Listen: twenty-nine short conversations

a collection of short fiction by Corey Mesler: more information can be found at www.kuboapress.wordpress.comFashion student Lacey Weston is desperate to leave the city and go home to Jumbuck Springs. Her three older brothers are adamant she’s not. They made a death bed promise to their mother that Lacey would stay the distance at design school and Ethan, the oldest, takes this responsibility very seriously. But Lacey is deeply homesick and determined not to be dissuaded again. She’s also impulsive enough to try anything – even faking a pregnancy.Ex-cop turned mechanic, Cooper Grainger – one of Ethan’s oldest friends – agrees to watch out for Lacey in the city even though he has a history with her he’d rather forget. How hard could it be, right? But a couple of years later, Coop is over pulling Lacey out of scrapes and cleaning up her messes as she tries to outrun her grief and sense of dislocation. He takes her back to Jumbuck Springs so she can persuade her brothers to let her come home. But things don’t go according to plan. Before Coop knows it Lacey’s pregnant and he’s putting his hand up as the fake baby daddy, filling in for the town mechanic and moving in with her at the local pub.Lacey is thrilled to have won a reprieve but nothing about the situation sits well with Coop. Least of all having sweet little Lacey Weston as his new roomie…