by Angella Graff
Fiction
Blurb:
Felix LaPage was a rising Classical Cellist. His career was taking off, but his personal life left something to be desired. For ten years he struggled through his relationship with a woman who had affair after affair, trying to stay true to what he had been taught by his parents; make a relationship work no matter what. It's after he meets a woman on a train that he starts to truly question everything he had ever stood for, and the idea of happiness.
The book isn't sweet romance, it's fairly nitty-gritty. It's not erotica, either, though there are some adult themes and adult language.
Read an extract of the book after the jump:
Extrract from Moments Collide by Angela Graff
Copyright Angella Graff.
“This girl is pretty,” Rayne said a few nights after I'd found the article. I was sitting on the couch next to her, Rayne on her laptop taking a break from her online game to browse the web. “Don't you think she's pretty?”
With a sigh, I looked over and saw some fan, one I didn't remember at all, had posted a picture of me and her together at what looked like the San Francisco symphony hall. “Not really,” I said tiredly.
“Do you remember when this was taken?” she pressed, her voice getting a little tighter.
I looked at the picture again. “I had a lot of photos that night. It looks like San Francisco,” I answered her. Seeing as we'd had this hysterical argument time and time again, I knew where it was going. No matter how many times I tried to avoid it, it always blew up.
“You seem really defensive of this, Felix,” she said. “One of these days you're going to tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“About you and these girls. Felix, I know a cheater when I see one, and taking a job where you travel around without your wife is kind of their calling card,” she spat.
I shook my head. “Rayne, I have never cheated and will never cheat, okay?”
“That's what I thought about myself, but I was capable of it!” she shrieked. “Don't try and act like the saint here because you've never been caught.”
I let out a groan and turned away from her. “I am not having this argument again, Rayne,” I bit out. “You can't keep punishing me for something I haven't done because you still feel guilty.”
“Guilty?” she hissed. “Guilty? It's far from it! I'm just saying I know the signs, Felix. I know when someone is interested in someone else. Look at the way you're looking at these girls! How many of them have you taken into your dressing room and fucked? How many, Felix? Tell me the truth!”
I stood up, about to lose my temper, and headed for the bedroom. “I am not going to listen to this anymore, Rayne.”
“Of course you're not,” she shrieked as I walked away. “If there was nothing to hide, you would actually have an explanation!”
I turned in the doorway. “I have an explanation, Rayne. I'm required to sign autographs and take fan photos for the people who pay money... money, my dear, that goes to pay our rent and put food on our table. So if you want to complain about it, I'll quit. I'll quit and you can go back to work and I'll figure something else out. It's up to you.”
“You always make it about me, Felix! You always make this into something I'm doing,” she shouted. I walked into the room and sat down on the bed, though she kept yelling. “Somehow this is always my fault! How would you feel if I was taking pictures with men every night and having then posted all over the internet!? I have no idea what you're doing when I'm away, Felix! How am I supposed to trust you?”
I fell back on the bed. “Because I've never given you reason not to,” I called back, knowing it was pointless to argue, but unable to help it. “I'm not the one who broke the trust in the relationship, Rayne!”
“You're never going to stop throwing that in my face!” she wailed. “You're never going to stop punishing me for it!”
“You're the one punishing me, Rayne.” I said. “You're the one insisting that I'm capable of the act that you were capable of. I've never given you reason to believe I'd ever do something like that.” I walked back into the living room and glared at her.
“Oh really? You flirt with women at work, I've seen it. You flirt with women at your shows, you let them post these photos of you. Half the time when I call, you don't answer and it takes you hours to get back to me!”
“Only when I'm in the middle of a concert and I physically can't answer my phone, Rayne,” I growled. “We can't keep going through this.” It took me a moment to say it, but eventually I blurted out, “You need therapy.”
Rayne's eyes went wide and she put her hand to her cheek dramatically. “Are you serious? Do you seriously mean that?”
“God yes,” I breathed and sat down on the arm of the chair. “Rayne, you need therapy more than anyone I've ever met.”
She let out a little sob and started to cry. “Why do you have to be so mean to me all the time, Felix? It's like you say these things to hurt me just for the fun of hurting me.”
I sighed and shook my head. “That's not it, Rayne, and if you were in any way rational right now, you'd see that. I don't enjoy hurting you, that's not the kind of person I am and not the kind of person I'll ever be.”
“So why would you say something like that?”
“Listen to yourself, Rayne!” I cried. “Listen to the things that you say to me all the time. I've never given you reason to believe I have or ever will cheat on you, but you're constantly persisting with this idea that I'm going to do to you what you did to me. You need therapy. You need to figure out how to let go of your guilt over what you did so you can stop assuming I'm out for revenge, or whatever it is you think.”
She stared at me, eyes wide, for the longest time. “You honestly think I still feel guilty over Richard?”
“Well you should, since you've never really taken responsibility for what you did,” I snapped at her, a knee-jerk reaction from the memory of the past pain. It was mean and honest, and I momentarily doubted what I had said earlier about not hurting her for the fun of it. If I was being truthful with myself, I sometimes found myself mean to her, just to see her flinch, particularly when she was being completely irrational.
Rayne picked up a candle that was on the table and threw it at me, growling as she did so. I dodged it and winced as I heard something glass behind me break with the impact. “You're such an asshole! No apology is ever good enough for you, Felix!”
“It's hard to feel like you apologized after you started making up things like he put a magic spell on you, Rayne. Maybe if you had just said, 'Yes, I cheated, it was a terrible thing to do and I'm sorry,' and just left it at that, I might feel like you actually learned something from that mistake. Instead you're constantly trying to put the blame on anything else other than yourself, and even after all these years I still can't move on because I'm terrified you're going to do it again.”
“What more can I do, besides not cheating, to convince you that I would never do that again?!”
“Go to therapy,” I said. “Go see a damn therapist and maybe they'll be able to help you realize what you did and why, and help to come to a rational conclusion where you can take responsibility for your actions- and not just with Richard, but with everything in your life. Maybe then we can actually move forward.”
“And what about you? What about all the horrible, soul-crushing pressure you put on me all the time to be this perfect being that I'll never be? Are you going to get therapy for that, Felix?”
“I can't do this with you, Rayne,” I said quietly. “I just can't. This is never going to work if you don't realize that you have some major issues that need professional help. I'm going to bed.” With that, I stood up and went back into the bedroom.
She followed me into the bedroom, ripping her wedding ring off of her finger and waving it at me. “Does this mean anything to you anymore, Felix? Does it?”
I sighed. “I can't continue this argument. We can talk tomorrow.” I gently pushed her out of the room and shut the door.
She continued to chatter and yell behind the closed door and eventually, once she had gone back online, I was able to sleep. It didn't last too long, she kicked me out of the bed a couple of hours later, but the fight was done.
Want to read more? The ebook is available here and
the paperback here
Read an interview with the author:
http://booksandtales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/author-interview-angella-graff.html
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