This book is a first for several reasons. It was the first contemporary I wrote. I started my writing career with traditional Regencies, and one of them (not yet published) was a Golden Heart finalist. Not long afterwards, the Regency market started to die out, and self-publishing didn't exist then. I was rather discouraged by the publishing possibilities at that time, and since my life was heading in an unexpected direction, I decided to give writing a little break.
Ten years later. . .
My life took another unexpected turn, almost a plot twist. I wasn't really planning to take up writing again. In fact, I was afraid to try, for a lot of reasons that seem kooky and unnecessary now, but that were legitimate to me then.
The other first about this book is it was the first time I tried NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I'd seen a book about it in the library a couple weeks before NaNo starts, and it was such an audacious thing, trying to write a whole book in thirty days. I didn't think it was actually possible, but I wanted to try it, and I did, and I loved it. Most importantly I discovered it was a great way to outpace all of those writing fears that had held me back for too many years.
The scene below is the original first scene when I began writing the book. But as we've seen many times, it's not always the beginning of the book when I'm finished. This book needed a little more information to show how the heroine got to this point, so there's a new Chapter 1 and 2. One of my favorite parts of this book is the friendship Delia, the heroine, has with her best friends, Brooke and Carly, who help her through a time when her life takes an unexpected change in direction.
~~~~~
"He actually said you are through? After five years? At your anniversary dinner?"
I nodded, over and over, to every one of Carly’s incredulous questions. I was like one of those bobble-head dolls, my head bouncing every direction at once.
I tried to respond, because Carly’s righteous indignation was such a comfort to me. That’s what best friends are for. To hold your hand when you need it. And to kick you in the ass when you need it.
Thank God this was one of those hand-holding times.
But even though I knew the answers to her questions, the awful reality of the situation made the words clump together in my throat. The next thing I knew my bottom lip started to tremble, and then liquid spurted from my eyes.
"Yessssss," I wailed.
Oh God, did I wail. I thought I'd cried myself out, but this seemed the only way to reduce the pain of my heart splitting into huge chunks and dropping like water balloons onto Brooke's kitchen floor.
"What the hell is going on?"
Brooke, my other best friend, came tearing into the room, a look of disbelief on her gorgeous face. Who could blame her? Here I was, keening like a madwoman, surrounded by a mountain of used tissues. I had no doubt my face, as well as my nose, were a splotchy tomato red color. And my eyes probably had that eerie "caught in the photo flash" thing that makes you look like Satan’s evil twin sister.
Brooke glanced down at my very bare ring finger, and then back at my devastated face.
She rushed to my side, encasing me in a hug that nearly smothered me thanks to her massive bosom. I closed my eyes, comforted by the warmth, not only from her arms wrapped around me, but from deep in her generous soul. I could physically feel the pain lessening because she was there, transferring it onto her shoulders without complaint.
"Honey," Brooke said, smoothing my hair while I exhaled a ragged sigh, "what’s going on?"
I opened my mouth to tell her, but I was overdue for some more wild sobbing, so I cut loose.
Again.
"Bradley broke up with her," Carly explained for me.
"What?!"
Brooke held me at arms' length, inspecting my face for the truth. She would have been less surprised if Carly had announced, "Delia’s discovered she’s a vampire".
"That asshole!" Brooke said. "It was your anniversary dinner!"
I felt a moment’s fear for Bradley. He had no idea what was about to hit him, thanks to Brooke’s fierce love of me.
If he was lucky, she’d limit it to hiding shrimp in the curtain rods.
"Why didn't you call us last night?" she asked, rubbing my back in a soothing fashion.
"I was numb," I answered. "After we left the restaurant, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even think. I just sat there in the car, trying to tell myself maybe I'd imagined everything." I hiccoughed. "And I thought if I didn't say it out loud, maybe it wouldn't be true. You know?"
"Oh, you poor thing."
She tried to wrap me up in another hug, but I stopped her.
"You're gonna smother me with those things. Seriously. Wait til I'm feeling suicidal."
Brooke grinned. "If you want, I could sneak up on Bradley and use them to finish him off." She gave a little shimmy to demonstrate just how lethal the girls could be.
I smiled, or I tried to, but it turned into a half-hearted yawn. I hadn't slept much the night before, and I was exhausted, and drained.
"I wish none of this was really real."
"Is there any chance you misunderstood him?" Carly asked, ever the optimist. "I mean, he’s the last person I would ever expect to do something like this."
She knows men, and relationships, since she’s had a lot of both. She’s also small and cute and adorable, everything I would hate if she wasn’t one of my best friends. How can you not love a girl who had her first "wedding" in kindergarten?
I, on the other hand—I like the concept of wedded bliss, but after years of my parents' silent warfare. . . let's just say the reality of marriage made me all woozy and shaky. The exact same way I felt now, after being dumped by the man whose proposal I thought I'd be turning down.
"She’s right, honey," Brooke said, "maybe you misunderstood him. Tell us exactly what happened last night."
"Well," I said, "it definitely started out with bad sex in the morning."
"It shocks the hell out of me," Brooke said, "since you are so not a morning person."
"I can’t imagine her doing anything before she’s consumed mass quantities of coffee," Carly agreed.
"Hey, I like to think of morning sex as a caffeine alternative."
"There’s always that whole dragon breath thing, too." Carly pursed her lips with distaste. It made me wonder if one of her men had been "let go" for that very reason.
"If everyone does their part correctly, you kind of get distracted from the whole dragon breath thing," I said.
"So you thought you’d get a great start on the day, by getting Bradley going," Brooke prompted.
"Right," I said, "and it didn’t take long before I figured out his equipment was doing its best to be in the moment. But his brain was obviously elsewhere."
Carly tsk-ed. "Even when they have no interest in you, they’ll still give it a go if there’s free sex involved. How do they do it?"
"It obviously involves compartmentalizing their brain, putting you in one part and the sex in another," I said, unhappily.
Brooke snorted. "But these are the same ones that can’t find their socks if you don’t put them in the same place every time you do laundry."
"We’ve never had bad sex before," I confessed. Bradley and I had had five years of wild, passionate, insanely gratifying sex. The kind that gets better with every repetition. The kind that makes you feel bad for all the people in the world who weren’t you.
"It was probably just a little blip," Carly offered. "Maybe he just needs a little pill to help out."
"That’s right," Brooke said. "Although if Sven had an erection that lasted four hours, I guarantee he'd spend three hours taking selfies with it."
Carly and I nearly spewed our coffee. I was grateful for Brooke's outrageous comments, since there sure wasn't a lot in my life to laugh about anymore.
"To be perfectly honest, the past year or so there wasn’t really any sex. Remember at my last physical when the doctor asked, 'What do you use for birth control?' and I answered, 'Exhaustion'?"
"Well, that happens," Brooke said. "Between your job, and his job—"
"Daily chores," Carly added.
"Interfering in-laws," Brooke said, with a grimace.
"But back in the day, whenever we got The Urge, all of those other things would have been pushed aside," I answered, indignant. "It didn't affect us. Then yesterday when Bradley was hovering over me, he had this weird expression on his face, like he was studying for a last-minute pop quiz and he’s scared shitless that he’s going to flunk it anyway."
Carly stared at me, fascinated, as if I was unveiling the secret for losing ten pounds overnight. I was the only one of us who had ventured into this brave new world of bad sex, so they were looking to me to be their tour guide.
I tried to figure out how to describe this indescribable scenario. "I just realized. It’s like he’s pretending he’s not having sex with me!"
"Did he think you wouldn’t notice?" Brooke asked, incredulous.
"It feels like I’ve been cursed." My voice caught. "Like I've got bad sex karma."
"I'd say it's more like bad ex karma," Brooke countered, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"She's right," Carly said.
"It doesn't really matter what we call it." I heaved a big sigh and laid my head on my folded arms. "The end result is the same. Bradley's decided to downsize and I've got to figure out how to deal with it."
~~~~~
