Page 1 of Lemon Crush

1

AUGUST

Lemon:a person or thing, especially an automobile,

regarded as unsatisfactory, disappointing, or defective.

“No,Myrtle. Come on, baby, don’t do this to me,” I begged under my breath when my old Honda—who’d never given me any trouble before—started spewing steam on the other side of my windshield.

Based on the red warning lights on the dashboard and the sickly-sweet fumes wrinkling my nose, there was some major what-the-fuckery going on under the hood that I didn’t have time for. Particularly now, when I was driving into one of the busiest airports in the country at zero-dark-thirty in the morning.

Welcome to my life.

“You need to find a place to pull over,” my sister ordered from the back seat.

Did I mention I had passengers expecting to reach a destination? Because I loved having witnesses to humiliating and potentially hazardous events in my life. It was the best.

With my pulse pounding in my ears, I gripped the steeringwheel so tightly my hands started going numb. “I’ll pull over when we get to your terminal.”

“Morgan’s right.” My brother-in-law shifted his large frame in the seat beside me, trying to watch both me and the road while typing furiously on his phone. “You should stop before the engine seizes or you crack the block.”

Was he just making up terms to confuse me now? What the hell was a block and how was I cracking it? “There’s no place to pull over yet, but we’re almost there. Two more minutes, Gene.”

Said every pilot who ever crashed into the ground a half-mile short of the runway.

Not the right time to think about planes crashing!

“This might give us two minutes,” Gene said, cranking on the heater to full blast. When a wave of hot air gushed into the car, I let out an undignified whine and rolled down the windows. Now we were all overheating.

I heard the click of a seatbelt releasing and then Morgan was inserting herself between our seats. “August, you don’t have to prove anything to me. I know you’re?—”

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

That was a dirty lie. I had absolutely strong-armed her into letting me take them to the airport this morning to prove I was happy about them going to Italy, followed by a cruise through the Mediterranean, without me. And I really was.

Mostly. I wasmostlyhappy about it. The part of me that wasn’t had obviously alerted the karma police.

“This is what you get.”

Exactly. I should have considered the state my car might be in after barely driving it for well over a year. The stateImight be in, when simply taking the airport exit had given me a nerve-jangling case of déjà vu, and promised a full-on panic attack in my verynear future if I thought about where they were going without me. And why.

“Pull in there.” Morgan pointed at the United Airlines sign ahead. “Look where I’m pointing, August. There’s a spot opening up right there.”

Putting on my blinker, I craned my neck to see around her and, miracle of miracles, a guy in a Prius let us into the drop-off lane.

“Thank you!” I cried as I pulled to the curb, shifted into park and cut off the overheating engine with a groan that was as much resignation as relief. Now that we’d made it, I could finally admit the obvious to everyone.

“I’m cursed.”

“You’re not cursed,” Morgan said in a voice that suddenly sounded very far away. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m a writer. It comes with the territory.” I wrote about curses all the time, and this was what I’d imagined a few of them felt like.

Youwerea writer, before The Great Block turned you into a human doorstop.

Everyone’s a critic.

Before that doorstop situation, I came to the airport all the time without having a problem. Usually whenIwas the one flying off to interesting places, like New York, Reno or Atlanta, for promotional events and conferences.

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