Chapter 1
Katie
Present Day
New York City
“Still no sign of her?” Lola asked, sliding me a second cold brew. Through the café’s window, the afternoon sun beamed, warm
and bright.
I shook my head, then sat back down at my usual table and refreshed my email for the thousandth time. Abigail Stephens, my
new writing partner, was supposed to have been here an hour ago, at one o’clock on the dot. But she was not here, and she
was not picking up her phone, answering my emails, or responding to any of the fifty very chill, emoji-drenched messages I’d
sent to the half-dozen socials we both maintained.
“I’m sure she’ll show up soon,” I said, as if the café wasn’t completely deserted. As if it wasn’t just me and Lola, my rose
gold laptop, and my six different feather pens in here. As if it wasn’t the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, and we weren’t
smack-dab in the middle of the Upper East Side. “She’s probably just stuck on the train or something.”
Lola shrugged, wiping down the counter as I pressed my laptop’s enter key yet again. This time, it actually worked. There
was an email from Selma, Meredith’s agent.
Katie,
Sorry this is so last minute. Apparently, Abigail just got a job offer from HBO, and I’m afraid she’s already on a flight
to LA. Unfortunately, all the other writers I’d shortlisted to help you with this next book had other projects lined up. I
was able to find someone local, though—a literary fiction author whose manuscript came to my attention recently.
I know he’s not a romance writer, but he’s eager, went to an Ivy, has published a few high-profile short stories, and wrote
a very strong book that, despite being about nothing, I might soon offer to represent. A few days of reading within the genre,
and maybe a crash course in commercial story structure, and he’ll be as good as anyone. I promise.
Sorry again for the last-minute change of plans, but we’ve got no time to waste. I told him where to find you.
Great. Exactly what I needed, some fancy-pants pseudo-novelist who had no clue what he was doing. Of course, this was part
of the deal, ghostwriting for Meredith Bradford—a job that, if we’re being completely honest, was both an absolute blessing
and a total shit show. I’d never actually met Meredith, but since graduating from college three years ago, I’d penned six
books under her name, and every project had come with its own set of challenges: Rapidly narrowing deadlines. A constantly
swirling rumor mill about Meredith’s whereabouts. An entire year during which everything I’d written was, per her publisher’s
request, pretty much Oregon Trail fan fiction. And now, thanks to a fifty-thousand-word dud left unfinished by another contractor, Selma needed this next manuscript completed in half the time, hence the whole partner thing.
And so I was rolling my eyes, chugging my coffee, and about to begin complaining about all this to Lola, who was using her
brand-new master’s degree in Gender Studies to smoosh a premade caprese sandwich into an electric panini press because New
York City, when it happened. When everything I’d spent the past eight years trying to forget roared right back into my life.
“Katie?”
I knew the voice.
I knew the voice before I’d even looked up.
“Katie,” it said again as my heart began to race. As my jaw began to ache. As my knotted, twisted stomach tumbled to my platform-sneakered
feet.
Lola walked out from behind the counter. “Well, you don’t look like an Abigail.”
Lola was extremely open-minded and infinitely cooler than I was, so this was an unusual thing for her to say, but she was
also entirely correct. Standing in front of us was not the very pretty, very-into-Squishmallows Vassar graduate from St. Petersburg,
Florida, we’d been internet stalking for the past three days.
It was Tyler McNally.
And I knew him like the back of my hand.
He looked different, of course. Nearly eight years ago, I’d tried to remove every reminder of him from my brain, my body, and my social media feed.
The last part, at least, wasn’t very hard.
Tyler never had any socials—too cool for that—and, by the time he’d turned nineteen, didn’t really have any friends left either.
And still, that first year, every time my phone buzzed, my inbox dinged, or the doorbell to my new house rang, a not-so-small part of me believed it’d be him.
That he’d come back for me. That he was ready to explain all my pain away. But he never, ever did.
He’d become a ghost to me. The face of a thousand memories I’d no choice but to push away and keep under lock and key.
But in this very moment? Now? I was twenty-five years old, and I was shaking, and the skin on my throat was hot and splotchy
and not enough to cover me, to cloak me. It was not enough to protect me from the fact that I was still me and Tyler was still
Tyler, except twenty-seven, he must’ve been twenty-seven, and with sleeve tattoos, a five-o’clock shadow, and artsy black
glasses covering that same set of hazel eyes that would not, would not, would not look at me.
Lola, brow furrowed, put her hand on my shoulder. Tyler continued to stare at the ground. He was shaking his head, chewing
on his bottom lip, twisting a watch I knew was his father’s around his all-grown-up wrist.
He opened his mouth to speak. “I . . .”
I was frozen. Silent.
“I didn’t know,” he said, and then he came a step closer. His hands, hovering there like an oath. I flinched, and he took
two steps back. “I didn’t know it was you.”
I closed my eyes. For a moment, that first summer unfurled—hot and soft and so, so stupid. And then, in a flash, it was replaced
by the only scene that mattered. The only one I’d allowed to stay seared in my mind.
I was seventeen. Everyone was crying. Everyone except for Tyler, who was standing there in a suit that did not fit, his face expressionless and his arms drooped.
My mom was wailing, every howl straight from her heart: a guttural, high-pitched ache.
The kind that stays with you, scrapes at you, claws at the last few quiet parts of your brain when you’re trying to forget.
When you’re trying to become somebody new.
When you’re trying to pretend you didn’t come from where you came from.
That you’re not always going to be that second child.
That, one day, you’re going to matter. That, one day, you’re not going to feel so alone.
“Katie,” Lola said. “What’s going on? Do you know this guy?”
I opened my eyes.
“He was my brother’s best friend.”
Lola’s grip on my shoulder fell limp. “You’re—You’re Tyler?”
He nodded. “I, um . . .” He looked my way. His gaze, broken and sorry and entirely different and exactly the same. “Can we
talk? Can we maybe go somewhere? Please?”
I made a sound. And then, before its echo could ring between my ears, I bolted out the café door.
Lola got back to the apartment around sundown. I was slumped on the fire escape in the same clothes as earlier: a hot pink
crop top, matching bike shorts, and a bedazzled headband. The whole look categorically wrong for dissociating to someone else’s
sad girl playlist on the eve of the first unofficial day of summer. But what other choice did I have? Everything I owned was
like this, and so I was just sitting there, head tipped back against the windowsill, dressed like a redheaded extra from the
opening dance number of Barbie, staring straight into the melting New York evening. Lola sat down next to me with a shitty bottle of rosé and exhaled.
“You okay?”
I shook my head no. She frowned, then handed me the bottle and softly scratched my forearm while I counted my breaths: one,
two, three, four. I took a long swig, then passed the wine back to her and focused only on what I could see: the mustard yellow
of her overalls, the lapis threading of her anklet, the bright white nail polish I’d painted onto her toes, and the way those
colors popped against her dark brown skin.
Lola was the only person in my current life who knew the truth—who knew what really happened. And, honestly, the other version
of the story had never really felt like a lie. Anytime I’d go on a first date or chat with a new copyeditor, I’d say the same
thing: That I was an only child. That my parents and I left Long Island after my junior year of high school. That my dad was
a retired elementary school principal, and my mom was in nonprofit work. That they didn’t make it down to the city very much,
at least not to see me.
“Do you want me to text everyone?” she said. “I told them you weren’t feeling well—that we probably wouldn’t make it.”
I nodded. She pulled out her phone, whittled off a few whooshing messages, and then looked at me. Tears burned my cheeks.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I have no idea.”
Lola blew out a breath. I downed another gulp, and for a minute, we simply passed the bottle back and forth. Eventually, she
broke the silence.
“I mean, in defense of teenage you, he’s objectively gorgeous.”
“Yeah.” I yanked a scrap of gold foil off the bottle’s neck, then wiped the tears off my face. “I’m aware.”
I didn’t sleep much that night.
It was hot. Not even June, and already, thick and breathless summer slipped through the cracked-open windows of our apartment.
Above me, twinkle lights flickered like dusty old stars, dotting the borders of a tulle canopy I’d had since college. Cars
rolled by, but really, it was almost quiet. It was Eightieth and York, after all, and three in the morning.
The room divider that bisected our studio was suggestive only. A random sidewalk find: bamboo and rattan, potentially vintage,
but probably from World Market. Every time Lola tossed or turned or got up to pee, I closed my eyes and lay very still. But
for the most part, she snoozed peacefully; her breathing, a metronome.
I reached for my glowing phone.
Selma again. She was on Pacific Time. I was Selma’s most cherished ghostwriter, and it wasn’t particularly close. Probably
because I was the only one she’d ever hired who didn’t actively want to publish under my own name. It kept me focused—and
it kept my best work on Meredith’s page.
How’s my favorite insomniac? What did you think of Tyler? He’s adorable, right? In that brooding, tortured way? Anyway, can
you two get me an outline in a week? Meredith’s being more insane than usual, and her publisher isn’t happy, so the sooner,
the better.
I inhaled.
I exhaled.
I tried to be a big girl.
When that didn’t work, I hurled my phone—anthropomorphic Care Bear case and all—across my half of the room. It landed on a
sequin leotard abandoned atop an inflatable chair.