Exclusive Book Excerpt: The First and Last Everything (a love story)

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Book Type: Fiction - Love Story
Summary: One summer of working on the New River is about to change everything and those who are impacted will be changed forever. Do you remember your first love?

Today I'm sharing an exclusive book excerpt from The First and Last Everything.
Check it out- below!

PROLOGUE
ELEANOR

KNOWING HOW IT ALL ENDED, I wish I would have been brave. But I was a coward. For someone whose head was always spinning with words, I had lost them all in that moment. It was the moment I lost him. A moment of impact that would forever change the lives of many, myself included. I’d allowed myself to be stolen away by a pair of blue eyes that cut to my core and tanned skin that sung melodies to my heart, in exchange for summer romance. My first love. My first kiss. My first rebellion. My first sense of what it meant to really be alive. My first heartbreak. My first, everything.
What is it about first loves that makes us feel we can move mountains? What reason does a first love have for staying deep within us, forever? I’m still not sure I can answer those questions, even now. Even after so much time has passed. If there is a scientific reason for love, I don’t want to know. I just want to remember how I felt. How he made me feel. I want to hold on to the person I was when I was with him, and the person he was when he was with me. We were great. We were something. Because we were in love.

Psychiatrists say we – yes you, too – tend to use sound bites and phrases to describe hardships in our lives. When someone asks if I have a sibling, for example, I always reply with “I had a younger brother. He passed away when I was twelve.” We use our sound bites to prevent ourselves from feeling wounds of the past. The deeper the wound, the more practiced and compact the sound bite. We don’t want to go there again. Automatically repeating the verbiage we’ve practiced protects our inner selves from much of the pain. I use sound bites to explain him. Although I mostly avoid talking about him at all costs. The wounds of my first everything are thick with roots that sink deep below the surface.

But something recently changed. And if you really want to know what happened that summer, I’m ready to go there. I’m ready to feel again. I’ve clung to the pain of that summer for so long, I’d forgotten what happy felt like. It’s taken me until now to realize I wouldn’t have felt so much pain if the good hadn’t been so amazing. I’m letting go of the sound bites. Not that anyone’s been asking lately. But that’s okay. No one has to ask. It’s my story, after all. And there are only two people who can tell it. Brink Edwards and me. Because it was our love that was my first. It was our love that taught me everything that matters. And it was our love that broke my heart into a million pieces. Pieces that I’ve just now decided to gather.

No one wants to hear a generic love story. And so I promise, I will dive deep. I promise I’ll share with you what really happened that summer. I’m willing to bet you’ve had a summer like this yourself. If you haven’t, maybe you’re about to have one. If you have, don’t let yourself forget it. Don’t use sound bites to cover up what real love made you feel. The greatest loves most often have the most tragic endings. I think it’s because when you know real love, the loss of it is unbearable. I bet you still remember the song that was playing on the radio the first time you made-out in the back seat of a car. I bet you broke curfew a time or two when you were with the one that made your heart race. I know this because love is the thing that binds us all together. Across ages, across nations, across religions, we all know what it feels like to love and to be loved. If we don’t have it right now, we’re longing for it. If we’re lucky enough to have it, we’re holding on for dear life because love is the only thing worth fighting for in this world. I just wish I would have realized this all those years ago; that summer. Time stands still for no one. Not even for the greatest love in the world. Nope. The world keeps spinning and we’re left to our own devices. We’re left to figure it out. We’re left to decide how we want to live this one precious life. What I’ve always wondered is, if love is such a powerful force, why are most of us so terrified of it?

I’m not a psychiatrist or a love doctor of any kind. I’m just an aging woman who has known love and lost love. A woman who is still grappling with what was and coming to terms with what is. I’m a person who stops and wonders if he ever thinks of me, even if only for a fleeting moment. Am I as ingrained in his memory as he is in mine?

No one wants to hear the ramblings of an older woman, so I’ll go there with you now. I’ll take you back to when I was sixteen, thin and beautiful. It was a time before technology, before texting, emails and cell phones. I’ll toss out the sound bites and tell you what really happened. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll see yourself in us. If you’re lucky, you’ll realize when you have true love in your life before it’s too late. Because if you realize it too late, you’re bound to live with a hole in your heart. An ache in your chest. And you’ll always wonder, what might have been. Promise me you won’t let yourself wonder. Promise me you’ll live. To truly live, is to find love.

1989
CHAPTER 1
ELLEN

 AT SIXTEEN I’VE NEVER been kissed. Unless you count the time Alex Martin pinned me against the wall in the kindergarten coat closet and planted a wet one on my lips. I screamed, slapped him in the face and ran to the safety of the classroom. I was five. That does not count as my first kiss. Anyway, in my defense, I’ve just celebrated my sixteenth birthday. I know what you’re thinking; sixteen is pretty old not to have kissed someone. Obviously, I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve hardly done so much as flirt with a guy. I am under the strict watch of my parents meddling eyes. Eyes that have turned cold to love and “relationship nonsense” years ago. We don’t own a television and my parents have never done so much as held hands in front of me. But I have seen my friends kiss guys at parties and at the pool. I have seen my friends hold hands with boys, too. I just haven’t done it myself, not yet. But I want to.

While every other sixteen year-old is celebrating the fact that another school year has ended, I know I have a summer of work ahead of me.  While my friends run off to purchase country club pool passes, I sit on my bed and write out a list of books I want to borrow from the library for the summer. Some books I’ve read before, others will be new to me. During the school year my life is full of maintaining good grades, racing at track meets, playing at piano recitals, and serving as the student council secretary and editor of the school yearbook. My parents are quick to assure me that I don’t have time for boys. Maybe I don’t. But I find myself wanting the time. But summer is here, and summer means moving two hours away with my dad. It’s what we do every summer.

The only time my mom ever seems happy is when we – my dad and I –pack the car and head off for the summer. My little brother, Tim, died in a car accident four years ago, the same summer I started working with my dad. No one was happy that summer. In fact, none of us really spoke at all. It was a summer of silence. But now, my mom smiles as we prepare to leave for the summer, the creases of her mouth reaching up toward her ears. She misses my brother, we all do. But she is happy to have the house to herself. Or maybe she is just happy to have a break from caring for my father and providing taxi services to me for my countless school activities. None of which include dating.

Since I’ve just turned sixteen, I don’t have my driver’s license yet. I am anxious to get it, but I need to save up enough money for a car, too. Until then, I guess it doesn’t really matter if I have my license. My parents said I can take the driver’s test when I return home before the start of school in the fall. Then, I can drive around blaring my Debbie Gibson cassette tape, singing to Foolish Beat.

Instead of lounging by a country club pool with my friends, I am about to spend yet another summer working by the river; the New River. And I won’t be lounging, I will be working. I will be sending others out for a day of fun, while I sit behind a desk repeating the same lines day after day. “After you’re outfitted with properly fitted helmets, life-jackets and paddles, please step to your right and wait for your raft guide.” I am sure I’ll be saying that line in my sleep, along with “Thanks for calling New River Rafting, this is Ellen, how can I help you today?” I am a pro at repetition. At being boring. At not being kissed. Hello, my name is Ellen Landis and I am desperate for love. I should have that line tattooed on my forehead this summer. Maybe things will get a little more exciting. Then again, maybe not. Maybe I will be back in this musty outdoor office again next year, at age seventeen, repeating the same lines and surrounded by my closest friends, my stack of library books.

It’s not because I’m ungrateful for the work. I actually like this job, sort of. But working under the thumb of a dominant father has its challenges. Especially when anyone my age comes rafting. Especially high school boys.

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Stacey Ritz is a bestselling author and award winning writer. An empathetic and compassionate storyteller, Ritz wrote for a plethora of local and national news outlets, magazines, blogs, and websites (copywriter), prior to becoming a novelist. Her book, Covered in Pet Fur  has gained attention from RIVA Media and Animal Planet. She is the Executive Director and co-founder of Advocates 4 Animals, Inc. – a 501(c)3 non-profit animal welfare organization that has saved more than 11,000 lives (and counting). She currently resides in Ohio. Ritz is published through Rockville Publishing. You can interact with Stacey online via Stacey's Book Blog, on Pinterest, andInstagram.

Ritz writes the following genres:
Non-Fiction:
Motivation/Inspiration
Writing/Publishing
Animal Welfare
Fiction:
Love Stories

Click here to view Stacey's fiction books.

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