Grab My Heart #24

TITLE: Seeking Stanley Derringer
GENRE: YA Romance

After Tab’s crush crushes her, she dreams of a boy who’s desperate to find her, discovers he’s alive, and sets off to find him. SEEKING STANLEY DERRINGER is Jane The Virgin meets the Holy Grail quest, a YA romance set in a Berkeley alternative school and a Detroit garage.

It was the end of a Sunday lunch shift at Tia’s Tacos. I watched two women linger over a shared enchilada. I tried not to stare at the one with her back to me, tattooed up to her sleeveless tee, who tenderly fed the last forkful to a woman holding a baby.

            What was wrong with me? I didn’t want a baby. What did they have that I didn’t have?
            Oh, yeah. Each other. Someone to love. A soul mate. In other words, everything.

            “May I?” I asked the couple as I reached for their empty plate. I laid the check in the middle of the table. The woman holding the baby tucked her into a fabric sling.

            “Your baby’s so cute,” I said. “What’s her name? Or his?”

            “Harmony,” the baby woman said. She eyed my thumb as my hand passed in front of her face. I could always tell when somebody noticed. My thumbs were shaped like little square paddles because of brachydactyly, an inherited trait. Mom thought I got it from my bio dad but I’d never met him so I never really knew.

           Tia watched from the door to the kitchen. Her arms strained with the weight of a full bin of mole sauce. She groaned as she plonked it on the prep counter.

           “I can do that! Sit down!” I hurried to fill bins like I was supposed to between customers. Instead, I’d been reading Parzival, about a naive knight on a quest.