Title: Where We
Belong
Author: Eve Connell
Release Date: February 19, 2015
Synopsis
One
man diving into the
past.
One woman emerging from the
depths.
At the age of seventeen, Amelia Baide won
silver at the Olympic Games and was
the second-fastest woman in the pool.
Then one tragic night she crashed into a
lake and was dragged out without a pulse.
Now twenty-four, she is still haunted
by it and hasn’t swum again. Until this
year’s anniversary of the accident. It
is a day unlike any other and a strange
turn of events finds Amelia back at a
swimming pool.
Harry Jamieson had eyes for one girl,
while women and the media had eyes for
him. As a trainer of Olympic athletes, he
was an in-demand man. Until one boozy
morning after … But from bad luck to pure
chance he runs into his old flame,
Amelia, at a swimming pool no less. She
doesn’t remember a thing from the night
of the crash.
And Harry knows every single
secret.
The pair joins forces—a comeback for
Amelia and Harry’s ultimate coaching
opportunity. But dodging waves is hard to
do; and even the strongest swimmer
may sink.
Where We Belong is a
second-chance love story for young and
old, for swimming enthusiasts and
romantics at heart.
Chapter
1
Amelia
We had the fight
moments after I slipped the robe off my
shoulders into a pool around my feet. I had one foot on the shower base, one on
the
plush rectangular
mat.
At that moment, my
fiancé, Kristopher, knocked from the
other side of the bathroom door, which I’d
already locked for
privacy.
He had this
tendency often. The first word he would
speak to me all day? As I stepped into
the shower. Was it okay if he went out
with his friends instead of the dinner
reservation? As I stepped into the
shower. His
solution to cancer? As I stepped into the
shower.
Clenching my jaw, I
awaited the
question.
“Aftershave,
Amelia?” he
asked.
I sighed. “You
should have gotten it when I told you I
needed to shower. Or while I collected
my creams and lotions and make-up. Or
while I sniffed around for a clean towel
in your stash in the
corner.”
The soap—as we both
knew—was irrelevant in this argument. For
a fleeting moment, I wondered if we
stayed together out of laziness. And
maybe we did. Because I hated many
characteristics about my fiancé.
Especially his ignorance of this
anniversary.
It was September
twenty-ninth.
This year I called
my boss’s mobile at the crack of dawn to
fake a sick day, playing up my groggy
tone as a terrible sore throat in
addition to a nauseous tummy. She told me to
get well, and I swallowed the news with a
lump in my throat, guilty for lying. I was an assistant for a
medium-sized advertising business and
handled paperwork, invoicing and calls
all day long—it wasn’t like my absence
would be of consequence to day-to-day
activities. I’d pick it up
tomorrow.
Last year Kristopher
and I made dates apart with our
respective best friends, and I’d spent it
eating all the ice cream along a strip of
shops down the coast. I’d thrown up
once and then kept on going. Jaffa
flavour, I remember.
I’d licked and
slurped the drips down the paper cup, and
only thought twice of the
anniversary. Once on the drive down to
the beach, and then once as I’d clutched
the sides of a rusty public bin and
spewed my guts up to the backdrop of
disgusted gasps from
passers-by.
I don’t know what
Kristopher did that day, but he came back
when the night sky was a deep
sapphire blue, whisky on his breath as he
climbed in bed behind me.
The year before I
took a day off from work and spent $600
buying cocktail dresses I would never
have occasion to wear. The next day I
donated them to
charity.
Six years ago
today, I died. Hence, it was the one time
of the year we didn’t forget the date.
Unlike some years when we had to shop
for Christmas gifts at two am on
the
twenty-fourth.
I stared down the
white door of the bathroom, one foot
tingling with the sharp cold of the shower
base, hand clutching the knob. I stepped
back onto the tiles, accepting defeat.
“Come on, Amelia,”
he said in a low tone. “Just one Goddamn
bottle of aftershave. That’s all I
need.”
“No. Just wait till
I’m
done.”
“Babe.”
“Amelia,” I
said.
“Amelia, please,” he said,
voice breaking. “I
haven’t showered and I stink. I just need
a few fucking sprays, and I’ll be out
of your way all
day.”
I gritted my teeth
and hobbled from toe to toe, the cold
seeping up my legs. If we kept going on
like this staying out of each other’s way
was pointless. We knew how to nip at
each other’s sensitive spots in a way
learned from several years of being
together. I saw the forthcoming crash,
clenched my eyes shut against the pain.
My shoulders heaved, bracing for
impact.
Was this what
happened to me just before my
crash?
Was
there a moment of wide-eyed fear as my
corded, muscled arms grabbed the wheel
at the proper ten and two positions, and
I flew through the air, reduced to a
thin, crushed and crumpled body at the
bottom of the lake?
Hot tears grew
heavy behind my eyelids as something
inside me snapped. I shut the gate to the
horrific visions.
It was too late to
shower.
Kristopher banged
his fist on the door, the
boom
echoing. I bent and
hurried on my new
clothes folded on the
counter.
“Come on. This is
beyond a joke. It will take you a few
seconds to pass it.” The door rattled,
the handle jerking, but I’d locked the
door already.
“Amelia.”
I slipped my arms
into the cardigan and threw open the
door, despite the bags under my eyes and
the chill settling over my chest
because of the unbuttoned
front.
I said, “Have it
all,” pushing the aftershave bottle into
his chest, then rushed past him.
And I didn’t look
back.
Chapter
2
Harry
I woke to star-
and heart-shaped glow-in-the-dark
stickers radiating in neon green from the
ceiling. A ceiling I’d never seen before
in my life—typically, I wasn’t the
sort of man to befriend the fancy sticker
type of person.
It was pre-dawn,
barely so, the sun a tiny orb just under
the horizon through the crack in the
curtains.
My world swayed as
I tilted my head. I held my ears in my
palms, and my fingers weaved through the
messy state of my bed hair. Under the
purple sheets, my stomach churned, and
farther down, morning glory unstuck from
the
aforementioned undelightful purple
sheets. I crawled out of the
bed.
What the fuck was this? I
thought. And where the fuck was I?
I remembered
flashes from the previous night. A club,
a slime party, and breathy kisses with
the girl who lay splayed under these
purple sheets beneath her stars and hearts
glow-in-the-dark
ceiling.
Viol … Vick … no, it was Vivienne. No, wait,
Vivienna.
I smiled, proud of
my achievement. But that dropped into a
wobbly set of lips. My stomach churned
again. I lurched into the attached
bathroom and retched, wiping myself clean
with
water.
Even
though I was ninety-nine-point-nine per
cent certain I fucked Vicky (or
Vivienna), I shivered at the thought of
sharing her toothbrush, so I used the
handy finger-stick in lieu and then the
mouthwash beside the basin.
Feeling somewhat
refreshed, I let out a deep breath and
looked around the bathroom, not much of
a better sight than the bedroom. The
towels were white and pale purple, the
soap purple, and more stickers dotted
along the corners of the mirror above the
basin.
I stared at my
reflection,
disgusted.
My hair Mohawked, askew
to one side, a chunk plastered across my
forehead in a teenage boy-crush style.
I fussed it around with my hands. It
looked as if I just had sex, which was
better than it had moments prior.
I stepped back into
her bedroom, peering amongst the sheets
and all her hair. I sighed upon seeing
her, confirming one thing. She had the
youthful expression of someone I hoped
was legal. I was twenty-eight, she
perhaps twenty or twenty-one. I hoped.
Since she was still
asleep, I returned to the bathroom and
looked around for supplies to make
myself appear more human. But I caught my
reflection in the mirror and stalled.
My tan skin and dark hair vividly
contrasted against my steel-blue eyes. Most
noticeably, a bloodshot glare, lined with
purple bags, rolled lazily at the
reflection.
I didn’t suspect my
pick-up techniques from last night would
have worked if I’d looked like this.
Just twelve or so hours
ago, one look at Vivienna and she was
under my arm, my lips near her ear telling
her things she wanted to hear.
I
wished I’d had the foresight to stop
drinking and pick up her nuisances: the
squeals I thought made her sound cute,
the frilly neckline of her dress more
girly than sweet, and the bright purple
shoes. The poor woman had a young girl trapped inside her
body.
I looked through
the doorway and whispered, “You’re a
little crazy, Purple Vivienna.”
I never should
have—
Stop, Harry. I told myself.
Find some deodorant, get some clothes on, and get out of
here.
So I did just that.
Then I walked out of her bedroom without
a note or text. I didn’t have her
number, plus she didn’t care for me.
The others didn’t,
either. They thought
they cared.
But they wanted the
thrill of a night with the
Harry Jamieson.
A
night of passion and drinking
with the idea of
love.
One of us had to
have our heads screwed on.
With
mine teetering on the right side of
sanity, I dashed out and found my car
parked by the kerb outside her house,
hoping she’d been sober enough by the end
of the night to drive it. I knew
with absolute certainty I wouldn’t have
gotten behind the wheel.
I didn’t drive
after drinking. Not
anymore.
I
travelled home, which took an hour—a long
way for pussy, even by my
standards—and did the whole routine:
shower, force down some hangover-cure
food, spend the rest of the day watching
TV like a zombie. Late afternoon, I got onto all my emails,
responding to meetings, questions and
other ad hoc business, then prepared some
training sessions for my
swimmers.
When I woke the
next morning, I stumbled drowsily onto my
front lawn in just a pair of sleeping
pants and retrieved the delivered roll of
newspaper. My neighbour, having
noticed my exit, darted her eyes away and
scurried inside her house.
I never claimed to
be a sight for sore eyes in the morning.
But what the hell was that about?
Five minutes later, as I tipped a
steaming cup of coffee to my lips, I saw the headline and
cursed, spraying coffee all over my
granite countertop.
Author
Bio
Writer, kid-at-heart,
awesome partner, graphic
design dabbler, book
lover.
Author
Links
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