That Infuriating Feeling: An Academic Rivals to Lovers Novel (Chasing Feelings Book 2)

Acknowledgments

My Favorite Reader,

If I may, I’d like to be vulnerable for a moment. As many of you know, this book is part of a series dedicated to small-town pop-punk kids, elder emos, metal heads, and anyone else who ever felt like they didn’t quite fit in or who just wants to go back.

While I was always a fan of Blink-182 and Boys Like Girls, there was a very specific time in my life that sent me spiraling into a phase at about twenty-four years old. It had me running toward my childhood. It had me wanting—begging—the universe to let me go back to before.

I would’ve done anything. Given anything. But there was nothing I could do. So I searched in music, in old YouTube videos, and finally in my writing, to be taken back to a place where I had friends and memories, where certain people were still around, and where time kept moving forward without all the nasty shit of the outside world.

I truly don’t want to divulge or exploit, but there are some very special people I’d like to thank for this book. I trust they know who they are. They are my family in this life and the next. They are everything to me, no matter the distance between us. Years may pass and times may change, but we don’t, and we’re always just a plane ride away.

Now, wipe those eyes, Ali.

I also want to give a major, humongous, enormous thank you to my beautiful friend and fellow author, LC Estallene. THANK YOU, LC, for always supporting me and for helping me improve. I have learned so very much from you, and I cannot thank you enough.

Finally, there’s one more person who deserves some recognition here, and that’s you, Reader.

Truly. Thank you.

I cannot express how grateful I am that you’ve made it this far. My heart, my thanks, and my undying loyalty are all yours.

I had a blast writing this book. As someone who went to a two-building university in Spain, I missed out on frat parties and campus life and all that good stuff. But of course, I made sure to visit some very special friends each time I was in The States. So I have, in fact, been in a few frat houses and I even played a game of beer pong with seventy-eight cups of beer. Can you believe that? Seventy-eight cups of beer. It was fascinating. So, this book was a very fun way to look back on that and, although it’s cliche to say, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.