For readers of Talia
Hibbert, a witty, contemporary love story with high emotional stakes and a
multicultural cast, about a widowed bar owner who, upon returning to college at
42, inadvertently hires the woman who turns out to be the adjunct instructor of
his online writing class to help tend bar at his failing establishment; for
fans who love grumpy vs. sunshine.
Title: Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up
Author: Charish Reid
Publisher: Canary Street Press
Release Date: 6th June 2023
BLURB supplied by Harlequin Trade PublishingMickey Chambers is a 33-year-old adjunct instructor with a sunny disposition despite her chronic illness and dwindling bank account. When she finds out a local bar is hiring in a hurry, she throws her hat in the ring. Has she ever worked at a bar? Nope! But there are a lot of things Mickey hasn’t done before and after years of her youth spent ill, she is willing to try anything once. Especially if it helps her cover her medical costs for the summer.
Diego Acosta, a 42-year-old bar owner, needs help in a hurry. Since his wife, LucÃa, died five years ago, he’s been running The Saloon by himself. But with only a skeleton crew and the pressures of returning to college, Diego fears he might be running his late wife’s bar into the ground. Between rowdy college students, one final English class, and an upcoming music festival, Diego accidentally hires his writing instructor in a panic to keep the bar afloat.
When Mickey brings her cheerful attitude to The Saloon, Diego balks at the changes: new cute cocktails, karaoke nights, and her pretty smile. It’s been so long since he’s had feelings for another woman, he wonders if a relationship with her is even possible. Mickey is trying to avoid a messy entanglement, but she’s ready to embrace everything life has to offer, including the grumpy Diego.PURCHASE LINKS
BookShop.org
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Amazon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charish Reid is a fan of sexy books
and disaster films. When she's not grading papers or prepping lessons for
college freshmen, she enjoys writing romances that celebrate quirky Black women
who deserve HEAs. Charish currently lives in Sweden.
AUTHOR LINKS
Author Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
GoodreadsEXCERPT
Plink, plink, plink…
Mickey Chambers’ heart stuttered as she
held her breath. Each prescription pill she dropped into different days of the
week was an ominous warning of finite resources. When she got to Saturday and
found a nearly empty bottle of her thyroid medication, she had to do quick math
in her head. To refill her prescriptions, she’d have to visit Dr. Curtis and
get bloodwork done.
Another expense…
She’d been counting pills for most of her
adult life. But at thirty-three, it was getting hard to pay for them. At her kitchen
counter, Mickey carefully spilled the remainder of her medication on to a place
mat and slowly separated them. Two weeks.
She quickly started on the mood
stabilizer next, counting with the same slowness, and making note of how few
were left in the bottle. Three weeks. Any gaps in medication could be bad news
for her hormone levels, knocking her flat on her ass.
This was going to be a hellish summer if
Mickey couldn’t fund the medication for her hyperthyroidism. Her teaching load
had always been somewhat precarious, but this was the first time she worried.
Hargrove University’s English Department had always made room for her, but they
had also hired more adjuncts like her. Other part-time instructors who needed
to grab up as many classes to cover their bills.
She gathered her medications and placed
them back on the top of her refrigerator before checking her cell phone again.
She was expecting a call from the department chair today with confirmation of
her summer schedule. So far, Mickey only had one online class.
Because she’d taught a few
distance-learning courses before, Mickey had a slew of class plans ready to be
taught online. She’d need to update a few PowerPoint presentations from last
year, but she counted on her Food Studies and Culture course to be easy to
navigate. Now, if Lara could just give her a heads-up on a Comp 101 or an
American Lit, she’d have extra syllabi for those as well.
But alas, no missed calls.
Mickey sighed as she tucked her phone in
her skirt pocket. No point in waiting around her apartment when she needed to
be at her parents’ home for Sunday dinner. This was the first dinner she’d
shown up to since a hectic finals week and logging grades, so she missed them.
She grabbed her purse and locked up before running into the Columbus, Georgia,
heat. Even in late May, she felt the blast of the outdoor furnace that frizzed
her curls and made her under-boobs sweat. She blew out another frustrated sigh.
The heat was an annoyance for any average Georgian, but for someone with her
condition, these summers were hell.
When she got on Forest Street, she tapped
out a quick message to her mother, letting Rita Chambers know she was on the
way. Mickey made a quick loop around Lakebottom Park, admiring the people who
could stand jogging in the bright sun and catching a glimpse of her favorite
brick-red bungalow on the corner of Cherokee Avenue.
She loved how it stood out from the
surrounding houses with its delicate white trim and shutters and large
wraparound porch. A couple years back, two rocking chairs used to sit near the
door, now only one remained. The owner also seemed to neglect the spread of
kudzu vine clawing its way up the west side of the house. Mickey noticed the
changes and it made her sad.
Her mind quickly went back to the road
toward her parents’ home. Through the shaded boulevard of dogwood trees,
Hargrove students were already walking to the downtown area, ready to tear it
up. She drove past them carefully, trying her best not to hit the pregame
wobblers.
When she reached her parents’ house, she
parked her car in the driveway behind her brother’s Beemer and walked past the
pecan saplings piled up in the yard. Mickey’s father must have been amid a
landscaping project. Her mother would object to Virgil Sr. lifting more than
necessary, but she’d let her parents argue about that.
She checked her phone once more and found
no new messages.
Mickey closed her eyes, trained a smile
on her face, and readied herself for dinner with her family. As she stepped
through the threshold of her childhood home, she called out, “I’m here, let the
festivities begin!”
Her little brother, Junior, was the first
to reply. “Girl, ain’t nobody waiting on you.”
Mickey laughed as she hung her purse in
the yellow foyer her father had painted earlier in the year. Judging by the
smells coming from the kitchen, she wouldn’t have waited on her either. She
found her family eating dinner in the bright and airy living room, using the
collapsible TV trays while her mother’s lovely dining room remained untouched.
“Baby, fix a plate and join us.” Her
mother pointed her fork toward the kitchen.
“Thanks, Mama.”
“Michelle, when’s the last time you had
that car looked at?” her father asked apropos of nothing.
Mickey bit back her grin. “Last time I
was here.”
Virgil Sr. shook his head as he scraped
at his plate. “Lemme change that oil before you leave. How them tires lookin’?”
It didn’t matter how she answered, her
father would just examine the entire Honda Civic before she left the house.
Even after a week of working for Columbus Public Works, he still needed to come
home and tinker around with something. “I’ll let you have a look,” Mickey said
on her way to the kitchen.
If it was hot outside, Rita’s kitchen was
an inferno. Her mother’s cast-iron skillet had put in the work that day,
producing fried chicken, fried pork chops and corn bread. Side dishes covered
the counter like a small buffet line, with a roll of aluminum foil and
Styrofoam plates sitting on the end, serving as to-go plates for Mickey and
Junior.
A bottle of Ardbeg scotch sat near the
refrigerator with a yellow sticky note pressed to the glass. If there was one
thing she could count on her brother for, it was a free bottle of booze. No
doubt, an end-of-the-semester gift. She smiled as she picked it up and
inspected the label. She and Junior tried to get together as often as possible
to try different spirits and share their opinions, but lately they’d grown too
busy. He with his start-up in Atlanta and her constantly grading papers. As
expensive as it was, his little reminder of simpler times touched her.
While she fixed her plate, Mickey
listened to her parents give a familiar rundown of the Columbus, Georgia,
happenings for Junior, who now lived in Atlanta.
“You remember Celestine on the West
Side,” Rita said. “Henry Richard’s sister.”
“Uhh…”
“Taught at the dance school back in the
nineties. Volunteered at the soup kitchen?”
“Mama, I can’t remember,” Junior said.
“Well, she passed a couple weeks back,”
their mother went on. “I went to the visitation and saw her granddaughter,
Layla. I didn’t know it, but she took over the dance school recently. You
remember Layla? Real pretty girl…”
“Maybe?”
“Henry still working at Wilson’s Paper?”
their father interjected.
“Sure is,” Rita said. “Coming up on
twenty years. Oughta be retiring soon.”
When Mickey returned to the living room,
she sat next to her brother on the sibling-designated couch, facing her
parents, who sat in their own cushy recliners. On the television, an action
movie played with the volume set low.
“Anyway,” Rita said, “you oughta let me
introduce you to Layla. She’s such a professional little lady teaching those
kids and I heard she was single…”
Junior made a noncommittal noise before
stuffing his mouth with fried pork chop.
Rita switched gears and turned her focus
on her other child. “Michelle, my favorite teacher! Are you feeling good? Have
you taken your medications?”
“This morning, Mama,” Mickey said, trying
to keep her smile up. Every time her mother laid eyes on her, she asked the
same questions.
“Do you have enough for the month?”
Mickey nodded, trying not to worry about
the number of pills she counted out earlier. “I get my refills on time.”
“Is that Obamacare still working for
you?” her father asked. “‘Cause Roy said he’s paying an arm and leg over these
prescriptions.”
Mickey eked out a strained smile. “It’s
fine, Daddy. The ACA plan I’m on is okay.”
“Are you teaching this summer?” Junior
asked, steering the conversation away from Mickey’s health.
She gave him a grateful look. Since she
was first diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, her parents had dropped everything in
their lives to make sure she was well taken care of. Now, at the age of
thirty-three, they hadn’t quite stopped. “I am,” she said, quickly changing
gears. “I’m still at Hargrove, in the English Department.”
“They had a hell of a busted pipe by that
athletic center,” her father said. “I told Roy, they gonna have to dig up some
of that parking lot that goes to Seaver Avenue.”
Her mother ignored her husband, who
routinely rambled about construction. “Are you going to be busy this summer?
How many classes will you have? Will you have to be on your feet in the
classroom, or can you teach from home?”
Mickey followed her brother’s example and
shoveled mashed potatoes in her mouth to avoid her mother’s interrogation. She
hoped it would give her time to figure out a good enough lie about her unstable
unemployment. She nodded. “Mmm-hmm.”
Her parents understood that she taught at
a university. They bragged on her to everyone they knew, from the cashier at
Winn Dixie to Monique at the salon. What they didn’t quite grasp was what
nontenured track looked like at a place like Hargrove University.
While associate professors could use
their summers for scholarship and traveling to conferences, adjuncts scrambled
to find all the classes they could to make ends meet. Mickey loved teaching and
her students…but she had the sneaking suspicion that her love for the job was
being used against her by the university machine. She wasn’t making nearly
enough money for the work she kept doing—the grim evidence hit her every time
she paid her bills.
She swallowed the lump of mashed
potatoes. “I’ll be fine,” she lied. As soon as her phone vibrated in her
pocket, Mickey would know for certain. “Sorry, I gotta take this.”
She quickly excused herself from the
living room and took her call in the kitchen.
Her boss started off on the wrong foot
immediately. “Hey, Michelle…” she said in a contrite voice.
Mickey’s heart dropped. “Hey, Lara.”
“I’m sorry,” Lara said. “I had hopes for
English 200, but there weren’t enough students for the Registrar’s Office to
sign off on it. And then I only had 101 left, and I know you just taught it…”
“No, no, I get it,” Mickey said. “Matt
needs a class too.”
“I tried to split the leftover classes as
fair as I could,” Lara said. Her boss sounded so close to tears that Mickey had
no choice but to let her off the hook. The availability of classes wasn’t
necessarily her fault. She couldn’t help the fact that the administration had
tightened up on summer course offerings.
“So, I’ve got the Comp 102,” she said
with an upbeat voice.
“You do! Luckily, it’s the condensed
early summer version; just four weeks. And you’d really be doing us a favor.”
Doing them a favor made Mickey sound heroic instead of an underpaid
professional who didn’t receive health-care benefits.
“Of course, no worries. Listen, Lara, I
gotta let you go,” Mickey said.
“I get it,” Lara said. “Michelle, I’m so
sorry. You’ll be okay?”
Even though she didn’t feel like coddling
Lara’s feelings, she still lied, “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. We’ll talk later?”
“Of course,” Mickey said brightly.
By the time she hung up, her mind was
already on the next problem. What did the money situation look like for the
next two and a half months? A quick calculation of savings told her she could
handle rent—that always came first. Then came medication. Her savings account
would take a hit, but it could cover those necessary pills. She had a roof over
her head, but food and utilities were a different story.
“Was that work?”
She jumped at the sound of Junior’s voice
behind her. Mickey could lie to her boss and her parents, but her brother would
always be a tough sell. He may be five years younger than she, but he’d had to
grow up fast when she was at her sickest. “It was,” she sighed.
“Are you going to need help this summer?”
he asked.
He didn’t mean any harm, but it stung to
be so far behind her brother, who graduated school on time, who found a career
at an appropriate time. Meanwhile, Mickey’s constant absences due to illness
meant flunking out of high school. She didn’t catch up to her peers until a
proper treatment plan was put in place. Getting her GED, earning a bachelor’s
and finally a master’s degree, in literature, gained her employment…just not a
steady career in her thirties. “Please don’t tell mom and dad,” she whispered,
glancing toward the living room. “They still see me as a sick teenager:
reminding me to take my meds, offering me money they don’t have.”
“You need to come work with me and
James,” her brother suggested as he rubbed his beard. His dark brown eyes
focused on the stove behind him and narrowed. She could tell his
computer-programmer mind whirred with a plan. “If you lived in Atlanta, I could
help you get set up with a little apartment nearby. We could finally start the
whiskey podcast…”
“You know I’d love to do the podcast,” Mickey
said with a chuckle. “But I don’t want to move to Atlanta and I don’t want to
work for my little brother doing—what are you doing?”
Junior rolled his eyes. “Coding the
MedPlus app. We’re still trying to find a decent marketing manager… You could
be it?”
Mickey grabbed her brother by the hand
and dragged him to the kitchen patio door. “Let’s talk about this outside,” she
sighed, hoping her parents weren’t listening. In the backyard, she finally felt
relief from the stifling heat of the house.
“How long are you going to keep working
for that school?” Junior asked, facing the setting sun. The vibrant red shined
on his deep brown skin as he squinted his dark eyes against the light. He took
his coloring and height from their father, while Mickey’s pecan-brown skin and
short, chubby stature mimicked their mother.
She didn’t know the answer to that. “I
don’t know. I guess I’ll teach until I find something else I’m good at.”
Sometimes she woke up in a cold sweat, wondering why she’d chosen literature
and composition as areas to study. The job market was rough for even those who
had doctorates. What had felt like a comfortable job was quickly becoming an
albatross around her neck. Anytime she tried to think about another vocation,
her heart pounded and her brain froze. “I know I’m really good at organizing
and planning, but those skills feel too vague to become a…career.”
“Well, you’re good with people—always
friendly and helpful. I wish I knew how you stay so damn cheerful,” he said
with a chuckle. “A bunch of spoiled-ass freshmen in English class would drive
me up a fuckin’ wall.”
“Oh, it’s not them,” Mickey sighed. “When
I step foot in the classroom, they respect me, they listen. Hell, they don’t
even realize I’m a part-time lecturer. My students think I’m a scholar like
everyone else.”
She certainly didn’t feel that way when
she left the classroom. Since she didn’t attend department meetings, many of
the tenure-track professors barely knew her name.
“Can I be honest with you?”
Her brother nodded.
Mickey blew out a sigh. “Teaching was
accidental. After the bachelor’s degree, I didn’t know what to do with
literature studies, so I continued and got a master’s degree. The first job I
got was teaching English and I just stuck with it. I like doing it, but without
a doctorate degree, being an adjunct is a permanent internship. It’s an
aspiration job that will never become a career for me.” She took a deep breath
before continuing. “It’s a hamster wheel masquerading as a noble pursuit.”
Quiet blanketed the back patio as Mickey
fought to keep her shit together. That was the first time she’d spoken the
truth to another person.
“Got it. So, you’re spinning your wheels
at Hargrove.” Junior said in a serious voice.
Mickey kept her eyes on the horizon ahead
of them. Anything to avoid her brother’s piercing stare. “I’ll need to make
some real changes come fall.”
“For real though, if things don’t work
out in Columbus, you can stay with me. I know MedPlus is still young, but James
has a couple investors lined up. You’re a writer. I could get you in on the
ground floor.”
Mickey nodded. “I hear you, and I’ll keep
it in my back pocket.”
While Junior’s job offer was a lovely
gesture, she was reluctant to accept it. Her family had done too much as it was
to help her. Her parents had given up their time, getting the runaround from
heath professionals. And then their money to send her to doctors and
specialists. Junior even helped her with her college applications and her move
to Athens for her master’s program. Living with her brother, while working for
him, seemed like taking a step backward.
The patio door slid open. Their father
stuck his head out and looked between the two of them. “It’s too hot out here
for Michelle to be standing around,” he said with a frown. “Y’all come in here
and get a cold drink.”
Mickey shot her brother a look that said,
See?
Junior smirked as he shook his head. “Coming,
Pop.” As she followed her brother back inside the house, she hoped that she
could continue pretending things were fine. She adjusted her face, forcing the
smile that people were accustomed to, and tried to forget about the
ever-present money worries. Positive attitude, Mickey. She wouldn’t get
anywhere feeling sorry for herself.
Excerpted from Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up by Charish Reid. Copyright © 2023 by Charish Reid. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A
