Original Love. J.J. Murray

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      REUNITED

      “Ebony, I—”

      She stands on tiptoes and kisses my lips. “Not tonight.” She takes my hand. “I don’t want to talk tonight.”

      I slide my hand around her stomach, and it’s soft and firm. God, It’s like she hasn’t changed in twenty years! She lifts her shirt and places my hand on her smooth skin, my fingers tickling her gumdrop belly button.

      She leads me to the Captain’s berth, a single votive candle flickering from its holder on a desk crammed with nautical charts and map books. She peels off her shirt and lies on the Captain’s bed, both arms reaching out to me.

      “You haven’t aged a day,” I say with a trembling voice.

      She shakes her head. “Shh. We’ll talk tomorrow. Come to me, Peter.”

      “It’s been a long time,” I whisper as I ease myself on top of her, her skin hot, burning.

      “I’ve been waiting twenty years.” Tears well up in her eyes. “You’re my one and only love. Just don’t let me go this time.”

      “I won’t. I promise.”

      Books by J.J. Murray

      RENEE AND JAY

      SOMETHING REAL

      ORIGINAL LOVE

      I’M YOUR GIRL

      CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE

      Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

      Original Love

      J.J. Murray

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

       KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Once again, for Amy

      Contents

      Part One Ebony Lost

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Part Two Ebony Found

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

      Part One

      Ebony Lost

      Yet nothing can to nothing fall,

      Nor any place be empty quite,

      Therefore I think my breast hath all

      Those pieces still, though they be not unite…

      My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,

      But after one such love, can love no more.

      —from “The Broken Heart” by John Donne

      1

      I’m writing the synopsis to this novel while flying from Pittsburgh to JFK. Unlike many of the other passengers on the plane, I don’t need to look out the window after takeoff to catch a glimpse of where that plane of heroes went to its holy grave in a southwestern Pennsylvania field, I don’t need to look down through the smoky clouds at Ground Zero in Manhattan, I don’t need to see the ruins, I don’t want to relive that day, and I don’t stare at other passengers as potential terrorists carrying knives and box cutters.

      I have so many other days to relive, so many other fires to put out, so many other ruins to explore, and I had already lost all the illusions that used to color my world at the tender age of thirteen back in 1976, the 200th anniversary of the dyslexic Untied States of America. The rest of this country is just catching up.

      And if birds were frisked and inspected and made to wait in line for hours, they would never fly.

      I stare at the folded and creased poem in my hands, a poem Ebony wrote to me twenty years ago, and I wonder if it’s possible to repeat the past, to renew an original love:

      My soul loves you endlessly…my whole life

      even before I knew you

      you were what I wrote and hoped

      things my day and night dreams were made of

      original love.

      You brought gentle peace…even in anonymity

      the thought of you

      the very idea of you

      and me ever coming to be

      was hope and power and love.

      I wrote your name up there…in clouds

      said it to myself out loud

      made you more real to me

      again and again and again

      I craved you way back then.

      You came to me…with splendor and glory

      just like in my dreams

      reigning strong and supreme

      constantly giving what I’d need

      making the you in me a necessity.

      Like pen and paper…destined to meet

      a joyous time to bear

      to write you, ignite you

      simply to delight myself in you

      makes pure the air I breathe.

      My soul loves you endlessly…my whole life

      more hope than my head knew

      my heart could ever have

      dripped into my life on slanted autograph

      original love.

      No matter how often I read it, I still see Ebony Mills, the girl I left behind, the girl of my dreams who I fed only nightmares. Maybe we’ll be destined to meet…again.

      After a harrowing trip from JFK around roadblocks, under flag-draped windows, and past closed-off streets in my rented Nova, I show the synopsis to my old editor, Henry L. Milton, at Olympus Publishing in midtown Manhattan. Light streams into Henry’s forty-third floor office, sooty clouds obscuring the street below. Aside from some classical harp music, nothing seems to move in Henry’s office, not even the air, as he reads.

      Henry shakes his head, his gray ponytail swishing behind him, flashes of light reflecting off a tiny lightning bolt earring. Henry still thinks he’s a child of the sixties, even though he wears a blue Armani suit.

      “Pete, this sounds far too