Annabelle is twenty-two years old, working the reception desk of a Dallas oil company, watching a clock that refuses to move, when a couple comes through the revolving door and kisses in the lobby at 10:47 on a Tuesday morning. Something shifts. What follows is a year.
Content Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content and mature themes. Intended for adult readers 18+.
A year of learning what her body actually wants: through Chad, who gave her something without meaning to; James, who asked before he kissed her; David, who brought water without being asked and always wanted to know what she wanted; and Jerome, who observed her with precision and warmth and never quite got past the surface of her.
A year of the Rosaria’s table, four women on Thursday nights who have been feeding each other wine and bread and honest opinions for long enough that catching bread without looking up is a developed skill.
A year that includes something that happens in a gallery corridor that she cannot bring herself to call what it was, and a night alone in a Deep Ellum club where she finds the edge of her own autonomy and what happens when someone engineers it away from you.
And underneath all of it: the violin tattoo on her back. Her late father’s instrument, pressed permanently into her skin after four hours face down in a chair. Chosen pain. The right to carry it.
Annabelle has been managing herself into a shape other people could receive since she was nine years old, standing in a kitchen doorway watching something she wasn’t supposed to see. This is the year she finds out what shape she actually is.
Explicit content. For adult readers who want literary fiction that does not look away.
| ISBN (Paperback): |
978-1-972810-32-3 |
| ISBN (eBook): |
978-1-972810-33-0 |
| Publisher: |
The Writing King |
| Publication Date: |
April 11, 2026 |
| Print Length: |
322 pages |
| Language: |
English |
Questions
What kind of book is this?
Literary fiction for adults. It follows one year in Annabelle’s life as she moves from a version of herself she constructed for other people’s convenience toward a more honest understanding of what she actually wants. It contains explicit content, but it’s a character novel first — interested in interiority, the Rosaria’s table friendships, and the long process of stopping managing yourself into shapes other people can receive.
Is this erotica?
No. The book contains explicit sexual content, but it’s written as literary fiction — the explicit scenes are part of Annabelle’s process of understanding herself, not the point of the book. The Rosaria’s table chapters, the men and what each of them reveals, the tattoo, the gallery corridor — these carry equal weight.
What is the significance of the violin tattoo?
Annabelle’s father was a violinist. The tattoo is his instrument permanently inked into her back — four hours face down in a chair, chosen pain, the right to carry something. It’s the clearest expression in the book of what she’s working toward: deciding what to carry and on whose terms.
Who would enjoy this book?
Adult readers who want fiction that takes female interiority seriously without sentimentalizing it. Readers who appreciated books like Sally Rooney’s Normal People or Catherine Newman’s Sandwich — character-driven, specific, honest about the body without being salacious about it. Not a romance novel. Not a thriller. A year in one woman’s life, told precisely.
Read the Opening
Chapter Two
The Lobby
10:47 on a Tuesday morning.
I knew the exact time because I’d just checked the clock, willing it to be lunch. It wasn’t.
I’d been in a bad mood since Sunday for reasons I understood and couldn’t do anything about. The kind of bad mood that had nothing to do with anything external and everything to do with being in a body that ran on a schedule it didn’t consult you about. I was managing it. I was always managing something.
He had his hand at the small of her back. Not guiding. Just there. Like it had always been there and always would be. She was laughing at something he’d said outside, still laughing when the revolving door exhaled them into the lobby, and then she turned and he kissed her.
Right there. Twelve feet from my desk.
Not a peck. A real kiss. She had one hand flat against his chest and leaned into it like she’d done it ten thousand times and was still not tired of it.
I became very interested in my spreadsheet.
Numbers. They meant nothing. I stared at them with the focused intensity of someone being paid to stare at numbers, which technically I was. In my peripheral vision, her hand on his chest, the silence they were making together in the middle of our very loud lobby.
They separated. She smoothed her jacket. He said something and she laughed again, quieter, private. They walked to the elevator without touching.
I was having a week where everything had too many edges. Two people kissing in a lobby was sitting in my chest like it meant something.
“Annabelle.”
Dale at my elbow with the energy of a man who had been saving a thought since the morning meeting.
“Going forward, when you answer calls from the Permian Basin office, the greeting is Good morning, Crestline Energy. The full greeting. Not the abbreviated version.”
“It’s afternoon when they call.”
“The Good morning is a courtesy, not a time indicator.”
“So I’m lying to them.”
“You’re welcoming them. There’s a distinction.” He straightened slightly. “After twelve hundred hours, Good afternoon. Before that, Good morning. It’s in the style guide.”
“There’s a style guide?”
Dale paused in a way that suggested there was not, in fact, a style guide. “There will be,” he said, and retreated.
I turned back to my screen. Her hand. Flat against his chest. The way she’d leaned in.
The afternoon moved the way Tuesday afternoons moved, badly. I answered phones. I smiled. I said Good morning to the Permian Basin office at 2 p.m. and nobody said anything about it.
I didn’t think about his hand at the small of her back. Except when I did, which was frequently. Not even sexual. Just, the ease of it. Two people in the same physical space making it look that uncomplicated. Like being close to someone was just something you did. Like breathing. Like it didn’t require years of preparation or a very good reason.
I sat in the driver’s seat of my car in the parking garage. Let the AC run. Didn’t pull out.
I had never been kissed like that. Not once. Not the way she’d been kissed, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, like there was nowhere else to be. I’d been kissed quickly and carefully and strategically and once at a party at seventeen by someone who’d had four beers and was aiming in the general direction of my face.
I was twenty-two years old and I had not known, until this specific Tuesday at 10:47, that I wanted that. Or I’d known and had been calling it something else.
Twenty-two years I’d treated my body like something I was housesitting. Careful with it. Not mine to damage.
I didn’t know exactly when that had started feeling like the wrong approach.
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Chapter Two
The Lobby
10:47 on a Tuesday morning.
I knew the exact time because I’d just checked the clock, willing it to be lunch. It wasn’t.
I’d been in a bad mood since Sunday for reasons I understood and couldn’t do anything about. The kind of bad mood that had nothing to do with anything external and everything to do with being in a body that ran on a schedule it didn’t consult you about. I was managing it. I was always managing something.
He had his hand at the small of her back. Not guiding. Just there. Like it had always been there and always would be. She was laughing at something he’d said outside, still laughing when the revolving door exhaled them into the lobby, and then she turned and he kissed her.
Right there. Twelve feet from my desk.
Not a peck. A real kiss. She had one hand flat against his chest and leaned into it like she’d done it ten thousand times and was still not tired of it.
I became very interested in my spreadsheet.
Numbers. They meant nothing. I stared at them with the focused intensity of someone being paid to stare at numbers, which technically I was. In my peripheral vision, her hand on his chest, the silence they were making together in the middle of our very loud lobby.
They separated. She smoothed her jacket. He said something and she laughed again, quieter, private. They walked to the elevator without touching. I watched the numbers above the elevator: three, four, eight. Eighth floor. Executives.
I was having a week where everything had too many edges. Two people kissing in a lobby was sitting in my chest like it meant something.
“Annabelle.”
Dale at my elbow with the energy of a man who had been saving a thought since the morning meeting.
“Going forward, when you answer calls from the Permian Basin office, the greeting is Good morning, Crestline Energy. The full greeting. Not the abbreviated version.”
“It’s afternoon when they call.”
“The Good morning is a courtesy, not a time indicator.”
“So I’m lying to them.”
“You’re welcoming them. There’s a distinction.” He straightened slightly. “After twelve hundred hours, Good afternoon. Before that, Good morning. It’s in the style guide.”
“There’s a style guide?”
Dale paused in a way that suggested there was not, in fact, a style guide. “There will be,” he said, and retreated.
I turned back to my screen. Her hand. Flat against his chest. The way she’d leaned in.
The afternoon moved the way Tuesday afternoons moved, badly. I answered phones. I smiled. I said Good morning to the Permian Basin office at 2 p.m. and nobody said anything about it.
I didn’t think about his hand at the small of her back. Except when I did, which was frequently. Not even sexual. Just, the ease of it. Two people in the same physical space making it look that uncomplicated. Like being close to someone was just something you did. Like breathing. Like it didn’t require years of preparation or a very good reason.
The revolving door pushed me out into the heat at five-fifteen. Dallas in July was a physical event. It landed on you.
I sat in the driver’s seat of my car in the parking garage. Let the AC run. Didn’t pull out.
I had never been kissed like that. Not once. Not the way she’d been kissed, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, like there was nowhere else to be. I’d been kissed quickly and carefully and strategically and once at a party at seventeen by someone who’d had four beers and was aiming in the general direction of my face.
I was twenty-two years old and I had not known, until this specific Tuesday at 10:47, that I wanted that. Or I’d known and had been calling it something else.
Somewhere in the middle of the drive home something shifted. I stopped thinking about the couple and started thinking about something else. Something closer.
Twenty-two years I’d treated my body like something I was housesitting. Careful with it. Not mine to damage.
I didn’t know exactly when that had started feeling like the wrong approach.
— End of Chapter Two —
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