Randy Thibodaux was just trying to help. The alligator was in his friend's pool. The drugs were supposed to keep it calm. The car was right there, unlocked, and the marshland was only twelve miles south. None of this was supposed to involve a head-on collision.
Destiny Powers was just trying to get to a job interview. She had four copies of her resume, a backup pen, and three weeks of preparation. Her ride never showed. The car across the street was unlocked. She was being practical.
When their stolen cars meet on Route 19, something else meets too. Randy and Destiny walk away from the wreckage, sit down at a nearby restaurant, and start talking -- about alligators, about ground beef, about what it means to want a life you can plan around when you've never had one. By the time the sheriff finds them, they've split a grouper sandwich and neither one wants to leave.
What follows is a courtship built on scratch-off lottery tickets, borrowed boats, a bucket of KFC chicken, and the kind of dates where getting arrested is always a possibility. Randy's best friend Daryl has schemes -- a backyard gas station, counterfeit cigarettes, a personal injury scam -- and every one of them ends with Sheriff Chad Landry stepping out of his cruiser, cuffs already in hand, wondering what he did to deserve this. Destiny's best friend Shawna watches the whole thing unfold with the exhausted calm of a woman who has seen too much and is impressed by none of it.
But when Daryl's latest scheme lands Randy in a holding cell on the night of their date, Destiny sits alone in a parking lot with a bucket of cold chicken and two unanswered calls. And when a misunderstanding convinces her that Randy is not the man she thought he was, she borrows a shotgun and shoots up his truck in the driveway. The truck was already broken. She was thorough.
Getting back to Destiny is going to take more than a phone call. It's going to take a fire escape, four stories, a crisis response team, and a best friend in a yellow hibiscus sundress. Because in Palmetto Cove, love isn't quiet. Love is standing on a roof yelling the truth until the right person hears it.
Grand Theft Amor is a clean romantic comedy with an absurdist Florida heart, a cast of characters who make terrible decisions for excellent reasons, and a love story that proves two disasters can add up to something worth building.
