Play Me
From the author of Good Girls comes a story of love, lies, fame and family from the guy's point of view.
As she’s talking to the sales guy, Lucinda slips out of her jacket. Underneath, she’s wearing a sleeveless shirt. It’s something, watching her slip out of a jacket. It’s like she rehearsed it so that it looks completely effortless and without any intended effect. Her exposed shoulders are smooth caps of muscle, singed pink by the sun. I want to touch them, which bugs me. Why would I want to put my hands on her? This is not a girl with tattoos on the small of her back. This is not a girl who is cool with it.
— From Play Me
Eddy Rochester has a problem.
It’s not his TV-star mom, who skipped town with a creep and appears on Crime Scene: Miami in tops cut so low you can see all the way to China.
And it’s not his dad, who’s nearly pines himself into a box for Eddy’s mom, or his stepdad, who pines right along with him.
And it’s not his little brother Meatball, who stages his own death daily with the help of knives and tomato sauce.
It’s not his movie-quoting friend Rory —“We’ve got armadillos in our trousers. It’s really quite frightening” — or his pumpkin-faced rival, Joe Meyerhoff, who thinks Eddy’s just a player who’s slashed and burned his way through every girl in a fifty-mile radius.
It’s not his hit online show, Riot Grrl 16, or Gina, its unpredictable star, who has threatened to rip out his liver and feed it to her dog.
And it’s not even all those other girls, because he never makes promises he can’t keep.
No.
The problem has a name: Lucinda. The name means light – and we’re not talking sunbeams, we’re talking lightning bolts. With Lucinda, Eddy’s not in the driver’s seat. But maybe, this once, he’s willing to go along for the ride.
This is the story of what happens when a guy looking for his fifteen minutes finds the girl who could burn in his heart for years.