Logline

Ex-Lovers Ren and Gio are thrust back into an elevator together by sheer fate. She thinks she's broken beyond repair. He thinks he's a train wreck unfit for relationships. Their chemistry is immediate, but in order to fully heal their relationship and themselves, they must first reveal their deepest secrets. 

Blurb

I have to admit it to you... I never got over Giovanni. I thought I had moved on, even married another man, but just when I had my life all neatly put together, it all broke apart. Now I'm nearly thirty, freshly single, and living back home with my mom in California, where the hot and heavy teenage memories of Gio still taunt me.

Then, as if by fate, after eleven years of no contact, he accidentally walks back into my life, his gaze licking up my body like fire and zap! All it takes is one look to feel the intense connection surging between us again-and I know he feels it too. Damn, Gio was hot at seventeen, but now he's the sup'd-up, modified version.

Anyone can tell I'd give anything to get back together with him, but every time my heart soars with one step forward, he immediately takes two steps back. I know him well enough to sense he's keeping something hidden behind those gorgeous, enigmatic eyes-though I'm keeping a secret from him too.

I'm so afraid the way we each are broken could be our final deal breaker. What will it take to get him back... and if I do, am I really ready for the man he is now?

~Chapter One~

I've been touched by love before, felt its fingers caress my soul. Filling me up until I thought there would never be space to feel anything else. But here I lie on the cold hexagon tile of the bathroom floor, no second line, no second chance. I stare blankly out the wavy glass of the old brick apartment window, creating a distorted view of the golden leaves blown harshly, then trembling, in the crisp October breeze - And I oddly relate to those leaves, barely clinging on, flailing helplessly against the inevitable wind. And I suddenly realize that this season is called fall because, for the third autumn in my life, everything is falling apart.

*   *   *

November 2009

Oh god, here we go. It's coming on again. Breathe, Ren, just breathe. Why? Why am I broken? Just stop thinking about it.

Too late. My body temperature is rising, and my heart rate is picking up speed—palpating in my chest more like the heartbeat of a bird and not of a twenty-nine-year-old woman.

I know it looks like I'm afraid of flying to the other passengers on this flight as I grip the armrest with my cold, clammy hand and pop my pill, but that's not what this is about. My life has turned 180 degrees in the past year and a half, and the shock of it all still hits me in rolling waves from time to time.

Yep, I'm turning thirty soon (yet another bullet point to add to my list of anxiety-producing facts about myself), and I thought I had my life all planned out—put together neatly and on display in posed photos posted on Facebook. But that's all gone now—dissolved, with only smeared and blurry memories left. Like a once beautiful chalk painting streaked on the sidewalk in the rain.

Ding-ding.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard Flight 453 with service from New York to San Francisco. We are waiting on one more passenger to board and will be taking off shortly. Thank you for your patience."

What! This long-ass flight has already been delayed. We have been squished in here, waiting to take off for ninety minutes! The universe just seems to want to punish me at every turn! Breathe. You're just in airplane hell. It's fine.

Figures. One interruption after another. My life is totally stalled out, reversing, actually. I mean, after eleven years of living in New York, I'm heading back to live with my mom with my tail between my legs. Loser with a capital L? Yeah, that's me—right here.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat. It's too tight in here—I need more air! I wish I could get up and walk around, but I'm stuck here. As my heart continues to pound, my eyes rapidly scan the aisles of the plane. Only a few seats are left. One of them being next to me.

God, I hope this person shows up soon, but please, god, just please, not next to me.

My one solace right now is this middle-seat buffer I have between me and a middle age woman whose resting face sports puffy lips and a deep frown like a Pacific Rockfish. Pulling out my bag, I quickly switch my iPhone on and text my best friend Sydney that we will be delayed again.

After I finish my brief text, I switch my phone off and stow it and my bag well under the seat with my foot so the stern flight attendant doesn't harass me about it for a third time. I don't need more stress right now; more people making me feel incompetent. I already can't do life properly, I don't need someone else making me spiral.

Distracting myself by reading seems like my only option to calm my nerves, so I pull out the only two books I brought with me on the flight. The one on top my mom sent me: "Fresh Start - A Divorce Recovery Workbook."

My mom, a psychologist, is always ready to send me books she thinks will "help." I sigh and stuff it back into the seat pouch in front of me. I open the book Sydney had urged me to buy. "Eat, Pray, Love."

I still haven't read it yet or watched the movie. Sydney had raved about it—telling me it was, like, "absolutely the perfect book for me to read right now" and to "just get through the first chapter," whatever that meant.

I flip to the first chapter, and immediately my stomach drops like the plane has fallen straight out of the sky. Yet here we are, still firmly on the ground. I slam the cover closed.

Is Sydney playing a sick joke on me?

My still recovering tummy is telling me don't do it, but I can't seem to help myself. I slowly open it again and re-read the sentence. The very first line of the book is:

"I wish Giovanni would kiss me."

I slap the cover closed again... right on my hand. Ouch!

My brain is fighting these words' effect on me—a slivery electric flow from my thrumming heart and pooling between my thighs. I can't even believe it. I just had a dream about this very thing! It was so vivid: Gio and I kissing behind the library in my small hometown in Northern California.

In real life, he had almost kissed me there—when we were teenagers in high school and hadn't become a couple just yet. The moment had been thick with desire for each other, but we had been interrupted.

In this dream, however, he did kiss me. And boy, did he kiss me! In a way that only knowing how hard and on fire his mouth on mine could be in real life. I could feel every detail of his lips on mine, his touch, his hands under my shirt pulling me closer. The blissful feeling of his body pressed hard against mine.

I woke up in a sweat, my nightgown soaked. It was the most real dream I had had in a very long time. The kind that makes you wonder if the other person shared that same dream, too.

I googled him that day and searched for any trace of him online—nothing. "No results found."

That relationship was in the past, I had reminded myself. I tried to put that dream and him out of my head. Forget him again like I thought I had finally accomplished when I got engaged to Alex. But reading these words just poured a bucket of intense, buried feelings right back over me.

"Excuse me."

I jump a little at the sound and dart my eyes over from the space in front of me as if I had just snapped out of a dream. A man has stopped in front of our row and is asking the woman at the end if he can squeeze in. Crap!

The large woman grunts and, with continued audible effort, gets up from her seat and makes room for the man to come in. I quickly take stock of the offending person who is A. late and held up our plane, and B. will now be squished next to me for the next five hours.

He is an older gentleman, maybe in his early fifties, with greying hair and a thin mustache. He is stylishly dressed in crisp navy pants and a striped button-down shirt. Tailored. He smells of expensive cologne and has an aura about him that intrigues me, a strange mix of something familiar yet foreign at the same time.

Scanning my outfit again, I suddenly feel a bit underdressed, though earlier, I had felt good in my new Adidas sweatshirt over cranberry skinny jeans and nude ballet flats.

He sits down gingerly between us, taking care not to brush me accidentally. He stows his leather bag under the seat and looks in my direction, the bright light of the window glinting off the wing of the plane is hitting his face, and he squints in response.

He slides sunglasses, with Gucci etched on the side, out of his shirt pocket, and I cannot look away from the sizeable mafia-like gold ring on his pinky as he puts them on. Then he folds his hands in his lap and sighs in what appears to be relief that he has made the flight.

Ding-ding.

"Flight attendants, prepare doors for departure and cross-check," I faintly hear.

A strange sensation creeps over me that I've seen this man before. Something is so familiar. I have lived and worked in New York for so long now—I could know him from anywhere. I am terrible at remembering names and faces unless the context is correct. He notices me looking him over and smiles at me.

Crap.

There is nothing more I dread than to have someone (especially a strange older man) strike up a conversation with me on any flight, let alone a long flight like this one, and be stuck making small talk for the entire duration. I have never been good at conversing with strangers, and my heart rate notches up again. I briefly wonder when my Xanax will kick in.

I take a few practiced, deep, slow breaths. The man next to me must be noticing me overreacting because he turns to me, lowering his sunglasses and catching me with sparkling, friendly, and familiar eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice thick with an accent.

"Um, yeah. Thank you." I manage, blinking a few times back into reality.

"You a nervous flyer?" he says, readjusting his sunglasses over his eyes.

"No, I'm fine, really."

He seems like he's just trying to be friendly, but nonetheless, I don't want to encourage him. I need to look occupied. The obvious answer is to go back to my book and curb the conversation, but I'm still freaked about seeing Gio's name in there and what the rest of it might say.

Instead, I let my long brown hair fall like a screen to hide my face as I sit forward slightly to look out the window. Gio... I wonder where he is now. My mind spins momentarily with thoughts of him, and I feel like I'm overheating again.

Grey clouds shift past a golden sun, unseen. I feel the jolt of the plane starting to taxi backward, and I lean slowly back in my seat again, feeling a wash of relief that we are moving now. There is a pause, and I smile optimistically to myself that the man will leave me alone. But yet... I now sense his eyes are still on me.

"Good book, no?" He gestures to what I am still gripping tightly shut, cover face up, on my lap.

"Oh," I say, feeling flustered once again. "Just starting it." I open the book once more, trying to shut down the conversation politely, but he continues.

"Are you flying home to San Francisco or for travel?"

I discreetly roll my eyes and breathe a sigh. "Home."

"You live in San Francisco?" he immediately follows up.

"No, a city just north of there."

I want to leave it there, but it feels rude. I have an irrational compulsion against being considered a deliberately rude person.

"You?"

"I'm moving back to the Bay Area again. Hopefully, see my kids. You have kids?"

"No," I say a little curtly and curse in my head. He had to ask that of all things.

"Ah!" he says softly to himself, gesturing with a hand to the head how stupid that was to say based on my reaction. "Sorry, of course not. You're still so young. Maybe one day." He smiles softly.

"Yeah," I agree, just to be polite. "Maybe one day."

The engine sound grows increasingly louder as we complete the turn onto the runway and pick up speed. The force pushes us both back into our chairs as we ascended into the air. I open my book, and he gets out a newspaper crossword, folding it into a neat rectangle.

And two things happen that surprise me: I get past the first chapter of that book, and he doesn't talk to me again for the rest of the flight.

But one thing's for sure...

Gio's back on my mind.