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Friday, 26 June 2015
Jamie Forta from The Confessions Series by Louise Rozett ~ Character Interview + Excerpt + Giveaways
This week Paperback Princess has dedicated the week to the Confessions Series by Louise Rozett. These are the posts thus far...
Day 2 Confessions of an Almost Girlfriend Review
Day 3 Interview with Rose Zarelli
Today we've got the Jamie Forta here to do a short Character Interview with the same questions that Rose answered in her Character Interview yesterday. Now as most of you would know, Jamie can be a bit difficult in the whole communication thing, so Louise was kind enough to sit in at our Interview to prompt him a bit, I suppose that's what's fantastic about being an Author, you can coach your book characters :) !
For the next 3 days I will also be sharing a chapter a day of No More Confessions, just to get you all a little bit more excited Furthermore we've got not one but TWO giveaways at the end, enter for your chance to win a copy of Confessions of an Angry Girl, book 1 in the series, this giveaway is hosted by yours truly to complement this feature. YA Bound is hosting the other giveaway to accompany No More Confession's tour.
YA Bound is hosting a tour for No More Confessions which is book 3 and the last book in The Confessions series, click on the banner below for the complete tour schedule and check out the stops for this tour.
~ Character Interview with Jamie Forta ~
Hi! This is Louise, author of the Confessions series. Today the lovely Angelica of Paperback Princess is asking Jamie the same questions she asked Rose yesterday. Let’s see if Jamie is up for communicating today...
Jeremy Sumpter dream casted by Louise Rozett
Source MTG Reviews
Describe yourself and your life in a tweet
A tweet? I don’t do that stuff.
Louise: Jamie, this is Louise. It’s just a sentence or two that’s 140 characters or less.
Like I said. I don’t do that stuff.
Louise: Are you willing to give it a try? For Angelica?
Uh...okay. 140 characters seems like a lot but I’ll give it a shot, Angelica.
"Don’t talk much. Can draw some. Bartender. Probably time to find a different job. Thinking about leaving Union. Might go out west. Someday."
Cool. What are your aspirations for the future?
Rose thinks I’m some kind of “artist.” I don’t know—I don’t know what that means, really. I got some stuff I gotta work out before I can do anything like think about a future. That isn’t something I ever did before. But, uh, it’s nice that Rose thinks I’m a...that I can draw.
What traits are "must haves" for future partners...Rose maybe?
It’s day-by-day right now. One day a time, if you know what I mean. I still gotta figure out what I got to offer. If I offer anything. I can’t think about anyone else right now. Which sucks for Rose, I know. But she gets it. She’s...Rose is cool.
What’s your greatest fear?
Uh...that I won’t be anything. Or that I’m not anything.
Louise: Can you expand on that?
Do I have to?
Louise: No, but if you can, I think Angelica’s readers would like it.
Angelica, you’re killing me here. Uh...my greatest fear is that I’m...already the best version of myself. That this is it. That would be...
Louise: Bad?
Yup.
Louise: Anything else?
That covers it. Are we done?
Louise: One more question.
One more. That’s it, okay?
Who do you most admire?
Easy. Rose. She, uh, she sees the future. She sees her future. And she sees one for me too, I guess. I admire that.
Louise: You know what she said when Angelica asked her that question?
No.
Louise: She said she admires you the most.
Yeah, well. I don’t know why she’d say that but...that’s nice. That’s Rose for ya.
Louise: Does that mean something to you?
I said one more, and that was one more. I’m out. Thanks.
Louise: All right, you heard the man. :-) Thanks for hosting us on your blog, Angelica!
My pleasure Louise, and I am so glad to have been able to have this chat with both you and Jamie, and Rose yesterday. Please do let Jamie know that I greatly appreciated his efforts in answering the questions so truthfully, it couldn't have been easy.
~ Chapter 1 ~
“Shake It Out,” Ceremonials, Florence + The Machine
The girl in front of me with the pink eye shadow is way drunk. Mascara tears slash down her face and onto her white eyelet halter top as she begs the smirking bouncer at Dizzy’s to let her in because her boyfriend is in there with some other girl and she just has to see him, she has to make sure he knows what a whore that other girl is.
It’s lovely the way girls talk about each other.
“I need to see him, I need...him!” she wails, her friend holding her up by her tanned shoulders, her drunk jelly legs making her wobble on her white cork wedges.
I look away, disgusted, embarrassed for girls everywhere.
The wailing girl is probably a student here in New Haven, at freakin’ Yale, which means she has a serious brain in her head. She should know that girls do not need guys. The Romance Industrial Complex just tells us we do in order to drive us into the arms of the Beauty Industrial Complex, where we waste our brainpower and our money on lipstick and skinny jeans. If we’re obsessing about all that crap, then we’re not thinking about what we want to do, who we want to be, what we want to contribute.
Yeah, okay, I read a book this summer written by the shrink my mother and I have been going to together. It’s called Killing Cinderella: How to Undo the Damage We’ve Done to Our Girls. So I’m a little hopped up on gender theory—sue me.
I scoff out loud at the wailing girl and the girl’s friend looks over her shoulder at me, her eyes accusing, as if to say, What, like you’re not here to see some guy who dumped your sorry ass, Underage Townie?
Please. My situation is totally different, and here’s why. First of all, I’m not making a scene by bawling and begging. Second, I’m willing to bet Drunkie here did not just find out that there’s video online—actual f’ingvideo—of her father getting killed in Iraq two years ago.
So yeah, if I am here to see some guy who “dumped my sorry ass”—which, I guess, technically I am—I think I get a pass. I’m not here to make him my boyfriend, because I don’t need a boyfriend. But he’s the only person I know—besides my mother and my brother—who can even begin to imagine what this feels like. He’s the only person I want next to me when I watch the thing, and I need to know if he’ll do that for me.
Drunkie’s friend—let’s call her Judgie—turns back around just as Drunkie throws up down the front of her halter. Apparently she’s been drinking pink cocktails this evening.
“Go sleep it off, girls,” the bouncer commands, dismissing them with a wave of his meaty hand. I crush the heel of my Doc Marten against the pavement, unsympathetic, annoyed, anxious for my shot at the door. The bouncer gives himself a nice long moment to finish enjoying the Drunkie & Judgie Show before his eyes land on me.
He studies my face before his gaze travels down to my chest, then to my hips, giving me a once-over that I can feel as if he were touching me. Eventually, his eyes make their way back up to mine. He cocks a brow and beckons, crooking his finger like a
cartoon villain. I step forward and hand him my fake ID. I’ve never used it before and I force myself to breathe steadily as he squints down at it and then back up at me. I let my long bangs fall over half my face and give him as hard a stare as I can.
“I’m here to see Jamie?”
I hear the upward inflection but I can’t do anything about it now. I basically just announced that I’m 16—not 21—and that my ID is not real, but I hold his gaze, unblinking. He stares back, doing some kind of mental calculus that I can’t unlock. Just when I think he’s going to send me away, he chuckles and mutters, “Forta’s gonna get us shut down with all this underage pussy.” Then he cracks a condescending smile as he hands back my ID. “Go on. Good luck, baby.”
Obviously it’s not only girls who talk about girls in a less-than-respectful way.
In my mind, I spit at him. In reality, I step inside the bar as calmly as I can—I don’t want to give him any satisfaction of any kind. Once I’m in, my hands start to shake, but it doesn’t matter now—I’m here, I made it. I’m in a bar for the first time, only half an hour after learning about my own personal IED ticking away online, waiting to blow up my life whenever I’m ready.
My phone pings and I look down to see a text from Holly. Yr Mom called me. Whr r u?
I can’t answer her now. I have to figure out how to...be in a bar.
I look around like I’m supposed to be meeting someone. I didn’t exactly pick out an outfit before I came down here. At best, what I’m wearing is non-descript; at worst, it’s what a high school junior who sings in a band would wear—ripped jeans, a holey Neko Case T-shirt, Doc Martens. The bar is crowded, loud and hot—we’re having a mid-
September heat wave, and I guess Mr. Dizzy would rather let humidity in through the open windows than pay for air conditioning.
The place is a disaster, or a testament to longevity—it depends on your point of view. People have carved and scratched their initials onto every available surface, from the dark paneling on the walls to the hardwood booths and tables. The ceiling has mysterious grease stains on it, and the finish on the floor has been worn away to nothing. It’s a place frequented by all sorts of people, from old guys with long, scraggly hair and biker gear on one side of the bar to college students on the other. It’s a cool but weird vibe.
Not that I have any idea what a bar vibe should be.
My fake ID sticks to my sweaty palm. My best friend Tracy got it for me this summer while she was living with her aunt in New York and interning at Marlien. Trace didn’t exactly make friends at the fashion mag. As the only high school intern, she spent most of her time getting people coffee, and no one—except for Marlien herself—cared that her blog had been mentioned in the Times once. She was never invited to go out after work but she got a fake ID “just in case,” and she got one for me, too.
This is my “just in case” moment.
If someone had told me half an hour ago that I’d be using my fake ID to get into Dizzy’s to see Jamie tonight, I would have laughed. But of course, I wouldn’t have heard the panic in Vicky’s voice at that point.
She didn’t even say hello when I answered the phone after dinner—just “Lemme talk to your momma.” Vicky and my mother had never spoken to each other before—my mother isn’t a big fan of the woman I befriended online when I discovered that her son
and my father had died in the same explosion. But I knew enough from the tone of Vicky’s voice not to ask any questions. I just handed my phone over and watched my mother’s face go pale.
I was out the door with her keys before she finished telling me why Vicky had called. I heard “video” and “online” in the context of the panicked phone call from Vicky, and I pretty much had the whole picture.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the bar—the last inch of my long brown hair cobalt blue, my bangs hanging way past my eyes—and that’s when I notice that Jamie isn’t bussing tables here like I’d heard. He’s behind the bar, filling glasses from a tap. There’s something sharp about him—something new. I don’t know what it is.
I wonder if he’ll talk to me.
Jamie’s not the type to yell in public—the worst that will happen is he ignores me. Still, I am rooted to the spot, hoping he’ll see me without my having to do anything. He’s busy, moving fast to serve everyone. He grabs some dollars off the bar and jams them into the tip jar that is already full, even though it’s still early for a Thursday night in a college town.
A gruff voice behind me mutters something creepy about jailbait. I quickly choose a seat near the Yalies, my mother’s keys in my back pocket digging into me, reminding me that I took her car without permission.
I wait. It only takes a minute.
Before his eyes go dark at the sight of me, there’s a flash of heat in his gaze that makes my stomach drop out. I remember exactly what it’s like to feel Jamie Forta’s hands on my bare skin, though I tried not to let myself think about it all summer. Not
after the way he shut me down without letting me explain. I believe his exact words in the parking lot after the fight with Anthony Parrina were, “I don’t know you.”
His loss.
Jamie takes his time pouring beers for the college girls next to me. As he hands them over, he smiles. The Jamie I used to know didn’t smile without good reason—people on the receiving end had to earn it. But here he is, giving his smile to these girls like it’s free.
One of them smiles back before turning to her friends, who aren’t paying Jamie any attention. Why would they? Jamie’s a townie, as far as they’re concerned. They go to Yale.
So? So what? That makes them special? They had high SAT scores and lots of extracurriculars in high school. Big deal.
Another college girl shows up and Smiling Girl wraps her arms around the newcomer. “Jamie, one for Skye?” she calls over her shoulder.
Did she just...
Why the hell does this girl know his name?
Jamie pours another beer and this time, he gives it to her with a wink. She laughs, takes the beer and drops a dollar in the tip jar. Just when I think he’s going to ignore me, he leans back against the bar and crosses his arms.
“How’d you get in?” He raises his eyebrows, waiting for an answer. I hold up my sweaty ID. He glances at it. “Dizzy let you in with that?”
“That was Dizzy?” I say.
“Underage kids aren’t allowed in here.”
Anger makes my face hot instantly. “What about underage bartenders?”
“What do you want?” he demands.
Smiling Girl senses turbulence and turns to see what’s going on. She’s curious about me, which means that she likes him. I take her in before she goes back to her conversation with her friends.
She’s got bright green eyes, long brown hair, cargo pants, a perfectly torn T-shirt with a thin gold necklace that disappears into her v-neck. She’s telling a story about a piece of art she’s working on, holding everyone’s attention easily, gesturing with the delicate but strong hands that I’ve always been envious of on other girls. There’s a slash of paint on her forearm.
She’s hot.
Well, lucky her.
I shift my attention back to Jamie. “Can I talk to you?”
“I don’t have time.”
I ignore the sting of his words. “Can you make time?”
“Does it look like I can?”
Part of me wants to tell him about the video just to shock him and make him feel guilty for how he’s treating me right now. But I’ve had enough therapy to know I wouldn’t feel good about that in the long run. Plus, if I say anything about it, he’ll ask me questions and then figure out that I ran straight to him without even looking at it.
Although who could blame me? So what if it takes me some time to get up the nerve to watch a video of my dad getting blown up?
In a way, it surprises me that it took two years for a video to surface. Everyone is a cinematographer now. But what surprises me even more is that the person I immediately wanted to talk to after finding out about it—even though we just spent another summer not talking to each other—was Jamie.
Now I see just how dumb that was. The fact that we’ve both lost a parent isn’t enough to overcome everything else.
Fuck it. I don’t need him.
I push back from the bar and slide off the stool. As I look over at Ms. Cargo Pants, I have three thoughts in rapid succession: she’s a fraud; I wish I were as cool as she is; I don’t want to be the kind of girl who thinks another girl is a fraud just because I’m jealous of her.
While I’m thinking all of this, Jamie goes back to work without a word. I stand there for another few seconds, watching as he shifts back into his role as the hot young bartender who exists only to give these future movers-and-shakers what they want. Then I stride out of the bar as confidently as I can for someone who just got so thoroughly shut down. I’m moving so fast that I nearly fall backward when Dizzy’s meaty hand lands on my shoulder.
“How’s our pal?”
I turn around, extracting myself from his oily grasp as subtly as I can. “Busy.”
“He always is, honey, he always is. The ladies love Jamie. And some of the boys, too. Heh-heh,” he chuckles. He checks out my breasts one more time for good measure, then holds out his hand. “ID, please.”
Puzzled, I show it to him again.
“Thanks, Girly,” he says as he takes it and crushes it in his fist. “Now don’t come back.”
Come back tomorrow for Chapter 2 and No More Confessions Review
Buy The Entire Series
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xoxo
Angelica