The Guard and the Heartthrob
an excerpt

Prologue
Ava Guard wasn’t a stupid girl. She knew that when Mr. Smith her next door neighbor moved out a new family would move in. The young girl hoped with all her heart that the new family would have a girl her age to play with. She’d always wanted a next door best friend. So as she stood on the front porch watching for the family Ava silently prayed that she’d get a new friend. Ava watched the road her long black hair whipping around her pretty face her brown eyes watching everything. Her mother sat on the porch swing curled into a ball her Ava’s inherited black hair in a loose bun in the back of her head a few wisps falling in her pretty blue eyes as her head rested on Ava’s father’s chest as he slept with his mouth open head leaned back giving very loud random snorts for snores, his messy purely almost dull brown hair all over the place as usual had his eyes been open his shining brown eyes that made up for his hair would have shown.
Ava watched them; her mother’s eye fluttering closed then open then back and her father waking up smiling at his wife’s head then going back to sleep or give Ava a little wink. The girl couldn’t help but smile at them, even at five years old she knew that what her parents had would never fade, never break. That instead of being one of the many children whose parents got divorced; she was to be one of the few children whose parents would stay together. This was something she treasured and kept in her mind when her parents had their rare fights.
Suddenly there was a great about of dust on the gravel road that her street was made of. Cherry Oak Road held ten houses, more cottages, all on one side of the road. The other side was a cliff, well a hill, made of sand and rock worn down by the many generations that had rolled and ran down it. The houses all looked over the salty Atlantic sea. The dust had been caused by a shiny silver SUV coming down the street. Henry Guard awoke with a start and sat up. Joie, his wife, almost fell off the swing but sat up catching herself instead. The couple got up and joined their daughter at the railing watching the SUV. Ava was lifted up by her father held on his hip so that she could get a good view.
Out of the driver’s side stepped a man with tanned skin with dirty blond hair and gray-blue brown eyes. The passenger’s side revealed a pale woman with honey-blond hair and dark blue eyes. Joie smiled at the woman and expected no reaction but she got a smile back. So they weren’t rude city folk like everyone in Bluve Shore had feared. Ava seemed sad when Joie looked over at her.
“Baby Doll what’s wrong?” Joie asked Ava using the girl’s pet name.
“No kids.” Joie watched as the newly arrived couple searched themselves for a key. Henry had to keep from laughing, to do so he put his beloved daughter down and went into his own cottage like house. Joie hit his arm as he went in rolling her eyes. She stroked Ava’s hair back as they watched getting embarrassed smiles from the woman and she and her husband looked in every pocket. Suddenly the woman ran to the car and pulled open the door on the driver’s side so that the Guards could not see what she was getting. When she reappeared she was pulling a boy about Ava’s age by the arm as he tried to read a set of keys in one hand a copy of a Superman comic in the other. Ava’s face bighted at this new development; a boy, real life child right on her street. A boy was as good as a girl, maybe better. Joie smiled at Ava as the smells of tomato soup came from inside their home. Sunday afternoon staple: tomato soup, grilled cheese, and reading. As the girl and her mother went into the house Ava looked back at the boy who was watching her over his book. He winked and she smiled sweetly back, they could not at that moment know how those to things would affect their lives; how many hearts those actions would break or that they sealed a friendship barely begun.