Lenny For Your Thoughts

A taste of the Contemporary Romance I'm writing set in Germany. This book is inspired by the town where my husband comes from--though all characters are fictional.

It's also the first love story I've written that spans over 18 years (from childhood to mid-twenties). Chapters fluctuate to tell the story from the now to the then and back. . . .

I hope this is the beginning of a Berlin based series . . .

Here's an excerpt before my editor has seen it, lol. :P (Thank bloody hell for editors, eh? :D)

Also, any German readers out there, feel free to pitch in if the German parts don't sound right. (But "Oma" is staying! :P)
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November 14, 2013
Three-in-the-fucking-morning

A shriek ripped through the night—and the dream I’d been having about rolling in luke-warm wax. I sucked in a gulp of slightly burned cookie-scented air, from my dismal attempt at baking earlier that day, and leaped out of bed.
Huh. Uh. What . . . ?
Oma! Shit.
I had to save Oma from her knife-wielding night terrors. Move. One foot. Then the other. That’s right.
Or perhaps I should say, I had to save the neighbors from Oma.
Two bounds from the door, and three from the stairs leading down to the ground floor, the shriek came again.
Huh?
This time it didn’t sound like the cuss-filled cries I’d gotten used to years ago. It sounded deeper, another type of familiar, and—
Kasper, I swore. But I smiled and stumbled in the dark room, outlined dimly with moonlight that peeked through a slit in his curtains, toward my cell phone that’d fallen in the crack between my bed and side table.
Karlo, the fuck. He’d changed my ring tone for Halloween two weeks ago—in a failed effort to make the whole day a big affair—and I’d forgotten to change it back.
Hurrying to get the call before it screamed again, I stubbed my toe on the corner post of my bed.
Aghhhhhhhh—
Fuck-fuck. Double shit. Fuck.
I lunged for the phone, knocking a framed photo from my side table that the culprit on the other end of that damned line had given me when I’d visited him in Berlin that summer. I swiped the screen.
“Damn you, Karlo,” I said, trying to hold a growl that broke as soon as he interrupted.
“Know it’s late, Lenny. Sorry, I . . .”
I sat back on my haunches, the bed covers brushing against my arm and night t-shirt, and the carpet itching cruelly under my knees. Karlo didn’t sound his usual vibrant self.
“What happened?” I asked, voice dropping instantly into concern. I picked up the photo from the floor and polished the glass with my t-shirt.
The photo was of a bird just as it took off from its perch of hundreds of dried up Berlin posters. I’d been watching Karlo as he’d taken the shot, and maybe had mentioned something about it, because later that week, I’d found it framed, perched in the middle of the cot he’d set up for me in his kitchen-lounge.
I bit my lip as I rested the photo back in its spot, angled toward the bed where I could see it before I switched off my reading lamp at nights. Holding that photo had been the moment where I’d stopped dreaming of ‘one-day’ moving to Berlin like my sister had, and decided to do something about it.
Karlo sighed down the line.
“Is it something to do with that girl you’re seeing?” I prompted. What was her name? Olivia?
There was a moment of quiet and then his voice again. Yep, all the party had left his words, all right. “Yeah, she—I’m pretty sure she’s going to dump me. I really thought she was the one too.”
I held back from a sharp desire to snap at him and say of course she was never going to be ‘the one’ because if she were, wouldn’t Karlo have introduced her to me by now?
I flopped onto my side of the bed. The side of the bed that Karlo and . . . that Karlo had always shoved me over to as kids when we had sleepovers. Even after so many years, it’d still remained ‘my’ side. “I’m sorry, Karlo. Someone will come along who’s perfect for you.”
“But what if they’ve come and I’ve just fucked it up?”
“Nah. If it’s meant to be, it’ll be. You can’t miss rightness like that, and when it comes, you’ll just know, yeah?”
“How come you’re suddenly such a know-it-all?”
“Oma Niki.”
“Naturlich.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what she told me.” Of course, when she’d described it, she’d said: love’ll bite you in the ass like a fucking mosquito, and once it’s tasted you, Schatz, it just won’t want to stop. She’d snapped her cane to my ass to emphasis the point.
Karlo grunted. “The witch didn’t use those words, I bet.”
There Karlo went again, pretending he despised Oma, when, in fact, she was the best family Karlo had. He’d just never gone and admitted it.
I said, “I’ll pass on your kiss.”
“Jesus, Lenny. It’s three in the fricking morning. Why the hell are you still talking to me?”
“Because you needed my all-knowing advice.”
“Oma Niki’s ‘all-knowing advice’ you mean. . . . Anyway, get back to sleep, idiot.”
“You too, dick-a-roo.”
“You’re terrible at this.”
“Taught by the best.”
“Yeah.” Karlo laughed, the timbre of it heading into giggling territory. I smiled. The dork. “Anyhoo, thanks for putting a stupid, wonky smile back on my face. Even if only for a couple of seconds.”
“You want longer?”
“I want forever.”
“Ha. Well, I could promise a whole weekend’s worth if you swing down this way. There’s the town festival this Saturday. We can check it out. Hey, maybe sis’ll come down too. Can you give her a lift? And . . .” I should spit it out and say it. Come on, Lenny. He’s your best bloody friend. The only one who ‘gets’ your crazy. “ . . . and there’s something I want your help with.”
“Planting more wax mushrooms in the backyard?”
“Nope. Something much bigger.”
“Fine. But . . .”
“Fine, butt? Why thank you—”
“Stupid fuck.” I heard his grin—that type of ability came after a lifetime of friendship. “Look, thing is, if I come down there, I’m going to have to see Julien.”
The name was a punch to my sleep-deprived gut. I couldn’t even repeat his name if my bloody life depended on it. “He’s . . . in town?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Since . . . when?” Since when had that fucker—I wasn’t joking with the pet name this time—come back?
Karlo went quiet. “This is awkward. Thought your auntie would have told you. He’s home for a while.”
“Home,” I murmured, brain still echoing Julien’s name.
“Yeah, and I don’t know why you hate him so much, but I don’t ‘kay? He was only ever nice to us in school for the most part. Besides, it’s been years. He’s finished uni, for crying out loud. We’ve all changed.”
“What are you saying, Karlo?” I managed faintly.
“I’m saying, maybe you could give your cousin a second chance?”