Excerpt: Synastry by Casey Richards-Bradt
"There was no reason for Fancy to hate John, Cameron’s bus-driver boyfriend, but a hate had centralized in her gut like an unplanned pregnancy: a hate with a temper and a roaming mind. She hated him with her gut, and a gut feeling was as incontestable as the road beneath them, even if it was something she would never confront. It sat as a stone at the bottom of her friend group soup. What was there to deal with, even? Maybe she was looking for the root of the negativity in all the wrong places. John did have a bus—drove one for the high school and owned one, a separate one, decommissioned. He had been plenty nice to her. The bus was great, except for the odd dog smell. It was what they were speeding in now, deep-purple day-glowed and sloppily renovated with a mattress in the back and the sofa up front she was sitting on."