Short Fiction Clean Romance Cozy Mystery Fantasy

Finding out you're immortal as a teenager can set your world on fire. But finding out at the same time that just getting angry could kill everyone around you can dampen that pretty quickly. Who wants to live forever if you can't get close enough to someone that they can piss you off and live to see the next sunrise with you? Meaning - it was time to take a road trip to sort things out. When my uncle offered a summer gig cooking out of his food truck for a big-city contract, I jumped at it. But when he stopped to pick up another helper down the road, I was bummed. She was a looker, a great cook, but I didn't know if I could trust myself with her - in every way...

When the hamburgers all disappeared, along with the buns I was warming, I thought I was seeing things. But when my spatula went through the cast-iron grill top - I had to let it go out of reflex. No way was I going after it. I'd been burned too many times. It wasn't like I had a choice after that. Because the grill itself dropped out through the bottom of the rolling coach we were cooking out of that summer. I looked up at Hami, my order-taker, partner, and lover - only to see her fall through the floor as well. A look of shock and trying to say something, but frozen in time. Then the coach disappeared, and I fell with it - but only as far as the pavement it used to be parked on. I could see the asphalt beneath my feet at least. Until it turned to some sort of foamy waves lapping on a beach I'd never seen before. Green hard-packed sand. Green water. And a long white line that went down this beach like it was some sort of dual-lane highway. In the distance, this shimmery circle thing. Down that "highway". Oh, what the hell. Nothing else out here but sand and water. Might as well check it out...

Are our dogs smarter than we are about our own love life? John woke one morning to his dog talking in his head, telling he needed to exercise, eat, and dress better, since he was about to meet the love of his life. Jo's own dog, told her how to dress that day and what, to do in order, to meet someone special. All just in thoughts in their head. Of course, they couldn't tell anyone that their dog's had suddenly, become telepathic. But when, John started talking to the young woman in front of him at a coffee shop he hardly ever visited. And when Jo met him for lunch "accidentally", then set up a date the next day on an impulse. You had to think those voices in their heads maybe had already figured this all out... *Another clean, feel-good romance from J. R. Kruze, for lovers and dog afficianado's everywhere.*