Someone Like You Read online

  Outstanding praise for the novels of Timothy James Beck!

  HE’S THE ONE

  A Booksense 76 Pick!

  “Second novels are usually not as good as first novels, especially when first novels are as excellent as Timothy James Beck’s first work, It Had to Be You. So it was with surprise and delight that I found Beck’s second work, He’s the One, to be not just as good—but better! Funny and touching with wonderful characters.”

  —The Texas Triangle

  “Another romantic comedy from the author of the equally engaging

  It Had to Be You.”

  —Booklist

  “This second madcap Manhattan romance from Beck has sexy boys, mild comedy, and even a little amateur sleuthing. Beck seems to have found his calling serving up featherweight fun.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A delightful sophomore novel…smart and breezy.”

  —OutSmart (Houston, Texas)

  “He’s the One stands out for good writing and a fairly inventive plot. This book is a good, quick read, just what everyone needs in the summer. You can enjoy it during an afternoon by the pool or an evening when you don’t want to go out or watch TV. Pick it up and see if you don’t agree.”

  —The Bottom Line (Palm Springs)

  IT HAD TO BE YOU

  “A charming, humorously appealing tale…Readers will find the overall mood light and the action absorbing enough to keep the pages turning.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It Had to Be You is a rousing story of finding yourself after you’ve spent years thinking you already had. While much of this book is laugh out loud funny, there are plenty of serious moments as well…Dry, witty, touching and loads of fun, It Had to Be You is a novel that manages to easily and expertly straddle the fence between serious and hilarious.”

  —The Texas Triangle

  Books by Timothy James Beck

  IT HAD TO BE YOU

  HE’S THE ONE

  I’M YOUR MAN

  SOMEONE LIKE YOU

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Someone

  Like You

  TIMOTHY JAMES BECK

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For John Scognamiglio

  Acknowledgments

  Belgian waffles from Congreve room service to: Tom Wocken, Dorothy Cochrane, Paul Enea, Bill Thomas, and Alison Picard.

  Drink for Your Health smoothies to: Rebecca and Brian Baker, Shanon Best, Sean Brennan, Tim Brookover, famous author Rob Byrnes, Jason Cabot and Jeff Heilers, Susan Caretti, the Carter family, Carol E. Charny, Jean-Marc Chazy, Clea, Darryl Coble, the Cochrane family, Steve Code, Andre Coffa, Dalton DeHart, Caroline De La Rosa, Lynne Demarest, Jonathan DeMichael, Jone Devlin, the Ellner family, the Enea family, Laura Enea, Jim, Alex, and Alana Fitzgerald, Kitty Fontaine, the Forry family, the Garber family, Amy and Richard Ghiselin, Cullen Graff, Lowry Greeley, Kimberly Greene and River Heights Productions, Terri Griffin, Kate and Chris Guerrette, Victoria Harzer, Larry Henderson, Greg Herren, Alan Josoff, Judge Joe B., Christine and John Kovach, the Lambert family, Lee Linden, Amy Littlefield, Pierre Lombardini, Ellie Marshall, James McCain Jr., Marla McDaniel, Robin McElfresh, the Miller family, Debbie Milton, Helen Morris, Riley Morris, Eric Newland, Steve Nordwick and Doug French, David Outlaw, Pete and Sonja, Rachel Polintan, Pootz ’n Mootz, Ron Pratt, Todd Rainer, the Rambo family, Lori Redfearn and Bob Corrigan, Tandy Ringoringo, the Rose family, Carmella Roth, Rhonda Rubin and Lindsey Smolensky, Michael Ryan, Terry and Allen Shull, Leah Siegel, Laurie and Marty Smith, Sylvia and Angelo, Amy Terrell, Denece Thibodeaux, Matthew Thornton, Steve Vargas, Michael Vicencia, Ellen Ward and Pat Crosby, Don Whittaker, Sarena P. Williams, the Wocken family, Yojo, OUTeverywhere, AOL and Yahoo message boards and chat room friends and supporters, and everyone at Kensington who pulls it all together.

  Treats to: Arthur, Brandi, Guinness, Hailey, Lazlo, Margot, and River.

  Events and people in this novel are entirely fictitious. Especially the managers. The Mall of the Universe does not exist, but thank you to some Indiana resources, including Anne, Linda, Myra, Rob, Craig M. Bell, and Traci Lenzi, for helping provide a context within which it could be imagined. Thank you, Tracy Wilson, for providing a little bit of Dollywood.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1 Fruit of the Loom

  2 Oops…I Stabbed You Again!

  3 Kept Boy

  4 Bland Ambition

  5 That Witch!

  6 Trying to Keep the Customer Satisfied

  7 Other People’s Money

  8 Down in the Valley of the Dolls

  9 Why the Long Face?

  10 Don’t You Step on My Blue Swarovski Shoes

  11 Heels Over Head

  12 I Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates

  13 Two Doors Down

  14 Totally Pauley

  15 Shuffle Up and Deal

  16 A Model for Business and Technical Success

  17 Tall, Mark, and Handsome

  18 Smells Like Teen Spirit

  19 They Shoot Dragons, Don’t They?

  20 Rear Windows

  21 Wake-Up Call

  22 Children Should Be Shaken, Not Stirred

  23 Close Encounters of the Spurred Kind

  24 I’ll Take What’s Behind Door Number One

  25 It’s Everywhere You Want to Be

  26 Love at First Stroke

  27 He’s a Magic Man, Mama

  28 The Dinosaur from Our Imagination

  29 Indiana Talbot and the Temple of Doom

  30 The Scene of the Crime

  31 Diamond in the Rough

  32 One Shoe Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

  33 Chitty Chitty Big Bang

  34 A Temperamental Journey

  35 The Wichita Lying Man

  36 The Spy Who Bagged Me

  37 Fables of the Reconstruction

  38 The Short-Terminator

  39 Across the Universe

  40 My Tennessee Mountain Home

  1

  Fruit of the Loom

  Derek Anderson had been sixteen years old before he had room service for the first time. His parents’ idea of a family vacation was visiting historic battlefields, homes, and monuments. They could never stay at a hotel. Their chosen vacation locations were invariably in close proximity to a campsite, where the nearest thing to room service was Derek’s mother poking her head inside the tent to tell him something charred over a campfire was done cooking.

  Deprived of entertainment, Derek was forced to devise his own. His growing up was measured by the nature of his fantasies. To the young Derek, a muscular man at an adjoining campsite was a superhero in disguise. Derek would envision Muscular Man saving the world—or at least one very bored eight-year-old. A few years later, Muscular Man was all human, more Indiana Jones than Superman. Derek would imagine going on adventures with him as they searched for magical artifacts buried in a Civil War battlefield or hidden within a dead hero’s tomb.

  Then Derek hit adolescence and his mental scenarios didn’t require props, costumes, locations, or complicated plots. Nor could he focus on only one man when there were so many men everywhere. Shirts off and sweating as they set up tents. Stripped to cutoffs, trunks, or Speedos as they dove into lakes. Tanned muscles on display as they stood in tourist lines wearing shorts and tank tops. Wherever he looked, Derek saw a tantalizing feast that he wasn’t allowed to taste. He was trapped in a world of scorched eggs and incinerated hot dogs.

  Reuben, his best friend, took him away from all that. Reuben’s parents won a trip for four to New York City, and since Reuben was an only child, they asked Derek to go along. After much begging and pleading, t
he Andersons relented, and Derek got to stay in a real hotel. Reuben and Derek shared their own room. On their first morning, Reuben dialed room service and ordered Belgian waffles topped with strawberries and whipped cream. After Derek took his first bite, while sitting in bed and watching television, he swore he’d never spend another summer roughing it in the wilderness like a male version of pioneer girl Caddie Woodlawn.

  After that, Belgian waffles became Derek’s comfort food. On his first day of employee orientation for Drayden’s department store, he sat at a table in the back of a conference room and promised himself a heaping plate of waffles if he didn’t run out the door before it was all over. A tall woman dressed in an eggplant-colored suit and brown high heels stood at the front of the room, droning on about the history of Drayden’s.

  “Bjorn Henry Lvandsson founded Drayden’s in 1951. When Mr. Lvandsson’s farm was wiped out by a tornado, his wife, Greta, pawned her loom so the young couple could try their hand at retail. The original Drayden’s, which was named after Mr. Lvandsson’s first-born son, was a tiny shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, and sold denim clothing and boots to area farmers. Offering sturdy, no-frills work clothes at low prices paid off. Mr. Lvandsson was able to get his wife’s treasured loom out of hock and expand the business to include a line of hunting wear in 1954.”

  It was the hokiest story Derek had ever heard. His eyes glazed over as boredom became exhaustion. He stared at the Human Resources associate, studying her tight-lipped, hatchet face and wondering if she ever smiled. To keep himself from giving in to monotony, he made up a second job for her. In his daydream, she led a secret life as a stripper by night. Her routine as Lydia the Librarian was a favorite among the blue-collar patrons, earning her hundreds of dollars, which she earnestly socked away so she could get out of Indiana in style.

  Derek smiled, but his glee vanished when he opened his eyes and the bright lights, dollar bills, and stripper poles faded from his imagination. He was back in the windowless conference room with a dozen other new hires. Derek sighed resolutely and tried to concentrate as the HR associate continued.

  “People from all over Minnesota flocked to Drayden’s in the late fifties, when the Lvandssons introduced a line of livestock blankets. Woven by Greta Lvandsson on the loom that started it all, they christened the livestock line Fruit of the Loom. Unfortunately, the underwear empire caught wind of the copyright-infringing horse blankets and threatened to sue Drayden’s. ‘We never hear of underwear from a loom,’ Mr. Lvandsson insisted. ‘We only wear Hanes,’ his wife declared. The publicity from the case brought more customers into the ‘Little Store That Could,’ and people everywhere snatched up the newly christened Cattle Cozy line to keep their livestock warm on those harsh winter nights.”

  Derek didn’t know which was worse, the story or the bad Scandinavian accent the HR associate used while speaking as the idiotic Lvandssons. He thought about excusing himself to go to the bathroom and not returning, or faking a seizure. Instead, he reminded himself that he needed the job, the money it would provide, and the sense of independence it could give him.

  A black woman with big, curly hair chose that moment to stride into the conference room and say, “Sorry I’m late. Is this orientation?”

  “Yes, it is. We were going over the history of Drayden’s. If you’ll find a seat, we can continue.”

  As the HR storyteller continued describing Bjorn Henry’s foray into hunting and camping gear, Derek watched as the hair that ate Terre Haute sat next to him at his table.

  “My curling iron made me late. It wouldn’t heat up,” his seatmate whispered.

  “Sounds like my boyfriend,” Derek said. When her eyes lit up, he added, “Sometimes it helps to plug it in.”

  “Oh, I like you,” she said. “We’ll get along fine. I’m Vienna.”

  “Derek,” he whispered, pointing at himself.

  They stopped talking and listened to their Drayden’s history lesson, which became more palatable now that Derek had Vienna to alleviate his boredom. As Drayden’s expanded into new markets, Mr. Lvandsson tried to engage his children in the business. His eldest son, Drayden, ran off to Hollywood. Sven, the next in line, headed for New York City and went to work on Wall Street after he received his MBA. Lastly, Henrietta, the only daughter, not to mention the family’s bad seed, grabbed her automotive engineering certificate and raced off to join a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500. Other than Greta, who would greet Drayden’s visitors from her loom, which was positioned in front of the main doors of the original store, the only family member to actively join in the business was Gertrude, the family cow. When Greta accidentally mixed up her Christmas card list with the customer database, Drayden’s catalog business was born. The store was inundated with calls from people who had to have the festive sweater a perky Gertrude sported on the front of the Lvandsson family Christmas cards.

  “Is this shit for real?” Vienna whispered.

  Derek could empathize with the Lvandsson children. A career in the retail industry was not his ultimate goal in life, and he understood why they wanted to get as far away as possible from their parents’ dreams. Derek’s dream had been to be pampered and privileged. To eat Belgian waffles in bed. Maybe be famous for being famous. However, that sort of lifestyle was usually reserved for people with money. Or at the very least, for their children. Derek’s parents were not rich. They were comfortable and happy. But they assumed their son would want the life they lived and never bothered to show him that his life had possibilities. Instead of preparing him for a future, they immersed him in a past of on-this-spot battlefields and crumbling buildings.

  Derek explained that to Vienna when they were allowed to leave for lunch.

  “I hear you, Derek,” she said as they left Drayden’s and wandered into Mall of the Universe. “My parents were very old-fashioned. Even though I did well in school, they never dreamed that I’d want to go to college. They thought I’d turn out just like my mama, living and breathing for my man. I worked hard to go to college, and I got my education. On my own, thank you.”

  “What’s your degree?”

  Vienna mumbled something that Derek couldn’t understand. There were a lot of people in the mall, voices and footsteps echoing off the tile and glass interior of the corridors, so he asked her to repeat herself.

  “Psychology. I got my B.S. at Indiana University,” she said.

  “I get mine from my boyfriend,” Derek quipped. “I don’t get it. Why are you here with me, working at a mall, when you could rake in the dough from an office somewhere in the real world?”

  “My license to practice was suspended,” she said. “Hey, let’s go visit my friend Davii.”

  They pushed their way through throngs of people and crossed the main floor of the mall. When Derek was a boy, he’d seen a drawing of a space colony that might house thousands of people sometime in the future. It looked like a gigantic, high-tech wagon wheel floating through the galaxy. Mall of the Universe was similarly shaped, but firmly planted on the ground with a planetarium at its hub. The mall contained not only hundreds of stores, but also a nightclub, a roller rink, and a bowling alley, as well as a hotel and an apartment building on opposite sides of the mall, and a mid-rise condominium standing sentinel over all four mall levels, which were named Earth, Moon, Sun, and Stars.

  Derek had assumed they would meet Davii in the food court, since there was one on the Earth level, but they walked past it, then Vienna pulled him into a hair salon. He was overcome by loud music and the acrid smell of perm solution, which almost made him yearn to return to Drayden’s and the insufferable Lvandsson legend. Vienna dragged him to the end of a row of chairs, where a handsome man dressed in black was cutting a client’s hair.

  “Davii!” Vienna shrieked.

  “Vienna!” Davii roared. He flung his arms around Vienna, and for a moment Derek was afraid Davii had plunged his scissors into her back. He couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Drayden’s without her.

 
; “I missed you,” Vienna said. “This has been the longest day ever.”

  “I know,” Davii commiserated. He resumed snipping his client’s hair as he said, “I’ve been slaving away here for hours. Ages!”

  “It’s only noon,” Derek said, checking his watch to be sure. Davii looked at him with an unreadable expression. Derek immediately worried that Davii hated his hair.

  “Davii, this is Derek,” Vienna said, putting her arm around Derek’s waist. “He’s been my saving grace today. We’re in training together, and he’s been so witty and clever, providing a much-needed stimulus in a dull setting. Very entertaining. He reminds me of you.”