This week’s Hump Day Hook is yet another snippet from I Still Remember. It takes place on the massage table, just as things start to heat up… 😉

Her fingers knead the flesh of my back and shoulders. Up and down they roam for minutes on end and—despite myself and the feverish thoughts crashing through my brain—I’m about to reach that state of zen-like calm, of shutting off the world and just returning to myself. But then it happens. Her finger brushes against the side of my breast, which protrudes a bit as I lay on my belly.

Amy doesn’t apologise, she simply continues, but it feels as if my life has just changed considerably. As if the world has shifted and new possibilities have been born. This happens all the time during massage therapy, of course. The number of times Raj has accidentally brushed his fingers along my breast equals the number of times I haven’t cared an iota about it. But the furtive skating of Amy’s finger along my skin there feels more like a promise. An opening. Maybe a declaration.

Both of her pinkies glide along on either side now, and I never before realised how sensitive my skin is there. Maybe this is just the way she does her job. Or maybe she has a few buried emotions rising to the surface as well.

Every time her fingers dip a little too low, a flash of heat tumbles through my bones, all the way from my spine to my toes. Goosebumps have made way for hot flashes and then—oh no—an involuntary moan escapes me. I snap my mouth shut as soon as it happens, but it’s too late. I’ve given myself away. I lay there dying a little bit, my face pressed into a hole, my eyes fixed on Amy’s toes. Her nails are painted a deep red and—I may be losing my mind by now—it’s the most beautiful colour I’ve ever seen.

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This week’s Hump Day Hook is another snippet from my newly released novelette I Still Remember. As this story deals with revisiting a teenage crush, it contains a few flashback scenes and this is one of them.

We’d been swimming in a small pond behind Amy’s house. It was cordoned off from their garden by a bunch of pine trees and, as the afternoon progressed, the sun dipped away behind the trees, leaving us with early evening shadows. We were wet from the water and the sky was the colour of summer: blue streaked with soft yellows and dashes of pink I never understood. The colours that would forever remind me of Amy.

It was the height of my crush on her, a few weeks before we’d leave high school forever. All my energy went into trying to keep my eyes off her as she adjusted her bathing suit while we let the last of the heat dry our skin. I tried so hard not to look at her that all I did was stare in the distance.

“What’s wrong, Eli?” Amy playfully pinched me in the side, catching me by surprise. I swathed her hand away as if it were a vile mosquito, quickly regretting my impulsive reaction. To mask the turmoil ripping me apart inside, I shot her a quick grin before rolling on top of her and pinning her arms above her head.

I stared down at her, every cell in my body tingling. Her dark eyes smiled up at me and a surge of something I couldn’t control swelled inside my gut. I closed my eyes for a second and saw what was going to happen next. I was going to lean down and kiss her. I saw myself do it on the back of my eyelids. I could almost taste her lips and smell beyond the heady mixture of sun and lotion on her skin.

When I opened my eyes, it seemed as if hours had passed, but it was still the same Amy squirming below me on the grass. It was the same pond giving away its summery sparkle to the falling darkness. Amy’s eyes were still the same mocha brown and her hair the same shock of wild curls, but I had changed. I’d never come so close and suddenly I realised it was the closest I would ever get.

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Obviously, I’m very fond of all the stories I write but, sometimes, when it feels as if I don’t have to write it, as if the story is basically creating itself and all I have to do is pound my fingers on the keyboard and let it flow out, a special one comes along. That’s how it felt when I was writing I Still Remember. It’s nostalgic and hot (I broke my record of lady-loving scenes per story!) and it’s my wife’s new favourite. Here’s a snippet for today’s Hump Day Hook. I Still Remember will be released next week. (Send me an e-mail if you want an ARC in return for an Amazon review.)

“Eli?” Amy’s voice never really suited her until now. It was always the voice of a grown woman with endless legs, strong hands, and pronounced collar bones.

“Sorry. Miles away.” I take the cup of tea she hands me and, awkward as I feel, sip from it immediately. The tea is scalding hot and I burn the tip of my tongue but I don’t say anything.

Amy looks at me over the rim of her cup while she, wisely, blows on it to cool the liquid. Her eyes radiate a softness I don’t recognise. But we are different people now, even though I feel myself slipping into my teenage skin again—and adoring Amy silently. Me, of the endless chatter on TV, the never-ending banter I’ve made a career of. A few minutes with Amy and I’m sixteen again.

“Why don’t we get on with it.” She places her cup on a small table next to the chair she sits in, one leg folded over the other. She looks at me, her eyes almost watery now, and in that one glance I see it. In that instant, I realise she always knew. “I give a mean massage, even if I do say so myself.” She erases the moment with a quip and a smile and I don’t know what to think.

The words ‘massage’ and ‘Amy’ seem to flash in my mind in big red letters. My brain can’t process the two of them together, as if it has neatly shelved any physicality away from the memory of Amy.

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