Thursday, February 5, 2015

Cover Reveal: Stone Walls by: A.M. Madden

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Stone Walls ebook cover

Title: Stone Walls
Author: A.M. Madden
Anticipated Release Date: March 2015
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Synopsis
Benjamin Stone has an unrealistic determination to rid the streets of New York from any and all drug dealing scum. That determination quickly moves him and his partner, Rob Withers, up the ranks to Senior Narcotics Agents within their precinct. A new case assisting the FBI has Ben facing the ghosts of his past. Those same ghosts are the very reason he moved to New York to become a cop. Ella Parker is bright, beautiful, kind, and severely damaged as a result of one tragic night in her past. Having lived an idealistic life, that horrific night sent her pretty castle of cards crumbling down. Forced to start over, she leans on her best friend, Andrea Hensen, to help her move on. With Andrea’s help, Ella quickly settles into her new life in New York City. It’s a safe and comfortable existence, albeit very boring. Their paths may have never crossed, if it hadn’t been for their meddling best friends. Rob and Andrea believe that Ben and Ella are soul mates that were meant to be together, a perfect match. There’s one slight problem. Ben and Ella want no part of this matchmaking scheme. Funny thing about fate, it’s inevitable. Or is it? Can a truth cause the possibility of a happily ever after to crash and burn? Ben and Ella learn that sometimes truth isn’t the best answer. Sometimes ignorance is most definitely bliss.

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About the Author
AM Madden

Amazon Best Selling Author ~ A.M. Madden's debut series is The Back-Up Series, which includes Back-Up, Front & Center, Encore, Backstage, and The Devil's Lair. They are all available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. A.M. Madden is a wife, a mother, an avid reader of romance novels and now an author. In The Back-Up Series she aspired to create a fun, sexy, realistic romantic story. She wanted to create characters that the reader could relate to and feel as if they knew personally. A self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, she loves getting lost in a good book. She also uses every free moment of her time writing, while raising teenage boys.


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Blog Tour: 39 & HOLDING Author: M.R. Joseph




39 & HOLDING
Author: M.R. Joseph
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Standalone Novel
~ SYNOPSIS ~
My name is Greer Walker. Mom of two. Friend. Daughter. Dance instructor. And, let’s not forget—a woman scorned.

For the fourteen years were were married and the twenty years we were together, I devoted my life to my husband. What did I get in return? Heart break, crows feet, stretch marks, and a slew of insecurities.

You see, the douchebag dumped me for a twenty-five year-old, real-life Barbie Doll with a large repertoire of medical enhancements. He crushed my heart. His affair destroyed me. The signs were there-I just chose not to see them.

Finally with my eyes wide open, I vowed to never go through that kind of heartache again. I didn't need someone to make me feel special or beautiful, or sexually charged. Hell, I can take care of that part on my own if you know what I mean. It was twenty years since I last dated-and I was okay with never doing it again.

But…There’s always a but.

The day Nick Costa walked into my life—or rather drove right into it—he made me feel all sorts of things that this woman right here had no business feeling. Lot's of feelings. He made me ask myself questions.

Could I allow someone into my life again? Could I risk being hurt? Could Nick deal with all the insecurities the fallout of my marriage produced?

I am thirty-nine! Can I start all over again? Can I let go of the past in order to have a chance at a future with this man?

You might want to stick around to discover the answers.

For now, I'll be 39 & holding.




~ PURCHASE ~

~ PROLOGUE ~

I was blind. Blind as a bat. I mean I was actually more blind than a bat. At least a bat can see what it needs to see when it needs to see it, or what it wants to see.

I didn't see it and it was right there in front of me.

For months.

I guess I should have really spotted all the warning signs. They were as bright as the lights on a neon sign that hangs above a bar, or a tattoo shop, or a strip club. You know the ones that practically flash in your face and say, “Hey, come on in and open your eyes, moron.” Well, I was not that person. Like I said before, I was blind.

Oh, right, back to the signs. Okay, so the first, let's call this exhibit A. This would be the new job, late nights at the office, and late dinner meetings with clients. Totally acceptable. You have to start at the bottom if you want to make it to the top. I got it. Back then, I got it.

Then there's exhibit B. Last-minute business trips. Yes, spare-of-the-moment trips that required a bathing suit and a crazy looking Hawaiian shirt, and a trip to Macy's for some new underwear. Sigh...yes. Fucking boxer briefs. No more tighty whities with the wet fart stains. I tried to bleach them out for fourteen years. What the fuck was I thinking?

Well, I wasn't.

Let's not forget about exhibit C. See C is a big one. It's the one that made me start to question my sanity. Electronics. They are the devil. If I could rid the world of cell phones or email, trust me I would. They are the spawn of Satan himself. If I didn't have to use a cell phone to keep in constant contact with my kids, I wouldn't have one. But this is the age of electronics and the be all and end all of love, hope, and forgiveness. And don't even get me started on girly, fruity, sexy fragrances. They are the eye of newt in this witches brew of lies and deceit. But I'll get back to that later.

I'm still on electronics. Yes, phones buzzing in the middle of the night and feeling the shift in the mattress as the phone that was buzzing is picked up and taken out of my earshot. I heard the whispers, thinking maybe, God forbid, someone forgot to tell someone about a big audit.

Big audit problems at one a.m. Yeah...audit my ass.

Emails. Ha, ha. Oh, yes. Emails. Such a brainless way of getting information from one person to another via the computer.

Whether for business or pleasure—well in my story it was for someone else's pleasure—it's the cherry on the proverbial top of the sundae in the form of communication or miscommunication. Depends how you see it.

In my case, it was simply the means to the end.

One email. One stupid email that sent my happy home into turmoil and into a tornado of absolute disarray.

I'm not a violent person by nature. I mean, I don't even own a fly swatter and I hate those outdoor bug zappers. Just listening to a mosquito in the summer sizzle as it’s electrocuted by a thousand bolts of electricity...I just hate it. But when I saw the words written in an email to my husband when I accidentally—yes accidentally—clicked on his account, I felt violent.

Ryan,

Can't wait for you to fuck me even harder tonight, baby.

xx- Giselle

Who names their kid that unless she's a princess in a Disney movie or some shit like that?

Giselle. Christ Almighty. That name. I can't even say it without green, acid-inducing vomit rising up in my throat, which will probably be the cause of esophageal cancer somewhere down the road.

But back to the email, oh and my distaste for swatting at innocent insects. Remember me telling you I'm not a violent person? The night I found the email, when my husband of fifteen years was fast asleep in our marriage bed, the man I had been with since I was nineteen and in my final semester as a freshman year in college. Yes, that one with the thick dirty-blond hair. Well…that night he had a little less of it because a clump rested in the palm of my hand after I dragged his sorry ass out of bed by the roots to confront him. The man is dead weight when he's asleep, but the adrenaline I felt that night took over any weakness or guilt of harming another human being, animal, or insect. Ryan Walker was all of the above except for the human part. He was the animal and the insect. If I had one of those outdoor insect buzzy-killing things, I would have thrown him in it and watched his body be charred to a crisp. Like he did my heart.

Sound a little violent to you? The dance instructor turned murderer? I guess you could say violent. I mean I wouldn't have done it...that way. Arsenic-laced cupcakes anyone?

He didn't deny it. After I screamed and cried and clawed at his face—and smashed the laptop jumping on it like a two-year-old—we just sat there in silence. We leaned against our bed like we were two strangers. Not two people that had been together for twenty years. We leaned our backs against the bed we picked out when we got home from our honeymoon. The bed we fucked in, watched movies in, had tickle fights in, and made two amazing children in. Now, it was just holding us up from falling. Me mostly. I learned he fell about six months before that. When he had her in my bed. My husband fucked Giselle, the long-legged, half-French-half-whatever whore, when I was away in Phoenix for a master class in Ballet, in my bed. Did I mention it was in my bed? My loving husband said he had to work that entire weekend and thought it would be better if the kids went to my dad’s because he felt bad he would not be able to spend ample time with them. He would not be able to take Cole to his baseball game or go watch Sophie take her dance class. What a good dad. Thinking of the children before himself.

Enter sarcasm here. Asshole.

Have you even tried to figure out what to do with a broken fifteen-year marriage in one sleepless night? I have. Trust me, you don't look like Miss America after a night of crying and lack of rest. The bags under my eyes—yes there was enough of them to take me to Mexico for a month. And the leftover mascara that streamed down my face, ha, ha, it made me look like Courtney Love from Hole. It's sad really. You think you know someone. You sacrifice for that person, you give them everything, and what they give you in return is heartache.

Do you know what it feels like to have someone tell you they are no longer in love with you? You don't? Truth is, I don't want you to know. I would never want anyone to feel the pain that I have felt. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Did you know that your heart actually hurts when you break up? I mean that fateful night I thought I was having a heart attack. Here it was just my heart cracking inside, dying—weeping—in total agony. That's exactly what a broken heart feels like. Doubt me? Think I'm exaggerating? I wouldn't think those things if I were you.

I told him I smelled her in our bedroom but at the time thought it was the scent of the new laundry detergent I had recently bought.

Remember the fruity, girly, sexy scent I told you about? Yeah, well laundry detergent doesn't smell like that. Guess I couldn't smell that well either.

He told me he loved her. I think I would have tried to make it work with him if he would not have told me that. He told me he loved me for being a good mother to our kids, but that he was no longer in love with me.

He left the next day.

Please don't get me started on how my kids reacted. Cole, my thirteen-year-old, bad, I mean real bad. He said he hated Ryan. I told him that was wrong. Daddy just didn't love Mommy and sometimes that happens, but he would always love him and his sister. Sophie, my six-year-old, just asked questions about having two Christmases and then she went back to play with her Barbies.

The first hard thing was seeing his side of the closet empty and his medicine cabinet in the bathroom bare of all his shaving things and colognes. A few days after he left I still smelled his scent lingering in the air, and I have to admit, I clung to it. Inhaled it and kept it in my lungs until they burned with remembrance. I had grown tired of that.

It eventually left. There were no traces of Ryan Walker in my home. Our home. The one we once shared. He gave me the house. I earn enough to keep it up. He pays the mortgage out of guilt I suppose and lives with...oh, God forgive me while I swallow my vomit...okay…I'm back…while he lives with what’s her name.

I got rid of the bed by the way. I wanted to set it on fire like Angela Bassett did in ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back.’ Torch it in the front yard for all the neighbors to see.

The trash men took it instead. That's what it wound up being. Trash. Like the way I felt. Left out on the curb. Discarded. Replaced.

So here I am.

Greer Walker, thirty-nine, and single after twenty years. My kids are gone most weekends with their dad and one night during the week.

And I'm alone. But that's okay because I won't ever let my heart or my pride be smashed beyond recognition again. I'll be a cat lady once my kids are grown and out of the house. No offense to all the cat lovers out there.

I'm done with giving myself completely to one person. I can do this. I'm a big girl. I'll be okay.

Being single isn't so bad. Being thirty-nine and single isn't so bad.

Soon forty will be knocking at my door and I'll answer it with my head held high. I'll do my best to welcome it.

Forty. The big 4-0. The over-the-hill; the crest of going from a Lamb to a Cougar.

God, I hate that analogy. But it is what it is. I'll hold on to thirty-nine as long as I can.

I'm Greer Walker and this is my story.


~ TEASERS ~









~ ABOUT THE AUTHOR~ 
M.R. Joseph 

I'm a book enthusiast, turned author, who loves all things "Happily Ever After". 

My first book, 'Reunion' debuted in November, 2012. Meant only to be a Christmas gift to my family and closest friends, word got out, and here I am. The second in the series, 'You Belong With Me', released in March, 2013, and the final installment in the series, 'Letters to Luca', released August 2013.

Mom and wife by day, writer of contemporary romance by night, I believe in soul mates, true love, and all that mushy stuff.


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Blog Tour: Souls ReAligned by: Tricia Daniels

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Title: Souls ReAligned
Series: Bound4Ireland #2
Author: Tricia Daniels
Release Date: January 5, 2015
Genre: Erotic Romance

Synopsis
A once broken woman, striving to find her former self. Olivia James leaves a heartbroken Ethan O’Connell watching as she fades into the distance. Frightened by her attraction to his controlling nature, and the lethal Irish charm that no one man should possess, she walks away. Slowly overcoming her past and regaining her confidence, she begins to take back her life. Unwilling to give up, Ethan’s persistent nature forces her to examine her feelings and face her fear. Struggling with the balance of power in their relationship, can she give in to the intense magnetism between them and let herself be loved? A man in love, determined to heal her heart. Returning to his Irish homeland, Ethan faces major obstacles in his life: his still impassioned temper, his father's censure, a vindictive ex-girlfriend and a troubled past full of secrets. When his future meets his past, secrets don't stay secrets for long. Resolved in his need to shield Olivia from her past, he’ll do anything to protect her from her abusive ex. Still craving her submission, his greatest concern is protecting her from his own desires. An infinite universal force Eccentric psychic, Eva Storm senses the energy around them. Fate can change and destiny is not always an easy path; sometimes the journey is full of twists and turns. Trust is a very fragile gift. Despite their reluctance to believe, she watches over these disconnected souls, willing the universe to steer them together. Love is the only true magic, for only true love transcends all time.
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Tricia Daniels lives in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada, where she raised three kids as a single parent. Creativity and imagination is something there is never a short supply of in her home. Between her quick wit and wicked sense of humor she found that she has a passion for writing steamy romance novels. Her goal is simple, tell her story, warm a few hearts, shed a few tears, share a silent chuckle, and occasionally, make people blush. That's the official version. But the simple truth is... I'm not an author. My friends laugh when I say that. I have never aspired to write the next great love story or take the literary world by storm. I'm just a normal woman, struggling to pay the bills and trying to raise my kids in a home where they feel empowered, supported and loved. Love inspires me to write. I love when the characters take over the story and plot twists develop that I hadn't planned. l love when you read and you get all warm and squeezy at the good parts. I love the journey to the HEA even though sometimes that road has a lot of bends in it. I love how two imperfect characters can love each other perfectly. My reward, my inspiration is experiencing through them, a love so deep that I feel it in my own heart.


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Release Blitz: The Hooker and the Hermit by L.H. Cosway, Penny Reid

HookerandtheHermitBlitz The Hooker and the Hermit 
Publication Date: February 5, 2015 
Tour: The Hooker and the Hermit by L.H. Cosway and Penny Reid\

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1zy7yva
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1vqnYaW
B&N: http://bit.ly/1Kodkm6
Kobo: http://bit.ly/16sEwUi
iBooks: Coming soon!

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/1BZ5w8n
Synopsis: New York’s Finest February 14, 2015 LADIES AND GENTS! I have an announcement!You know that guy I featured on my blog a few months ago? The really, really hot Irish rugby player who plays the position of ‘hooker’ in the RLI (Rugby League International)? The one with the questionable fashion choices leading me to ask whether he was the lovechild of a leprechaun and a hobbit? The one with the anger management issues and the body of a gladiator and the face of a movie star? Ronan Fitzpatrick? Yeah, that guy. Well, I have a confession to make… THE HERMIT Annie Catrel, social media expert extraordinaire at Davidson & Croft Media and clandestine celebrity blogger, can make anyone shine in the court of public opinion. She is the Socialmedialite, anonymous creator of New York’s Finest and the internet’s darling. Virtual reality is Annie’s forte, but actual reality? Not so much. THE HOOKER Ronan Fitzpatrick, aka the best hooker the world of rugby has seen in decades, despises the media—social or otherwise. The press has spun a web of lies depicting him as rugby’s wild and reckless bad boy. Suspended from his team, Ronan has come to Manhattan to escape the drama, lay low, fly under the radar. Only, Ronan isn’t easy to overlook, and he can’t escape the notice of the Socialmedialite… THE PLAN When Ronan is sent to Davidson & Croft Media to reshape his public image, he never expects to cross paths with shy but beautiful Annie, nor does he expect his fierce attraction to her. He couldn’t be happier when her boss suggests pairing them together. What lengths will Annie take to keep her virtual identity concealed? And what happens when the hooker discovers who the hermit really is? The Hooker and the Hermit is a collaboration between authors L.H. Cosway and Penny Reid, is a full length 100k word novel, and is a standalone.
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About L.H. Cosway

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L.H. Cosway has a BA in English Literature and Greek and Roman Civilisation, and an MA in Postcolonial Literature. She lives in Dublin city. Her inspiration to write comes from music. Her favourite things in life include writing stories, vintage clothing, dark cabaret music, food, musical comedy, and of course, books. She thinks that imperfect people are the most interesting kind. They tell the best stories.

about penny reid

Author-Photo-Penny-Reid-300x300
SEX! It all started with sex, between my parents. Personally I don’t like thinking about it, but whatever works for you is a-ok with me. No judgment. The sex happened in California and much of my life also occurred in that state until I moved from the land of nuts (almonds), wine, silicon… boobs, and heavy traffic to the southeast US. Like most writers I like to write, but let’s get back to sex. Eventually I married and gave birth to 2 small people-children (boy-6, girl-4 as of this writing). By day I’m a biomedical researcher with focus on rare diseases. By night I’m a knitter, sewer, lino block carver, fabric printer, soap maker, and general crafter. By the wee hours of the morning or when I’m intoxicated I love to listen to the voices in my head and let them tell me stories. I hope you enjoy their stories.
 

RELEASE BLITZ: Pulse BY: Amity Cross




Title: Pulse
Series: The Beat and the Pulse #2
Author: Amity Cross
Genre: Erotic Romance
 Release Date: February 5, 2015


Synopsis


Ren Miller never dreamed her life would turn out quite like this.

On the cusp of qualifying for the brand new woman's UFC league, she's finally found the thing that makes her tick. She finally has a whole new life before her, but it’s one that doesn't include Ash Fuller.


No one has seen or heard from Beat's Golden Boy in six months, not even Ren. He's disappeared off the face of the earth and he's just another person who's ended up abandoning her when she needed him the most. He broke her heart, but he took the one thing that was hers. Her spirit.


When someone unexpected turns up at Beat with an ultimatum, Ren must make a decision. Go after Ash and her own heart or make her Dad's dream of winning a Championship come true.


Will Ren choose to fight?


Or sacrifice everything to save the man she loves?


18+ due to mature sexual content









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Author Bio


Amity Cross isn't her real name. That's no secret.

She is the author of wicked stories about rock stars looking for redemption, gritty romances featuring MMA fighters and dark tales of forbidden romance. She loves to write about screwed up relationships and kick ass female leads that don't take s**t lying down.

Amity lives in a leafy country town in southern Australia and can be found chained to her desk, held at ransom by her characters.

Don't send help. She likes it.



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Chapter Reveal: Where We Belong Author: Eve Connell




Title: Where We Belong
Author: Eve Connell
 Release Date: February 19, 2015


Synopsis



One man diving into the past.

One woman emerging from the depths. 

At the age of seventeen, Amelia Baide won silver at the Olympic Games and was the second-fastest woman in the pool. Then one tragic night she crashed into a lake and was dragged out without a pulse. Now twenty-four, she is still haunted by it and hasn’t swum again. Until this year’s anniversary of the accident. It is a day unlike any other and a strange turn of events finds Amelia back at a swimming pool.

Harry Jamieson had eyes for one girl, while women and the media had eyes for him. As a trainer of Olympic athletes, he was an in-demand man. Until one boozy morning after … But from bad luck to pure chance he runs into his old flame, Amelia, at a swimming pool no less. She doesn’t remember a thing from the night of the crash. 

And Harry knows every single secret.

The pair joins forces—a comeback for Amelia and Harry’s ultimate coaching opportunity. But dodging waves is hard to do; and even the strongest swimmer may sink.

Where We Belong is a second-chance love story for young and old, for swimming enthusiasts and romantics at heart.

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Chapter 1

 

Amelia


We had the fight moments after I slipped the robe off my shoulders into a pool around my feet. I had one foot on the shower base, one on the plush rectangular mat.
At that moment, my fiancé, Kristopher, knocked from the other side of the bathroom door, which I’d already locked for privacy.
He had this tendency often. The first word he would speak to me all day? As I stepped into the shower. Was it okay if he went out with his friends instead of the dinner reservation? As I stepped into the shower. His solution to cancer? As I stepped into the shower.
Clenching my jaw, I awaited the question.
“Aftershave, Amelia?” he asked.
I sighed. “You should have gotten it when I told you I needed to shower. Or while I collected my creams and lotions and make-up. Or while I sniffed around for a clean towel in your stash in the corner.”
The soap—as we both knew—was irrelevant in this argument. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if we stayed together out of laziness. And maybe we did. Because I hated many characteristics about my fiancé. Especially his ignorance of this anniversary.
It was September twenty-ninth.
This year I called my boss’s mobile at the crack of dawn to fake a sick day, playing up my groggy tone as a terrible sore throat in addition to a nauseous tummy. She told me to get well, and I swallowed the news with a lump in my throat, guilty for lying. I was an assistant for a medium-sized advertising business and handled paperwork, invoicing and calls all day long—it wasn’t like my absence would be of consequence to day-to-day activities. I’d pick it up tomorrow.
Last year Kristopher and I made dates apart with our respective best friends, and I’d spent it eating all the ice cream along a strip of shops down the coast. I’d thrown up once and then kept on going. Jaffa flavour, I remember.
I’d licked and slurped the drips down the paper cup, and only thought twice of the anniversary. Once on the drive down to the beach, and then once as I’d clutched the sides of a rusty public bin and spewed my guts up to the backdrop of disgusted gasps from passers-by.
I don’t know what Kristopher did that day, but he came back when the night sky was a deep sapphire blue, whisky on his breath as he climbed in bed behind me.
The year before I took a day off from work and spent $600 buying cocktail dresses I would never have occasion to wear. The next day I donated them to charity.
Six years ago today, I died. Hence, it was the one time of the year we didn’t forget the date. Unlike some years when we had to shop for Christmas gifts at two am on the twenty-fourth.
I stared down the white door of the bathroom, one foot tingling with the sharp cold of the shower base, hand clutching the knob. I stepped back onto the tiles, accepting defeat.
“Come on, Amelia,” he said in a low tone. “Just one Goddamn bottle of aftershave. That’s all I need.”
“No. Just wait till I’m done.”
“Babe.”
“Amelia,” I said.
“Amelia, please,” he said, voice breaking. “I haven’t showered and I stink. I just need a few fucking sprays, and I’ll be out of your way all day.”
I gritted my teeth and hobbled from toe to toe, the cold seeping up my legs. If we kept going on like this staying out of each other’s way was pointless. We knew how to nip at each other’s sensitive spots in a way learned from several years of being together. I saw the forthcoming crash, clenched my eyes shut against the pain. My shoulders heaved, bracing for impact.
Was this what happened to me just before my crash?
Was there a moment of wide-eyed fear as my corded, muscled arms grabbed the wheel at the proper ten and two positions, and I flew through the air, reduced to a thin, crushed and crumpled body at the bottom of the lake?
Hot tears grew heavy behind my eyelids as something inside me snapped. I shut the gate to the horrific visions.
It was too late to shower.
Kristopher banged his fist on the door, the boom echoing. I bent and hurried on my new clothes folded on the counter.
“Come on. This is beyond a joke. It will take you a few seconds to pass it.” The door rattled, the handle jerking, but I’d locked the door already. “Amelia.”
I slipped my arms into the cardigan and threw open the door, despite the bags under my eyes and the chill settling over my chest because of the unbuttoned front.
I said, “Have it all,” pushing the aftershave bottle into his chest, then rushed past him.
And I didn’t look back.


 

Chapter 2

 

Harry

 

I woke to star- and heart-shaped glow-in-the-dark stickers radiating in neon green from the ceiling. A ceiling I’d never seen before in my life—typically, I wasn’t the sort of man to befriend the fancy sticker type of person.
It was pre-dawn, barely so, the sun a tiny orb just under the horizon through the crack in the curtains.
My world swayed as I tilted my head. I held my ears in my palms, and my fingers weaved through the messy state of my bed hair. Under the purple sheets, my stomach churned, and farther down, morning glory unstuck from the aforementioned undelightful purple sheets. I crawled out of the bed.
What the fuck was this? I thought. And where the fuck was I?
I remembered flashes from the previous night. A club, a slime party, and breathy kisses with the girl who lay splayed under these purple sheets beneath her stars and hearts glow-in-the-dark ceiling.
Viol … Vick … no, it was Vivienne. No, wait, Vivienna.
I smiled, proud of my achievement. But that dropped into a wobbly set of lips. My stomach churned again. I lurched into the attached bathroom and retched, wiping myself clean with water.
Even though I was ninety-nine-point-nine per cent certain I fucked Vicky (or Vivienna), I shivered at the thought of sharing her toothbrush, so I used the handy finger-stick in lieu and then the mouthwash beside the basin.
Feeling somewhat refreshed, I let out a deep breath and looked around the bathroom, not much of a better sight than the bedroom. The towels were white and pale purple, the soap purple, and more stickers dotted along the corners of the mirror above the basin.
I stared at my reflection, disgusted.
My hair Mohawked, askew to one side, a chunk plastered across my forehead in a teenage boy-crush style. I fussed it around with my hands. It looked as if I just had sex, which was better than it had moments prior.
I stepped back into her bedroom, peering amongst the sheets and all her hair. I sighed upon seeing her, confirming one thing. She had the youthful expression of someone I hoped was legal. I was twenty-eight, she perhaps twenty or twenty-one. I hoped.
Since she was still asleep, I returned to the bathroom and looked around for supplies to make myself appear more human. But I caught my reflection in the mirror and stalled. My tan skin and dark hair vividly contrasted against my steel-blue eyes. Most noticeably, a bloodshot glare, lined with purple bags, rolled lazily at the reflection.
I didn’t suspect my pick-up techniques from last night would have worked if I’d looked like this.
Just twelve or so hours ago, one look at Vivienna and she was under my arm, my lips near her ear telling her things she wanted to hear.
I wished I’d had the foresight to stop drinking and pick up her nuisances: the squeals I thought made her sound cute, the frilly neckline of her dress more girly than sweet, and the bright purple shoes. The poor woman had a young girl trapped inside her body.
I looked through the doorway and whispered, “You’re a little crazy, Purple Vivienna.”
I never should have—
Stop, Harry. I told myself. Find some deodorant, get some clothes on, and get out of here.
So I did just that. Then I walked out of her bedroom without a note or text. I didn’t have her number, plus she didn’t care for me.
The others didn’t, either. They thought they cared.
But they wanted the thrill of a night with the Harry Jamieson.
A night of passion and drinking with the idea of love.
One of us had to have our heads screwed on.
With mine teetering on the right side of sanity, I dashed out and found my car parked by the kerb outside her house, hoping she’d been sober enough by the end of the night to drive it. I knew with absolute certainty I wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel.
I didn’t drive after drinking. Not anymore.
I travelled home, which took an hour—a long way for pussy, even by my standards—and did the whole routine: shower, force down some hangover-cure food, spend the rest of the day watching TV like a zombie. Late afternoon, I got onto all my emails, responding to meetings, questions and other ad hoc business, then prepared some training sessions for my swimmers.
When I woke the next morning, I stumbled drowsily onto my front lawn in just a pair of sleeping pants and retrieved the delivered roll of newspaper. My neighbour, having noticed my exit, darted her eyes away and scurried inside her house.
I never claimed to be a sight for sore eyes in the morning. But what the hell was that about?
Five minutes later, as I tipped a steaming cup of coffee to my lips, I saw the headline and cursed, spraying coffee all over my granite countertop.






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Writer, kid-at-heart, awesome partner, graphic design dabbler, book lover.



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