Author: Jean Meltzer
Publication Date: August 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780778334415
Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing / MIRA
Price: $18.99
Buy Links:
HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/magical-meet-cute-jean-meltzer?variant=41281223950370
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Social Links:
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Book Summary:
From the author of the buzzy The Matzah Ball comes a romantic comedy
for fans of Sally Thorne, about a lonely potter who drunkenly creates a golem
doll of her perfect match—and meets the man of her dreams the next day.
About the Author:
JEAN MELTZER studied dramatic writing at NYU Tisch and has earned numerous awards for her work in television, including a daytime Emmy. She spent five years in rabbinical school before her chronic illness forced her to withdraw, and her father told her she should write a book? just not a Jewish one because no one reads those.
Excerpt:
1
It was hard and
magnificent.
Faiga Kaplan, otherwise
known as Faye to her friends, ran her hands down the long shaft of her latest
clay creation. An earthenware vase—at least three feet in length and bearing a
perfectly crafted slit for sunflowers at the top—lay on her studio table. Having
been painted twice and forged through fire in her kiln, it was now ready for
placement in her storefront window. All she had to do was get the heavy,
hulking piece of pottery through the first floor of Magic Mud Pottery without
breaking it.
Cautiously, she lifted
the vase from the table. Peeking out from the sides, carefully managing her
balance with each step, she creeped slowly past the tables and chairs of her
studio, bumping over the threshold into the hallway, heading through the first
floor. She was halfway through the old wooden building, by the center
staircase, when she felt something mushy and wet beneath her left foot.
Faye didn’t need to look
down.
She knew exactly what she
had stepped in.
“Hillel.” Faye groaned,
rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
Carefully, she put the
vase down beside the staircase, turning her attention to inspect the damage now
seeping through her pink sock.
“Hillel,” Faye called out
again. “I’m serious. Get in here!”
Hillel, a hairless and
toothless Chinese crested, peeked around the corner. Faye had adopted the
pathetic-looking creature when he was ten years old. At the time, she had
considered it a mitzvah, a good deed, in the wake of a dreadful breakup. She
thought she could funnel all her love into this poor creature—a dog riddled
with back acne and without a home—and he would adore her forever.
“I know you did this on
purpose,” Faye said, lifting one foot up to display the mess.
Hillel twisted away from
her, tail up, his tiny butthole pointed straight in her line of vision. She
swore that dog could speak English.
She also knew that his
constant accidents had nothing to do with tummy troubles. After all, Faye was a
responsible pet owner. She had taken Hillel to the vet a dozen times, run every
expensive test to see if there was something physically wrong with him, only to
be told that the tiny monster was in perfectly good health. Indeed, the vet had
promised her that Hillel would likely live another decade. No, he defecated all
over her apartment for the same reason Stuart had called off their engagement. She was too much.
“Keep acting this way,”
Faye warned, narrowing her eyes in his direction, “and I’ll send you to go live
with Nelly. You can wear frilly doll dresses and be the guest of honor at her
Second Glance Erotic Parties for the rest of your natural existence.”
Hillel strolled past her,
unconcerned, before landing on a mess of blankets and pillow squares waiting
for him by the storefront window.
Faye had made the tiny
bed for Hillel there so he would be comfortable. She figured he could watch the
people walking down Main Street, see the customers before they entered her
store. It was also the sunniest, and therefore warmest, spot in her building,
an absolute necessity for a dog without any fur. She did everything for Hillel.
She gave him her best. Devoted her love, time, and energy to his well-being.
And what did Hillel do in response?
Crap all over her.
The thought had crossed
her mind more than once to return him to the shelter.
Faye never did, of course.
No, as it turned out…no amount of snarling or defecating in high-traffic areas,
or trying to bite her with his gummy, toothless mouth, would ever steer her
heart away from the four-legged fur demon.
The reason being simple
enough. She had made a promise to Hillel. She had stood outside Woodstock
Animal Shelter, placed him safely in the front basket of her bike, and told him
in she would care for him, and protect him—and
never betray his love on a snowmobile in Lapland—until the bitter end.
Perhaps loving someone to
the bitter end had always been her downfall.
Her mind wandered to her
ex-fiancé, Stuart, when most applicably her nose wrinkled. The scent of dog
feces was beginning to take up residence.
Faye hobbled on one foot
up the stairs to the second floor. Finding her way to the bathtub, she set
about cleaning up her foot.
For the last three years,
Faye had been the sole proprietor of Magic Mud Pottery. She lived above her
store and studio in a quaint one-bedroom apartment.
Magic Mud Pottery was one
of a handful of quirky old buildings made of wood and painted in bright colors
that dotted the bucolic downtown of Woodstock, New York. Set between large
trees, and dotted by pride flags and double-hung windows, it was the type of
town that, no matter the season, smelled like burning wood and cinnamon.
Her apartment was small,
but as a single woman, she didn’t need much space. Plus, she had gotten an
amazing price. On the second floor, a cozy bedroom sat towards the back of the
building, overlooking a fenced-in yard and garden. In the front, a tiny living
room was divided from a half kitchen by a counter. A bathroom rested in
between.
As an old building, the
layout—but especially the kitchen— was all types of weird. While the oven,
stove, and sink were on the second floor, the refrigerator was too tall for the
upstairs kitchen alcove. And so it sat downstairs, right behind the front
counter, where Faye often rang up customers.
At first, it was a
problem. Especially at night, as Faye often liked to sneak downstairs in
nothing but her skivvies and have a late-night snack. But Faye quickly realized
that most everyone who owned a business in downtown Woodstock lived elsewhere,
and so, even though she had invested in curtains, she never bothered to use
them.
Beyond all these things,
she liked the quirkiness of the building. The fact it was strange and unusual.
It reminded her of an apartment she had lived in on the Lower East Side while a
young lawyer in Manhattan, with a shower in the kitchen and a bathroom outside
the apartment, just down the hall.
Faye was finishing
cleaning up when the bell above the front door to Magic Mud Pottery rang out.
“Faiga,” a voice called
out moments later.
She recognized the voice
as belonging to Nelly, who owned the building next door, where she ran the
business Second Glance Treasures.
It was a gentle, lovely
name for a store that was essentially extra storage space for a woman who had
taken the hobby of hoarding to a professional capacity. Perhaps Faye was being
too hard on the eccentric octogenarian. But No-Filter Nelly—as Faye sometimes
called her behind her back—was a frequent, though not always welcome, visitor.
“One moment,” Faye called
out.
Quickly, she finished
drying off her foot. Spraying down her bathtub and the floor, she popped
downstairs. Nelly was standing by the storefront window, arms crossed, her
entire forehead wrinkling in displeasure.
“It smells like a
porta-potty in here.” Nelly grimaced.
Faye huffed. “Hillel had
an accident again.”
“Again?” Nelly looked
towards the dog. “Maybe you should take him to the vet.” “I’ve taken him to the
vet,” Faye reminded her for the ten thousandth time. Grabbing a towel and some
pet odor remover, she bent down to the floor and began cleaning up his mess.
“Can I help you with
something, Nelly?”
“I was wondering if
you’re going to Single in the Sukkah tonight?” she asked.
“I’m not planning on it.”
“Why not?” Nelly said,
following her. She always followed her. “Only twenty-four dollars a
participant. For a good cause. Plus, you might meet someone.”
Faye tossed the turd in
the trash. “I’m not interested in meeting anyone right now.”
“Why not?”
Faye slammed the lid
shut. “You know the reason.” “Because you were dumped by your fiancé of seven
years after a snowmobile accident in Lapland?”
Faye had first met Stuart
Wutz during law school. After a seven-year engagement, the two-week escapade
she had painstakingly planned to Lapland was supposed to be a pre-wedding
getaway, a chance for them to have some fun before planning for their wedding,
three months away, moved into hyperdrive.
Instead, everything about
the trip had been a disaster.
Stuart complained
constantly. About the cold. About the food. About his hemorrhoids. He nearly
caused an international incident when he found out the hamburger he was eating
was made of reindeer meat. But it wasn’t until that fateful snowmobile
ride—when Stuart skidded out on a slick of ice, crashing into a snowy
embankment—that their decade-long relationship came to an official end.
Bringing her vehicle safely to a stop beside him, racing to check that he was
okay, she was shocked when Stuart had stood up and lobbed his own attack.
You’re too much, Faye. Everything you do, everything you are… it’s
just too much. No wonder your own mother couldn’t stand you.
The wedding was off. Faye
was thirty-one years old, and having given Stuart the best years of her
life—the best of her reproductive years, too—back to being single. It was more
than betrayal. It was more than a hurt. It was an avalanche of pain that she
had barely escaped from. And yet, she couldn’t completely blame Stuart for what
had happened. He was simply a trigger point in a snowslip that had been
building since her youth.
“So, you had one bad
experience,” Nelly said.
“Not just one,” Faye
grumbled.
“So, you had multiple bad
experiences,” Nelly said, unfazed. “Lots of people hurt and disappointed you.
Because of this, you give up on love forever?”
Faye spun around. “I
don’t need a mother, Nelly!”
Her words pierced the air
and turned into ice. “Everyone needs a mother,” Nelly said, simply.
Faye scoffed, hardening
herself against the admission. Against the confession. She had already had a
mother in her life, and she sucked. Some nights, she could still feel the pain
in her wrist—in her fingers—from where her mom had permanently disabled her.
Faye twisted away from
Nelly. “If you’re done pestering me about—”
Nelly cut her off. “So
come for the synagogue. They always need money.”
“How about I just write
them a check and spend the night reading a book and eating hard kosher salami
by myself?”
Nelly grimaced. “This is
fun for you?”
“Yes, Nelly.” Faye threw
her hands up, exasperated. “This is fun for me. Because I like being alone.
More important, I’m better alone. I have no interest in meeting a man, starting
a romantic relationship, or getting married. Going to a Singles in the Sukkah
event would be the equivalent of false advertising.”
Faye made her way back
through her pottery studio. Picking up her vase, she turned to place it in her
storefront window. And that was when she saw it. The vase she had thought was
perfect…had a tiny bubble at the bottom.
“Haman’s hat,” Faye huffed. She tried not to use curse words.
“What’s wrong?” Nelly
asked.
Faye shook her head. “I
must have missed an air bubble before drying.”
Clay held memory. If you
did something wrong at any part of the process, it would be reflected in the
final work. A fingerprint at the edge. A lip all misshapen and wonky. A warp or
scratch in the otherwise smooth facade, or worse…the entire thing exploding,
shattering completely, when placed into the kiln for firing. Clay, contrary to
popular belief, was not an easy material to work with.
“I’m just gonna throw it
out,” Faye said, attempting to move it out of her window.
“Wha!” Nelly stopped her
with both hands. “Why would you throw this out? You’ve already spent time to
make it.”
“Because it’s awful,”
Faye snapped back. “No one is going to want a vase with a bubble sticking out
of it!” And because looking at that bubble was a constant reminder of all the
things her mother had stolen from her.
Faye was only seventeen
years old when it happened. When her mother—in another one of her random and
totally unjustified rages—woke her up from a sound sleep because she had
accidently left clay out on the kitchen table. Grabbing Faye by the wrist and
pulling her out of bed, she dragged her down the hall to clean up the supposed
mess. Faye could still recall the sensation of her hand being twisted the wrong
way, the sound of it snapping as the bone broke. But most of all, she
remembered screaming for her father to help her.
The abuse Faye had
endured as a child changed her. She lost the scholarship to a prestigious art
school in Manhattan where she was planning to study ceramics. She became wholly
focused on protecting herself, remaining independent… Changing paths, she
became a lawyer instead. And when she met Stuart, she thought she had found the
safe, unconditional type of love that she read about in her romance novels.
Instead, her clay memory
bubbled up and formed blisters all over their love. She became someone
unrecognizable. Desperate to keep Stuart happy—desperate to prove she was
someone loveable and worthwhile—she lost herself completely. The break up had
been hard, but when she looked at her life now, at Woodstock and Magic Mud
Pottery, she was grateful. What life had taught her, most of all, was that she
had to protect herself.
Excerpted
from MAGICAL MEET CUTE by Jean Meltzer, Copyright © 2024 by Jean Meltzer.
Published by MIRA.
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