Title: Textual Encounters
Author: Morgan Parker
Genre: Romance
Tour Host: Lady Amber's Tours
Synopsis
Katie discovers an unlocked iPhone in the back seat of a
taxi. But instead of turning it in to the driver as lost, she decides to keep
it for herself. Outside of the usual clutter you would expect to find on a
smartphone, what captures Katie's interest is the single conversation she finds
on the phone's secure text messaging service, a three-month dialogue between a
woman with an uncertain past named Christine and a single, eligible man named
Jake. What starts out as a message intended for someone else ends up being the
beginning of a relationship more powerful than anything Christine or Jake have
ever experienced.
Author Bio:
Morgan Parker is the pen name of someone who thinks he is
more important than he really is.
At 38 years old, Morgan has two young children and is married
to a woman who puts up with his
self-diagnosed hypochondria and literary obsessions.
Excerpt
8:03pm:
Did Melissa tell you that Peter was abusive?
8:04pm:
Of course she didn’t, because she never knew that part of
him.
8:05pm:
I bet she didn’t tell you that he doesn’t even know that I
live in the same city as
he does. Of course she didn’t, because she never asked me
about Peter when I
texted her two weeks ago.
11:38pm:
I’m curious, Jake. How did Peter come up in your
conversation with Melissa?
Were you asking, or did she volunteer. Because if you were
asking, then I have
to wonder why you never asked *me*.
11:40pm:
Because if you had asked me, this is what I would have told
you:
11:43pm:
Peter and I met in high school. He was the greatest guy I’d
ever met. Smart,
handsome, extremely charming. He was a year younger than me
and all of the
girls in the school wanted to be with him. So to have him to
myself, to have “won”
him, I felt pretty special.
11:45pm:
Anyway, Peter and I were together eight years. We tolerated
each other through
my last year in high school and my four years of college. By
the time I finished
my CPA, he hit me five times. He threatened to kill me six
*thousand* times. I
guess it depends on who you ask, but that is either five
times too many, or six
thousand times too many, but for me it was both.
11:48pm:
I moved to New York with him for two reasons. The first is
that he proposed to
me once he was offered a job at Arthur Andersen and I was
afraid to say no,
and the second is because I saw New York as my last and only
opportunity for a
fresh start. In Chicago, I didn’t think I could break free
the same way. He had so
many friends to keep an eye on me, he knew where to find me,
etc.. So I tagged
along.
11:52pm:
Our first week in NYC, I had six interviews, three in one
day, two the next and
the last one on Friday. I didn’t make the Friday interview
because I was in the
hospital. When I showed up for the second round of
interviews the following
week, I never heard back from two of them. I’m sure you can
figure out why.
11:55pm:
When I met Melissa, I was still with Peter. It was optics by
then, Jake. Of course
we were high school sweethearts. Of course I *loved* him
more than anything.
Of course we were planning a huge wedding on Long Island, my
dream wedding
that was *fit for a princess.* Of course we were trying to
have children. And of
course Melissa saw two people madly in love with each other.
11:57pm:
That’s how these kinds of relationships work – all about
what it *looked* like. I
didn’t want to make another trip to the hospital!
11:59pm:
When Andersen promoted Peter to Toronto, I promised him I
would follow. Would
you have told him anything different?
12:01am:
I packed all of our stuff and shipped it out with him. Even
my stuff because I was
allegedly on the verge of getting transferred myself. It was
easier to have it there
waiting for me because then he knew I was serious about
making the move,
right? And if he knew I was serious, he would give me the
space I needed to find
my next job without telling him anything about it.
12:03am:
I had to take these kinds of steps because if Peter ever
returned to NYC to hunt
me down, I couldn’t risk him walking down whatever street I
decided to move to
and recognizing an old lampshade or anything else that I
might put out for the
trash. Call me paranoid, but would you have taken that
chance?
12:05am:
So to address your comment about following him to Toronto,
are you smoking
fucking crack? Moving here is not *following him*, it’s
either being dragged or
tiptoeing delicately around a sleeping bear.
12:06am:
I love you Jake, I really do, but next time it might make
better sense to ask me
directly.
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