2007

Alexander

3. Whisper these Words to Me

We’re in bed. Dani rolls over to face me and has to lift her belly with her hands to shift her body to the other side. Today is her due date. Our first child. Dani is beautiful, glowing, truly gorgeous, but her stomach is so huge, it has to be painful.

“Alex?” she whispers. It’s early and she’s still groggy. She’s wearing just a tank top that only covers half her belly and a pair of tattered floral underwear. It’s adorable. I run my hand over her stomach and feel our baby kick. It’s one of the best and oddest feelings in the world. Dani is all belly. It almost seems like the rest of her body is actually thinner, like the baby is taking everything she’s got. If she didn’t still have such a vibrant energy, I might actually be concerned. The baby moves and turns dramatically, it’s hard not think there is at least a three year-old in there.

“Yes, my love.”

“I want to ask you something.” Her eyes are still half-closed. She maneuvers to get closer to my ear. I can feel her breath. Now my mind is on other things. I think she’s going to kiss my neck when she very quietly says, “I think we should insulate the attic today.”

My eyes shoot open. “What?”

Taking a deep breath, she sits up. “This house is cold and the insulation sucks. We should go rent one of those machines that shoots insulation into the attic.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I saw it on an episode of ‘This old House.’ We can get it all at Home Depot.”

Dani is nesting at the moment… quite literally. She wants to blow tons of insulation material into our attic, like an actual nest, and I can’t tell her no.

“I think it’s like a two or three-man job,” I say.

“Man?” she snaps.

“Person,” I reply a little exasperated. “You know what I mean.”

“You and I can do it,” she argues.

“No, Dani! No way. You’re not going up in attic right now.”

She takes a deep breath and calms down. “You go in the attic and I will put the insulation into the machine outside. It runs through a big hose and you’ll just shoot it all around up there.”

***

It’s now the afternoon and I cannot believe I agreed to do this but I knew Dani wouldn’t take no for an answer, and honestly how could I refuse her? She is smiling as she stands in the side yard preparing to dump giant bales of insulation into the hopper machine down below. I’m watching her from the attic opening and through the kitchen window. She has the radio blaring ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ and she’s bobbing her head to the beat. She’s ready. “Go ahead,” I yell and then prepare myself for the onslaught. The insultation comes shooting out with the force of a fire hose.

It’s not slowing down and now I’m about knee high in the stuff. I wonder if Dani will ever stop throwing the bales in. “Stop,” I yell, but she keeps going. The music and sound of the machine are drowning me out.

I finally set the hose down and go over to the opening. The hose is flailing around wildly, but I need to get her attention. She’s covered in sweat and insulation particles and she’s frantically cutting the bales open and tossing them in. I pause for a moment to take it all in. It’s hilarious. She’s so determined.

Finally, I have to scream, “Stop, Dani!”

She looks up, still smiling. “Oh sorry!” she yells.

When I get down from the attic, I check my phone and see there is a message from our neighbor, Carl. It says:

Monica and I are very concerned, Alex. We see your wife across the street frantically throwing stuff around. Isn’t she very pregnant?

I laugh to myself and reply:

Yes. Today is her due date and she decided she wanted to insulate the attic. I love her so much.

PRESENT DAY
Danielle

4. I Haven’t Heard Your Voice in Years

It’s 4:32 in the morning and he’s walking down the hall toward the stairs. I know the time without looking at the clock. The springtime light isn’t yet piercing the horizon. There are no cars on the road; his will be the first. It’s quiet out, but loud in my head, loud in this house.

He’s shifting his one hundred and seventy pounds from one foot to the other, down the stairs…loudly. It feels intentional. He clears his throat. It feels intentional. I can hear him from my bed, far away in my bedroom. What used to be our bedroom. Our bed.

No one is awake at this time in the morning. No one in this house, no one in this neighborhood, no one else in my life. He must know he’s waking the whole house as he shuffles his feet across the travertine floors, down the hall, past the dining room and into the kitchen, where he presses the button on the coffee grinder. We’re up now! You’ve made your point, asshole.

This is how it has been for years. After three hundred and eight thousand complaints, it hasn’t occurred to him that he should grind the beans the night before? It’s not evident to him that no one else in this house needs to be awake for another three hours? Not me, not our twelve-year-old son, not our thirteen-year-old son, not even the damn dog. After so many years of tolerating his inconsideration for the sake of marriage, it no longer feels like a sacrifice…It feels like a crime, one in which I’m victimizing myself by staying.

In the last several years, there hasn’t been a single morning I’ve woken up on my own, or even by an alarm I had set myself. No mornings lying naked, languid, exposed…. wrapped up in a lover. Wrapped up in him. I have entertained such phenomenon, I have revisited that life in my mind many times. The life I used to know. I shimmy out of my tattered sweats and T-shirt at dawn. I run my hands across my breasts, my stomach. I feel what I might feel like to someone else…someone who isn’t in such a hurry.

I imagine a man being awestruck, telling me he doesn’t want to leave. I remember that feeling, which is now so far away. He asks me to stay… in bed… I imagine sleepy morning sex while listening to Chet Baker croon quietly from the speaker in the corner. Later we amble directionless around the room until we’re dressed, teeth brushed. Strolling to a café, sharing a meal, drinking our coffee, kissing and saying goodbye. Realities I no longer experience.

I’m alone. I feel the scars he calls “marks” like they’re tattoos chosen from a wall off the retail store of my youth. Drunken mistakes? A tramp stamp, as it is so terribly referred to? No! These are stretch marks from pregnancy…scars. Four pregnancies in all. My two beautiful sons and the two horrific second-trimester miscarriages I endured alone… my daughters. He doesn’t see them every day the way I do. He doesn’t imagine the women they would’ve become every time he looks at his own body in the mirror.

The grass isn’t greener, it’s gravel on the other side. This is what I have told myself for years and this is why I’ve stayed, but now my imagination has become too wild. The grass isn’t greener, it’s a vitamin-rich waterfall oasis with magical, golden baby goats and Adonis angels feeding me calorie-free chocolate ice cream.

It’s Sunday and I’m awake at four forty-five in the morning, but I won’t go downstairs until at least seven. I will not give him the satisfaction of knowing he woke me up, yet again.

He’s completely deaf in his left ear, according to the world-renowned audiologist he saw–– his words, not mine. He can hear a mere twenty-percent in his right ear, but it’s enough, and it’s why I automatically walk and sit and eat and instinctively move to a person’s right side when interacting with them regardless of their aural-apparatus capabilities. You evolve after twenty-two years of adjusting your frustration levels, speaking up, enunciating, shouting, “How was your day?” Eventually, you just move to the right side.

I’d think it contemptuous to be annoyed by his deafness if I didn’t believe it was partially selective on my behalf. He seems to have much better hearing when anyone besides myself is speaking. It’s that insolent wife joke about how obnoxious her voice is. I can’t believe I used to laugh along to jokes like that, as if to say I’m too cool, too easygoing to be offended by a joke about how women in general are annoying and my own voice is grating or off-putting. The voice I used to soothe our children, night after night, the only voice that could soothe our children is somehow raucous to Alex and to others? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?

He had just gone deaf the year I met him and was monumentally struggling with his balance, among other issues that present when your hearing in one ear suddenly goes out. It was an inner-ear infection, the first world-renowned audiologist had said just before closing the book on Alexander­— no amplification possible. He’d have to get a cochlear implant, which at the time was a devastating idea, even to me. Yet now, after twenty-two years of people shouting at him, he still refuses to look into cochlear implants? Part of me thinks it could have saved our marriage.

In the beginning…I pitied him, and I know it doesn’t make sense to resent a person for pitying them…but it is possible.

I tap the screen on my phone. It’s now seven-fifteen in the morning. Today is a big day. Moving day. I realize I’ve been lying in bed, awake, listening to the clanking, tinkering, shuffling, shifting for almost three hours. In my head I imagine making three tally marks on top of an old chalkboard. The screeching chalk in my mind coincides with the sound of Alexander slamming the vitamin cabinet above the trash can. He’ll take the trash out next and when he does, he’ll lift the trash bag out and let the heavy plastic trash can liner slam back down into our overpriced SimpleHuman stainless steel trash can. It’s made for simple humans after all.

I glance at the clock and add another tally mark to the chalkboard. The thousands of lines represent the hours I’ve wasted being unhappy.

Regardless of how many aspects of my life are predictable to the point of soul-murdering boredom, one thing is, ironically, predictably unpredictable, and that’s the fact that I never know when Alex is going to leave the house or return. Even though he wakes up at the same time every day, some days he says he has to be at work at seven a.m. Some days he’s home at two or four, and others not until eight p.m.  He’s a physical therapist with his own practice, and his hours vary greatly.  If you ask him to try and give you a heads-up, he’ll act like you’re somehow taking away his autonomy when the reality is, by virtue of his own recalcitrance, he has eliminated any autonomy I could possibly have.

And so I am the default parent…the mother. He is the man who deserves autonomy.

Cases in point, more than a thousand times over the years we will be headed to a destination we’ve both agreed upon, Alex driving, of course, because I’m a woman, when, without warning, he will turn in the opposite direction than the agreed-upon destination, at which point I will say, “Where are we going?”

In the more recent years this question has become increasingly agitating to him. “I’m stopping at the gas station to get a Lotto ticket. Is that okay with you?”

I’ll usually respond with something like, “Sure, it’s just nice to know where my body is being driven.”

Almost every time he looks at me and rolls his eyes.

Just last week, many months after we had already decided to file for divorce, we chose to ride together to the mediator’s office. We were naively optimistic, and also… we pretend we’re progressive. On the way there, Alex decided to take a different route.

“Where are we going?”

“To. The. Mediator’s. Office.”

“Why are we going this way?”

“Because I decided to go this way and I’m driving.”

“Well, then let me drive,” I said without condescension.

“No, this is my car, I’m driving and I am going this way because I want to go this way.”

“Alex, do you see how this conversation started as a simple question and now it’s turned into a battle over whose damn cookie it is?”

He glanced at my crotch. “Well it’s not yours; we know that.”

Shocked, I said, “Now that we’re getting a divorce you’re a sex-crazed, deluded, misogynist man from 1805, calling my vagina a cookie? Well, that definitely makes things easy for me.”

“Lighten up.”

“No, I will not lighten up. You lighten up. I just asked where we were going, and now you act like I was the one overreacting. If you’re not stonewalling me, you’re blatantly gaslighting me.”

“Well I’m glad the thousands of dollars we spent on therapy has improved your vocabulary. Anyway, it’s never just a simple question with you, Danielle. I can always hear something in the underlying tone.”

“You’re projecting.”

“According to you, I’m everything in the goddamn psychiatric bible!” he yelled.

“You said it. In this instance, I really did just want to know where I was going. I’m not your property, not along for the ride. You’ve been doing that to me for what feels like a millennium… And by the way, Alex, I’ve always had a stellar vocabulary.”

“Leave it to the writer to exaggerate everything and then to brag about her word prowess on top of it.”

“Let me explain something to you––”

“Dani, just stop talking.”

“No, I’m pissed now.”

“You’re always pissed.”

“Listen to me, there is a difference between exaggerating like, ‘My dress was nine hundred dollars when it was really seven hundred,’ and, ‘My dress was a million dollars.’ It’s beyond the scope of possibility or likelihood and it’s simply for effect. Furthermore, I haven’t written in a year. For some reason I am no longer inspired to write.”

“Don’t blame me for your writer’s block.”

“Stop saying everything I do is because I’m a writer. You always do that. You knew me before I was a writer.”

“You said yourself you were a born writer, a storyteller, which makes you a born liar.”

“Oh, screw you.”

“You won’t let me.”

“You’re a pig. Why would I? Your jealousy about my career has made the fact that I am a writer the enemy of this marriage.”

At this point, we had looked up to realize we were in the parking lot of the mediator’s office. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not jealous of you. I have my own career. Are we gonna go into Kevin’s office yelling and screaming at each other like last time?”

“I’m not yelling. I have to talk this loudly so you can hear me, remember? How come when you yell, you say it’s because you can’t hear, but when I yell, I’m a bitch?”

“Are you ever going to shut up, Dani?”

“Are you going to start showing me some base-level respect by telling me when you decide to take a different route, or stop at a convenience store while I am the passenger?”

He sighed. “This is ridiculous. It doesn’t matter because you’ll never have to be the passenger again.”

“Fine by me. I can’t believe we thought we could actually ride together. And for the record, Alex, this cookie is closed­­––to you anyway.”

“Well that’s settled. Let’s head in. Now, get the hell out of my car.”

Under my breath I said, “Your car that I paid for,” which isn’t entirely true, but I do know how to push his buttons.

That was exactly three seconds before I unbuckled my seat belt and got out. It was exactly five seconds before Alex jammed the car into reverse, backed up, almost running over my foot, and took off down the road while I looked on from the parking lot completely dumbfounded.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘This Used to Be Us’ by Renée Carlino appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Will you be reading any of these romance releases? Tell us in the comments below!

Kiss Me Not by Emma Hart
Goodreads | Amazon

As the reigning kissing booth contest champion, I have one goal: kiss as many people as possible to retain my dubious crown. But the only person I want to kiss is my best friend’s brother.

Handle With Care by Helena Hunting
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

New York Times bestselling author of SHACKING UP and I FLIPPING LOVE YOU Helena Hunting mixes humour and heart in this scandal-filled romantic comedy.

The Aussie Next Door by Stefanie London
Goodreads | Amazon

American Angie Donovan has never wanted much. When you grow up getting bounced from foster home to foster home, you learn not to become attached to anything, anyone, or any place. But it only took her two days to fall in love with Australia. With her visa clock ticking, surely she can fall in love with an Australian—and get hitched—in two months. Especially if he’s as hot and funny as her next-door neighbor…

Say You Still Love Me by K.A. Tucker
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

The bestselling author of The Simple Wild and Keep Her Safe and “master of steamy romance” (Kirkus Reviews) delivers a sizzling novel about an ambitious and high-powered executive who reconnects with her first love: the boy who broke her heart.

The Love Solution by Ashley Croft
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Sisters Sarah and Molly are close, but they couldn’t be more different. When Molly is put onto a new assignment, she’s over the moon. It’s a high-profile, top secret project – and she has a handsome new boss to ogle at when she’s not bending over a petri dish… But when Sarah finds herself on the painful end of a disastrous break-up, no amount of Ben & Jerry’s or trashy rom-coms can cheer her up. She wants to take a more drastic approach to dealing with her heartbreak, and one that only her sister – and perhaps a sprinkle of science – can help with . . .

Discretion by Karina Halle
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From New York Times bestselling author Karina Halle comes a delicious saga of wealth, luxury, and scandal—and the wicked secrets of success behind an envied family dynasty.

Playing for Keeps by Kendall Ryan
Goodreads | Amazon 

Get ready to meet your new favourite hot jocks in this series of stand-alone novels. If you like sexy, confident men who know how to handle a stick (on and off the ice), and smart women who are strong enough to keep all those big egos in check, this series of athlete romances is perfect for you!

Playing House by Ruby Lang
Goodreads | Amazon

Romance blossoms between two city planners posing as newlyweds in this first in a bright new series by acclaimed author Ruby Lang.

The Last Post by Renee Carlino
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In this evocative and poignant novel from the USA TODAY bestselling author of Blind Kiss and Wish You Were Here, a young widow in the midst of grieving her late husband through Facebook posts learns to heal and fall in love again.

Already Gone by Kristen Proby and K.L. Grayson
Goodreads | Amazon

New Hope, South Carolina is my home. It’s where I grew up, got into trouble, and fell in love for the first time. Scarlett Kincaid was more than the girl next door, she was my best friend, until she decided that small town life wasn’t for her. One minute she was here, and the next she was gone..

Catching Him by Aurora Rose Reynolds
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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Aurora Rose Reynolds comes the first novel in the fun, sexy, and thrilling How to Catch an Alpha series.

Then I Met You by Matt Dunn
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From the bestselling author of At the Wedding comes a story of two perfect strangers who might just be perfect for each other.

Are you excited for any of these new romance releases? Tell us in the comments below!

The post August 2019 Book Releases: Romance appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Read on to discover our picks and tell us in the comments below if you will be reading any of them!

Hold You Close by Corinne Michaels and Melanie Harlow
Goodreads | Amazon

Ian Chase broke my heart at seventeen, and I’ve spent the last eighteen years hating him for it. He makes it easy, with his smart mouth and playboy lifestyle—which I unfortunately have to observe since he lives behind me… London Parish is my little sister’s best friend, not that it stopped me from falling for her. Our history is complicated. The only thing we have in common is being godparents to my sister’s three adorable kids—until our lives are changed in one tragic moment. Now we’re trying to raise the children we love, mourn an unthinkable loss, and fight an undeniable attraction.

The Good Luck Charm by Helena Hunting
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Is it love, or is she just his good luck charm? Lilah isn’t sure what hurt worse: the day Ethan left her to focus on his hockey career, or the day he came back eight years later. He might think they can pick up just where they left off, but she’s no longer that same girl and never wants to be again. Ethan Kane wants his glory days back. And that includes having Lilah by his side. Just when Lilah might finally be ready to let him in, though, she finds out their reunion has nothing to do with her and everything to do with his game. But Ethan’s already lost her once, and even if it costs him his career, he’ll do anything to keep from losing her again.

Desperate Girls by Laura Griffin
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Defense attorney Brynn Holloran is right at home among cops, criminals, and tough-as-nails prosecutors. She’s a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, but in her personal life, she’s a mess. When a vicious murderer she once helped prosecute resurfaces and starts a killing spree to wipeout those who put him behind bars, one thing becomes clear: Brynn needs to run for her life. But when Brynn defies advice and gets involved in the investigation, even the former Secret Service agent assigned to protect her may not be able to keep her safe. With every new clue she discovers, Brynn is pulled back into the vortex of a disturbing case from her past.

From Here To You by Jamie McGuire
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On her wedding day, Darby Dixon holds a positive pregnancy test and realises marrying her abusive fiancé would be the worst decision she’s made, so she runs. She lands a job as a front desk clerk at the Colorado Springs Hotel. Former Marine, Scott “Trex” Trexler has the chance to find peace again, which is Colorado Springs at top-secret military installation. Darby realises he’s dangerous when he walks in and as charming and devastatingly gorgeous as Trex is, he clearly isn’t telling her everything. But as wildfires rage on the mountain and Darby’s ex-fiancé shows he isn’t so willing to let her go, both she and Trex are soon to find out that what you don’t know absolutely can hurt you.

Darkest Heart by Juliette Cross
Goodreads | Amazon

Anya—a stoic, blue-winged angelic warrior— was bitten by a demon prince in battle, and now she has precious little time to find a cure for his deadly venom. But the only archangel with the power to stop the dark poison from corrupting her body and soul is missing. She’ll have to trust her guide, the outcast high demon Dommiel, who is as handsome as he is dangerous if she has any hope. An outcast of his own kind, high demon Dommiel stays under cover while the war between angels and demons rages on. But when the only person who ever showed him kindness asks for his help, he has no choice but to try to save the angel. Venturing back into the dens he has avoided for so long, Anya makes him want and feel things he never thought possible. But Dommiel knows there is no way an angel can ever love a demon…

The Chase by Elle Kennedy
Goodreads | iBooks

Everyone says opposites attract. And they must be right, because there’s no logical reason why I’m so drawn to Colin Fitzgerald. I don’t usually go for tattoo-covered, video-gaming, hockey-playing nerd-jocks who think I’m flighty and superficial. His narrow view of me is the first strike against him. It doesn’t help that he’s buddy-buddy with my brother. And that his best friend has a crush on me. And that I just moved in with them. Oh, did I not mention we’re roommates? Anyway, I’ve got my hands full dealing with a new school, a sleazy professor, and an uncertain future. So if my sexy brooding roomie wises up and realizes what he’s missing? He knows where to find me.

All The Way by Kristen Proby
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Finn Cavanaugh is known for being a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom. He owns a successful law firm with his brother and brother-in-law in Manhattan. But when Finn’s troubled niece goes to stay with him for the summer in Martha’s Vineyard, he’s reluctant to take time off from work. That is, until he meets his beautiful new neighbor, London, a Tony Award winning actress on Broadway. When tragedy strikes her family, leaving her alone and injured, she flees Manhattan for Martha’s Vineyard. Hoping she can figure out how to pick up the pieces of her life, London is convinced that she’ll never be able to return to the stage. But when she meets the charming young girl next door and her sexy uncle, they soon lure London out of her shell as she finally begins to heal from the wounds of her past.

The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Calla Fletcher wasn’t even two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when Calla learns that her father’s days may be numbered, she knows that it’s time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born. While she struggles to adjust to this rugged environment, Jonah—the unkempt, obnoxious, and proud Alaskan pilot who helps keep her father’s charter plane company operational—can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. Soon, she finds herself forming an unexpected bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it’s replaced by friendship—or perhaps something deeper?

Not So Nice Guy by R.S Grey
Goodreads | Amazon

“Oh my god. Who that?” I get asked this question a lot. “Oh him?” I reply. “That’s just Ian.”Just Ian is the biggest understatement of the century. Just the Mona Lisa. Just the Taj Mahal. Just Ian, with his boring ol’ washboard abs and dime-a-dozen dimpled smile. Just Ian is… just my best friend. We’re extremely close, stuck so deep inside a Jim-and-Pam-style friendzone everyone at works assumes we’re a couple – that is until one day, word spreads through the teacher’s lounge that he’s single. Fair game. Suddenly, it’s open season on Ian. He should be reveling in all the newfound attention, but to our mutual surprise, the only attention he seems to want is mine…

Tailspin by Sandra Brown
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Blind Kiss by Renée Carlino
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Penny is now a suburban housewife, dreading the moment her son departs for MIT, leaving her with an impeccably decorated McMansion and a failing marriage. A lifetime ago she had a chance at happiness. After The Kiss. Before The Decision. The Kiss was earth-shattering and it was all for a free gift card. Asked to participate in a psych study that posed the question, “Can you have sexual chemistry without knowing what the other person looks like?” She never expected The Kiss to change her life forever and introduce her to Gavin: tattooed, gorgeous, and spontaneous enough to ask her out seconds after the blindfolds came off. For a year, they danced between friendship and romance—until Penny made The Decision that forced them to settle for friendship. Now, fourteen years later, both of their lives are about to radically change—and it’s his turn to decide what will become of their once-in-a-lifetime connection.

The Governess Game by Tessa Dare
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

After her livelihood slips through her fingers, Alexandra Mountbatten takes on an impossible post: transforming a pair of wild orphans into proper young ladies. However, the girls don’t need discipline. They need a loving home. Try telling that to their guardian, Chase Reynaud: duke’s heir in the streets and devil in the sheets… Like any self-respecting libertine, Chase lives by one rule: no attachments. When a stubborn little governess tries to reform him, he decides to give her an education—in pleasure. That should prove he can’t be tamed. But Alexandra is more than he bargained for: clever, perceptive, passionate. She refuses to see him as a lost cause. Soon the walls around Chase’s heart are crumbling… and he’s in danger of falling, hard.

Check out our other August book picks on our Goodreads list!

Any other releases you’re excited to read this month? Tell us in the comments below!

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