It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another excerpt from one of my books! Woo-hoo!
This week’s excerpt is from The New Girl. Joey and Beth grew up together, but when Beth’s dad moved to pastor a new church, they lost touch. They’re unexpectedly reunited several years later when Joey arrives in town to begin a new church plant and Beth is on the team to welcome him and help him in his work. It’s a sweet romance, but it’s more than that. It’s a story about church life, about being a pastor’s daughter, and about friendship that grows into something more. You’ll love it!
If you’re new to Jenn Faulk books and want a complete listing of all the titles and the order they were written in, go here for descriptions, pictures, and links.
Happy reading, friends…
Later that night, she was sitting on Joey’s couch, recounting the oddest one that she’d had.
“She launched into this ten minute discussion with me about how to fall the right way.”
Joey looked over at her and raised his eyebrows at this. “What?”
She couldn’t stop herself from laughing, thinking about the sweet senior adult lady that Harold had begun bringing with him to his small group. “Seriously. She said she’s fallen more than a few times, and she worries about breaking a hip. Legitimate worry at her age, you know?”
“Yeah,” Joey nodded, grinning at her as she continued on.
“So, she said she’s gotten to where she just relaxes completely even as she’s falling. I mean, she says she knows it’s happening, when she’s about to start falling, so she consciously loosens up and just lets herself fall onto the ground in a heap. Said she won’t break anything that way.”
“Well, that makes sense,” he said. “But that’s weird that she talked to you about that.”
“It’s the kind of stuff we talk about,” Beth smiled. “Doctor’s appointments, who’s hurting where, what surgery is up next – you know, that kind of thing.”
“We just talk weather,” Joey shrugged. “And football.”
She watched him with the older men a lot, wondering at what he was talking about, what they were discussing.
“Is that it?”
“Mainly,” he said. “But every now and then, something spiritual gets discussed.”
“They didn’t have that before,” she said, so pleasantly surprised again by how things had turned out with the church plant. “God’s doing a new thing here, and they’ve not been a part of anything God has been doing. Ever. You’re here to see a whole new thing.”
She smiled at him, admiring him again for about the thousandth time since he’d come here.
“And to learn a lot,” he sighed, leaning forward on the couch, even as he turned to face her better. “About falling so that I don’t break anything. Just like a big ol’ heap onto the floor.”
She laughed out loud at this, covering her mouth for a moment as his grin grew, then putting her hands back into her lap as she leaned closer to him.
“A big ol’ heap of Pastor Anderson,” she said. “Or Pastor Joey, I guess.”
He took a breath and looked to her lips.
Wait…. what was he looking at?
“Beth…”
“Yeah?” she said, giggling again, thinking that he must be preparing to tell her something very, very funny, just like he had been all night.
“I want to kiss you.”
Well. That explained why he’d been looking at her lips like that.
But wait… what?
It had to be a joke, a cruel joke, pretending at this. But Beth grinned anyway, determined to let it play out as though it didn’t hurt her feelings, just a little.
“What did you just say?”
“May I kiss you?” he asked, sounding so sincere, and…
But he was joking, right?
“Umm…”
How in the world would she answer this, when she wasn’t even sure what he really meant?
She took a breath, chiding herself for thinking anything but what was the honest truth – that he was joking with her. “You told me years ago that I shouldn’t kiss boys because they were all creeps,” she said to him, recalling this memory, trying to lighten the mood.
He watched her for a long minute. “What? I said that?”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “I remembered it. Took it to heart.”
He continued staring at her. “Stupid Joey,” he muttered.
“Smart Joey,” she corrected. “Because you knew what you were talking about back then. Boys are creeps.”
Some maybe. But not him. He’d never been anything but wonderful and kind and so sweet…
“I’d like to know and wouldn’t like to know, all at the same time,” he said, “how you can be so certain of that.”
Well… she wasn’t all that certain of it. She could number her relationships on one fist, using no fingers at all. Not that she’d never been asked out, but no one ever seemed serious enough about Jesus to seriously consider as a possible love match.
Telling Joey this wouldn’t help anything, though. So, she played it up.
“The stories I could tell,” she said, giving him a knowing look.
His eyes widened fractionally at this.
“Be that as it may,” he began with a slight strain in his voice, “and I don’t like that much at all –”
“As well you shouldn’t,” she murmured.
“I say stupid Joey,” he said again, “because I was sabotaging myself.”
“You also told me that I was like your bonus sister –”
“Idiot Joey,” he laughed, looking down at his hands for a second, then glancing back up at her.
“It was so sweet that you told me I was like your sister, though,” she said, laughing with him, then looking at him with such sincerity, wanting him to know how much she had appreciated who he’d been to her. She’d felt cared for and watched over in all the time she’d known him. Older sisters were great, but hers were so much older than her that it was like they weren’t even there. Having Joey around had felt reassuring, at least, as though she’d been lucky enough to have an older brother.
Joey was smiling self-consciously now as he watched her.
“It may have been sweet, but it wasn’t entirely true,” he said. “Well, I mean, you were special to me. Like a kid sister, that kind of thing. But you aren’t my sister, Beth. And it’s different now.”
How?
“But still,” she said, not sure what he was playing at now. “Kinda weird, right? You saying that since you once told me not to kiss anyone. Like, ever.”
Because regardless of how attracted she was to him, it would just be weird, dating the pastor and all. What if things didn’t work out? Or, what if they did? Awkwardness either way, likely.
Besides, Joey couldn’t honestly mean anything with this, could he?
She couldn’t rightly tell, given the way he was running his hands over his face. What was he thinking?
“If I could just go back and smack my seventeen year old self right in the face right now,” he muttered, “I would so do it, you know.”
Ahh, that.
“I liked seventeen year old Joey,” she said reassuringly. “So, I’m glad you can’t go back and hurt yourself.”
“Well, I’m glad that you liked me then,” he muttered.
“I like you now, too, Joey,” she said, meaning it entirely. He was just about the best friend she had these days.
“You do?”
“Well, of course, I do,” she answered.
“Then why would it be weird if there was something more here?” he asked.
Because… well, because…
Well, there were lots of reasons, all connected to the church. Surely he just hadn’t thought it out. (And did he honestly, seriously mean all of this for real?)
Beth considered many responses, then just went with honesty. Brash, bold honesty, just like his remark earlier that he’d like to kiss her.
If that’s what he’d really meant.
“Are you being serious about any of this?” she asked.
“I’m being serious about all of it,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
She stopped herself from gasping out loud at this.
He was thinking about her. A lot, apparently. The smiles he gave and the looks they exchanged were more than she’d figured they were. The very idea that Joey would see her as more than what she’d been as a little thirteen year old sitting out on the porch with him, though…
Unbelievable.
Or at least hard to believe, because the more he watched her, the more she found herself trusting his words.
“Oh,” she said.
Ahh, eloquence at its finest.
“Why would this be weird?” he asked softly. “Me and you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unable to meet his eyes as she processed what he was saying. “It’s just… I didn’t know you felt… that you thought…”
“That I think you’re the godliest, most precious, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known?” he asked.
Wow. All of those words. Together like that. So, so good.
“Yeah,” she managed.
Her words weren’t nearly as perfect, obviously.
“I do,” he said. “The more time we spend together, the more I feel.”
She glanced up at him and could feel her heart swell just a little at the sincerity in his eyes.
He was serious. He had feelings for her, feelings greater than what she could have imagined.
There had been subtle signs, maybe. Something more to the way he held open the door for her. Something in the way he said goodnight when she’d walk him to his car. Something to how he watched her and smiled as she would attempt to explain something at their small group.
Okay, so the signs were more than subtle.
But they couldn’t do this. There was too much at risk.
“Joey,” she said, trying to figure out the words to say to let him down gently.
He gave her no opportunity.
“Do you feel anything for me?” he asked, and she could hear the stark vulnerability in the question.
Did she?
There was more than a little elation every time she saw his number on her phone. When he taught, she often found herself thinking that he was just the kind of godly man she’d one day hope to find and marry. And he…
… well, he’d always been handsome.
Yes, even back when he’d been seventeen, and she’d felt weird about his arm around her, there had been something special about Joey Anderson. He’d been attractive then, not only in the way he acted and the things he said, but in how he actually looked. Easy on the eyes, and even more so now, with all of his boyish good looks grown into this.
How could she say any of this, though, when she knew this couldn’t go anywhere?
Instead, she said nothing.
Joey took her silence as a rejection.
“You’re killing me, Beth,” he said softly.
“It’s not you,” she said, knowing that it really wasn’t. In any other circumstances, she’d be all in. But the church and propriety and…
“It’s not you, it’s me, right?” he asked, nodding. “I shouldn’t have presumed.” He managed a look that was just a step above disappointed, straining for a smile. “I appreciate how you’re speaking plainly about it, so I can’t misunderstand and misinterpret anything else.”
She wasn’t speaking plainly about any of it because the hard truth was that she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. She only knew that looking at him right now, dejected and let down, was making her feel much worse than he likely did.
“Joey, you’re one of the best friends I have here,” she said softly.
This was true. For all that she couldn’t sort out, this was truth.
She watched him take another breath.
“And you’re one of my best friends, too,” he said. “Having you back in my life is one of the greatest things that’s happened here.”
So many good things had happened, but Joey was ranking her at the top of the list. Beth could hardly take in how wonderful these words were and what it all meant.
“I didn’t know I was missing you until you showed up,” she said.
This was perhaps the most truthful thing she’d ever said. She’d hadn’t known she was missing him until he came around, and she surely hadn’t known how much he meant until he’d become such a big part of her life.
Something in those words caused his features to soften just slightly, almost imperceptibly.
Perhaps he’d heard hope in them, maybe the promise of something more.
Beth was convinced that there couldn’t be any more… but she didn’t say anything to correct him.
He heard what she didn’t say. The absence of those words spoke louder than any affirmation could have.
She saw it in his eyes.
“Okay, then,” he said, moving the conversation onto the church, onto everything that they were doing together.
And when he told her goodnight at her door, she saw resolve in his smile.
He was going to wait on her.
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Jenn Faulk 