20,482 plus another excerpt

Whew! I just flew comfortably past my goal of reaching 20,000 words in Coven Hill before the end of August. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d get there, to be honest, so this feels pretty good.

To celebrate, here’s another little excerpt, this time from a scene between Robby and The Girl He’s Had a Crush on Forever. All you need to know to understand it is that someone has just played an embarassing joke on the girl, Becca Reese, and now Robby has managed to find her before anyone else does. Obviously, all of my usual disclaimers about rough drafts and their inherent craptitude apply. As does the “no plagiarizing, not that you’d ever want to,” thing. Go make up your own damn crappy novel instead.

Anyway, this is from Chapter Five, and is excepted here from a scene that has quite a bit going on before and after what you see here.

     “Are you all right?” Robby asked.
     Becca sniffed and then looked at her skirt. “I think so.”
     “I was worried about you,” he said lamely.
     She tilted her head and appeared to be seeing him for the first time. Her eyes narrowed in that cute way they did when she was concentrating on a particularly vexing math problem. She said, “Did you… were you looking for me?”
     The words rolled out in a jumble before he could stop them. “Yeah, no, I mean, I—yeah, I guess I was.”
     The half-smile on her face quivered and turned into a full-fledged one. “That’s really sweet of you.”
     “Really?” Robby asked, feeling a little lightheaded.
     “Really,” she said firmly. “No one else bothered.”
     “I think everyone else was kind of stunned.”
     “They were too busy laughing, you mean.”
     “Happens to me all the time,” Robby muttered.
     “Even T-Rex,” Becca continued, as if Tommy Rexman hooting like an overgrown orangutan was a new phenomenon. “Why weren’t you laughing, Robby?”
     Robby shrugged. “I didn’t think it was funny.”
     Without warning, Becca leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.
     Robby didn’t know what to say. Her lips had touched him! He’d been touched by her lips! Becca Reese’s lips! On his forehead! Touching! He was still searching for the right words—any words!—when Becca said, “Oh my god! I’m so sorry!”
     “For… what?” Robby asked, feeling flushed.
     “I shouldn’t have.”
     “No!” said Robby. Then, fearing she might actually think he was agreeing with her, he said, “I mean, it’s okay. I didn’t mind.” He wanted to add, “You can do it again if you want,” but he didn’t want to push his luck.
     Becca said, “What about Abby?”
     “What about her?”
     “She’s your girlfriend. I feel awful.”
     Robby chortled. “She is not my girlfriend. She’s practically my sister.”
     “Oh,” said Becca, nodding, and then again, “Oh.”
     “I think we’d probably kill each other,” Robby added. Something about that thought didn’t quite ring true, but he wasn’t in the mood for self-examination. Not with Becca Reese’s lips just seconds removed from kissing him! Becca laughed and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Was she actually nervous? He’d seen a lot of impossible things lately, but that seemed the least likely one of all.
     She said, “I always thought you guys were a thing.”
     “We are,” said Robby, “just not that kind of thing.”

Ah, Puppy Love. I guess I’ll use the next few days to get a head start on my September goal of 30,000 words!