~ON SALE FOR $.99~
I never forgot her. Not for one minute. Not from the last time I saw her, at seventeen, to today. I measured all women against her and all women came up short.
But being with her was unfeasible in high school, and it's taboo now.
I see her sometimes, but I've never spoken to her. She runs, or I run. We're in the same town, on the same block, in the same building, and the gulf between us is just too wide to cross.
Until tonight. He was my high school crush, back when I lived in a world that didn't want me. He was the perfect boy, and I was the outcast kid from the other side of town. And when he held my hand I thought I could fit in, just a little. I thought I could be his and he could be mine.
Then he left, and my life fell apart.
Now we are the king and queen of opposite sides of Hollywood. And we haven't spoken a word to each other.
Until tonight.
◆ EXCERPT ◆
I stroked his hair, waist deep in peace, all worry gone for the moment, and floating in no more than an ocean of gratitude. I must have been more vulnerable than I realized, or he’d reopened some wound with his kindness, because though my sweet reverie stayed, as the minutes passed, a layer of need fitted itself on top of it.
I needed to tell him, if not the details, the outlines of who I was.
“I want you to know,” I whispered, starting somewhere small, then everything I didn’t want to say spilled out. “I have stuff. I’ve never been to jail, but you know, it’s stuff, and it’s ugly, and it scares me. Because, I mean, you’re so perfect, and I’m... I’m just a mess. I’m not whole. I’m a bunch of pieces of a person I cobbled together.” My eyes got wet when I thought of the comparisons between us and that picture in my silverware drawer. “So if you have to move on when you realize that, I’ll understand. You have an image, and if anyone understands protecting a career, it’s me. I mean, I’ll be mad, don’t get that wrong, but also.” I swallowed and blinked, shifting my head so he wouldn’t feel the tear on his forehead. “I won’t blame you.”
I waited for an answer. Anything. A change in position or a word on any subject. The weather. Sports. Something. But all he did was breathe.
I smiled so wide, tears fell into my mouth. He was sleeping.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
~ABOUT CHRISTINE REISS~
CD Reiss is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t pick up, she’s at the well, hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did embed TV story structure in her head well enough for her to take a big risk on a TV series structured erotic series called Songs of Submission. It’s about a kinky billionaire hung up on his ex-wife, an ingenue singer with a wisecracking mouth; art, music and sin in the city of Los Angeles.
Critics have dubbed the books “poetic,” “literary,” and “hauntingly atmospheric,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to give the toilets a onceover every couple of weeks or chop a cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
~CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE~
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