GOOD
FAITH
By
Liz Crowe
BLURB:
Strong personalities—volatile marriages—stressful
careers—conflicting goals—difficult children.
Contemporary challenges facing close-knit families form the
crucible that forges a new generation.
Brandis, Gabriel, Blair and Lillian emerge from the entanglement
of their parents’ longstanding emotional connections, but one’s star will burn
brighter – and hotter – than the others.
With a personality that consumes everyone and everything in
its path, Brandis Gordon struggles to maintain control as he ricochets between wild
success and miserable failure. His life proves how even the strongest relationships
can be strangled by the ties that bind.
Brandis and Gabe Frietag are as close as any brothers, bound
by both loyalty and fierce rivalry. The strength of their ultimate alliance is
tested time and again by Brandis’ choices.
Companions from birth, Blair Frietag and Lillian Robinson
share loner tendencies, but come to rely on each other through adolescence. As
they mature, both are forced to confront their feelings for the men they knew
as boys.
Somewhere between the tangle of good memories and bad,
independence and addiction, optimism and despair, the intertwined destinies of
the new generation finally collide, leaving some stronger, others broken, but none
unscathed.
As a chronicle of three
families navigating the minefields of teen years into the turbulence of young
adulthood, Good Faith holds up a
literary mirror to contemporary life with joys and temptations unflinchingly
reflected. Its fresh, real-life voice portrays the sheer volatility of human nature,
complete with the hopes, dreams, and unexpected setbacks of marriage,
parenthood and “coming of age.”
Excerpt
2
Blair dropped back on the bed and
shut her eyes forcing herself to recall happier moments, better times.
“You’re so laid back,” her father used to say to her when she still paid
attention. “So relaxed.” He would smile as she worked alongside him in their
kitchen. While the restaurant irritated her, she used to adore cooking with
him, just to the two of them, and baking made her the happiest. “I wish I were
more like you.” He’d flick flour from his fingers at her making her giggle and
flush with happiness at his attention.
Later, he would accuse her of being “detached” and not
willing to have any kind of confrontation even to defend herself. But who cared
what he thought? She rolled to her side, picking up her phone as it buzzed with
a text.
Hey loser, Brandis
had sent. She frowned at the tingle that shot down her spine. She deleted it,
determined to ignore him. About ten minutes later, he sent another one. You there?
She sighed and opened her laptop, thinking she’d do some
English homework. Her cat jumped into her lap, its usual spot whenever she sat
at the desk. The long Saturday stretched out in front of her, endless, boring,
and useless. Typically she didn’t mind being alone, treasured her privacy and
the time to read or take long walks. But the last few months had been
different, frustrating beyond belief as she couldn’t seem to settle or relax,
to enjoy herself like she used to.
Stupid adults. Stupid fathers and their stupid
marriage-busting assistants. Stupid mothers and their mealy mouthed blindness
to the whole thing. The phone kept buzzing with messages. And she kept ignoring
it, something in her holding back, preserving herself from the sucking vortex
of Brandis Gordon. She didn’t like texting him. It made her feel awkward,
forcing conversation via a few tapped out words on the phone.
Finally, the phone rang. She sighed and answered it. “What?”
she said, her hands shaking with the effort not to launch into a conversation
with him. Flirting simply did not come naturally to her. She had no idea how to
handle herself around boys, much less the huge, giant, hulking presence of
Brandis—football quarterback, high school super stud, and one-time friend.
Other than to settle herself with memories of him, of them, as kids, when
things were simple.
His seeming addiction to their strange, late night
conversations had confused and thrilled her in equal measure. And she missed
them. A lot.
“You are one hard girl to get hold of,” he said, softly.
“What do you want, Brandis?”
“I thought we were gonna stay friends. I mean, we talked
about it, after….”
She winced, wishing she had her brother’s willpower when it
came to Brandis’ all-encompassing, some would say, suffocating, personality.
“He’s a goddamned drain, an energy suck, a…shithead,” Gabe had said to her, a
few days after their huge fight. He’d been sporting a black eye and a split lip
from the altercation. A terrible, embarrassing moment for everyone
concerned—one that signaled the end of her childhood, best she could tell.
“Why? What did he say to you?” Blair had begged her brother
to tell her. They were close, and she had no qualms asking him. But he’d
pressed his lips together, and threatened her with all sorts of dire,
brother-inflicted consequences if she even talked to the guy again. So, she
never knew.
Brandis had been on the phone to her within hours, pleading
with her to intervene for him, to talk to Gabe, to get him on the phone. She’d
enjoyed that moment—when Brandis needed something from her. But it faded, as
did his efforts to try to make up with her brother. She’d heard a lot about him
lately—drinking, smoking pot, hard partying on every level while still
remaining quarterback, and in top, nearly model-perfect physical shape. And of
course, all the girls, many of them older, who flocked to him.
“Blair?” he asked, interrupting her aggravation at the
thought of all the females he must have screwed. She knew about the “college
girls weekend.” Gabe and Brandis had laughed and joked about it enough in front
of her. It made her nauseated with jealous fury and headache-y with
embarrassment at her own virginal self.
“What?” she said again, getting up to pace. “Why do you keep
trying to talk to me? We have…nothing in common anymore. You have plenty of
girls to talk to. Leave me alone.” She slid down the wall next to her door, her
knees weak, like they always got, at the sound of his deep, rumbly voice.
He’d been a fixture in her life, on vacations, at holidays,
camping and fishing in the summer with their dads, going to baseball and
football games, just…her friend. The kid with the funny laugh, shock of
jet-black hair, and snapping blue eyes who attracted trouble and deflected it
with equal equanimity. She had no idea when she’d become aware of him as a
compelling member of the opposite sex.
He’d changed almost overnight, developing a sarcastic
streak, a bit of meanness with his endless practical jokes one of which ended
with his own sister’s broken wrist. During those strange years, she would catch
him staring at her, his eyes dark, puzzled, confused. And when she’d smile and
try to draw him out of it he’d blush, run or bike away, usually yelling
something about “stupid girls.” And almost always with her brother Gabe in his
wake. Anger lit her brain. “Seriously, Brandis, what do you want from me?”
“I want to be your friend still. That’s all. I…miss you
guys.”
“Well then I guess you shouldn’t have said whatever you said
that day.” She looked up at the ceiling, willing him not to give up, to stay on
the line.
“I know,” he said, then got quiet. “How is he,” he asked
after about thirty seconds.
“Fine. Busy, working at The Local, playing soccer, hanging
with Lillian.”
“Wow, Lilly-G?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Blair stretched out on her soft rug,
propped her feet on the wall, and settled into the conversation. “My mom’s been
going out on dates. It’s stupid.”
“Well, your dad did….”
“I know, I know.”
She heard a shuffling sound as if Brandis were getting
comfortable on his end. “And you? How many boyfriends for you now, Miss B?”
“Please.” She blushed. “Boys don’t notice me. I’m a
sophomore. I don’t play sports or do anything cool really.”
“You play a mean game of Scrabble. I miss that. And I have
yet to find a Euchre partner as good as you.”
She bit down on the urge to invite him over, to eat popcorn,
watch a movie cuddled up on the couch like they used to do. But she knew things
were altered. Now that “Brandis, the super stud,” had emerged he would never be
“Brandis, Blair and Gabe’s friend” ever again.
“It’s a good thing you aren’t dating,” he declared out of
the blue, making her blush again. “That way I don’t have to beat up any punks,
you know, who think they can get anywhere with you.”
“And what makes you think my dating anyone means anything
else is happening, hmm?”
“My sweet and innocent Blair, boys want one thing on a date.
And it is not the concept of a good movie or a nice meal. Don’t ever forget
that.” His voice lowered a bit, making her shiver.
“I guess you would know, eh stud?”
“I, um…I don’t know. Sometimes I wish….” He trailed off.
“What? That you could walk around town without bumping into
some girl you’d ‘dated’? That you didn’t have so many pissed off ex-girlfriends
floating around? That you would occasionally go a weekend without getting drunk
and screwing your way through a party?”
The silence spilled into her ear like smoke. “Sorry,” she
muttered, meaning it.
“No, it’s okay. I won’t deny it.” A bit of a swagger had
snuck into his voice. “Popularity is my middle name.”
“I thought it was Robert. You know, after my dad? Same as
Gabe’s?”
“Oh, right. Got me there. Listen, Blair, I gotta go. I
just…wanted to hear your voice.”
Aggravation gripped her and held tight. “Why, Brandis? I
don’t party. I don’t know how to kiss boys or…anything else. I’m a bookworm, a
geek, a science nerd. I like to be by myself, and I don’t run in a pack of
popular girls. Hardly worth your time I’d say.” Her face flushed, and she had
to put her feet back on the floor to keep her knees from knocking together.
“Guess that’s why I love you,” he said with a voice so soft
she thought he might be talking to himself.
“Spare me,” she scoffed,
suddenly needing to be off the phone. Something about him felt suffocating and
needy. While she figured herself for a caretaker, a conflict avoider, someone
who liked keeping things simple but wanted the people around her to be happy,
suddenly she sensed danger in letting Brandis worm his way any farther into her
heart. “Bye.” She hung up, quickly and sat for nearly an hour clutching her
phone and calming her racing pulse.
AUTHOR
INFORMATION:
Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger and beer marketing
expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major
college town. She has decades of experience
in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent,
ex-pat trailing spouse. While working as a successful Realtor, Liz made the
leap into writing novels about the same time she agreed to take on marketing
and sales for the Wolverine State Brewing Company.
Most days find her sweating inventory and sales figures for
the brewery, unless she’s writing, editing or sweating promotional efforts for
her latest publications.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a
groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained
thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the
“WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More
recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels,
which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries,
on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and many times in exotic
locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh
voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex
storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight,
frustrate, and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
If you are in the Ann Arbor area, be sure and stop into the
Wolverine State Brewing Co. Tap Room—but don’t ask her for anything “like” a
Bud Light, or risk serious injury.
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