Anyway, I have a few more things up my sleeve in the coming weeks/months for you, but for today let's welcome Celia Kennedy and her blog tour to Sooz's Journal.
Blurb:
Charlotte's Restrained, a comical fictional tale of what happens when the paths of a celebrity god and a mere mortal collide.
While vacationing, Charlotte has a chance encounter with a celebrity famous for his lead roles in romantic comedies. Unfortunately for Charlotte, lighthearted banter develops into tabloid fodder. With her career, friendships, and new found romance all impacted, Charlotte sets about dealing with the fallout of her fifteen minutes of fame.
Marian,
Hillary, Kathleen, Tiziana and I had met at Oxford. We were all at varying
points on the same path, graduate students at the Said Business School. I met
Kathleen first. Her long, blonde hair glistened in the late summer sun as she
taped up a poster for a pub crawl for American students studying abroad on a
lamp post. It wasn’t her I noticed so much as all the guys ogling her wiggling
backside as she smoothed down the tape.
Three
days later, at the pub, The Bear, we met Marian. She was there spying on a groom,
at the behest of her good friend, the bride. I guess to make sure he didn’t get
out of line.
We
were young, easily influenced, and really drunk. We had been in and out of four
pubs in the two hours, if my memory served me well. While ordering a round of
drinks, we heard people chanting, “Stripper, Stripper!” The next thing I knew,
Kathleen’s elbow collided with my kidney as she pointed at Tiziana.
Tiziana!
Every woman’s archenemy nemesis. Think of Sophia Loren wearing a man’s white
dress shirt with a long string of pearls and a pair of flashy stilettos. To be
fair, Tiziana appeared shocked when she realized the stripper comments were
directed at her. You’d think a girl who oozed that much sexuality and dressed
that skimpily would get used to being the object of every male’s fantasies. But
no. She looked more than a little nervous when a couple of guys drinking with
the groom became a little too friendly and suggested Tiziana show the
soon-to-be-married man a little mercy.
Marian
reminded me of a bull when she was angry: snorting nose, steam out of the ears,
crazy eyes. A smart person would back away, slowly. So when Marian dragged
Tiziana outside before anything could happen, we were worried for her. None of
us knew Tiziana, but still I didn’t think she’d done anything worthy of
dismemberment. When Kathleen and I followed them outside to where they stood on
the narrow sidewalk, Marian was swearing away in Gaelic at Tiziana, and Tiziana
was shouting back in Italian. The two of us just stood back, amazed.
Just
when things had calmed down a bit, a very regal looking woman opened the pub
door and took in the situation. “Oh! What luck, I found your… purse?” She
handed a bedazzled black clutch to Tiziana.
Why
we burst into laughter, I wasn’t quite sure. I really didn’t even know if we
were laughing together or at each other. After we controlled our laughing, Hillary,
the regal one, who had let loose and smirked a bit, invited us to go back in
for another drink. “The groom’s my brother! I’m here to make sure he doesn’t
overdo it. Sorry his friends are such asses.”
We’ve
been close friends ever since.
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