Gia's Gems, page 1
Gia’s Gems
Synopsis
Gia Williams is living her dream as a successful travel magazine columnist. Gia’s Gems, featuring a single, thirty-something lesbian who travels around and finds the little gay gems in each town she visits, is the best gig ever, right? There’s just one problem. Gia is agoraphobic, and she hasn’t left her house in years. Gia’s Gems is a complete photoshop fake.
Lindsey Speyer is a huge fan of Gia’s Gems, so imagine her disappointment when she accidentally stumbles upon Gia’s secret. Not knowing what to do with the information, a friend talks Lindsey into turning the tables on Gia. Gia must come to Lindsey’s economically struggling Midwestern town and feature it in her next article...or else.
Gia just needs to get through one week with one beautiful and captivating blackmailer in a quirky little town she’s never heard of. What could possibly go wrong?
Gia’s Gems
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By the Author
Share the Moon
The Marriage Masquerade
Gia’s Gems
Gia’s Gems
© 2021 By Toni Logan. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63555-916-3
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: November 2021
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission
Credits
Editor: Barbara Ann Wright
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design by Tammy Seidick
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
Acknowledgments
A heartfelt thank you to Radclyffe, Sandy, and the incredible team at Bold Strokes Books. I am honored and forever grateful to be a part of this amazing family. Thank you.
A very special shoutout to Barbara Ann Wright, editor extraordinaire, for your patience and guidance. I definitely owe you a huge box of goodies.
For my wonderful friends, I thank you for always being there for me. You guys keep me smiling. I love you.
To Tammy, for sharing all the crazy stories of her cat, Brody, and to Ronnie for the late night text messages of encouragement and comments about all things writing.
And the biggest thank you goes to you, the reader, for taking a chance on this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Dedication
To Evelyn Bean (Beaner)
Prologue
Did you get the pics I sent you?” Stacy said in an over amplified voice.
“Where are you right now? I hear loud music.” Gia Williams clutched a glass of merlot, sank into the well-worn spot on her couch, and put her bare feet up. She hit the speaker button, and scrolled through Stacy’s latest pictures of food, scenery, and selfie pictures.
“I’m at a bar sampling the local brew that the bartender said was halfway decent. And he was right, it’s not bad.”
“Beer? Thought you were on a wine kick?” Gia turned her phone sideways and smiled at a cute selfie of Stacy standing in front of an old stone building with the sign Brillow’s Brewery in the background.
“That was last week. Besides, I’m at some hole-in-the-wall beer bar that’s south of Chicago, as in way south of Chicago, and believe it or not, this place is like a gay mecca. I mean, seriously, how can there be so many of us living in such a tiny little…Oh. My. God.”
“What?” Gia stopped looking at the photos and gave Stacy her undivided attention.
“There’s a gorgeous Amazon woman at the end of the bar, totally staring me down right now, and I kid you not, she just licked her lips.”
“Wow, someone’s going to get lucky tonight,” Gia replied in a half-hearted way. Stacy always got lucky, so the fact that someone was licking their lips at her wasn’t a news flash.
“I don’t know. My kinky meter is starting to ping. She reminds me of someone I hooked up with in Atlanta, and holy hell, that woman had an arsenal of crazy ass toys that would make most lesbians blush. I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that kind of thing tonight,” Stacy said.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not like most lesbians,” Gia said as she returned her attention to the photos. She already knew that if something was pinging Stacy’s meter that much, it was a lure she wouldn’t be able to resist. “Take a picture of her and send it to me,” Gia said as she flicked her thumb and first finger across the screen of her phone and enlarged a selfie of Stacy biting into a rather large, mysterious looking pastry.
“I have a better idea, why don’t you start getting your ass out of your house and back into the world so you can send me pictures of your dysfunctional one-nighters with eccentric women?”
Gia rolled her eyes and downed half her glass of wine. Here they went again, the never-ending prodding to get her out of her self-induced home coma and back into the land of the living. “You know why, Stacy.” Gia sighed. “I’m just not ready yet, and besides, you know I’m agoraphobic.”
Stacy snorted. “You’re not agoraphobic, you have bruised ego-itis, and will you please stay off those self-diagnose websites? Remember what happened last time? You about scared the shit out of me when you called crying hysterically because you thought the spot on your thigh was cancer when it was really—”
“I know, I know,” Gia interrupted. “Just dried chocolate. But this is different.”
“No, Gia, it isn’t. Stop looking outside yourself for excuses and start looking within for answers. It’s going on two years. Don’t you think that’s long enough?” Stacy huffed.
“Hey, according to all the inspirational sites on my social feed, it’ll take as long as it takes.” Okay, maybe Stacy was right. But damn it, she was still in pain after being dumped and Stacy knew that. So what if she had spent the last two years not wanting to go out in public or date anyone? She didn’t have to. All the wonderful convivences of technology both satisfied and enabled her antisocial mood. She telecommuted, shopped online, had food delivered to her house, streamed movies, attended video conferencing calls for work, and fired up her vibrator when the mood hit. It was a self-diagnosed agoraphobic’s wet dream, and for right now, it was exactly what she thought she needed to heal.
“Uh-oh,” Stacy mumbled.
“What? What’s going on? Give me the play-by-play.” Gia finished off the remainder of her wine and anxiously waited for her reply. Living vicariously through her best friend had become her only attachment to the outside world, and she relished in Stacy’s descriptive narrative.
“The Amazon queen just sent me a beer,” Stacy said in a low voice.
“You already have a beer.”
“I know, I guess she wants me good and drunk tonight.”
“On two beers?” Gia chuckled as she settled deeper into the couch cushion, knowing full well that Stacy could drink most people under the table.
“Well, two’s a good start for the kind of night I think this woman has in mind,” Stacy said.
“Ew. That’s a little more information than…ouch.” Gia gently slapped at her cat Brody, who sat on top of the cushion behind her.
“Ouch what? Ouch for me getting some tonight with an Amazon woman?” Stacy asked.
“No, ouch for me. Brody is sitting behind me using my head as a kneading pad. Which is reminding me that I really need to trim his claws.”
“You do know that a beautiful woman could be doing that to you.”
“Clawing my head?” Gia grunted.
“No. Massaging you. Some hot babe could be running her fingers through your hair right now.”
Gia leaned forward and out of Brody’s reach. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, and thanks to Brody, the left side of her head looked like it had been caught in a wind tunnel. She gently peeled the feline off the top of the cushion and placed him by her lap. “I think I’ll pass.” As much as she would love feeling the touch of a woman on any part of her body, she did not welcome the drama and bullshit that came with that package. “No, thanks,” she mumbled to herself as she blew at the strands of her hair tickling across her face. She undid her hair tie and placed it in her mouth as she palmed her hair behind her head.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Stacy barked into the phone.
“What?” Gia shoved her hair into the elastic band.
“Amazon woman approaching, gotta go.”
“Practice safe sex.” Gia quickly threw out in a teasing way, but the connection had already gone dead. “Guess Stacy’s in for another fun night, huh, big boy?” She ran her fingers down Brody’s back as he climbed on her bare leg and began kneading. “Ouch, ouch. Enough already.” Red, needle-like marks appeared on her skin. She gently scooped him off her leg and placed him back on the cushion next to her. She had to repe
As she sat back and finished scrolling through the remainder of Stacy’s pictures, a pang of jealousy hit her. Stacy was out embracing life while she hid from it. She stared at the last picture in the sequence and found herself being drawn into the quaintness of Stacy’s recent small-town adventures. Good ol’ Stace, she thought. She gets to go to some of the weirdest and most interesting places.
Stacy worked for a mid-sized tech company that developed a medical software app that helped track a patient from admission to release and all things in between. The added bonus for the hospitals and clinics that signed up for the software was that she flew to their facility for a two-day, hands-on training session. It was a perk that brought Stacy to small towns in places Gia never heard of or knew existed. And with Stacy’s extroverted personality and excellent gaydar, it didn’t take her long to sniff out anything or anyone who even remotely hinted of gayness. The stories she relayed of her escapades were entertainingly colorful, and just as she had done since the time when they were teens, she hung on every descriptive word.
They had been swapping stories about women, love, and life since high school. Fast forward twenty years, and the only thing that Gia thought had changed between then and now was their age. Well, that and the fact that neither of their lives looked anything like they thought it would. Who knew being rich, successful, and in a long-term relationship was so hard to obtain?
As she studied Stacy’s photos through the intoxicating fog now hovering around her brain, she could almost see herself as the one taking the pictures. “All right, Stacy,” she said as she forwarded the photos to her email account. “Since you think it’s time for me to have a life, I’ll have yours.” She stumbled into her bedroom and returned with her laptop. She settled back on the couch, opened the computer and activated her photo editing software. She picked eight of what she considered were the best of Stacy’s pictures and one by one, began photoshopping herself into the scenes.
She created a three-page article on her adventures as a single, thirty-something lesbian traveling around to small towns and finding the little gay gems each had to offer. She took the information Stacy told her about her latest travel escapades and embellished them. She focused on the food, the idiosyncrasies, the nuances, and the hidden away places and spaces that Stacy seemed to have an uncanny way of sniffing out. As Gia poured herself more wine, she poured her wit into the humorous and informative fictitious piece.
By the time she looked up from her computer and glanced at the clock, it was two in the morning. She arched her back, stretched and looked down at Brody. “What should we call this masterpiece, huh, big boy?” Brody didn’t look up, as though he couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge any human sentence that didn’t have the words din-din time in it. “How about…” She cocked her head as she typed Gia’s Gems at the top. “There, take that, Stacy.” She yawned as she hit send. She placed the computer on the coffee table, stood, and turned to Brody. “I’m heading to bed, you coming?” Brody didn’t stir. “Fine.” She headed to her bedroom, knowing he had not only heard the word bed, but by the time she peed and brushed her teeth, he would be curled up in the middle of her pillow. Gia smiled. So what if she was a self-induced weirdo right now? At least she didn’t have any drama in her life. Well, to be fair, she really didn’t have anything in her life except her job, Stacy, and her cat. But hey, she was content. And content was so much better than what she had been.
* * *
Stacy’s body was aching. With her limited knowledge of the human anatomy, she didn’t even think she had muscles in some of the places that were now throbbing.
“What a night.” She chuckled to herself as she hobbled into the hotel’s coffeeshop with her suitcase in tow. The sign at the empty hostess stand instructed her to seat herself, so she picked the first empty booth.
A server carrying a menu and carafe of coffee approached. She mouthed a thank you as the server poured a cup. She took a sip and cringed. She had tasted some pretty nasty coffee in her travels, but she was always grateful for the end result. “If you have a veggie omelet with hashbrowns, I’ll have that.”
The server nodded as she scribbled the order on a small notepad, turned, and headed for the kitchen. Stacy relaxed against the back cushion of the booth and, feeling as though she was finally back amongst the land of the living, dug in her purse and pulled out her phone. She had a plane to catch in four hours, and she wanted to make sure it was on time. As she activated her screen, she noticed her email icon indicated she already had ten. “How is that even possible?” She groaned. “It’s not even six o’clock.” As she debated which she should open first, her eyes wandered to the last on the list. It was from Gia, timestamped at two in the morning. “Do you ever sleep?” she mumbled as she tapped it open. But who was she to talk? By two in the morning, she was on her second rodeo ride around a toy she never knew existed.
As she topped off her coffee, she began reading. A professionally designed, two-page story, peppered with Gia’s photoshopped pictures, stared back at her. “What the hell?” Within minutes, she was laughing as she read Gia’s comical spin on her own words, turning them into a charming adventure. “Damn, girl, you still got it,” she said as the server placed the food in front of her.
Stacy finished Gia’s article, but before she closed the email, a thought crossed her mind. She hit the forward arrow and typed in the address of a friend who was the assistant to the senior editor at the popular lesbian online magazine, L Online.
Hey, Sara,
You remember me telling you about my friend Gia? Well, I thought I would pass along a sample of her writing. Just in case anything opens up at L.
Hope you’re doing well.
Stacy
She hoped after L Online read Gia’s article, they might hire her to do some freelance writing, and maybe in turn, that would help Gia emerge from her cocoon. She hit send, placed her phone back in her purse, and grabbed the salt shaker. By this afternoon, she would be in another town, working with another clinic, and hopefully, enjoying another round of local hospitality. And maybe—she arched her aching back and rolled her sore shoulders—she could book a massage for later that evening.
For a brief moment, she wondered if she was getting too old for late night hook-ups. “Nah.” She smiled as she slid her fork into the greasy omelet and replayed a scene from the previous night. As long as her libido was still firing on all cylinders, she was in it for the ride. And she was really enjoying the ride.
* * *
“What do you mean, they want to publish it? How did they even get it?” Gia didn’t know if she should feel flattered that L Online wanted to publish her work or pissed at what Stacy did.
“I might have sent it to my friend Sara over there. She’s the assistant to the senior editor, who might have showed it to her boss.”
“That’s an awful lot of might haves.” Gia cradled her phone between her cheek and shoulder, while she opened a can of wet cat food. “Din-din time,” she said as Brody let out an ear-piercing yowl.
“What the hell was that?”
“That was Brody.” Gia giggled. “You’d think wet food smelled like a female in heat.” She dumped the contents on a small plate and placed it on the floor. “There you go, sweetie.”
“Anyway, I didn’t mean for them to want to publish the actual article. I just thought I would send it in as a sample of your writing. But it doesn’t surprise me that they fell in love with it. It’s a well-written and entertaining piece, Gia.”
“But it’s not real. I didn’t do any of those things. You did.” She leaned against her counter and pinched the bridge of her nose. Again, she was flattered beyond words for the offer to publish, but her stomach soured as she wondered if the article teetered on the edge of plagiarism.
“Yeah, but they don’t know that,” Stacy said.
