Songs of Love and Hate

By Courtney Milnestein

After two years hunched over her laptop at home, Deanna Spenser is finally back in the office, albeit only for three days a week, and predictably, she hates it. Driven by a deep desire for change, a yearning to not go back to the way things were before coronavirus, she finds herself consumed by memories of adolescence, of a friend lost to the past.

Abruptly, she is offered a chance to reconnect with her friend. Yet as the past opens up before her, she finds herself wondering if perhaps there are things that should not be revisited after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: May 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685501167

Book preview

Songs of Love and Hate

By Courtney Milnestein

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 Courtney Milnestein

ISBN 9781685501167

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

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This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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Songs of Love and Hate

By Courtney Milnestein

In the dull grey months after Christmas, yet before spring, she began to miss her. On the street, with the sun bright above her despite the clouds, she found that she had come to an abrupt halt, that she was just standing there, pushing the thin silver band of the ring on her finger with her thumb, wondering what had happened, how she got where she was, amidst the distant crowds, yearning for an early spring; how she had become an adult so sharply, so suddenly.

She had taken to wearing a ring on her left hand to dissuade men from talking to her on public transport, to convince them that she was not available, that she would be more effort than they might be willing to put in, and, for the most part, the statement was true, she was in a relationship. Her boyfriend of six years was kind and thoughtful, as many years younger than her as they had been together, and she did not dislike him, which felt like the kindest thing she could say about him. Yet here, in the grey months after Christmas, standing between Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross, facing the stones of St Martin-in-the-Fields and the lonely shops with their lonely clientele that filled the alleys and side streets running all the way up to Covent Garden and Leicester Square, she felt a sort of yearning, a sort of discontent.

She drew in a breath, trying to steady herself, trying to quell the sense of panic she felt, the mounting anxiety. It had been a difficult two years; two years of working from home, of keeping people at a distance, and she had begun to let her mask slip. Now that the threat of mass infection was apparently just something to be lived with, the insurance firm for whom she worked had been pushing aggressively for its staff to return to the office for a minimum of three days a week, and no amount of common sense or concern would dissuade them; the pandemic was something to be lived with now, she had been told each time she raised the issue, especially when there was still money on the table, followed the unspoken understanding.

She would need to leave, she had told the boy the night before as they had sat watching some bland television show together,