TREADMILL Week 185 & What I #AmReading – Ripples & Waves by L.A. Witt

Treadmill Goals/Tracking

• Get on the treadmill (or equivalent exercise) daily
• Pace is fine at 30 min/mile, although I may up it on occasion
• Time range between 30 minutes and 1 hour per day
• Distance 1-2 miles per day
• Read the chosen book. I’m officially modifying my original rule of not reading the book-of-the-week off-treadmill. I’m usually going to look at length and try to divide it up somewhat evenly per day, even if that means either closing that book early (if it’s short) or continuing after (if it’s long).

Week 185: June 7, 2020 – June 13, 2020

DAY	PACE	TIME	DISTANCE
Sunday	30 min/mile	54:20 min:sec	1.8 miles
Monday	30 min/mile	30:07 min:sec	1 mile
Tuesday	30 min/mile	30:10 min:sec	1 mile
Wednesday	30 min/mile	30:12 min:sec	1 mile
Thursday	30 min/mile	31:01 min:sec	1 mile
Friday	30 min/mile	30:14 min:sec	1 mile
Saturday	Mowed Lawn	~ 2 hours	Lots

What I’m Reading

Note: Although I will try to avoid them, my weekly reading snippets may or may not contain spoilers, so read at your own risk.

What I #amreading: Ripples & Waves by L.A. Witt

Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.

No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.

Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When he disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.

One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?

Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?

Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

My favorite lines this week…

✿✿ SUNDAY ✿✿

I nodded slowly. “Whoa.” Wiping a hand over my face, I sighed. “I never thought there’d be a time when ‘you had temporary gills and then a merman tossed you onto a beach’ would be the most plausible explanation for… well, anything.”

✿✿ MONDAY ✿✿

There were people in my life who I couldn’t say for sure would have lifted a finger to pull me out of that water.

But Lir…

Lir couldn’t let me drown.

✿✿ TUESDAY ✿✿

“Son of a bitch!” I put the coffeepot down as I shook out my other hand, sending a few drips flying. I’d been drinking coffee since I was like thirteen and always managed to get it in the cup without incident, but this was the third time this week I’d splashed some on my hand.

Grumbling to myself, I shoved my hand under the faucet and let cold water run on it for a few seconds. I didn’t even have to ask why I was this distracted. I knew exactly why.

✿✿ WEDNESDAY ✿✿

“You’ve been acting weird lately anyway,” Dad said. “Ever since that incident on the boat, you haven’t been yourself. We’ve barely seen you except when your mother comes down to the guesthouse. What’s going on?” I wondered if other dads sounded worried when they asked that, rather than resigned like they were asking the mechanic, “What’s wrong and how much is it going to cost me?”

✿✿ THURSDAY ✿✿

Overwhelm me? Oh, he’d passed that point the moment his lips had first touched mine, long before I’d ever left the water for him. Lying here together, our bodies entangled beneath the warm sheet, I was far beyond overwhelmed, and I craved more.

✿✿ FRIDAY ✿✿

Maybe it was magic. Maybe it was fate. All I knew was I would never stop loving the way our bodies fit together like they were made for each other.

✿✿ SATURDAY ✿✿

“I love you, Lir,” I said into the stillness. “If I could promise…” I choked on my own words, and wiped my eyes with a shaky hand. I couldn’t promise it, so why torture myself by saying it out loud? Yeah, I could promise him that I would love him with every fiber of my being until the end of time, but everything I’d said to him when I’d let him go still stood.