out in her emotions, her personality, and her physical capabilities. And because she is an individual, it's impossible for Joss to fully encompass or represent everyone's experience. If there are errors in wording, or phrasing, those errors are mine alone, and in no way reflective of the people who shared their story with me.
I hope you love her half as much as I do.
For more information on Transverse Myelitis, please visit myelitis.org
Prologue
Levi
Five years earlier
Until the day I finally spoke to Jocelyn Abernathy, I never really believed in the Buchanan curse. I made it to the ripe age of eighteen years and three days old before it finally got hold of me. I'd heard my father talk about meeting my mom when he was fifteen, and how it felt like someone grabbed his heart and said, hey, look at that one, we like that one. My middle brother told me that when he met Sylvia—both of them sixteen—his brain short-circuited, and it took him two months to be able to make intelligible conversation with her.
As far back as my great-great-great-grandfather, it’s been said that Buchanan men fall in love only once, and they fall in love—real, true love—the moment they meet the one. And once a Buchanan found The One, that was it. Nothing would come close, no one else would suffice, and you'd lay your heart out on the train tracks before walking away.
The day I met Jocelyn Abernathy, it was her hair that caught my notice first. It sprang out of the top of her head like someone shook up a box of wound-up, champagne-colored springs and then set them loose. It was so crazy, so wildly overwhelming, that her bright blue eyes and high cheekbones were a very distant second and third.
Of the players on the team I was assistant coaching, she was the fastest, had the most natural talent—her three-point shots were so beautiful, I almost cried when I watched her run drills—but she was also the quietest. It took two weeks of practice before I even got the chance to talk to her.
Every time I saw her use deft, strong movements to propel her wheelchair forward, blond curls bouncing wildly when she spun around to steal the ball during practice or when she'd ram into the side of someone else's chair to try to snag a rebound, I got this persistent tug in my head.
You know when you woke up in the middle of the night and realized you forgot to do something? It was like that. But the thing I was forgetting felt critical. Forgetting your mom's birthday. Forgetting to show up for a midterm. Forgetting to do your taxes—not that I was old enough to do my own taxes, but it was on that level.
That feeling like I hadn't done something vital was a churning in my stomach, all acid and knots, until practice on the first day of week three. Along the back of the gymnasium, part of the converted elementary school that we used as the Green Valley Community Center, I sat with my legs dangling over the edge of the wooden stage, looking at Coach's beat-up clipboard to prep for the drills he wanted to run that day.
Because the weather was still warm, and it made it easier for our players, we had the metal doors propped open with little plastic wedges. I heard her chair pop noisily over the small metal lip of the entrance when she came in.
"Abernathy, right?" I heard Earl ask from his perch at the long rectangular table. Earl and Merl, both in their nineties if they were a day, took it upon themselves to be the unofficial greeting committee for every activity held at the community center.
My head jerked up when I heard him say her last name.
She pulled her chair to a stop, twisting it as she did to face the two men. "Yes, sir."
He nodded, swiping at his forehead covered by the red hat I'd swear he'd had since the day he was born. "I knew your grandma. She was good people even though she always wore that ugly purple hat to church."
Merl leaned in, cupping a hand to his ear. "Which hat?"
"The purple one," Earl bellowed. "With the yellow bird on the front."
The two men nodded while Joss waited patiently. Or impatiently, as her fingers tapped rapidly along the top curve of her wheels.
"I can't say I've seen the hat," she said.
"It didn't come with the house?" Merl asked. "We heard she left you and your ma that house. Must have the hat in there somewhere."