Andrea Laurence | You Can Go Home Again, But Here Are Five Reasons to Reconsider... (Spoiler Alert: Reason #1 - Old Boyfriends)

In my new southern contemporary romance, FACING THE MUSIC, my heroine Ivy Hudson has to face a very scary eventuality – returning to her hometown after six years away. After landing a record deal and running off to California, Ivy has toured the world, played Madison Square Gardens...but she hasn’t had to face the people she left behind, including her ex, Blake.

At the urging of her manager, Ivy is returning home to tiny Rosewood, Alabama on a goodwill trip. A tornado swept through town, damaging the high school, and Ivy is invited home to lend her stardom to raise money to rebuild the gymnasium. I’m all for good deeds, but there’s a couple reasons she might want to reconsider returning to uh...the scene of the crime...

#1 Old Boyfriends

We’ve all had that moment, especially if you’ve lived somewhere for more than a couple of years. You bump into your ex at the grocery store or the park. Hopefully you’re looking thin and sexy and make him feel awful for screwing up his shot with you, but if you’ve got my luck, you’re in yoga pants, without a bra or makeup, with your hair in a ponytail because you were making an emergency Ben & Jerry’s run at 10PM on a Thursday. Way to let him see what he’s missing, Andrea!

No matter how you broke up, it’s always going to be weird. Maybe there’s still feelings. Maybe there’s hard feelings. Maybe you’re single eating ice cream alone and he’s got his beautiful new wife and baby with him. Or maybe you’re an internationally known rock star that became famous by singing a song that announced to the world that your ex has a small penis...

To avoid this sticky situation, I say stay away from your hometown. At least until you’re certain he’s bald and fat.

#2 Old Friends

People always wax poetic about old friends and reminiscing about the past together. While that can be fun (unless they always bring up that time about the tequila and the unfortunate vomiting incident) the novelty wears off pretty quickly. The problem with running into old friends is trying to explain why they’re not your current friends anymore. How exactly was she your bestie one minute, then you don’t speak to her again for ten years until you run into her in the bar line of your high school reunion?

Anymore, it’s hard to fall out of touch with people, especially with Facebook and texting and such. It doesn’t take much effort to be ‘friends’ so you really have to be distracted or disinterested not to be able to maintain a friendship regardless of distance. Maybe she was the clinger-on that said you were her best friend, but she wasn’t yours. Maybe life just got in the way and in time, you completely forgot she even existed. Either way... bumping into them will be awkward. Especially if they want to rekindle the friendship you worked so hard to disintegrate. Good luck, my friend. She’s going to be ‘liking’ all your posts for the foreseeable future.

#3 Old Frienemies

Of course, by going home you also run the risk of bumping into a frienemy too, or even just an outright enemy without the polite layer for show. I’ve always thought that if I had kids, I wanted boys. Girls, especially as they get older, have so much drama! The gossip, the cutting comments and now... the nasty cyber bullying. It’s hard enough to be a hormonal teenage girl without some other one trying to make you hate yourself even more.

Like the ex, you want to make sure that you’re at peak grooming when you run into the frienemy. Maybe even more so than with the ex. With the ex, you’re just trying to make him feel bad for ruining what he could’ve had. With the frienemy, it’s a competition. I go all out for a writing conference that’s mostly women, something my guy can’t understand, and I tell him “Women judge.” And it’s true. So make sure you’re wearing the latest styles, you’ve got cute shoes, good skin, and no bloat. You want to look beautiful and successful and make them hate them more than ever. Or, well, I guess you could bury the hatchet, forget about all that silliness in the past and try to make friends. Yeah, like that’s going to happen after you caught her kissing your guy under the bleachers in eleventh grade. Slut.

#4 Nothing Will Be The Same

Going home, you have expectations. Things are supposed to be the way you remembered – at least the stuff you remember fondly. Whenever I head to my hometown, I want to eat at the places they don’t have anywhere else. I’m from Tucson, so I always want a strawberry Eegees and fried goodness from Lucky Wishbone. And good Mexican, of course. I live in the south and it is just not an option there. And while the food is fine, somehow it never ever measures up to how I remember it.

Things change. It’s life. But that doesn’t mean you want them to. Who wants to go home and find their parents turned their childhood bedroom into an S&M den after your mother read Fifty Shades? Or maybe they sold your childhood home entirely and bought a condo in Florida. Then you really can’t go home because someone else lives in your home. Or in my case, your childhood home got towed away and sold for scrap metal. Boy that trip home, sucked. But that’s what happens. Things change and sometimes, it’s the things you hold the most dear. I suggest not going home and just preserving those treasured memories in your mind where they can’t be mowed down to put up a new Walmart.

#5 And Yet, Nothing Ever Changes

It’s amazing, but no matter how much changes, things tend to stay the same, especially if you live in a small town. Yes, the grumpy old woman at the post office may have retired, but a new grumpy woman will take her place. Your parents’ neighbor is still nosy and she still grows tomatoes even though she’s allergic so she has an excuse to give them away and talk to people. There might be a new high school, but what happens there will be the same as it was in the old school. Sometimes you can go home and find yourself in a time warp where years have passed and yet it seems like just yesterday.

While it might seem charming and comforting, you’ve got to face the fact that you’ve changed. You’re not the teenager you once were. So no parking at Frenchman’s Point. No TPing the principal’s yard. As much as it might intrigue you, you’re a grown up now.

You can go home, but after everything I’ve listed, I don’t know why you would. So many land mines to avoid! I say talk your parents into meeting you in Cabo San Lucas for Christmas and avoid all the drama and unachieved expectations.

About FACING THE MUSIC

Five years ago, high school sweethearts Ivy and Blake’s relationship imploded and both their lives were changed forever. Ivy became a rock star and Blake lost not only his dreams of a successful NFL career, but his reputation. Ivy’s angry song about their breakup, called “Size Matters” hit the top of the charts and Blake became a national laughingstock. He’s salvaged his career and returned to Rosewood to be the high school football coach, regaining his status as town hero and leading the boys to the state championships.

When a tornado whips through town and destroys the high school gymnasium and stadium, a committee is formed to help rebuild and plan some charity fundraisers. Blake’s grandmother requests that Ivy return to Rosewood for the events. Forced back together for the good of their hometown and their careers, Ivy and Blake have no choice but to put aside their differences, stop running from their pasts, and finally face the music.

About Andrea Laurence

Andrea Laurence has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she learned to read at a young age. She always dreamed of seeing her work in print and is thrilled to finally be able to share her special blend of sensuality and dry, sarcastic humor with the world. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she's working on her own "happily ever after" with her boyfriend and their collection of animals including a Siberian Husky that sheds like nobody's business.

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