Lauren Blakely - 21 Stolen Kisses (ang)

Contents Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to anyone who ever fell in love at the wrong time. And, as always, to my dear friend Cynthia.

Chapter One Kennedy The champagne bubbles tickle my nose. I don’t taste the drink I’m holding. I don’t even bring my lips to the glass. Not because I’m too young to drink, but because I don’t drink. I’d rather be in control, and so, instead, I raise the crystal flute in a toast. I am always toasting because everything is grand in the land I live in. Everything is sparkly. Everything is fabulous. Even when it’s not. But my mom’s TV show was just renewed for another season, and everyone who matters is here at our home off Central Park West, drinking and nibbling and laughing and chatting. Like my mom, for instance, who holds court in the living room, perched grandly on her cranberry-red couch. Her raven-black hair is glossy and gorgeous, and her green eyes glitter with happiness as the head of the network toasts her. “To Jewel! A gem among showrunners,” he says, looking every bit the shiny, gleaming suit that he is. He’s polished so brightly, and he always knows exactly what to say at these moments. I’m pretty sure he once tried to spend the

night with my mom. I’m pretty sure she rebuffed his advances. Every once in a blue moon, it happens—her rejection of a suitor. “To LGO! The best network there is!” she says, holding her glass up high. She doesn’t even try to feign embarrassment at being the center of attention. She’s not embarrassed. She adores her role in the spotlight. She might as well have been bred for it, like a prized poodle. She’s smiling as she always is because she has everything she wants. Her new man, Warren, is by her side, fawning over her. My mom’s petite friend Bailey, a publicist for her show, clinks glasses with me, then downs half her champagne. I drink none, and instead I run my finger absently along the rim, wanting one thing, wishing I could want nothing. But I can’t. I want him. I’m wearing my best jeans, a pair of black heels, and a silvery-gray top. I like to look good. I like to look good for him—that guy on the other side of the room, leaning casually against the wall, not drinking either. Watching the scene unfold. Part of it, but separate. I wonder what he thinks when he looks at me. If he still feels the same pull. The same damn longing. His eyes meet mine. His are dark blue, the color of the dawn before day takes over. They give me my answer

when he doesn’t look away, and my heart tries to spring free of my chest and bound over to him. Being in the same space—even with him so many feet away—is hard. So hard. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. “And what about you?” Bailey’s voice jars me. Reminds me that we’ve been having a conversation while I’ve been drifting back to him. “Hmm?” I ask furrowing my brow. “What about me?” “Boys? Guys? Are you dating? Anyone special?” My cheeks burn red. Heat spreads over my face. I’m not seeing anyone. “No,” I say, even though inside I’m saying It’s complicated, it’s complicated, it’s complicated. That’s what I told my cousin Anaka in Los Angeles when she emailed me earlier this week asking me if there were any hot guys on the scene. We chat more, making small talk, the skill I’ve been schooled in the art of since I could utter my first words. Then Bailey snaps her fingers, her face lighting up in recognition. “I almost forgot! I have a script for a friend I want to get in front of Hayes,” she says then makes a beeline for the man who makes things happen. I watch for a moment, cataloguing the expression on his face as she makes her pitch, the shift in those dark-blue eyes to his business look. He nods, and I can just make out him saying, Sure, send it over, and it reminds me once more of everything between us. I have to excuse myself from this party and my mother and her friends and all these people.

When I reach my room, I text him. Because I can’t resist. One word. It’s all I can manage. It’s all I can’t manage without.

Hi. After midnight, they are all gone. Every last one of them. The brownstone is eerie and still, as it should be after hours. I pad quietly to the kitchen, find an apple in a basket on the counter, rinse it off and take a bite, rewinding a few hours to the party, to that moment when we locked eyes. To the charge I swear raced through the air, connecting us. Tethering us, like we’ve been for so long. I shudder, remembering kisses. Remembering his touch. His soft voice whispering in my ear. The music we listened to together. The stories he told me. It’s a dreamlike state, being back in time. Then I hear footsteps and snap open my eyes. My reverie is broken cruelly when I realize I’m about to learn something I’d rather not know—the answer to whether my mom's latest boyfriend wears boxers or briefs. Because Warren wears white boxer briefs. He walks through the hallway, across the living room, and past the dining room table before he notices the daughter of the house leaning against the kitchen counter. “Honestly?” I say as I crunch into the fruit. Even in the dark I can see his face turn red as he stops short at the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Kennedy.”

But he’s not moving. Perhaps his bare feet are stuck to the floor of the entryway. “I had no idea you were going to be in the kitchen,” Warren says, stumbling on his words. “That much is self-evident. Now, do you need me to pour you a glass of milk, or do you think maybe you can get through the rest of the night without one?” He’s flustered and fluttery and his belly is saggy and it’s just the sort of stuff that would make a lesser girl scream or cringe or cry. But this is par for the course. I had to get over the silly idea that I might actually walk around my house without running into a mate of my mother’s a long, long time ago. They are always underfoot; ingesting coffee at the table in the morning, draped across the couch in the evening, foraging in the fridge after hours. If I didn’t have my own bathroom, I might never stay at my mom’s place on her half of my fifty-fifty nights. Not that I have much say in the matter. I have no agency. I have no choices. I’m too young. Warren somehow finds the strength to retreat to the cave of dark and sordid late-night festivities—my mom’s bedroom; though it’s more like an opium den. I finish off the apple in the silence, return to my upstairs bedroom, and fiddle around on Instagram, checking out a new collection of found hearts in nature—wild red fireworks forming a heart, a drawn heart on a sandy beach, a heartshaped stone. I save them and send them to a special folder on my phone as I settle into bed. The pictures help

me forget the kitchen run-in. I check my text messages one more time. I’m still waiting to hear back from him. I’ve heard nothing. Maybe it’s all in my mind.

Noah The elevator dings on the sixth floor, and the doors slide open. I’m still clutching my phone, and I could justify with a million reasons the way I stare at the screen. Responding to clients. Writing back to producers. Dealing with my boss. All that is true. But all that is a lie because one little text has me right back where I know I shouldn’t be. But I gave in long ago. With my free hand, I unlock my apartment door, then drop the keys on the table. I turn on the light, rub my hand over my eyes, and sigh heavily. I’ve already gone through all the reasons to ignore her. I’ve already tried to fight this for far too long. I’m not winning any awards for resistance. I never did. I threw in the towel many moons ago. Besides, one text won’t kill me.

One. One. One. The word echoes through my skull like a temptress. Only one text. Only one kiss. Only one date. It’s always one thing that leads to another. I know this. Even so, I reply. There’s nothing magical about my words.

The only thing magical is her. And the hold she still has on me. Then I add a picture because I know what she likes. I know what makes her happy. If I can’t have her, at least I can make her smile. I attach an image I uncovered online of snow fallen on twigs in the shape of a heart.

Kennedy I slide into bed, under the covers. I place the phone on my pillow, just inches from me. I touch the necklace I wear every day, feeling the shape of the three different sparkly charms that hang from it. I close my eyes, but sleep is so far away it might as well be in Indonesia. Then my phone buzzes. I hold my breath for a second, making a wish. I open my eyes and I slide my thumb across the screen.

Hi to you. Three words. They’re enough to get me through another night of wanting him back but knowing I can’t have him. Then I see a picture, and I could die of happiness.

Chapter Two Kennedy “Did you know that only fourteen percent of twelfth graders know why the Korean War started?” This is how my good friend Lane greets me in the lobby of the shrink’s offices the next day. We don’t share the same shrink; just the same practice. Yes, I am that girl. The messed-up, mixed-up seventeen-year-old child of well-todo divorced parents who sees a shrink in Manhattan. It’s a bit of a caricature, and caricature is something I aim to avoid in life. Especially because, unlike many other teenagers in New York City seeing shrinks, I actually enjoy my weekly visits to Caroline. They’re perhaps the only times when I can be in the presence of an adult and not feel an instinctual need to lie. “I did not know that. But I do know why it started,” I say to Lane as he drags a miniature rake through a Zen sand garden on the table in the lobby. This is where we met many months ago. In this lobby. We’re both seniors, but we go to different schools on different sides of the city. “Why?” “I’m guessing a bunch of people didn’t get along with each other and they came to fisticuffs.” Lane touches the tip of his index finger to his nose.

“Bingo.” He rattles off other random facts, party chatter we call it. Lane checks out a new big book of facts from the library every week and endeavors to memorize the most interesting tidbits about human nature. “Never be without a little conversational nugget,” he likes to say. He never is. He informs me that snakes don’t live in Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, or Antarctica, then his shrink opens the door down the hall, and the patient ahead of Lane leaves. Lane stands up, salutes me, and says, “Because they can’t migrate long distances over water.” A minute later, I walk into Caroline’s office, shut the door, and sink down into the black leather couch. “How are you?” I ask. “Did you fix anyone today?” She waves a hand in the air dramatically. “Everyone. I have wrought miracles between these four walls.” “You don’t want to be too good. You’ll run yourself out of business.” She nods, then flashes another small smile. “That is true.” As I hand her the monthly check from my dad, I check out her shoes. She’s wearing a pair of her trademark ballet flats, which I want to tell her not to wear because she has gigantic feet, and women with gigantic feet only look like they have bigger feet when they wear flats. But I don’t ever manage to get the fashion critique out of my mouth. I don’t

need a shrink to tell me why I stay mute on this point. I like Caroline far better than any other adult. With Caroline, I don’t feel like a cat crouching in the corner as the family dog struts by. “The current Public Enemy Number One wears white boxer briefs,” I say. “Warren?” I nod, and draw in a deep breath. “He didn’t even have the decency to, oh, say, grab a bathrobe before he wandered into the kitchen last night,” I say, then tell her about last night. The funny thing is, or really, the ironic thing is I didn’t come here in the first place because of my mom’s affairs. I’m here because of a love letter. Not the kind with hearts and lipstick marks, but the kind that takes your breath away. I wanted it to have that effect on him, and so it was the story of how we fell in love told through our kisses. Both kisses we’d had and kisses I wanted to have, and places I wanted to kiss. Places like Paris and Amsterdam, along the river or by the canal, or Kauai under waterfalls. It was an epic love letter, and it was all I’d ever wanted in my life—to feel that kind of epic love. But my dad found the letter before I even sent it earlier this year. Or rather an imprint of a sentence or two. My father isn’t a snoop, and I’m not careless enough to leave something like that lying around for discovery by anyone.

But I learned a valuable lesson nonetheless—even if you’re writing on a beautiful, fresh, crisp sheet of stationery, don’t press too hard with a purple pen while using a legal pad of paper as a sturdy surface. Some of the words might seep through onto the legal pad. My father deciphered some of the letter that night, and he declared me too young to tell someone that I’d love him for the rest of my life and then some. But what does he know? He isn’t an expert on big love. He is quite the authority in getting royally screwed over by the person you love—my mother—so I understand why he reacted the way he did and sent me to a shrink. “And this all transpired in the kitchen last night? After the latest party?” I nod, then add, just for emphasis, “Warren is married, you know. He takes his ring off when he’s over so they can pretend.” Caroline doesn’t ask how this makes me feel. Caroline knows how it makes me feel. Horrible. Angry. Frustrated

as hell. “She made him breakfast this morning. Frittatas with mushrooms and cheese. She served them on her best china, of course.” “Did you join them?” “I had coffee and left. I can’t even sit with them. I just hate him.” Because that’s what I do. I hate my mom’s boyfriends. Lovers, I should say. I hate that she has them, that they have

breakfast and dinner at our house, that I lie to her to get away from them, that she lies to everyone about them, that she lied to my dad about them for years, and that she made me lie to my dad for years too. I will never forget how my life has been measured by the men my mother has kept. Her lovers are the reason I can’t be with the man I love. She ruined my father for love, and then, in some misplaced act of retribution, he took away the love in my life. “Have you ever thought what it would be like not to hate them?” “Ha. Not possible.” “I’m serious, Kennedy.” “That would require removing my brain. I’m not ready for a lobotomy.” “Hypothetically,” Caroline posits, turning her hand over, palm side up, holding it like there’s an invisible plate and she’s a waitress, practicing her craft, “What if you got a lobotomy that only removed the lover-hating portion of your brain.” I consider such an operation for a few seconds. I contemplate the potential results. But it’s as if someone proposed transplanting my green eyes with blue ones. What’s the difference, really? “I don’t know.” “Because it’s not them you hate,” Caroline says. “It’s about the role you feel you played back when your parents were married. That’s what you hate.”

I wait for her to say more. “Are you familiar with twelve-step programs?” “Sure. I mean, broadly speaking.” “One of the vital elements in any twelve-step program is making amends. It may actually be the most important step because it’s about change. Changing your behavior, reversing the damage, saying you’re sorry, living in a new way,” she continues. “I’m not talking about you. What I’m saying though is that the concept may apply. Amends is about making direct amends to the people you have harmed.” I flick back to my dad, to the ashen look on his face the night I spilled all three years ago, to the way his life capsized when his only child told him that his only wife had Hester Prynned him for years. He hasn’t even dated since they split up three years ago. I think his heart may still be too bruised. Mine too. Because the reasons are still under my nose, in my face, and in my kitchen late at night; the reminders, everywhere the reminders, just like this brick, this heavy weight of anger, always inside me. “What I think,” Caroline continues, “is that amends could be a useful exercise for you. It might be the type of thing that helps you let go of the way you feel about all your mom’s lovers.” I like the sound of that. “How should I do amends?” “I’m not sure. But I trust you will find a way.”

Because I’m not one who does anything halfway—I don’t drink, smoke, swear, eat meat, or beg off lacrosse practice when I have a headache, and I hardly ever miss a day of school—I know I’ll find a way to make amends. Not for things I did. But for the things I didn’t do. I didn’t stop my mom. I didn’t say No, mom. I won’t tell lies for you.

Noah Jonathan raps on my door with his knuckles. “Come in,” I say, but it’s perfunctory. Of course he’s coming in. He’s the boss. He runs this talent agency. Runs it with an iron fist and a pin-striped suit and the sartorial perfection of Don Draper. Gotta give it to the guy; he looks the part of the agent shark. “How’s it going?” “Great,” I say, because that’s all he wants to hear, and besides, work is great. Work has always been great. Work has never been the problem in my life. “I hear The World on Time is blowing critics’ minds,” he says, miming an explosion with his hands. “Yep,” I say, because I’d have to be an idiot about the entertainment business not to know that. The darkly comic TV show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night. Word on the street is the writer-creator, David Tremaine, isn’t happy with his agents and is looking for a new ten percenter. Tremaine is a

genius; I’ve been following his career since he wrote a humor column for a local paper. “I want Tremaine,” Jonathan says, as he sinks into my leather couch and crosses his legs. “Who doesn’t want Tremaine?” I toss back. He points at me. “Get me Tremaine, Hayes. You’re my top man. I need you to woo him. There’s a charity shindig event this weekend at MoMA. Some art and literacy thing. He’s going. Bring a date, so you don’t seem like you’re just there to schmooze him,” he says, raising his eyebrows and pointing at me. I wince inside, but show nothing. Finding a date isn’t hard. It’s just hard when you don’t give a crap about the woman on your arm because you’re still hung up on the one not on your arm. “Sure,” I tell him. “Are you still dating Mica? I haven’t seen you with anyone in a while. Did you start batting for my team?” I shake my head and laugh, glad he inadvertently let me avoid the issue of why I haven’t been seen with anyone in a long time. “I still like girls, sir. Mica and I split up a year ago. She’s a nice one though.” He waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Whatever. I don’t care if she’s nice. I just care how it looks at the party. Make sure she’s pretty, your date. Not that you’d bring a cow.” “No cows on my arm, sir,” I say drily. He laughs. “Love that sense of humor, Hayes.”

Later that night, I’m thumbing through my contacts, trying to figure out who to invite to the shindig, when Kennedy’s name appears in a text. My chest goes warm. My heart thumps. This is why I don’t give a crap. I already gave everything I have to someone else. Listening to 42nd Street and thinking of you. I flash back to the time I took her to see the revival. To the way she threaded her hands in my hair and kissed me in the alley outside the St. James with the marquee still lit up from the show. She loves Broadway musicals and their big, showy, over-the-top declarations of love. We had that in common. We had everything in common. It was almost too much to bear. I run my thumb over the screen, picturing her with her earbuds in, so I cue up the soundtrack too and start playing her favorite tune. Some other time, I’ll figure out who to bring to MoMA this weekend. I write back: Which song? In seconds, she replies with the name of the one I’m listening to, and I might as well be lost in that kiss outside the theater one more time.

Our Stolen Kisses We’d just seen 42nd Street, and you were humming “Lullaby of Broadway,” and I told you you had a good voice. You laughed, and claimed you couldn’t hit a note if you tried. “I’m terrible at singing.” I said, “You’re great at kissing though. And just in case you doubt me, let me remind you.” Then I ran my hands through your hair. God, I love your hair. How it feels in my fingers. I kissed you outside the theater, and in that moment we didn’t care if anyone saw us even in the alley. We didn’t care because the only thing that mattered was your lips on mine. The feel of your breath. The way you curled your hands on my hips, bringing me near, but keeping a distance too, in case we got too close in public. Like it mattered. Like anyone who saw us couldn’t tell how we felt.

Chapter Three Kennedy Technically, lacrosse is not a contact sport. If you looked in the rule book for girls’ lacrosse, you would see all sorts of warnings to keep your hands and elbows and sticks to yourself. But that’s not how I play. In my rule book, lacrosse is a contact sport. Life is a contact sport. You’d better woman up. I make my way downfield, determined to pummel the ball into Keeland Prep’s waiting net. Their top defender tries to slam into me and keep me from scoring. I turn my hand in and my arm out, fashioning my elbow into a weapon. She plants her feet in front of me, so I jam my right elbow hard into her side. She loses momentum and lunges a bit, her white-blond ponytail swinging out sharply to the side. She’s fast and recovers quickly, and now she’s an angry bull and she’s chasing me down because she’s a ferocious player. But so am I and I plow ahead, then fling the ball into the net. The Agnes Ethel School for Girls’ crowd erupts. I raise a fist in the air and shout a loud, “Yes!” My teammates high-five me, and I’m flying, soaring, laughing into the sky as everything good rains down.

“Woo-hoo! Go, Kennedy!” My mom calls my name from the stands. I wave to her then return my focus to the field and hammer two more goals into the net as we hand Keeland Prep a 12 to 6 defeat. She’s the first one to greet me when the game ends. She’s already on the field, pumping her fist in the air. “You. Were. Amazing,” she declares. “Thanks, Mom.” “And if memory serves, only three more wins for the division.” I’m impressed she remembers. It always surprises me that she remembers these details, but she always does. “Don’t jinx us.” She waves a hand in the air. “Jinxes? Who believes in that? Now, shall we celebrate tonight? I can get us a fabulous table at Sushi Ko like that,” she says, snapping her fingers, her sapphire ring glinting in the sun. “And they have absolutely delicious vegetarian rolls.” Every victory, small or large, requires a celebration—a swank dinner out, a new pair of shoes, a decadent dessert. “I have to go to Dad’s exhibit tonight. Opening night,” I say, wishing for the old days when my mom and I would have gone to the gallery together. When my mom would have waltzed into the gallery, kissed my dad on the cheek, and then delighted in his work. When the three of us would have all gone to Sushi Ko together. We did dinners out exceedingly well. Nobody could rock a restaurant visit like the Stanzlingers. We were New Yorkers; dining out was a

mandatory skill in this city. “I’m going to say good-bye to my teammates.” I run back to the other girls in green-and-gold lacrosse uniforms. “Slasher Girl!” My teammates call out my nickname. It’s a joke because I don’t slash. I don’t hit uncontrollably. When I hit it’s with impeccable control. “Slashing? Who slashed in this game?” I say as I high-five each and every one, because I get along with all of them. Even though prep school can be a wild beast in Manhattan, I’ve both survived it and thrived in it by following a few key guidelines—I keep my own secrets, I focus on schoolwork, and I kick ass on the field. That triple combo has been my road map, and I’ve followed it to the letter. It’s also allowed me to have the life I have after school, where I flit in and out of the adult world, and no one here at school has a clue about my family or my own love affairs. I clasp hands with Amanda last, and she grabs my arm to pull me aside. “I have to tell you something.” A drop of sweat drips down her face. She brushes it off. “My dad came to the game.” I give her a quizzical look, like she can’t be serious. This is front-page news. “Your dad never comes to games. What’s the deal?” “My mom lit into him the other night. She was all over him about not showing up for my brother or me at any of our stuff.”

“And he listened? I thought he didn’t care.” “She told him all the other parents were there. She told him she was going to cancel their vacation to Tokyo if he didn’t show up and he loves Tokyo.” “Wow, that’s big time,” I say because Amanda’s mom wears the pants in the family. Her dad lost his banking job a couple years ago and hasn’t found a new gig since then. Her mom is CEO of an advertising tech company, so she’s doing just fine and she sets the rules and books the vacations and generally dictates what they do, where they go, and where they spend her money. Amanda points to the stands and her dad is still sitting in the bleachers, his head bent down over his smart phone. “I bet one of his stupid college friends just e-mailed him and was like ‘Hey, I know somebody who knows somebody who might know somebody who’s looking to hire,’ so of course he had to answer it right away. Do you know he spent the entire game on his dumb phone?” Then Amanda snorts. It’s a derisive snort and I know this not just because I’ve heard it many times before, but because Amanda and I once made a list of all the varieties of her snorts. She is a champion snorter and has mastered imbuing them with a range of emotions: her laugh-my-assoff snort, her this-lunch-food-smells-nasty snort, her this-isthe-lamest-assignment-I’ve-ever-gotten snort, her derisive snort, her comical snort, her embarrassed snort, and her isn’t-that-guy-across-the-street-hot snort. Her dad stops typing, takes out a tissue and blows his

nose, then glances down at the field and nods to Amanda. I bet it’s the first time he’s noticed his daughter. Then he walks down to the field. But the world’s most fascinating email must come through, because he’s now answering another message on the way, so he manages to bump into my mom and they begin chatting. My pulse races. My shoulders tense as the dangerous possibilities bob and weave before me. The last thing I need is to have my mom start flirting with my best friend’s father. I grab my sports bag with the speed of an express train and say good-bye to Amanda at the same pace, then extract my mom from the conversation. I breathe easily again once we’re away from the field. I listen to my mom do her usual recap of the game as we slide into the cab that shoots us away from the lacrosse field on Randall’s Island and back into Manhattan. She acts out every great play, mimes every moment of glory, and I laugh and I don’t even pretend she’s ridiculous, because I don’t think she’s ridiculous. I think she’s actually kind of awesome for never turning her phone on during a lacrosse game. Ever. I want these moments to be the defining ones in our relationship. I want to erase all the other moments, like the ones involving friends’ fathers, and wallpaper them over with these instead. When we walk inside the brownstone the three of us used to share, my mom tells me she has a surprise for me.

She covers my eyes and walks me to the foyer. “Ta-da!” And Joe, my sleek, sexy, silver fixed-gear bike, is waiting there, glistening and gleaming, the broken chain fixed. “I picked him up this evening for you. And I went ahead and got the works. A full tune-up.” She presses the handlebar brakes. “See! I even had them tune the brakes too. And shine the frame.” “He looks awesome.” I run my palm over the frame and it feels like steel silk. I give her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, Mom.” “Anything for you, my darling.” This is why I can never hate her. This is why my hate is reserved only for them—her lovers. Never for my mom, who I love like crazy. I head for the fridge, for my postgame ritual of a cold Diet Coke. I crack open a can, savoring that first sip. It’s then that she turns her phone back on. It starts buzzing instantly. The messages must have piled up. I hear her call her agent back, and my face flushes momentarily when she says his name. Hayes. That’s what everyone else calls him. Everyone but me. I imagine Hayes in the office being all agenty and business sexy in his colorful shirts, the red, the purple, the dark navy blue, and most of all I picture the way they fit his tall, strong, sturdy frame so well.

“I was quite productive today and wrote three smokinghot scenes for the upcoming story arc,” she says to him. Lords and Ladies is the top-rated nighttime soap opera she birthed several years ago and still pens to this day for TV’s hottest premium network LGO. As the showrunner for Lords and Ladies, she created it, she controls it, and she writes the smoking-hot scenes. Sure, she has a whole staff of writers at her beck and call over at LGO’s West FiftySeventh Street studios, but the story line is hers, the intrigue, the affairs, and the double crosses are all courtesy of the mind of Jewel Stanza. It’s a pen name, shortened from her married name. I stare out the kitchen window, this time hearing bits and pieces of his sexy, strong voice on the other end of the conversation. The voice I want to keep just for myself. Only he belongs to so many people. He belongs to her, and to his clients, and to the business, and to everyone who wants a piece of him. Most of all, he belongs to the eight years that separate us. “Let’s have you over for dinner and we’ll chat about the scenes then,” she says casually to him, as if this is a mere suggestion. But it’s not optional to disobey. “We’ll invite the usual suspects.” She rattles off the names of LGO’s chief publicist and her husband, the studio’s international distribution head, and the show’s head writer and his wife. “And Warren, of course. I’ll call Warren and we’ll make it a party.”

She ends the call and turns to me. “Could you do me a huge favor? I need you to read three scenes. I know you usually read before bed, but I really need your feedback. I’m terribly nervous. Especially because of the”—she stops to sketch air quotes—“content.” She waits for my reaction. She wants me to be eager to read the scenes with content in them, like I’ve just won a prize, an advance early screening of what any Lords and Ladies fan craves the most. My mom, the woman who single-handedly brought back the power of the nighttime soap to TV, who rejuvenated a once-dormant media form with her twists and turns on Victorian Englishmen and women and their machinations over life and love—is known for her weekly cliffhangers, her shocking reveals, and the show’s wicked-hot sex scenes. This—the show’s rep for causing hotness under the collar—pleases my mom the most. The last thing I want to do is read the scenes her own sex life inspired. But I know where telling the truth leads to. It leads to splits and splinters and a fifty-fifty life. “Of course. I’ll read right now.” It’s just easier.

After I shower and scrub off the remnants of the lacrosse game, I pull on my favorite skinny jeans and a fitted T-shirt, then lace up my Converse sneakers. As usual, I wear my charms necklace. I position it just so—he won’t be able to miss it if I see him. I want him to know I wear it all the time, that he’s with me, next to my heart, even when I can’t be near him. I send a silent wish to the universe that he arrives early. That I’ll catch a glimpse of him. A smile, a twinkle in his eye, a look just for me. I grab the script pages my mom left on my pillow, close my eyes so I can’t see a single word, and move each page behind the next. When I’ve counted to fifteen I open my eyes, confirm I’m back to the start and that the pages look read, and head downstairs. “The scenes are just totally absolutely splendiferously amazing, Mom,” I say loudly, as I slap the pages on the counter, then open the fridge and crack open another Diet Coke and take a big gulp. “Tell me everything.” She nods to the pages in my hand as she wields a fat blade and chops carrots into fine slices. She’s changed too, her bleacher-wear cast aside for a lowcut magenta blouse, the color so blazingly rich she looks like royalty. She’s paired her top with trim black slacks and four-inch black leather pumps. “What did you think about the scene? About what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables? Tell me what you liked.”

No. God no. There is nothing at all I can tell you about

what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables. Especially not when I heard what Warren did to you the other night, which was surely the inspiration for the characters’ romp in the stables, and I had to play the soundtrack to 42nd Street the rest of the night to drown out the sounds. “Hot. Just totally hot,” I say, unspooling the exact words my mother longs to hear. “And sweet too. It was like this perfect mix of sexy and sweet, and the viewers are going to love it.” She smiles deeply, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you. I don’t want to disappoint any of the viewers.” “They love your show, Mom. They love all the lords and ladies,” I say, reassuring her properly, because I’m steeped in just the right words, said in just the right tone, to reassure her. Because I love her, even though I hate so many things about her. My love is stronger than my hate. It has to be.

Chapter Four Noah Two seconds after I step off the elevator in my office building, the doorman calls me over. “Hey, Mr. Hayes. I have something for you,” he says from his post at the gleaming black desk in the lobby. He waves me over like he’s got a secret to share. “Hey Randy. What have you got?” The mustached man in the navy-blue uniform lowers his voice to a whisper. “My cousin Joey has a script. New action series centered around a group of coworkers, and each one has special powers. It’s gonna be epic. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow,” he says with a wide smile. I flash a smile back. Not because I’m eager to read yet another script. But because this is par for the course. Everyone, everywhere, it seems, has a TV show in them, and they’re always asking me to read them. To do to their show ideas what I did for Jewel’s. Make them soar to the top. “Sounds great, Randy,” I tell him, then give a quick nod good-bye as I head out into the warm May evening. Then there’s a clap on my shoulder. I swivel around to see my buddy Matthew. He’s a critic for a top-notch music magazine and he works in the same building. He’s never

once asked me to read a script for a friend, a cousin, a neighbor. I like that about our friendship. “Superhero coworkers?” he says, raising an eyebrow. He must have been behind me and heard the whole conversation. I shrug as we walk uptown. “You never know where you might find the next big hit.” He laughs, tossing his head back. “You’re far too nice. What are the chances you’ll find a gem in some random script thrust your way?” “What are the chances you’ll find the next great band in the files record companies send you?” I fire back. “Touché, mate. Touché. Though, speaking of the next great bands, Jane and I are going to see one tonight at Roseland. It’s not nearly as exciting as seeing a cancan show on Broadway, or what have you, but want to join?” I roll my eyes as a bus rumbles by, spewing a plume of exhaust. “Ha-ha-ha. Mock my job, why don’t you?” “It’s not quite mocking your job though, is it? Since I’m pretty sure you go to those Broadway shows for fun, not work,” Matthew says, as we near the avenue. “What can I say? I’m the straight guy who likes Broadway musicals,” I say, owning it. So what if I like theater? “I’m just messing with you. Are you on for Retractable Eyes?” “What time?” I ask, glancing at my watch. “Late. Ten. Do you need your beauty sleep?”

“I can handle it. I’m heading to Jewel’s house now for dinner and to go over her script.” “When are you just going to get down on one knee for her?” I scoff. “That’d be a never.” There’s a strange silence between us, and then a clearing of his throat as we near the subway entrance. “Right. I nearly forgot. It’s not her you’re keen on,” he says quietly, his voice serious for the first time. He’s the only who knows about Kennedy. “Is that why you still go there?” “No,” I say, answering quickly and truthfully for the most part. Of course, I like seeing Kennedy. Though like isn’t truly the right word. Crave would be more accurate. But that’s all complicated by the fact that I actually care about her mom, and not only because she’s my biggest client. Jewel Stanzlinger is the reason I’ve earned the regard I have and the client list that came after her. Our business partnership is one of the rare Hollywood-style stories of loyalty and faith. I started working with her back when I was an intern in college, and she was looking for her first break. She was the long-suffering-last-on-the-totem-pole writer for several middling daytime soaps that have since gone off the air. She told me her idea for Lords and Ladies and I quickly landed her a better writing gig on another soap, then pushed hard and fast to make her head writer. She upped the spice factor, boosted the intrigue, and tossed in even more sordid affairs. The whole time she refined and reworked and rewrote Lords and Ladies until it was

unpassable. Then I sold it to LGO mere weeks after I graduated from college. It’s one of the biggest TV shows in the country, and I now have one of the most enviable client lists of any TV lit agent in the country, let alone any agent my age. I owe it all to Jewel. Which probably makes me the biggest idiot in the world for falling in love with her daughter. Four months after it ended, those feelings for Kennedy show no signs of dissipating. Zilch. Nada. Goose egg. I really should go see the band tonight. Just to get my mind off her. “See you at ten,” I tell Matthew when he reaches the subway entrance. “See you then. And be careful,” he adds, because he likes to look out for me when it comes to the hornet’s nest of my romantic choices. “I will.” I make my way to Jewel’s, and along the way I spot a burst of yellow and white at a bodega across the street. I stop in my tracks, then glance at the crosswalk. The closest car is fifty feet away, and even though I don’t have the light, I race across anyway, slowing my pace as I come closer to what caught my attention in the first place. A bouquet of daisies tucked amid a stuffed assortment of flowers, of roses and tulips and lilies and daffodils. The eye of one of

the daisies almost looks like it’s in the shape of a heart. She would love it, so I buy it. As I turn onto her block, my heart starts beating faster and my palms are sweating, and this chemical response pisses me off. I should be able to manage my reactions better. Hell, I saw her the other night at the party. I’ve seen her plenty of times since she ended our relationship four months ago. I should be able to get a better grip. But seeing as how I just bought her flowers, I doubt I will. Or can. Or want to. Somehow, as the brownstone looms into view, all four stories of its Central Park West splendor, the home befitting a woman of Jewel’s stature, I manage to get my emotions in check. I hold the flowers in one hand as I ring the bell. Kennedy answers. Her brown hair is wavy and lush, and I know how it feels sliding it between my fingers. They itch to touch those soft strands. Her green eyes light up when she sees me. Her lips quirk up in a smile as she holds the big door, keeping it open only so far. Creating a shield. A temporary five-second cocoon. She eyes me up and down, and I can tell she’s lingering on my shirt. It’s purple, tailored perfectly, and tucked neatly into my charcoal-gray slacks. She’s obsessed with my shirts. I don’t have a problem with this. I like this obsession. More than I should. I am a lost cause to her, and now as my heart thumps

harder, it doesn’t piss me off. It reminds me of everything I once had that was pure and perfect and true. “Purple,” she says in a breathy voice, like it’s a dream, like it’s a word that has wings and breath and can fly away, far from here. It transports me back in time, reminding me of a night from many months ago. The night she tried on this shirt. She looked stunning in it, and my breath catches from the intensity of the memory. I am surrounded by memories of her, and I can’t let them go. I don’t want them to fade. Ever. “Purple,” I repeat, low and soft, like it’s our insider secret. I say it so low it’s almost unspoken. But she can hear me. “How was your day?” “It was good,” I say. “How was yours?” “It’s not bad.” “I heard you can’t stay tonight.” “No. My dad has an art thing.” “Art thing. Sounds like fun. If you like art,” I say, with a wink. I know she likes art. I know so many things about her, and I want to know so much more. “I like art.” “I picked up some flowers. You can pretend they’re for the house.” Then I whisper, as I point to the eye of the flower. “But they’re not.” Her eyes widen and her jaw falls open. “I love it.” “Me too.” She grabs her phone to snap a picture of the eye of the

daisy. “For my collection,” she adds. “I know, K,” I say, and she presses her teeth into her lip as I call her by that name. As if she’s holding inside all the things I store tightly in me too.

Kennedy I don’t want to move away. I don’t want this moment to end. My heart is still doing a wild tap dance in my chest because he’s early. My wish to the universe came true, and even though I’ve seen him countless times, I can’t tear my eyes away from him. His brown hair is thick and messy, and right now he’s five-o’-clock-shadow-stubbly. I have to hold my hands behind my back so I don’t reach out and run a thumb along his jawline, then thread my hand in his hair, letting it slide through my fingers as I line my body against him. I resist, staying rooted to this spot so I don’t give in to all that I want. His dark-blue eyes twinkle. He looks only at me, and my skin heats up in an instant. No one has ever looked at me like he does. I doubt anyone ever will. Noah Hayes is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Inside and out. In every way. Every now and then, I wonder why my mom never went after him. Considering his looks and her appetite, he’d be obvious prey. But all I can figure is she needed one man who wasn’t disposable. And

maybe that’s why he’s the only man who’s been a constant, because he’s the only man my mom’s never had a fling with. He is her best friend, her confidante, and for all intents and purposes her business partner. More than that though, she thinks of him like a son. His own mom is gone, so my mom watches out for him. She loves him in some sort of protective way. Which makes the situation all the more messed up.

Our Stolen Kisses Our lips didn’t even touch for our first kiss. You weren’t even present for it. I kissed a picture you gave me. You’d seen me time and time again bent over my phone, thumbing through photos. Finally, you asked what I was looking at one night when we were sitting across from each other in my living room. No one else was around. They’d gone out for gelato, and you were reading a script. You looked up from the pages. “Texts from a boyfriend?” You raised an eyebrow. Your voice was laced with curiosity. So much it gave me hope that you were praying I’d say no. I shook my head, and showed you my phone. “My collection of found hearts,” I said, and my own slammed into my rib cage. Showing you something that mattered to me was risky. But I’d take that risk. “Found where?” “Nature. The street. Animals. Anywhere,” I said, and then watched as you scrolled through the app where I stored the pictures I found. A coral reef in Australia in the shape of a heart. A chalk drawing on a sidewalk. Two tree branches intertwined into a heart.

You looked up from the screen, the corners of your mouth curving up. “The tree branches are new. I just found them on a blog and added them,” I said, my voice dry. “You find these often?” I shrugged. “When I need to.” “Why do you need to?” “They give me hope.” “I wonder when you’ll find one next,” you said, as if you were merely musing on the topic. A few days later, after I’d finished dinner with my dad, you sent me a picture. I opened the text with shaky, hopeful fingers simply because it had your name on it. “Found this for you,” you wrote, and attached a picture of a chocolate-brown horse with a white heart-shaped spot on his nose. I kissed the screen.

Chapter Five Kennedy Lane waits at Columbus Circle. He’s on his bike as well, and we barely even bother with hellos, instead nodding and taking off downtown, helmets on, ready for the thrill of racing through rush hour and conquering the cars. Riding like this requires a supreme focus on not getting killed, which has the welcome benefit of keeping my mind off the whole messed-up situation with Noah. We zip through traffic on the way to the West Village so we can stop by my father’s latest show that he arranged, an exhibit of famous love letters from history’s greatest writers, sharing wall space with photographs of men, women, girls, and boys writing. Soon we arrive at our destination in the West Village, a thin and narrow block with cobblestoned sidewalks and arty boutiques and too-cool-for-school cafés every few feet. It’s one of those movie blocks, the kind where the heroine in the romcom walks down the street at night wearing some tulle skirt and cute heels and a little clutch. We lock our bikes to a nearby post. The ride did the trick —my overactive brain and rebellious heart have settled into the here and now as I survey the scene. Already, crowds of thirtysomething hipsters in black jeans and slouchy tops are spilling from the inside of the

gallery onto the sidewalks. A banner across the glass windows says LETTERS FROM THE HEART, the name of this exhibition—the photographs are for sale; the famous love letters are on loan and they’re the lure. I spot a familiar face down the street, a lopsided and smarmy grin I know well, watching the crowd at the gallery, while nursing a coffee at an outside table. My heart lurches. It’s my dad’s ex–business partner, Jay Fierstein. My mom was involved with him last year. I scowl. “That’s the guy your dad hates?” I nod. “For many, many reasons. His lawyer has been all over my dad’s lawyer about the company split.” “What is he doing here? Spying on your dad?” “I wouldn’t put it past him,” I say, then spot my dad inside, listening to a small crew of curious onlookers discuss the meaning of a drawing of a girl carrying a heart two times larger than her body. My dad is a graying man, with tuft-like hair barely covering his head, like a baby duck’s. I wave to him, then show Lane the original of a love letter Zelda Fitzgerald wrote to her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

There’s nothing in all the world I want but you—and your precious love—All the material things are nothing. I’d just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence—because you’d soon love me less—and less—and I’d do anything—anything—to keep your heart for my own—

“Is that where your inspiration came from for the famous love letter?” Lane asks. “Famous unsent love letter,” I add, glad to be able to talk freely with someone. Lane’s the only person besides my shrink that I’ve ever told about Noah. “My dad was working on this exhibit back then when I started writing it. I should have just blamed him, huh?” “Totally. Parents always deserve the blame.” “I mean, really! He was constantly talking about famous love letters, showing me copies of them. What was a girl to do?” “What you did of course. Write one yourself,” he teases. Lane and I finish reading the letter. “It’s a beautiful letter, don’t you think?” “Oh, totally. Especially when you consider she was completely bonkers and F. Scott was a total lush,” he says. “Lane!” “It’s true though. You’re all Ms. Just the Facts, Please. So you should know Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and whiled away her days at a sanatorium while F. Scott drank himself silly,” he says as a twenty-something girl brushes past us and gives Lane a thorough once-over from stem to stern. It’s almost impossible not to, because his

surface is spectacular. Lane’s hair is light brown with hints of gold. It’s thick and full and invites fingers to be run through it. His eyes are hazel, or maybe green, or sometimes light brown. It’s not that they change with the weather or his mood. Eyes don’t change. It’s just that they’re a lot of colors, and every shade is alluring. They are the kind of eyes that can melt a woman with one look. “You are so not fun. You’re like a gigantic buzzkill,” I say as we amble past the other letters, reading Franz Kafka’s words to the woman he loved: “The doors are shut, all is quiet, I am with you once more.” Then Hemingway to his wife: “If anything happened to you I’d die the way an animal will die in the Zoo if something happens to his mate.” As I read the words again, I can’t help myself. My mind returns to him, the effects of the bike ride are washed away with words, and I am thinking once more of the man I can’t forget, the one who gave me flowers because he found the heart in one of them. I might keep company with cold, hard facts in my notebooks about my mother, but inside of me, in the places she can’t touch, I know who I am. A purist. A lover of love. I adore love letters, and professions of love, and true, heartfelt moments when two people know they’re meant for each other. Maybe that’s because I know how it feels. I had it for six perfect months with Noah. I feel my dad’s arm around me. “What a surprise to see you here,” he says playfully. “A total shock.”

“Hello, Mr. Stanzlinger.” Lane shakes my dad’s hand even though they’ve met plenty of times. “Good to see you again, Lane.” My dad leans in closer and tells me, “We’ve already sold ten photographs. I so rock. Say it. Say my dad is the best art consultant in all the world.” “You are embarrassing me,” I say with a smile, even though he’s not and never could. His clients love him, museums love him. He has an impeccable reputation. Because of him, I plan to study art history when I start at NYU in just a few months. Someone calls him away, and as I watch him join another group of prospective buyers, I can’t help but feel this familiar flicker of pity for him. He’s this outgoing, savvy, smart businessman, but yet he was totally hoodwinked by my mom. Sometimes, I want to ask if he’s over it. But how do you ever get over that kind of betrayal? Have the wives of all the married men my mom canoodled with gotten over it? I haven’t. I sucked in all her secrets for years, wrote them down in my notebooks, lied for her, lied with her, until I couldn’t take the pressure of them building up in me anymore. One day, I told my dad everything. So that would be me who caused the breakup of my parents’ marriage three years ago. But for anyone keeping track, I really broke up their marriage many years ago. Maybe I do deserve an “A” on my chest. Make it a double

“A” for “Aiding and Abetting.” I stop at a reprint of one of the rarest love letters of alltime. This one is from the writer Honoré de Balzac to the married countess Hańska. “I can no longer think of anything but you.” The letter is gorgeous, but it comes from a situation I can’t abide: an affair. And that’s when it hits me.

Amends. I can make amends for being her henchman. * “Let me get this straight. You’re going to send love letters to the wives of the men your mom had affairs with?” I nod, then drain the rest of my espresso before I explain the amends project that arrived fully formed moments ago. “Yes and no. They won’t be love letters from me. They’ll be more like letters of apology. Anonymous letters. It’s like a karmic way of reversing the damage. I’m already sort of making amends for lying to my dad all those years just by going to the shrink, so now I can make them for what I did to all the other people. I can say I’m sorry without saying ‘Oh, hey there, I’m sorry my mom screwed your husband and I knew about it and did nothing to stop it.’” “But you couldn’t have stopped it,” Lane points out as he leans forward in his chair for emphasis. We’re at Dr. Insomnia’s Tea and Coffee Emporium in the West Village, the best coffee shop in all the world, or at least in New York,

which is the world to me. It’s my world. “Kennedy, don’t you get it? Your mom had the affairs. She asked you to lie. You didn’t do anything wrong. She did, and there’s nothing you could have done.” “Maybe I could have said something before it went too far,” I say softly as I look down at the small brown cup in front of me. “Maybe if I said something way back when it was all starting, she might have stopped. Or he might have forgiven her before she went too far. So this is my chance. I can write letters to the women she wronged, sort of like a wish for happiness, a hope for more love in the world. Then maybe a line from a famous love letter.” “Sounds a bit stalkerish.” “It’s not stalking. It’s like I’m putting the love back into the world that was taken,” I say, the words sticking in my throat, but I push past the lump because it’s time to move beyond all those lies. “You are obsessed,” he says, tossing his hands up, knowing he can’t convince me otherwise. He arches an eyebrow, shifting to a playful mode. “But yet, I cannot resist an opportunity for potential troublemaking, so I must insist on joining.” “But you have nothing to make amends for,” I say, since Lane’s in therapy for other reasons. His dad died two years ago. “I know this is going to sound a bit crazy and radical, but I kind of think it would be fun. You won’t deprive a poor, fatherless boy of a little fun, would you?” he says, dropping

his lips into a forced frown. “Stop it,” I say with a laugh, because only Lane could take the tragedy in his past and turn it into a joke. He punches the air with his fist, then holds out his hand to shake. “Consider me your comrade in amends.” We spend the next hour drinking coffee, making lists, and plotting a love letter delivery plan to make up for all my past lies. The addresses aren’t terribly hard to find. A few Google searches for property records and home ownerships reveal most of the homes. An unlisted number is meaningless in the Internet age. When we leave, I ride my bike home to my mom’s. Maybe, just maybe, as I send anonymous letters, I can start to restore some of the love that was stolen. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms; the bad becomes good, the wrongs start to right. The way it should be. I slam on my brakes, thrilling when I see a man in a purple shirt walking toward Central Park West.

Chapter Six Kennedy My parents loved to cook together. That was their thing. Their bond. They loved to cook and they loved to entertain. When I was younger, we had one of those homes where their friends would drop in on Saturday afternoons, have wine and cheese, olives and pastries. One time my mom’s friend Patricia came by with her husband and their daughter, Catey, who was my age. I hit it off with Catey, and we became best friends at the tail end of third grade and then throughout most of middle school. We did everything together—discovered new music, got our periods at the same time, and shopped for clothes and makeup. We both became hooked on coffee drinks at the same time too. Back then, I was more into the froufrou drinks, while Catey was already on coffee. “I’m so tough,” she said, after ordering a latte to my mocha chip Frappuccino on our first trip to the coffee shop around the corner. “Let’s see who can finish her drink first,” I said as the nearby espresso machine whirred and hummed as a barista made drinks. “No fair. Yours is cold. Mine is hot. It’s harder to drink hot drinks fast,” she pointed out, swiping her light-blond hair away from her face.

“Yeah, but you’re underestimating the potential for a brain freeze to knock me out of the battle.” “Oh, good point!” she said, then added cream to her latte. “This’ll help me keep up.” We chugged our drinks, laughing and wiping foam and mocha from our lips, and by the time we were both halfway through, we declared it a tie and high-fived. “We should always make sure things end up in a tie. Then we both win.” “Always,” I seconded. We were friends for several years. Looking back, it’s amazing my mom took as long as she did to hit on Catey’s dad, Adam. But sure enough, she tapped him for a ride on the Jewel Express when Catey and I were twelve. He was a British historian, and she wanted to make sure the final treatment for Lords and Ladies hit the mark. All in the name of valiant research and historical accuracy, Catey’s dad started coming over in the afternoons, to help my mom. He’d pick up Catey from school, bring her along, and our friendship became their cover-up. They told us to stay upstairs, because we were loud by then, chatting and dancing to music, and that was better done behind the closed door of my bedroom, so they could focus on the fine-tuning of the scripts. But one time, we were hungry and we left my bedroom, flying down the stairs to the kitchen to grab some pretzels. When I hit the landing, I was greeted with one of the

loudest moans I’d ever heard. A reckless “Oh God” blared from my mother’s room. My face burned as the awful soundtrack of her path to pleasure continued. A rhythmic groaning that matched the banging of the headboard, and made my gut twist in mangled knots from the shame. I turned to Catey, red flooding my cheeks. “Um, I think our parents are … ,” but I couldn’t finish the sentence, so I said, “I’m not hungry anymore.” “Me neither,” she said, and we went back upstairs, listless defeated soldiers, broken in battle from a surprise attack. We were silent and worked on homework quietly on opposite corners of my bedroom until her dad tucked in his shirt, zipped his pants, and gathered up his daughter to head home. After all, what do you say after you hear your mom screwing your friend’s dad, and vice versa? Nothing. You say nothing. Before the next party, my mom pulled me aside and reminded me that the reason Adam spent so much time at the house was for research. “Research, honey. If your dad asks, Adam is here for research.” “Research,” I repeated. “You’re a good girl,” she said with a smile and a kiss, and I smiled back. Because that’s what I had to do. Store up the names of men I was told to keep from my dad. Keep it quiet, don’t mention it, keep calm and carry on. I didn’t

mention it. Not to anyone. I stuffed all the names inside of me. My plan was to do the same with Catey—pretend it never happened when I saw her. We could move on and stay friends. I was sure of it. All we had to do was make believe nothing had ever happened. That’s what my mom had taught me. But Catey didn’t come to the next party. When her parents showed up, they said she was spending the night at another friend’s house. I learned then that a friendship could die. * I see purple and my breath hitches. I slam my feet into the brakes and hop off my bike, walking it the final few feet to him, across the street from the park. I unsnap my helmet and sling it over the handlebars. “Did you just leave my house?” He nods. “Going to join some friends at Roseland to see a band.” “Not a hair band or a hip-hop band,” I say, returning to one of our inside jokes. He smiles. It’s a small smile, the tiniest recognition of all our shared secrets. But I’ll take it. “Definitely not either of those. What about you? What are you up to?” “Just out causing trouble,” I say, then rest my bike against the fence surrounding the building he stands in front

of. He laughs, and backs up a few inches to lean against the railing next to my bike. He runs his thumb along the rubber of the handlebar, still warm from my hands wrapped around it seconds ago. A spark shoots through me, a reminder of all the times we touched something the other had touched as part of our first tentative dance steps to each other. I don’t take my eyes off him. I study him, even though he’s so familiar to me. The moonlight plays across his face, illuminating half of him. Strong cheekbones, bristly stubble on his jawline, a nose that was cracked once from football. Then his eyes, those navy-blue eyes that are like ink, even darker here in the late evening that inches toward midnight. The air is humid, and the noises of Manhattan surround us—cars, cabs, wind, sirens, and the anonymity of all the crowds. “You. Causing trouble. I have a hard time picturing that,” he says in a wry voice, the corner of his lips quirking up. I step closer. The current draws me to him; the air between us is charged with ions and electrons. He is the eye of my hurricane; the calm I am drawn to amid the chaos of my home. Here, a mere block away, we are so close to being caught. But we are far enough away that I feel both safe and reckless. That’s how I always felt with Noah. “You can’t picture me causing trouble?” He shrugs. “Depends on the trouble.” “You know I’m trouble.”

He nods, the smile erasing itself. “I know, K. I know. Trust me.” “I do trust you,” I whisper. “With everything.” He inhales sharply. The look in his eyes says we’re crossing into the danger zone again. It’s the only place I want to be with him. Because when we’re there, nothing between us feels dangerous. Everything feels right. “I turn eighteen in a few more weeks,” I say, like my birthday is an open invitation for us to slam back into each other. He nods. “I know.” A breeze blows by and rustles his hair. A lock falls out of place. Instinct takes over. I raise my hand to reach for his hair. But he’s faster. He grasps my wrist, and the second he does, the moment expands. It stretches and unfolds into the thing I will replay tonight and tomorrow and the next day. I stare at his hand clasped around my wrist, flashing back to all the times he held my hand, touched my wrist, and ran his fingers along my arm. I shiver as the memories collide, the past slamming into the present. I look up from our hands to his eyes. Blazing, full of heat. Full of all that restraint from him that I know so well. “I’m almost out of high school,” I whisper. “Three more weeks till I graduate.” He closes his eyes. The expression on his face is so pained. I’m supposed to stay away. But all I want to do is be

close again. “I am acutely aware of the dates. Of everything,” he says through gritted teeth. He opens his eyes. “I know everything about you. I know when you graduate. I know when you turn eighteen. I know what we planned. I know you.” Everything comes out like they’re stones in his mouth, hard and hurting. Except the last word, all breath and warmth and whispers. An echo. “You.” I want it all back, I want to say. But I don’t. I let him drop my hand. It aches from where he touched it.

Our Stolen Kisses They say you never forget your first kiss, and I never will, but our fifth kiss was pretty spectacular too, wasn’t it? Do you remember where we were? We were on Jane Street. You grasped my hand, and led me into a small courtyard outside an apartment building. You placed your hands on my cheeks, and I practically melted just from the feel of you holding my face. But it was the way you looked at me that truly sent me soaring. I felt like the only one ever. That’s who I want to be with you. Then you whispered in the barest voice, “You.” It was all you said, but I knew everything you meant. I felt it too. You.

Chapter Seven Kennedy Noah started as a crush. He was the first one to visit me in the hospital when I broke my foot from a skateboarding accident in ninth grade. I was still reeling from the epic phone fight I’d heard my parents having earlier in the day. They were fighting over custody of me. Enough, I thought. Just enough. I grabbed my skateboard, slammed the door, barreled down the steps, and slapped the longboard down on the sidewalk. I raced east a block or two on the smooth concrete, then jumped off the curb and into the crosswalk without looking. I weaved south on Broadway, sandwiching my body and the board between the parked cars and the cabs, the trucks and buses screeching downtown. I was fast and I was furious. I wanted speed and I wanted distance. There was no more home, and there was no more Mom and Dad, and there was no more normal life, but there’d never been a normal life anyway, and this was the only normal there ever was—me and the New York City streets as I dodged the bullets the traffic threw at me. It was me against the cars, me against rush hour, and I wanted to win. Then someone in a cab opened the door and I didn’t see it coming. The door smacked my elbow, and the next thing I knew the

board slid out from under me and my foot slammed into the tire. I tried my parents when the medics showed up, but neither one answered their phone—my dad was at a museum event, and my mom was having an afternoon delight. The only other number I could come up with on the spot was Noah’s. He met me at the hospital and didn’t even flinch when he saw my mangled foot. Soon I went into surgery, and by the time I woke up my parents were there and Noah was gone. But he came back to visit me; he was like a family member, or at least a very good family friend. He’d been my mom’s agent for two years by then, so he’d been around the house, had come over for my parent’s parties. We’d see him out of the house too—at Lords and Ladies events, LGO fetes and celebratory dinners whenever he inked some new terms or new distribution deal for my mom’s show. I had talked with him plenty over the years, but rarely had it ever been just the two of us. Now it was. He was a jock too, a former one at least. He sat a few feet from my hospital bed, camped out in a standard upholstered hospital chair, and regaled me with stories of all the bones he had broken when he was younger. He wiggled three fingers on his right hand. “These three snapped when the center stepped on them during practice in junior high.” “You were the quarterback?” “No. Wide receiver.”

“How did the center break your hand then?” “It was just one of those big old football pile-ons during practice,” he said. “Were you good at football?” He smirked. “What do you think?” I nodded my answer. He nodded back. “How many passes did you catch?” “So many they had to make an extra record book for Pop Warner in Hoboken, New Jersey.” “Ha. Yeah, right.” He winked, then whispered. “Don’t tell anyone I can’t remember the records from my glory days.” “Right. They were so long ago,” I joked. “Then I broke my kneecap a couple years later,” he said, recounting high school injuries. “How’d you manage that?” “Playing soccer. I planted my foot wrong while I was twisting around to try to score, and then it snapped. Man, it felt like it fell down to my shin.” “Seriously?” He tapped the side of his calf under his black pants to show me where his kneecap had landed. He wore his agent outfit: black slacks, shiny leather shoes, and a crisp navy-blue shirt that day. “Yep. My kneecap was knocked about two inches out of the socket.”

My eyes widened as I covered my mouth with my hand. “It’s like when a cartoon character’s chin falls to the ground or something.” “It was exactly like that. Only it actually hurt, oh, say, twenty thousand times worse than if I’d have been animated.” “What else?” I asked, eager for more stories of his broken bones that took my mind off not just mine, but my broken family.

Noah I crossed my legs and leaned back in the hospital chair, happy to entertain her with tales from not that long ago. It was a rare day when I could talk about something other than business. The chance to distract a friend from an injury —because she was a friend, as weird as that may seem to an outsider, she was always a friend first—was something I’d gladly do. “Let’s see. There was that time when I was seventeen and I dislocated my shoulder on a triple play.” “How? Did you throw too hard?” “That’s me. All brute strength,” I said drily. “Seriously,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “I was the third baseman. I forced out the runner at third and threw too hard to second.”

“But you got him out, right?” “Hell, yeah. Glory first,” I said, like it was my team’s tagline. But there was a pride underneath my self-mockery, and she nodded in understanding. She was good at sports too, worked hard at them, and they meant something to her. The same was true for me. “Were you all stoic during the play, then did you limp off the field cradling your shoulder, as your teammates cheered?” “Something like that. But we lost the game, so it was a moot point in the end.” “Is that all you did growing up? Play sports?” she asked. I laughed, and shook my head. “It wasn’t all I did, but I was good at sports. Plus, I think my mom just wanted to balance out all the show tunes and cabaret and drag queens I’d grown up with. You know, just to give me a full sense of the world.” Raised by a single mom in the acting biz, I grew up on Broadway and off-Broadway, in nightclubs and cabarets. I knew stage right and stage left before I knew real right and real left. My mom was a chorus girl. She never made the big bucks. She always made just enough from her tiny backup roles for us to get by. In between her Broadway gigs, she sang in nightclubs for a hundred bucks a pop, her big, brassy, showy voice reverberating throughout the cabaret halls and red-velvet lounges of Manhattan. She took me everywhere, toted me to all her auditions when I was a little kid, tugged me by the hand to her rehearsals

when I was in grade school, brought me to Sardi’s in between her matinees and evening performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I was a fixture of the Broadway scene and became a communal theater kid. Those same thespians I hung out with came with my mom to my games, cheering me on in football and baseball with the loudest hoots and hollers. Maybe that’s why chatting with her over her broken foot and reminiscing about high school days felt the closest to normal I’d had in a while. “Will you sign my cast?” She tipped her forehead to her foot. “I thought you’d never ask,” I said, and reached for the Sharpies she’d left at the foot of her hospital bed. Her friends had already commandeered most of the plaster real estate with colorful loopy signatures and red hearts. “Hmmm. Not much room left,” I said, appraising her foot and its new packaging. “Right by the toes. There’s a little space right next to the toes,” she said, pointing toward the edge of the cast. “Nice toes,” I said, with a laugh, when I noticed her toenail polish. Her toenails were bright green and bright purple, alternating each shade on every other toe. “My friend Amanda calls them Skittles toes.” “I’ll just sign right here under those Skittle toes then,” I said, then scratched out my signature near her candycolored toenails.

I didn’t have a foot fetish. I certainly didn’t fall for her because of her toes. Romance didn’t even cross my mind. I just liked talking to her. I had no idea that three years later, she’d become the center of my universe.

Chapter Eight Kennedy “Think Mr. Lipshitz will remember you if he sees you?” Lane asks, accentuating the name of my mom’s onetime lover, as we ride across a quiet block in the East Seventies, rolling casually by the brownstones and buildings with pretty stoops. “Probably,” I say with a groan as we hunt for the residence of the wife of the man with the worst last name in the world. “It was four or five years ago but I had to have dinner with Mr. Lipshitz a couple times. My mom even made her world-famous pork chops once when it was just the three of us at the dinner table. It was disgusting.” “And that didn’t offend your vegetarian sensibilities?” “She made me a peanut butter and honey sandwich instead,” I say in a deadpan voice, as if the choice of food is what mattered. “Epic. I love those things, especially when they’re toasted.” “There’s no other way to eat them but toasted,” I say. “Anyway, his wife knows me too. They came to one of my parent’s parties a few years ago. My mom invited them both, right while she was still in the thick of it with him. I even called the wife to confirm they were coming. I believe my

instructions the night of the party were Act as if you’ve never seen him before.” “And did you? Act?” “You’ve seen the Oscar on my bureau, right?” He chuffs a humorless laugh. “What did your Dad say? Was he suspicious?” I shake my head as we near the curb, remembering how awful I felt that night, how my stomach tied itself in knots as I maintained that lie. “Didn’t have a clue. He never did,” I say as we pull our bikes onto the sidewalk and lock them up. I take an envelope out of my backpack and show it to Lane. There’s no return address on it, but Doreen Lipshitz’s name is on the front. She lives in the corner brownstone with a green planter in one of the windows. “How fortuitous that this block also happens to have a mailbox.” Lane points to a blue postal box twenty feet away. “Because of course you couldn’t mail this from anywhere else in the city,” he teases. “It’s ceremonial.” I walk to the mailbox, but before I open it, a jagged sort of worry sneaks through me. “I think this might be crazy. I shouldn’t do this. I should just leave her alone.” “What did you say in the letter?” “Just that I wish for her to be happy and to be surrounded by love,” I say in a small voice, feeling small. Why should she care? I’m just a seventeen-year-old girl, struggling to find a way through her messed-up life.

“Does she know what happened though?” I nod, the memory of my mom’s affair so fresh it’s in high-definition. My stomach churns as images of those days flash by. After Mr. Lipshitz was caught by his wife, Doreen, my mom was a mess for a week. My dad was in Italy, so my mom had carte blanche to be mopey, to sniffle, and to barely eat anything but crackers. I brought her books to read and made her sandwiches and told her everything would be better when she said she was sad because she’d lost a friend. She let me take care of her though, let me cuddle with her and watch old sitcoms on television. We were both pretending. She was pretending she was sad over a friend. I was pretending I believed her. I try to shove the memories away so they don’t imprison me any longer. “Yes, his wife knows. She caught him emailing my mom.” “Then all you’re doing is saying sorry in a roundabout way. You’re not rubbing something in her face that she never knew.” “Right,” I say with a nod, reassuring myself. “Besides, my letter is anonymous. I just want to make her feel happy.” Lane smiles, then drapes an arm around me “You are a good person, my friend.” His arm feels warm and comforting, and it’s enough to give me the courage to just do it. I gulp, then open the door of the mailbox and slide the letter in, taking a deep breath as the door clangs shut.

This is how I reverse the damage. “Oh, I’m so proud of you, my little Kennedy. Growing up now and making amends,” he teases. I swat him. “Shut up!” “Now I get to play,” he says, tapping his backpack. “I told you I’d be your comrade in amends. Since you’re sending letters to particular people, I thought we should leave love letters around the city too—to anyone. Like how some people leave stickers for a campaign or a cause? They plaster them on subways and billboards and railings. We do the same. It’s like found art. But found love. We’re Cupids, kind of, but more in a cosmic, big-picture sense.” He reaches inside and hands me several pieces of paper. He has printed copies of the F. Scott Fitzgerald love letter—the one from the “bonkers” wife of the drunk writer. “I love everything about your idea and I also think you’re crazy,” I say, admiringly, as he hands me thumbtacks from a plastic container in his backpack pocket. “I know,” he says, his eyes lit up with excitement. Now they’re bright green, it seems. “Let’s do it. Let’s go make public art.” It’s like a sip of champagne; his thrill is contagious and I catch it too. We race, watching behind us, in front of us, beside us, making sure we’re not caught by whoever it is that catches people doing what we’re doing. We execute our first mission as impromptu practitioners of found love, tacking up the dozen copies of the letter all along various doorframes on Mr. and Mrs. Lipshitz’s block. An older

woman walks a pug with a pink collar, and eyes us curiously. My heart beats faster in worry, but the woman says nothing as she passes us leaving messages of love. Found love. Lettered love. Love from a stranger. Love on the street. Messages of love all around. I breathe them on the air, I imprint them on the walls, I spread my hopes and dreams for the way things could have been across the city streets. I look at our handiwork—each piece of ivory-colored paper, curling at the edges, like parchment, then the words in curving script, letters shaped like they were made in another century. I don’t know who will see them, but the possibility that someone will stop and read and realize that they too are surrounded by love for just a moment here in this city of millions unclenches some of the pain inside me. I could get used to this feeling. Buoyed by the lightness inside of me, I throw my arms around Lane and hug him tightly. “Thank you,” I whisper. “For what?” His voice is nervous, worried. “For being my friend,” I say, as I untangle myself from his arms. He waves a hand in the air as if to say it’s no big deal. “Easiest thing I’ve ever done,” he says. But it’s more than easy. It’s vital—this friendship. No one else knows all my family secrets, or all my family shame, or all my family guilt. And no one else knows how much I want

to mend all the mistakes I have made my whole life over. And in this moment, his friendship is even better than a crush. * After we leave the first letter, I head to my dad’s. He’s making a mushroom risotto that smells delicious. I’m tempted to ask if he misses cooking with my mom, laughing in the kitchen with her, and kissing the back of her neck while she arranged Goudas and Bries on a serving plate. I want to ask if he wishes I never told him what she’d done, if he wants to go back to whatever blissfully ignorant state he was living in just so we could all be together again. I’m dying to know if I ruined cooking for him. He was making pasta primavera the night I told him. “Mom is having another affair and it’s not the first time she’s fooled around on you. Mom has been having affairs since I was nine or ten years old and she has men over at the house all the time when you’re not around and she does everything with them,” I began and then went on and on. He stopped stirring, stopped moving. Face white as a sheet, eyes glazed. Soon the water from the pot boiled over, spilling onto the stove. He didn’t move, so I grabbed a towel, cleaned it up, turned off the burner, and said I was sorry a million times. He unfroze and said it wasn’t my fault, none of it was my fault, that I should never ever be sorry for what I told him.

Then he called the pizza place down the street and had them deliver a cheese pie and we ate the whole thing. In the morning, I found the pizza box had been stabbed many times. Now, as he finishes the risotto and spoons it onto plates, I can’t help but wonder if cooking is a bitter reminder of my mom. But I don’t want to stir up painful memories. “How is the love letter exhibit going?” I ask when he sits down with the plates and I push my calculus homework to the side of his dark-brown oak dining room table, a newish table, because this place is still relatively new. We are in his apartment—my other home—a fifth-floor Greenwich Village walk-up with windows that look out over my dad’s quiet street. There’s just a sliver of a view of the Hudson River and New Jersey if you push your face as far as you can against the corner of the window. It is homey in its own way, with exposed brick and art on the walls, mostly prints of my dad’s favorites, works by Édouard Manet and Willem Claesz Heda, by Francesco Hayez and Roy Lichtenstein, but also originals from newer artists, like one of the photographs from his exhibit. “It’s going really well,” he says with a smile, then takes a bite of his culinary creation. He nods several times, pleased with his proficiency in the kitchen. “You should meet the photographer behind that one,” he says, gesturing to the photo he bought. “She’s really fantastic. Nineteen, an art student at NYU, very talented and very easy to talk to. Her name is Amy Vaughn.”

“Got a crush on her?” He pretends to laugh. Then he turns serious. “I hope you know I wouldn’t have a crush on someone that much younger than I am. Because you know how I feel about that.” “Dad, relax. I was just kidding.” “I mean it, though. It’s not appropriate for a man my age to date a college student.” “Obviously,” I say quickly. His face turns pinkish blotchy and he clears his throat. “I didn’t mean it like that, Kennedy. I mean in general, there is a certain acceptable age range that people should date in.” “So are you dating anyone?” I say, trying to deflect from the dangerous topic of age. “I don’t really think that’s the issue here.” “Oh, I didn’t realize we were discussing issues now. I thought we were discussing art.” “And somehow it got turned around, so let’s continue,” he says, and I brace myself. But his question surprises me. “How are things going with your therapist?” I put my fork down. “Really? You really want me to tell you how things are with my shrink?” He stops eating too. “Yes. Really. You don’t have to go into the details. I understand it’s personal what you talk about with her. But is it going well? Is it helping you? Because I just want you to be happy in life. I want you to be able to have the sort of happiness your mother and I never had.”

I had that kind of happiness. Only I can’t say that because then I’d be spinning more lies. But, he’s my dad. He’s the one parent I can at least try to be honest with. “Okay, so you want to be all open, then here you go. Here’s what I’m getting out of seeing Caroline. I’m learning how to move on from what I did. Because I was complicit in her affairs. By lying for her and covering it up and saying So-and-So is just a friend and So-and-So was just over for dinner. And I’m sorry I lied for her. I’m sorry I hurt you by never saying anything to her, by never telling her to stop.” My dad covers his mouth with his hand, and he looks like he’s going to cry. “Dad, what did I say wrong?” He shakes his head and speaks softly. “You did nothing wrong, Kennedy. Not now. Not then. You have to know that. It was never your fault. Please don’t blame yourself.” “I’m a pretty good punching bag for myself though,” I say, reverting to jokes and sarcasm, because this is comfortable terrain for me. I pretend to punch my own arms. He is undeterred by my attempt at humor. He remains starkly serious. “I mean it, Kennedy. Your mom has to live with what she did. It’s not your fault.” But I don’t really think she’s living with it. And since we’re letting it all hang out, I decide to ask him something I’ve always wanted to know. “Why didn’t you ever tell Mom you knew about her affairs? After you left her? Why didn’t you tell her you knew?”

“Why,” he says softly, repeating. He exhales deeply. “Because. Because I knew if I told her then it would always be there, it would always exist, we would always be aware of it every single time we talked about you or anything. And I didn’t want to have to think about it every time I talked to her. I didn’t want to have it in front of me all the time. I wanted it to be behind me.” “Self-preservation,” I say. He nods. “Yes, I suppose it was self-preservation.” “Dad, I’m old enough to know what real love is. I’m the opposite of her. You have to know that.” “I know, sweetie. I know you are.” “Then why do you worry so much about me?” “Because you are young, Kennedy. Because you are too young to feel that way for anyone. And especially because you know how I feel about him,” he says, and there’s a steeliness in his normally warm brown eyes, a hard glint that tells me exactly how he would feel if he knew how much I want Noah back. When I go to bed, it is quiet. I never have to worry about overhearing my dad having sex. I can sleep peacefully, and while I still long for Noah, for a note, for a picture, it’s not necessary for my health and sanity like it is when I’m at my mom’s. I shove my phone under my bed so I’m not tempted to reach out, so I’m not seduced by this peaceful, easy feeling. Staying away from him is my amends to my dad. After he found the bits and pieces of the letter, he

freaked out to the nth degree. I had no choice but to conjure a heap of tall tales around the letter, so many that I was dancing dangerously close to the edge of sanity. I had to end it with Noah. I didn’t want to be another source of stress for my father. That was the least I could do for my dad, considering all he’s done for me. The biggest thing he’s done is to just be a normal dad, a normal parent who doesn’t ask his daughter to keep his secrets. I have a copy of the letter still, a chronicle of my so-called “21 Stolen Kisses.” I keep it in a safe-deposit box so no one can ever see it. That’s the only thing in the box, because it’s the only thing I have that’s priceless to me. I wrap the sheets around me one more time. Maybe I should just start over. Maybe I should just go out with boys my age. That’s what my dad wants, and he’s the only one who’s remotely normal among the two people who passed on genes to me. But really, what’s normal? This is New York City. Nobody is normal anymore.

Chapter Nine Noah After a few rounds of hoity-toity hors d’oeuvres, consisting of fig-wrapped ricotta cheese and polenta cups with sweet peppers, and a painfully detailed conversation about the upcoming story arc in Lords and Ladies with my date, Jenna, who works on a late-night talk show, I spot an opening with Tremaine. He’s made his way to the bar as his wife heads down the hallway to the restrooms. We’re at The Modern, the restaurant that overlooks the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The salt-and-pepper-haired TV show creator holds up two fingers to get the bartender’s attention. I excuse myself from Jenna and join the man my boss wants me to nab. “David Tremaine,” I say, extending a hand. “Noah Hayes. I wanted to say hello because I’ve always admired your work. I think you were one of the first to truly poke fun at the hipster universe in Brooklyn before it became a target for everyone.” He raises a bushy eyebrow. His expression is wary, but pleased. “You read my New York Press pieces?” “Of course. I can see how they’ve informed your shows. Your dark sense of humor was evident in those columns. I read them growing up,” I say, referring to the pieces he penned for the paper well before he started writing for the

small screen. He was a humor columnist many years ago, and sometimes when my mom went to auditions she’d drop me off at the nearby library for an hour and I’d spend that time reading Tremaine’s columns. “No one ever notices that I wrote for the New York Press,” he says, as he takes his vodka tonic from the bartender and tosses a green bill on the black lacquer. “Or that Brooklyn hipsters needed to be mocked.” I laughed. “They do. And most people don’t notice because most people think TV writers are born that way. Fully formed and writing in dialogue. But most cut their teeth doing something else.” His eyes light up. “Exactly. Everyone started someplace no one wants to remember. Journalism. Speechwriting. Even press releases. But hey, I’m lucky to be able to write, right?” he says, his comment a reminder that Tremaine is here at this charity event because he’s a big supporter of literacy efforts. He grew up with a mom who was a teacher and regularly volunteered to teach reading and writing to underprivileged adults. “We all are lucky on that count, and I’m lucky that the New York Press hired you because your columns cracked me up. They made me laugh when I needed a laugh,” I say as his wife rejoins him, hooking her arm through his and flashing a smile. A waiter passes by and offers tuna on a chichi-looking potato chip. I shake my head no. Tremaine lifts his chin at me. “Noah Hayes, you said?”

I nod. “You’re an agent, aren’t you?” “Yes, and I can see you’re busy. It was a pleasure to meet you.” “Wait. You’re not going to try to … ,” he says, letting his voice trail off. “Woo you?” I ask as I raise an eyebrow. He nods, and his wife laughs. He wraps an arm around her waist and plants a kiss on her cheek. “Yes, we’re used to agents wooing my husband,” she says, chiming in. “Want me to? Woo you?” “I’m just surprised you didn’t,” he adds, a note of almost delight in his voice. “Good. I think it’s good when we can surprise each other in a business where there’s little of that left. I’ll leave it at this. I’ve been a fan of yours since forever,” I say, then I walk away. A guy like Tremaine isn’t looking for an agent who’s like every other agent. I have to leave him wanting more. I find my date, feeling that momentary pang of annoyance when I see Jenna and not Kennedy. It’s not Jenna’s fault that she’s not the one I want; nor is it her problem that out of nowhere a deep and lonely longing slams into me, and I wish I was sneaking off to see Kennedy in the park. Hell, I’d gladly settle for just running into her on the street like the other night. I wish she’d say she’s ready.

But I won’t push her. I can’t. She needs what she needs right now, even though she’s the only person who ever truly needed me. And look, it’s not like I have a thing for younger girls. I’ve dated plenty my age. There was my college girlfriend Sandy, then the hot drummer Hayley that Matthew introduced me to, and then the publicist Mica last year, the one Jonathan thought I was still seeing, even though she’s the one I broke up with when I started falling hard for the girl I wasn’t supposed to fall for. Soon, Jenna and I leave MoMA. As I walk her home, she clears her throat and says, “So I was wondering …” And I can almost predict what’s coming next. “If I could show you a treatment for a sitcom I’m working on,” she continues, and there it is. The hit-up. The inevitable ask. I know that’s why Jenna agreed to come with me tonight. But then, it’s not as if I want anything more from her, so it seems only fair that I give her this side of me—my work side. “Sure,” I say. Before I even walk through my door, Jenna’s e-mailed me her script. I write back and tell her I’m looking forward to reading it. Then I search for something I can give freely. I find a picture of a deer with a white heart on his butt. I can hear Kennedy’s laughter as I hit Send.

Chapter Ten Kennedy I knew his other girlfriends, including Mica. She came before me. She was pretty in a standard New York City entry-levelprofessional sort of way—straight brown hair clipped back, black sweaters and gray slacks and kitten heels. Mica was fascinated with my school, as if she could never imagine taking a class that lacked a boy. The Agnes Ethel School for Girls was all I’d had ever known since kindergarten, so I couldn’t fathom taking a class with a boy. “Does it even cross your mind at school anymore that there are no boys, or are you just totally used to it?” Mica asked as we chatted during one of my mom’s parties one spring night a little more than a year ago. “Totally used to it,” I said. “But it’s like the running joke that never gets old. We play Top Five Things That Suck about Going to an All-Girls’ School during impromptu lacrosse practice.” The routine went something like this: I’d lob the blue ball at the beige wall at the back of the school. “Time for our daily practice,” I’d say. “And what are the benefits of this daily practice?” Amanda would ask.

“Keeps the mind and senses sharp.” “Keeps us ready for the rebellion,” Amanda would add. “In case we decide to overthrow the school someday.” “So we don’t become complacent!” I’d shout happily then we’d begin our call-and-response. “Number one. No boys.” “Number two. The uniforms.” “Number three. No prom.” “Number four. The way people all think we’re naughty girls.” “Number five. To being naughty girls!” Mica laughed out loud at the last one, probably especially because it didn’t quite fit on the list. “Do you wish you went to a coed school?” she asked. “Sure, but it is what it is. I’m used to this,” I said. “So are you seeing anyone outside of school?”

No, but I kind of have a crush on your boyfriend. “Nope,” I said, and stole a glance at Noah, who sat on the couch across from my mom as she held court, entertaining the hearty and loyal guests with a story—mostly apocryphal—about the time she watched the sun rise while on a rooftop in Istanbul as the locals began their morning prayers. He’d probably heard it before, he probably knew all her stories by heart, but he listened, laughed, and smiled. He had his five-o’-clock shadow like a 1950s ad exec,

and he looked like the kind of man who worked in the shade, who spent his working hours on the phone, talking, negotiating, wooing. He wore pressed black pants and a shirt the shade of raspberry. I wanted to walk over to him, sit down next to him, and touch the cuff of his shirt with my thumb and forefinger. I returned my focus to Mica. “I’m just too busy with school and stuff.” She scoffed, and ran her manicured fingers through her hair. “Kennedy, you’re never too busy to date. Let me tell you, when you meet the right guy, you’ll find a way to fit him in.” “Like Hayes for you?” I asked, and I tried to mask the higher pitch in my voice. I felt like a detective, ferreting out information. I wanted to know how serious Mica and Noah were. “Well, what’s not to like? He’s hot, sweet, and he’s making a ton of money already. He has to be the one,” Mica said, and I wanted to tackle her. I wanted to shout at Mica to stay away because Noah wasn’t about money. Who cared if he had money? I didn’t need or want a man for money, not then, and not ever. I might be in high school, but I damn well planned on making my own money when I was out of school. I wasn’t going to be dependent on anyone else’s wallet. Besides, love shouldn’t be about what someone made. It should be about how someone made you feel. “And you love him, right?”

“Of course. Of course I love him,” she added, as if she were reminding herself. I tried not to glare at her. Noah walked into the kitchen to pour himself another iced tea and to grab a chocolate-chip cookie from a batch I’d made earlier for the party. He bit into a cookie, then rolled his eyes in pleasure. “I might have to take the whole batch when no one’s looking,” he said. Take them all , I wanted to say, but instead I flashed a small smile. “I better try one too,” Mica said, and there was a competitive tone, even a territorial one, in the declaration. Something flamed up in me; a thick plume of jealousy as she draped her arm around him as she ate the cookie. But then, I felt deeply ashamed. I had to stop entertaining a crush on a taken man. I didn’t want to be a thing like my mom, not one bit, not an iota. I told myself the crush was over and no one would ever need to know my schoolgirl daydreams had existed. I retreated to my upstairs bedroom, turned on my computer, and watched a YouTube video of my favorite Internet comedian speed walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in nothing but a banana-yellow Speedo and black Converse sneakers. It took my mind off the advantage all the Micas in the world would always have on me when it came to the Noahs—age. A few weeks later, she was absent from the party. Then the next one. Then the next one.

I didn’t say anything about her sudden ejection from his life. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to breathe her name. I didn’t want to intervene, to plant a seed, to do any of the things I’d seen my mother do. I needed to be the opposite of my mom. I needed to be quiet, to be good, to keep my hands to myself. My mom didn’t have the same rules of self-regulation. “I’ll raise a glass to you getting that clingy girl out of your life,” she said to him one night while lifting her nearly drained wineglass. I sat at the kitchen table, studying for one of my final math tests of my junior year. She’d ordered Chinese takeout for the three of us, and we were waiting for it. She and Noah had been reviewing the next season’s plans for her show. “You never liked her, did you,” Noah said. It was a statement, not a question. “Well, she practically had “marry me” written all over her face.” “What’s wrong with marriage, Jewel?” he asked, baiting her. “I suppose it’s fine for some people, but I don’t think of you as the marrying kind, my dear.” He laughed deeply. “I didn’t end it with Mica because of that. If she were the right girl, I’d have married her.” “You’re too young,” my mother said to him, and the irony of her words was not lost on me. “You should not even be thinking of marriage.”

“I’m not thinking of it. And I’m not not thinking of it. When I meet the right girl, I’ll be down on one knee.” Jewel rolled her eyes. “You always make me laugh, Hayes.” “I’m not trying to be funny,” he said, but he was smiling too. He could egg her on in a way that no one else could, probably because their relationship was so clear. There were lines, they had roles, and everything was neat and orderly. She did enjoy dispensing relationship advice to him, though. She seemed unable to resist tinkering in the romantic life of a young, single, eligible New York bachelor. “Okay, Mr. Not Funny Man. Why did you end it with Mica then, if not for her clinginess?” “Let me get this straight. Clinginess is the only reason I should have ended things with Mica?” “You admit she was clingy?” Jewel countered. The agent and the writer—both used words as weapons. Noah shook his head. “Mica was a fine girl. But marriage never came up for either one of us, because we had different ideas of what makes a relationship work.” “What makes a relationship work then? I’m dying to know,” Jewel said. “Shared interests? Common beliefs? A little humor?” “That, and someone who knows all the lyrics to Chess,” he said with a wry smile, and I forced myself to hide a crazy grin. I’d told myself my crush was over. I’d almost tricked myself into believing it. But inside I thrilled at the words. I

knew all the lyrics to Chess. Jewel laughed loudly at his remark. “Oh, you win. You win this round. You and your show tunes. You know Kennedy is a Broadway baby. She loves all musicals,” my mom said on the way to the kitchen to refill her wine. When she reached the other room, I look up at him, meeting his inky-blue gaze. “Now at least I know. I know him well,” I said in the smallest voice, almost under my breath. Noah straightened his spine and stared at me with wide eyes. I gripped my pencil so hard I thought it would break. “What did you just say?” he asked softly. I shook my head. I wouldn’t repeat the lyrics from the bittersweet ballad from Chess. I couldn’t admit that much. But I could let on that I shared the same interests. “It played for two months in 1988,” I said, and my heart was in my throat. My insides were spinning. I was sure my feelings were tattooed across my face, living, breathing ink marks with arms reaching for him. “And hasn’t been revived since, much to the chagrin of musical theater diehards everywhere,” he said, and his eyes sparkled. “Yes. Much to the chagrin.” I returned to the equations on the page, but they were drunk lines in front of me, weaving back and forth. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t speak. It was too much intoxication for me.

Noah Something about the way she said those lines from Chess sent the temperature in me ticking up a few degrees. They were the match that lit the flame. They made me see all the possibilities of us. It was the sweetness in her voice, with a sliver of hopefulness too. I wanted to be unaffected by it, to let it slide right off me, like a thousand comments about a thousand things do every day. But she wasn’t like my every day business life. She was the beautiful young woman I couldn’t take my eyes off of whenever I went to Jewel’s home. I knew better; of course I knew better. But tell that to the stupid heart that was banging around in my chest. All from the simple fact that we liked the same obscure musical. My kryptonite. I couldn’t resist tossing back the next line. Low, under my breath. Jewel couldn’t hear me. She was in the kitchen and I was in her dining room, playing with fire, but ready to be burned. “Wasn’t it good?” She looked back up from her paper. I watched her swallow. Nervously. I did the same. I was dancing near some kind of line in the sand. “Wasn’t he fine?” she said, sharing another line.

“Isn’t it madness?” I said softly, going next. She exhaled, and her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink. Then, in a whisper, she said the line that followed: “That he can’t be mine.” My heart pattered far too much in my chest then, and I was sure I should lock it up and tell it to never act that way around a seventeen-year-old girl again. But I didn’t do that. Because she wasn’t false or fake or angling for something. She was, quite simply, the girl who liked the same things I did. A few days later, I bumped into her in Central Park on my morning run. I wasn’t looking for her, but I wasn’t unhappy to see her when she rode past me on her bike at dawn and called out my name as I ran. She squealed to a stop, and I pulled up short too. “Who would have thought you owned something besides pants and perfect business shirts,” she said, looking me up and down, her green eyes hooking me. I tried to keep it light. Keep it safe. “Can’t burn off all those cookies wearing a dress shirt,” I joked. “But of course,” she said, then pressed her sneakers back into the pedals. “I should make more cookies for you.” Cookies. She was talking about cookies. But she was also talking about more. She was residing in that place where we weren’t agent and client’s daughter. Where we were friends, where we were a guy and a girl. I let myself forget who she was. I let the ties that bound us fade away.

“Chocolate chip please,” I said, and was rewarded with her smile. “’Bye, Kennedy.” I ran into her a few more times over the next few weeks, and I never said a word to Jewel about those early morning encounters when I went over to her house in the evenings. Not even when Kennedy would ask me how my day was. I’d only say, “I had a great jog, then a great day.” Right in front of her mom. “What about you?” I asked her. “I had a great bike ride, and then a great day,” she said, and our eyes said everything. We had the start of a secret, and we knew how to keep it.

Chapter Eleven Kennedy The peaceful, easy feeling from staying at my dad’s quiet home doesn’t last long. The next night I’m back at my mom’s and I’m falling down the black hole of noise again. I pull the pillow over my ears when I hear my mom and Warren screwing. Loudly. The sounds try to strangle me, and I want to slam the moans out of the world, send the perpetrators of them far into orbit. The noises worm their way into me, even as I grip the pillow harder and firmer, over my head. I can barely take it. I grab my phone, jam earbuds in, and blast Chess. My fingers dig into the side of the screen, like claws that somehow hold me back from writing to Noah, reaching for him, like I want to. He saved me from this. In every way possible, he was my escape, and he freed me. My fingers burn with the need to reach out to him, to seek that comfort, that blissful oblivion. But then I remember the pained look in his eyes from the other night, and I can’t keep racing to him when everything around me hurts. At some point the music takes over and loosens the stranglehold. It’s enough for me to resist my lifeline. I think I was his lifeline too. We were both adrift in New

York City. We were both surrounded by so many people, but ultimately we were terribly alone. Until we found each other. Maybe I’m still his lifeline because soon I can feel my phone vibrating under the sheets. I grab it, slide my thumb across the screen, and find a photo of a deer with a white heart on its butt. I laugh out loud, a deep laugh that rumbles through my body.

Someday, we’re gonna find that deer. Then, I turn to the folders on my phone and scroll through all my pictures of hearts in nature. Someday, I will go on a treasure hunt around the world and find them all. Someday, I will believe in love again. * “I wish I didn’t know what my mom sounds like having sex,” I tell Caroline as soon as the door to her office closes the next day. She brushes her tawny brown hair from her face and gives me a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure. I’m sure you wish you didn’t know what that sounded like at all.” “I wish I could erase all the memories of those sounds,” I say, because it’s not just her new beau, Warren, it’s Catey’s dad and Mr. Lipshitz and so very many others. “I mean, I guess you’re supposed to overhear your parents, right? But instead, I overhear my mom screwing other guys.

And it’s not like I want to know what she sounds like with my dad, because that is completely disgusting as well,” I stop and look away. “But this is worse.” “It’s the sort of thing you aren’t supposed to know about your parents. And the reason it feels so off, the reason it’s got you all out of sorts, is that it’s outside the typical boundaries.” Caroline draws a square in the air, cordoning it off with her hands. “There are boundaries in any relationship, and the things your mom did and the things she is still doing are out here.” She points outside the imaginary box. But it’s hard for me to process her comments about my mom, even if she’s right. Maybe especially because she’s right. I press my hands against my belly, and wince. “My stomach hurts.” “Does it?” I move my palm to my forehead. “My head hurts.” “Sorry to hear that.” “I love my mom,” I say, because it’s true, and I need Caroline to know that. “I know you do.” “You think I should hate her, don’t you?” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think that at all.” “Well, I don’t hate her,” I say, leaning farther back into the leather couch, suddenly defensive. “I love her. She was the one who was home all the time. My dad was traveling for business. Isn’t this all his fault? If he’d been around more,

maybe she never would have started cheating.” “Do you believe that?” Caroline asks me carefully. “Maybe,” I mutter as I look away. “Truly? Do you?” “I don’t know. Maybe he should have been home more. She had so many opportunities. So many chances. Maybe he wasn’t there for her.” “Maybe he wasn’t,” she offers, ever the pragmatist, always waiting for me to figure out the crap of my life for myself. Today, it irks me. Today, it feels like an itch in my chest that I can’t scratch but don’t even want to touch. It’s a headache. It’s a bellyache. It’s everything that hurts in my life. “I miss Catey,” I say as I play with the three charms on my necklace, dropping them against my shirt over and over. “I learned how to love coffee because of Catey. I became addicted to lattes and espressos and Diet Cokes thanks to her,” I say, then laugh once. I know caffeine dependency is not the barometer for a friendship. But the remnants of the time we spent together still exist in my life, even though she doesn’t. “I became a vegetarian because of her.” “And you probably are worried Amanda is going to go the way of Catey?” I tap my nose with my index finger, thinking of Lane too, of how he makes this gesture. “Bingo.” “Well, what could you do differently so that doesn’t happen?”

I narrow my eyes at Caroline. “It’s not my fault that friendship ended.” “I didn’t say it was your fault. I was simply asking what you could do differently.” I don’t answer. I don’t want to answer. Instead, I say, “I think I should go.” “Is that what you want to do?” I hold up my hands, sharply. “Why are you just asking me questions and spouting platitudes? You’re like the caricature of a shrink right now.” She nods thoughtfully. “I understand why you feel that way.” “You’re doing it still!” She’s silent. I point a finger at her, as all my frustration over last night’s sound show unspools in Caroline’s lap. “Ugh! That makes me even crazier!” “Now, you’re talking, Kennedy. Now you’re speaking the truth. This is what you should say to your mom.” “What are you talking about?” “You just told me exactly what you think of me. Try that with your mom. Tell her how her actions make you feel. Tell her the truth,” she says, with a fierce edge to her tone. I close my eyes, slide down farther, my butt touching the edge of the cushions, my back a crushed “C” against the couch. “I can’t,” I say, deflated. “You can.”

“I shouldn’t have lied to my dad,” I blurt out. “You can tell the truth anytime.” When it’s time to go I leave Caroline’s office and walk past the lobby, knowing Lane is waiting for me outside. I’m not ready to see him. I lean against the wall by the elevators, grateful for a break from talking and from trying to figure out why I’m so messed up about life and love. But am I really that messed up? Was it so wrong for me to be with Noah? I’m tired of holding back, tired of waiting, tired of pretending he is not what I want right now, when he is the very thing I want and I need. He is the opposite. I take out my phone because I can’t resist him right now. I simply can’t not reach out to him.

Hi. Wish I were with you right now. There. I sent it before regret washes over me. There is no regret. I punch the button in the elevator, and when I reach the ground floor I feel a buzzing in my back pocket, and the possibility that it could be from him sends a delicious thrill though me. I grab my phone and my fingers feel slippery as I slide it open. It’s a number I don’t recognize. I pick it up. “Hi, is this Kennedy Stanzlinger?” It’s a woman’s voice.

“Yes,” I answer. “This is Doreen Lipshitz. I think you may have sent me a letter.”

Chapter Twelve Kennedy I want to set Doreen Lipshitz up with my Dad. She is perfect for him. She works at a nonprofit that raises money for arts education. She has a soft but clear voice. Her dark hair is long and curly and her warm eyes are a chocolate brown. I’m sure she is my father’s long-lost soul mate. I can picture them strolling through galleries in Florence together, arm in arm. He’ll point out a painting to her. She’ll share some amazing detail with him. They’ll laugh, sit down in the palazzo, and have cappuccinos. The only problem is she’s still married to Craig Lipshitz. She wears her wedding band, a shiny silver thing, and she also has a gigantic rock next to it. I bet it’s a so sorry gift from him. “How did you know?” I ask. “How did you know I sent the letter?” We’re sitting on a bench tucked inside one of the entrances to Central Park. The start-and-stop afternoon traffic from just beyond is the background music to our conversation. The school day is over; I couldn’t wait for it to end and meet her—she was as kind on the phone yesterday as she seems to be now. She told me she still had my number because she’d saved my contact info long ago from the night I called her to confirm she’d attend the

party. Mrs. Lipshitz shrugs, a sweet kind of shrug, as if it’s obvious. “It wasn’t that hard to figure out.” My face flushes momentarily, and I look away. She places a hand on my arm. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I mean is, given the context of the letter, given the handwriting, I was able to put the pieces together.” “What does that mean? It looks like it was written by a kid?” She laughs, but it’s a reassuring laugh. “No. It looks like it was written by a young woman.” Now I laugh. “Euphemism for teenager.” “I remember you from your parent’s parties. You were like your mom’s crown jewel. She made sure everyone knew who you were.” I should be embarrassed. But yet, I feel this strange burst of pride in me. Because even when my mom was on, even when she was the belle of her own ball, she never left me out. “I talked to you at one of the parties. You were nice to me. And I was only in seventh grade then.” “You never seemed like a seventh grader. I’m sure you get that a lot, don’t you? People always thinking you’re older? Because you just had this sense about you. A maturity. And that’s why when I received the letter, it had that same sense of maturity, sort of a worldliness. A knowledge about the adult world, about adult matters.” Too much knowledge, too much worldliness. I wish I

didn’t know the things I know about adults. “Sometimes,” I say. “And I appreciate you meeting me. Especially because you didn’t have to do any of this. You didn’t have to say you’re sorry, because my husband was the one who made the mistake.” I pull my shoulders in, closer to my chest, as if I’m doing the opposite of a chest-opening, breathe-from-deep-inside yoga move. Because now I’m thinking of what it was like back in seventh grade and it all feels so fresh, and so weird, and so abnormal again. Like a faucet turned on high, the memories pour out of me. “I had to have dinner with your husband. I had to listen to their jokes. I had to hear them. I had to see him at my house when I got home from school.” The words spill out, like water or rain. They are remarkably easy to say to her, to someone who isn’t my own mom. It’s so simple for me to tell this woman I hardly know how angry I am at her husband. And he’s nothing to me. Just one of many on my mom’s long, long list. One of many names I have recorded in my notebook over the years. But still, I hate him. “Don’t you look at him and think …” my voice trails off, because I don’t want to reopen her wounds by saying what I think:

What scum. Mrs. Lipshitz shakes her head. “I don’t hate my husband. I love him. That’s why I stayed with him even when I saw his e-mails, even when I learned what had been going on. It took a lot of work, but I’m glad I did it. And I don’t hate your

mom either.” A car screeches to a stop somewhere outside of the park, tires squealing against asphalt. The sound jolts me and I key in on what she has said and what it amounts to. Forgiveness. She forgives her husband, she forgives my mom. “And your letter was beautiful. It meant so much to me that you’d do that. Really.” My letter was beautiful. My amends are working. And everything clicks into place, turning one, two, three degrees past where I thought I was going. Because if she can get over what happened, maybe I can too. Maybe I can forgive my mom. Maybe I can let go of the past and my part in it. The possibility feels like floating on the wings of a butterfly. Like freedom and lightness all at once. Like scoring the winning goal in a lacrosse game. “Thank you for tracking me down, Mrs. Lipshitz,” I say, my mind already racing ahead to the next one and the next and the next. “Please. Call me Doreen. I really hate the name Lipshitz.” “It is a pretty awful name.” * The letters become my new passion project. The next night we hit a block on the Upper East Side, mixing up our repertoire by leaving cut-out red and pink construction

paper hearts with lines on them from Beethoven’s famous “Immortal Beloved” love letter, leaving it for Catey’s mom. As I position a heart just so on a fencepost, I think of Catey and all we shared when we were younger. “Do you know why I don’t eat meat?” I say to Lane while we put the finishing touches on this latest ‘public art’ display. He arches an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me a story? I love stories. Spill.” “It’s because of my friend Catey,” I say, then tell him about the day I crossed pepperoni, ham, and chicken off the menu. Catey had been raised a vegetarian, and she proudly told me she’d never tasted meat. “Not chicken, not fish, not cow, not pig, not anything,” she said one afternoon as we balanced lazily on our boards after school, back and forth on a smooth section of concrete in the middle of Central Park, surfing on the flat asphalt. “What about a turkey?” I challenged. “No gobble-gobble.” “How about a sheep? Ever had a sheep?” “A lamb? No way!” she said. “Duck?” “Quack-quack, no.” “Frog legs?”

“I have no idea if they taste like chicken.” “So why are you a veggie?” “How could I not be? I mean, I don’t use makeup that was tested on animals, do you?” Everything I knew about makeup I had learned from my mom, and she only bought the highest-end stuff from department stores. She never elaborated on whether her mascara had made a bunny cry. “I don’t know.” “Eating animals is kind of the same idea, don’t you think?” “Maybe.” But I wasn’t convinced yet. “Second, you don’t really hear about people getting mad cow disease from eating carrots.” I laughed and shifted my weight to the back end of the board. “Very good point. What else? Give me another reason.” “Here’s the thing. At the end of the day, do you really want to eat something that can poop?” “That is so nasty,” I said with a laugh, and we both cracked up. I went veggie the next day and never looked back. Lane stares at me with narrowed eyes. “Is this your way of trying to convert me to your broccoli-loving habits?” I laugh and swat his arm as we walk away from our art, leaving it for someone else now to discover. “Maybe. Is it working?” He shakes his head. “Never. My love for pepperoni is

too strong.” * Two days later we tackle a block in Gramercy Park. This is a tough one, since the letter is for my mom’s coworker Bailey. Lane and I park our bikes at the end of a block in the East Twenties, hooking our locks together, twisting each through the others. As we walk down the block, I half expect him to hook his arm through mine, as if we’re in a 1940s movie, maybe even in black-and-white. I kind of like that image, so I go with it, making the first move. Lane glances down at our arms, linked together, then he raises an eyebrow at me. He says nothing; just smiles. I wait for the flutter to kick in. For the flip in my belly I’d feel if Noah did this. It doesn’t appear, and maybe that’s because I already exhausted my supply of flips and flutters when Noah wrote back to my last text the other day, when I told him I wished he were with me.

I would grant that wish if you wanted me to. You know that. Right now, I wish I felt half as much for Lane as I do for Noah. We stop near the end of the quiet street, outside Bailey’s building, a pretty gray stone structure near a tree-lined corner. She’s the publicist at LGO, and I chatted with her last week at the party at my house when my mom’s show

was renewed. Her husband Sean is somewhat of a regular with my mom, the three-or-four-times-a-year guy. Bailey doesn’t know about Sean’s extracurricular habits. So Bailey is just getting a card in the mail—a cool black-andwhite photograph of two kids holding hands on a beach. I signed it Best wishes for an everlasting love and I sent it off when we passed a mailbox a few blocks ago. I hope it brings her some happiness. With the card on its way, we enter the next phase of our love letter mission. Now, we are spies. We are clandestine, scanning her tree-lined street for the thirty-something strawberry blonde. I don’t see her anywhere, so we begin tacking up copies of an excerpt from a letter James Joyce sent to his wife, Nora. “I love this letter,” I say as I tape a copy to a street sign. “But my favorite love letters were written by Honoré de Balzac. Only I can’t ever leave his letters. Want to know why?” “Why?” Lane asks as he smooths out a page against a railing. “Because he was having an affair with a married woman.” “Ah, I can see why you wouldn’t want to go there.” “His letters are the best. But they’re cursed,” I say, then look up at the fourth floor of Bailey’s building. My heart stops. Lo and freaking behold, there’s a blond woman walking over to the window, pulling back the curtain. Peering across the street, then down the block.

My pulse races. “That’s Bailey,” I whisper, grabbing Lane’s arm before Bailey sees us. In a nanosecond, we are off, running once more to the end of the block and around the corner to where we parked our bikes. We unlock them so quickly we could be auditioning for the role of speed demons in an upcoming flick. We race down the sidewalk, then onto the avenue, pedaling away from the scene. I’ve done nothing wrong, but spotting Bailey in the window reminds me that there are real people on the other side of the amends. Sure, I desperately want her to feel happiness, but I also don’t want to get caught. No one knew how complicit I was in my mother’s affairs; no one needs to know how I’m trying to extract myself from that guilt. As I ride away, the thought flashes before me: Am I going too far? The first amends felt freeing, the second and third a damn liberation. But now I have to wonder if I’m pushing, needling, worrying away at something better left alone? Like Bailey in the window? I don’t have the answer. Eventually, we stop at a diner and order fries and diet sodas. As the waitress walks away, Lane reaches a hand toward me. I flinch. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “You have grease on your cheek.” “Oh, that’s gross.” He rubs a finger against my cheek. “Bike grease.”

“Even grosser.” “How do you get bike grease on your cheek?” “I don’t know.” “Did you know it’s good luck to get bike grease on your cheek?” I laugh. “Yeah, right.” He touches the tip of another finger to his tongue. Then he presses his finger against my cheek again, wiping off the rest of the grease. He shows me his finger, smudged now. “See?” “Now it’s on you.” He smears a tiny amount on his cheek. “Then it’s good luck for me too,” he says, and the faintest blush blooms across his cheeks. He flashes me a sweet smile, then holds my gaze, and I feel untethered. Untethered to him. He’s never looked at me like this, and I’m honestly not sure I want him to. I don’t even want to know if Lane sees me in another light. I am only in one light, and it’s not lit by a boy. It’s lit by a man. A man I shouldn’t have. A boy my age would be better for me. I should try to like a boy my age. I know I should. When the fries arrive, I hold one up playfully for Lane, offering it to him. He takes it happily, and we continue on like that as I try and I try and I try.

Our Stolen Kisses Someday in London. Someday in Paris. Someday in Amsterdam. That’s what you said one evening when we were eating French fries at a diner after a show. You told me that someday you’d kiss me in all those cities. That you’d take me around the world. No one would care. No one would notice. “I’d hold your hand, and we’d walk down the street, and you’d laugh at something I said, because I always like making you laugh, then when you stopped laughing, I’d kiss you.” “But can you kiss me if I’m laughing too?” You raised an eyebrow, rising up to the challenge. “I would never back down from kissing you.” “Then kiss me now,” I said in a hot whisper. You looked down, shook your head, but you weren’t saying no. You were saying yes. You were always saying yes. Is it so wrong that I always want you to say yes? Some days, I feel so selfish to want you this much, to make you bend, to ask you to kiss me all the time. But you never seemed to mind. You slid into the booth next to me, brushed my hair from my ear, and whispered, “Diner kisses.” Then your lips met mine, and I shivered, as sparks raced across my body from your lips on mine. Your soft

kisses sent me into a dreamlike state where my world was nothing but bliss and joy and pleasure. I suppose, in retrospect, it’s safe to say we were never very careful in public. Maybe we wanted to be found out. I think I do. I do want to be found. Because I don’t want the way I feel for you to be a secret.

Chapter Thirteen Noah Jonathan marches into the doorway a few days after the event at MoMA. He holds his hands out wide and raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Well?” Damn. He must really want the guy if he’s willing to speak first. Jonathan rarely goes first. One of his golden rules of business. Whoever speaks first loses the negotiation. “I met him. He’s a nice guy.” He stares daggers at me as he steps into my office. Parking himself on the couch, he plants his hands on his knees and widens his icy eyes. “And?” he asks, as if he’s hanging on the edge of the word. For some reason, I feel like toying with him. “And he enjoyed the polenta cups,” I say wryly. “C’mon, Hayes. Did you get him?” I tilt my head to the side. “It was one event. We spoke for three minutes, Jonathan. He’s not a “Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am” kind of guy.” Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Then what of guy is he?” “He needs to be wooed. Romanced. We need to let him know what we can do for him.”

“Well, get on it. That’s your mission. Jewel won’t be on top forever. You need another big whale.” He stands and walks out. He’s done with me for the day. Everyone is disposable in this world. One of the things I always liked about working with Jewel was her pure love for the story. Lords and Ladies became a hit because she put her whole heart into it. That’s why it grew like crazy. And as it soared, I fell in love with her daughter. I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t map out a plan to romance Kennedy at all. It simply happened thanks to the show’s runaway success serving as an unexpected wingman to us coming together. W he n Lords and Ladies skyrocketed last year, I licensed it to countries all over the world, so Jewel was always signing contracts and papers. She had so many papers to sign, she started sending Kennedy over to my office to drop them off. One fateful afternoon last June, I was wrapping up a deal f o r Lords and Ladies in Brazil, and the receptionist escorted Kennedy to my office. “How are you?” she asked, as she plunked the papers down on my desk and helped herself to a chair, her brown hair looped in a loose ponytail at her neck. She had on lip gloss, and that was it for makeup. Her directness threw me off, but it was refreshing that she didn’t ask how business was. I’d been talking business all day. I didn’t want to talk about business.

“Good. I’m good,” I said. “You?” “I’m great. What did you have for lunch?” I laughed at the randomness of her question. “Sushi.” “Nigiri, roll, or sashimi?” “Combo platter, as a matter of fact,” I said, and tapped my pen on the edge of the desk, giving her a curious look, trying to figure her out. We’d chatted at her house, in the park on my morning runs, but this was the first time we’d ever talked in my office. “You like sushi?” “As long as it didn’t swim beforehand.” I smiled at her joke, knowing she was a vegetarian. “Good one.” She gestured to my computer, to the music coming out of the speakers. I was listening to the soundtrack of Anything Goes. “I get no kicks from champagne,” she said, the tiniest touch of sultry to her voice. There it was. Like a gauntlet thrown. Some kind of return to the night at her dinner table. “Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,” I said, starting the volley. “So tell me why should it be true,” she said, and her lips curved up in the start of a pretty smile. Her eyes met mine, those beautiful green eyes that made my stomach flip. I wanted to serve up the next line, the one that followed: That I get a kick out of you. But it was too soon, too presumptuous. “Love that song something fierce,” I said, trying to play it

safe. She adjusted with me. Maybe she was tentative too. “Do you ever listen to any other music, or is it show tunes all the way?” “I would have to say it’d be a rare day if I listened to something that wasn’t meant to be belted from a Broadway stage. What about you?” I asked, eager to keep chatting. “I like lots of music, but I like musicals best of all. They’re so … happy, you know?” “Yeah, I know. I know what you mean.” “What’s your favorite musical ever?” “Well, I love Chess, as you know. And Les Miz, and definitely Rent, and of course Sweeney Todd . But my favorite ever is 42nd Street. My mom was one of the understudies for Peggy Sawyer for one of the revivals some years back.” “Did she ever get to play?” I nodded. “Many times. The lead always had some vocal problems.” “Not the kind of thing you want to have when your name’s in lights.” “Bad for her. Good for my mom.” “Did you see those performances?” “Yes, I saw her perform. She was amazing,” I said, remembering some of my happiest moments from when I was a kid. My mom was a moth to the flame of the stage— she adored it. It was her home and her love, and she shared it freely with me. And here I was, sharing some of

that with a girl I was starting to feel things for. I’m not even sure I was completely admitting those feelings to myself yet; that’s why I let her keep visiting. “Do you have a favorite song from 42nd Street?” “Title song. Hands down.” “Can you put it on?” I nodded. She stretched across to the computer, shifting closer, and I didn’t move. I stayed stock-still, careful to not assume, not get too close, not do anything inappropriate. Keep it on this safe level. She clicked over to the new tune. The familiar opening notes sounded, and we sat in my office, quietly, listening to show tunes, as deal making and negotiating and business transpired in nearby offices. But not this office. Not for those few minutes on a Wednesday afternoon. When the song ended, she stood up to go. “’Bye, Noah.” It was the first time she’d used my first name. The way it sounded on her lips stripped off another layer of risk.

Chapter Fourteen Kennedy “Want to go out tonight with me and Holly?” Amanda whispers as our philosophy teacher drones on about Descartes. “After the game,” she adds, because it’s Friday and we have our game against Livingston Prep this afternoon. I shake my head. “Can’t. I’m helping Lane with a project. A school project.” Fine, she knows I’m friends with a guy named Lane and that he goes to another school, but she doesn’t know where I met him. Because I don’t gab about seeing a shrink. If I tell my friends that I see one, then I’ll have to explain about my parents too—about why they really split. I don’t want Amanda to know about my mom’s habits. I don’t want anyone to know why their marriage ended. “A school project?” “Yeah. In history,” I lie, and my stomach ties itself in a knot. While I don’t want to tell her the truth about therapy and shrinks and my parents, I do want to tell her about Lane, what he said last night, and how he touched my cheek, and how we walked arm in arm. I want to ask her what it means, because I honestly don’t know. I’ve only had one boyfriend, and everything else I’ve ever known isn’t normal.

As our teacher continues on about Descartes’s connection to Spinoza, I decide to go for it, whispering, “I think Lane might like me.” Amanda squeals under her breath. “Of course he does! You guys hang out all the time. No boy is going to hang out with a girl as much as you guys do unless he likes her too.” “Really?” I ask as the bell rings, and we stand and gather books and bags. She nods emphatically and it strikes me as funny, for a second, that in some ways I know so very little about boys, despite having loved a man. I’d never truly dated someone my age. “I bet he’s waiting for you to make the first move. That’s why he hangs out with you so much. He’s totally into you, but maybe he’s shy or something. So you should make the first move tonight.” “You’re sure? I mean, you’ve never met him.” “So? Boys are boys.” “What about men? Are men men?” She laughs. “Of course. Just bigger boys. They want more sex.” I laugh lightly, wondering if that’s what Noah wanted from me, as we file out of the classroom into the hallway. Amanda reaches her hands up to her head, readjusting her dark-blond hair from a proper ponytail, high and bouncy on her head as the school rulebook dictates as the permissible height and style of ponytails, into a doubled-

over messy one. Like a missile zeroing in, the headmistress barks at her. “Amanda, you are still inside the school’s halls. Proper ponytail now.” Amanda shifts back to the cheerleader look, then gives the headmistress a penitent look before we continue on to our lockers. Amanda swivels the combination on hers and yanks her locker open. It is stuffed to the gills with books and papers and magazines and even newspapers. Amanda is old school and still likes to read the print newspaper because she wants to study journalism in college. A section from the New York Times falls to the floor, so I pick it up and hand it to her. “Oh, dude. You should read that,” she says, tipping her forehead to the black-and-white pages in my hand. “There’s this article in the Style section about this couple who just got married. And get this. They met in their kids’ kindergarten class.” I hold up a hand. “Wait. Their kindergarten class?” She nods several times. “Yep. They were married to other people, obviously. But they met at some kindergarten open house, like when the parents go to see all the artwork and projects and stuff the kids are doing. And they hit it off and then started having an affair.” I scrunch up my nose in disgust. “Seriously. What is wrong with parents today? I feel like everyone’s parents are having affairs,” she says, then lists the names of several classmates whose parents’ marriages ended in the last few years. Then she leans in to

whisper. “Now, I think my dad is fooling around.” My eyes pop out of my head. “Yeah, he’s always taking phone calls in the hallway, or he walks the dog for two hours in the evening now instead of his usual ten minutes around the block.” “Do you know who it is?” I manage to say, even as my throat catches and I have a horrifying feeling that I know the answer. She shrugs. “Some loser, I’m sure. Who’d want him? C’mon. Let’s go destroy Livingston Prep.” At the game, my mom sits two rows in front of Amanda’s dad. She glances back at him several times, even smiles, even laughs a few times. I broil inside. I am a ball of fire, ripped from the sun, as I shoot down the field, because no matter what I do, no matter how I try, no matter what I decide, my mother finds a way to unravel it. We slaughter Livingston Prep. I score three goals, Amanda scores two, and I grab my mom’s arm the second I leave the field. I pull her away. “Stay away from Amanda’s dad,” I hiss. Her hand flies to her heart. “What on earth are you talking about?” “I saw you making eyes at him the whole game.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I roll my eyes like I’m a champion eye roller. “Don’t act like you have no idea,” I hiss, and I am half-shocked, half-

psyched that I finally have the gall to talk to my mom like this. “Just stay away from him.” “There is nothing going on with Daniel,” she says, and I give her a sharp, knowing look. I point a finger at her. “You know his name.” “Of course I know his name. I was talking to him because he is the father of my daughter’s best friend. Now, enough, Kennedy. Enough. Let’s head home and have a nice Friday dinner. Do you want pasta primavera or shall we go out? Let’s go out, why don’t we?” I shake my head, then wave a hand dismissively. “I have plans.” “Kennedy,” my mom calls out, and her voice quivers. I feel a sick sort of righteousness at the sound. She’s scared. She wants me. She needs me. But I’m not going to budge, not on this count. “Can’t, Mom. Why don’t you see if Warren is free?” I shower, catch a cab back to Grand Central Station, and somehow manage to race down the track, fly through the doors, and slide into a seat next to Lane on the 6:20 train. “We won,” I say breathlessly. “Of course you won. You rock.” “You should come to our next game.” “I should. That is true.” We ride in silence for a bit, but as we pull into Scarsdale, I suddenly have cold feet about leaving love letters outside the clothing boutique owned by the former Mrs. Pierre

LaGrande. She’s divorced from him now, the man my mom took to the movies with me back in junior high. I run my fingers across the letter I wrote as we walk down the street. I’ve written her name already, sealed the envelope, and placed a stamp on it. Lane, too, has his love letters ready, complete with words from Woodrow Wilson to Edith Bolling Galt, who became his wife and also the first lady of the United States. But now that the downtown, with its quaint shops and cute cafés draws into view, something seems wrong about reminding Mrs. LaGrande. I stop walking and place a hand on Lane’s arm. “Maybe I should just buy something from her store.” He gives me a curious look and waits for me to say more. “I mean, they’re already divorced. Maybe the letter is a moot point. Caroline said amends aren’t supposed to cause further harm. What if this lady is already past it? I could just support her business instead, right?” “Then let’s go shopping,” he says playfully, as he holds the door open to the boutique. It screams rich old lady chic, so immediately I model a crazily expensive hat, giving Lane a perfect pout. “Gorgeous, gorgeous,” he says, like a high-fashion photographer. “Now try this, darling.” He hands me a fancy scarf next and I wrap that around my neck. “Perfect, but give me just a little more panache.”

I make a simmering look with my eyes, then he hands me a chunky gold bracelet that you have to be over seventy and belong to a country club to wear. “Oh, it’s just so you, lovey.” Pretty soon, I’m doubled over and so is Lane, and it’s then that a stylish fiftyish woman asks me if I need help. I straighten up and wipe the smile off my face because she must be Mrs. LaGrande. Her black hair is twisted into a clip and she wears cat’s-eye glasses. I’m immediately jolted back in time, remembering the day at the movies, when her husband bought me popcorn and told me to enjoy the show, and then my mom claimed a headache and said she’d pick me up when it ended. They spent the two hours in a hotel room. But if anyone asked, she told me to say she enjoyed the movie with me. The memories assault me, as terrible questions flood my brain: What was Mrs. LaGrande doing that afternoon when I was instructed to lie? What was my father doing? I try to open my mouth, but no words come. My voice is lost, stolen into silence by the images raining down on me. I’m a fish trying to breathe air, and I’m choking. Lane steps in, reaches for her hand like a character from a Jane Austen novel, bends down to his knee, and recites Woodrow Wilson’s words. “You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love, my reverence, my admiration for you, have increased in one evening as I should have thought only a lifetime of intimate, loving association could have

increased them … ,” he recites. Then he rises, reaches for an oversize umbrella from a nearby display, and says, “That, and we’ll take this umbrella.” She nods and rings him up, and I can breathe again. When we finally escape the store, we burst into laughter. “You, only you, would do that.” “Only me,” he says, then he presents me the umbrella. A red polka-dot umbrella with a curved wooden handle. “For you.” My face is warm and I can’t help but smile. “I love it.” “Try it out.” “It’s not raining.” “So?” I open the umbrella and we stroll through the streets of Scarsdale like that, looking in shop windows, commenting on the oh-so-suburban garb of passersby, then stopping for a seven-layer bar to share on the return trip home. As we walk to the station, he puts his arm around me. “I’m going to prom,” Lane says abruptly. “You are?” He nods and looks at me. “Yeah. To try to be normal. To try to have fun. My mom wants me to. Will you go with me? You’re my closest friend.” “Yes,” I say, and in this second I don’t care about who my heart belongs to. Lane is here for me; he knows my everything, and so I will go. As his friend.

“I guess that makes you my prom date now,” he says, after we buy our tickets and sink into a pair of seats on the train back to Manhattan. I tense at the word date. I thought he was asking me as friends. “I guess it does,” I say in a flat tone, because I’m not sure what being Lane’s prom date means, or if it means anything, or even why I feel like I’m betraying him. Prom was never in the cards for Noah and me. Unless it was a prom held in his office. But something about being someone’s prom date just seems so normal, and for now I like that. As the lights on the train dim, I tell Lane, “I love the umbrella.”

Chapter Fifteen Kennedy I suppose it was his office where we came together. Ironic, because we never did business together, but in the safety of those four walls, we removed the biggest barrier—not age, not jobs, not station in life. But the physical presence of my mother. A week after Noah and I listened to 42nd Street at his desk, my mother finalized a deal for Lords and Ladies in Russia. She handed me the papers and I happily delivered them to Noah’s office in the afternoon. It was the summer before my senior year and I was taking a pre-college course at NYU, so I stopped by after class. I knocked twice on his open door. “Hey. Come on in,” he said. I gave him the envelope and helped myself to a chair. “Sit down,” he joked. “Don’t mind if I do. What did you study in college?” He shifted in his chair, surprised by my quick segue to a question. “Psychology. Why do you ask?” “Just curious,” I said. “Did you enjoy it? Your major?” “I did. I’d thought about studying business, but I read an

interview with another agent who said he wished he’d studied psychology, that it would have been more useful than econ. So I picked psychology. What do you want to study when you go to college?” “Art history. Like my dad.” “You’re close with your dad, aren’t you? He’s where your love of musicals comes from?” “Totally. We saw Wicked and Billy Elliot and Chicago and the Evita revival. We even went to see this one-night Patti Lupone concert at Lincoln Center two years ago, and I teased him that we were the only two straight people there.” Noah laughed, then corrected me. “Three. The only three straight people. I went to that Patti Lupone concert.” “You did?” “Hell, yeah. Wouldn’t miss Patti for the world.” “You went alone?” He shrugged. “Not everyone shares my musical taste. But that’s okay. I didn’t mind going alone.” “That’s cool. That you like Patti Lupone.” “I don’t just like Patti. I love Patti. But really, it’s not as if I had a choice. My mom sang Patti Lupone songs every single day of my life.” “Do you miss your mom?” I asked. “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” he said, and he sounded wistful, lonely even. “It’s just you now, right?”

He nodded. “Man against the world,” he said, like it was a joke, but I could tell there was a kernel of pain beneath the offhand comment. “It must be hard sometimes. To feel that way. To miss her,” I said quietly. I got the sense he didn’t talk freely about himself. Maybe he needed someone who wanted to know him, truly know him, and to listen. He looked down at his hands in his lap, then back up at me, his blue eyes meeting mine. “It is hard,” he said in the barest voice. “How long has it been now?” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and swallowed. “Three years.” Each word was a scrape. Dry and harsh. I wanted to take away the hurt, so I did the one thing I could do. Keep talking. About musicals. About art. About Patti Lupone. Until the raw edge left his voice. When it was time to leave, I stood up, but Noah told me to wait. He handed me an envelope. “Can you believe they’re making Lords and Ladies fragrances now?” he said and laughed. “Just got these from the licensing team. But it’s kind of a rush.” “Should I bring the papers back tomorrow?” He nodded, but didn’t say anything more. The smallest sliver of a smile told me he was glad I’d be coming by tomorrow. After I settled into my regular chair the next day, I dived into more conversation. “You don’t drink,” I said.

“Not at the office, at least,” he said, with a wink. “But you don’t drink at all. You never have at any of the parties or events,” I said, because I’d been curious about this for some time. He drank water or iced tea at my house. He never had the wine or champagne my mom served. “That is true.” “Why is that, may I ask?” “My mom was an alcoholic,” he said, speaking plainly. He didn’t try to avoid it. He simply owned it. His truth. “Did she ever stop?” He shook his head. “Nope. Drank till the day she died.” “And you just decided you didn’t want to be like that?” “Don’t want to be like that at all. So I never touch the stuff. Never have, never wanted to.” “I’m the same. I mean, obviously, I can’t drink. But I don’t want to be buzzed. It just seems …” I trailed off, and he nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said. “It’s just not your thing? It’s not you, right?” “Exactly,” I said, and the way his eyes were steady on me told me he understood everything. “I don’t want something else controlling me. I want to be aware of everything.” “Yeah, that’s how it is for me too. I don’t want to be beholden to something. I don’t want to be chained up.” “Did she drink the whole time you were growing up?”

“She did,” he said heavily. “She was a great mom, don’t get me wrong. She was always there after school, did homework with me, took me to her shows, came to my games, cheered and clapped the loudest, and brought all her actor friends along to my games too. She was this sort of big personality, always laughing, always singing, always wanting the spotlight. Know the type?” Did I know the type? I was raised by the type. “I think I can picture that.”

Noah The next day it was India for Lords and Ladies, and I picked up where we’d left off. “Do you ever want to write, like your mom?” I asked. She shook her head. “Never. I don’t even watch TV.” I laughed, and tapped my pen on the desk. “That is awesome,” I said, shaking my head in admiration. “Really? It’s awesome that I don’t watch TV?” she asked, quirking up an eyebrow. “Hell, yeah,” I said, dropping the pen, and leaning back in my chair. A warmth spread through me because talking to her was easy, it was peaceful, it was fun. It was free of obligations or expectations. “It’s just so different from everyone else I deal with. All everyone wants to talk about is TV, or some new deal, or script, or what have you.” “Do you want to talk about TV? I can pretend I watch,”

she said, tilting her head, her eyes sparkling in a playful way. “No,” I said, drawing it out, like a pronouncement. “Let’s not talk about TV.” She didn’t answer right away, and I watched her, waiting. She sat up straighter in the chair, fidgeted briefly with the cuffs on her blue shirt, then raised her face. “We could talk about Chess,” she offered, saying it like it was ours, like it was the connective tissue between us. Her voice rose, and my heart fluttered. In that moment, everything slowed. I considered what was coming next, and whether I was going to step over the line. I wasn’t a teacher falling for a student, I wasn’t a doctor tangoing with a patient, but I wasn’t immune to risk either. Jewel mattered to me. She was the foundation of my client list. She should have been top of mind. But she was nowhere in my head or my heart then. Kennedy was, filling me up, making me feel things I didn’t want to stop feeling. I had more to lose than Kennedy did. I had, in retrospect, everything to lose. I stood up, walked to the door and gently closed it. Her cheeks were turning red. My mouth was dry. I didn’t return to my desk. Instead, I sat down in the chair across from her. “Kennedy,” I started, the words threatening to stick. But I was an adult. I was the adult. I had to act like one and at least discuss the elephant in the room. “Do you really think you should keep coming by here?”

She looked crushed as her lips curved down. “You don’t think I should?” “I just wonder if it’s a good idea,” I said, trying to be careful with each word. “You don’t like it when I come by with the papers and stuff?” she asked, as if she felt foolish. That was the last thing I wanted her to feel. I leaned forward, reaching for her, but then pulled back my hand. We weren’t there yet. I didn’t have permission to touch her knee or to hold her hand. But reassure her of my feelings? That I could do. “I do like it,” I said quietly, telling the truth. “That's kind of the problem.” Her smile reappeared for a second, then she seemed to rein it in. “Why is it a problem?” “I just think it could complicate things. You know, professionally,” I said. Admittedly, I might not have been resisting too hard, but this was the best I could do. “Maybe I should come here and talk about professional stuff then,” she said playfully. I smiled. “You’re the only one who comes around and doesn’t want to talk about that stuff. That might be why I like your visits so much.” “I could talk about business. In fact, I have this idea for a TV show I wanted to pitch you.” I groaned, and ran my hand through my hair. “But wait. Really. You’ll love it. You have to hear it,” she teased.

“You just said you don’t watch TV!” “Not only do I not watch TV, I don’t even like TV,” she said, stabbing the air with her index finger. I loved that we were back on familiar territory. We’d acknowledged what was happening without letting it define us. “You have no idea how refreshing that is to hear. Do you watch anything? Like online videos or something?” “There’s this Internet comedian I like. He does these random New York things. Like dances on roller skates in jean shorts in Times Square.” “Show me,” I said, and we moved back to my computer, where she found a video of a guy in too-short shorts who was skating through orange cones he’d set up amid the tables and tourists. The video cracked me up, and so did her response to it. The sweetness of the sound of her laughter touched down somewhere deep inside me. “I love it. Haven’t laughed that hard since I found an old copy of one of David Tremaine’s columns. The TV writer,” I added. She nodded. “I know who he is.” I shrugged sheepishly. “Of course you do. I love his work. Anyway,” I said, tapping the screen. “I’m going to have to watch all of this guy’s videos.” She flashed me a smile. “I hope he makes you laugh.” “One of my favorite things to do” “Me too. I guess I better go.” She started to walk to the door, and some kind of

emptiness took hold, rooting around in my gut at the prospect of her leaving. I reached out and placed a hand on her arm. “Are you going to come by again?” My voice was crackly and dry. I wasn’t sure if I should be asking the question. But I was doing it anyway. “I don’t want to complicate things,” she said, her voice low and breathy. “They’re already complicated,” I said, my chest rising and falling as it did when I was a little bit nervous. Right then, I was a lot nervous. “I’ll come by. Do you have papers for me to have signed?” “No.” She smiled, reeling me in more. “I will, Noah.” “You know that no one calls me Noah, right?” “Are you saying you want me to call you Hayes again?” I shook my head. “No. I want you to call me Noah.” She stepped closer, the distance between us halving. She was so near, I could have wrapped my arms around her and tugged her in for a kiss. I clenched my fists, as if that would keep all my desires in check. The matter became more complicated when she whispered my name once more, letting it slide off her lips, like she’d lingered on every letter.

Kennedy

My heart was a hummingbird, its wings beating wild and fast. He’d given me the keys. I was the only one who had them. I didn’t ask why. I suspected he used the name Hayes as a shield, so he’d have a wall, a barrier if he needed one. But I’d already broken down some of those barriers in the simplest way—I only wanted what was on the other side. Him, just him. And so he became Noah, and I was the only one who called him by his name. “’Bye. Noah.” I swore I heard a low groan from him, then he collected himself. “’Bye, K,” he said, calling me K for the first time, calling me by an affectionate name. It did not go unnoticed, or unenjoyed. I stopped by another time. Then another, then another. I never tried to look older. I didn’t get dolled up or apply extra makeup. He wouldn’t have been fooled anyway. He knew the score; he was either willing to handle it or not. When I’d arrive at his office, I came from summer class, or summer lacrosse practice, so I was dressed casually. My hair was usually in a ponytail. I looked like me. If he was going to like me, he was going to like me. We talked about everything; he told me more stories about his mom, the shows she performed in, the things she said and did, even the sadder times, how he’d come home

and find her drunk, how she’d started performing tipsy sometimes too, how she died of liver disease when he was only twenty-one. He’d never known his dad; his dad left when he was two and he never had any siblings, so he was alone. I almost wanted to ask if he was drawn to my mom because she was so similar in some ways to his mom, and she technically could have been his mom too, since she was twice his age. But I didn’t want to go there and dig into their relationship, the way it spilled over from work to friendship, because then I’d be reminding him of the biggest hurdle between us—not age, but her. Instead, I told him stories about school, about the headmistress and her rules, I talked about lacrosse and recounted the games we’d played, and the goals I’d scored, and the plays I made. I wanted him to be impressed with my prowess on the field, that I was a jock like him. “You should come to my games sometime,” I said one afternoon. I wasn’t planning to ask him out. It just came out then. It was the natural moment to say it. “I should,” he said with a nod. “But will you?” He cocked his head to the side, considering my question. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you really want me to?” “I’m asking you to, aren’t I?” He paused, licked his lips briefly. “Kennedy, do you think it would be weird if I came to a game?” “Weird in what way?” I asked carefully, sensing we were

circling the real issue, and also wanting to be circling it. “Weird as in obvious.” I grinned slightly and stretched my hand across his desk to touch the handle on his coffee mug. He’d finished the coffee earlier and his hands were in his lap. Still, I was touching something he’d touched. “What’s obvious?” I asked playfully. “You know what I mean,” he said, his voice slipping away from him, gliding into dangerous territory. “Do I?” He nodded, never taking his eyes off me. “You are a very smart woman, Kennedy.” Woman. He called me a woman. “I know,” I said. “That you’re smart or what I mean by obvious?” I laughed at the way he was now playing, teasing, fishing even for information. “Both.” He reached for the empty mug, tapping the handle where I’d touched it, then stroking it once. Flames lit up inside me from the gesture and what it seemed to suggest.

Contact. “If I went to your game, I would think it would be obvious how complicated this has become.” The moment slowed down, revealing the potential. Anticipation clung to the air, and then the hope that this was the turning point. A quick burst of nerves roared through me, but I ignored them. I was ready for what was next.

Keeping my gaze on his beautiful blue eyes, I spoke softly. “Do you know I know all the lyrics to Chess?” He didn’t say anything right away. His lips were parted, and he looked at me, as if he were considering what to say next, and whether to say it at all. Then he did, in a voice that almost wobbled. “If they ever did a revival, I’d take you to see it.” My heart nearly flew out of my chest. “I wish there was one,” I said, and the words came out all breathy sounding, but I didn’t care. “There’s this great chocolate café down in the Village,” I added before I had time to think about it, to take it back. My heart was beating all over, pounding across every inch of my skin. I squeaked out the next words. “We could go there and talk about who we’d cast in a revival.” I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. It came immediately as his lips curved into a grin that said yes. “I cannot think of a thing I’d rather discuss.”

Chapter Sixteen Kennedy The May sun beats down on me as I walk along Central Park on Saturday afternoon. It’s warm but not hot; a perfect spring day in New York, and the trees are bursting with green. Lush and blooming. I breathe in the scent of newness, embracing it, wishing I could spend the day away from my home. I haven’t seen my mom since yesterday’s lacrosse game, when I told her to stay away from Amanda’s dad. I’ve avoided her all morning, slipping out to have lunch and coffee with Amanda, but now I’m heading home. As I walk up the steps to the brownstone, I nearly trip on a folded-up letter on the top step. I recognize the ivory paper. It’s one of our letters from a few nights ago–the James Joyce we left outside Bailey’s house. An anonymous letter is boomeranging back to my doorstep, and seeing it stills my heart. Carefully, I open the letter, even though prickles of worry tap dance on my skin. But there’s nothing on the paper except the words I printed out. The fear of the unknown dissipates. An extra must have fallen out of my backpack the other night. Nothing to worry about. I unlock the door and walk inside. My mom’s feet are propped up on the coffee table and

she has on her reading glasses. She’s marking up what looks to be the latest Lords and Ladies script. “I picked up a six-pack of Diet Coke for you. I even checked the expiration dates, just like you say to do, to make sure it’s in the acceptable range,” she says with a bright smile, sketching air quotes as she uses my phrase for Diet Coke verification. “You have been well trained,” I say, relieved. Perhaps, being honest yesterday about Amanda’s dad was the trick. Perhaps, all that was needed was just the saying of it, the voicing of the request—keep your hands off my friend’s dad. “By the way, the weirdest thing happened,” my mom begins in a cool, even tone. “My publicist Bailey Waltham received an anonymous card in the mail wishing her everlasting love.” “Really?” I do my best to appear disinterested while my heart speeds to rabbit time. “And here’s the other odd thing. She said a neighbor saw a young couple tacking up letters near her home in Gramercy Park,” my mom adds, sounding the slightest bit like a lawyer starting up a cross-examination. “What’s weird about that?” I ask, calling on my best acting ability. “Well, she said the girl—the neighbor said this—was riding a silver bike. Just like the one she’s seen you on.” I open the fridge with shaky hands, keeping my eyes

away from her as I stare at the shelves. I don’t want her to see my face and read my face. “That is weird,” I say in a monotone, even though my voice wants to rise many octaves. Was Bailey the one who left the letter on my stoop as some sort of sign? Did she know it came from me? Then my mom laughs. “I said to Bailey, ‘Well, I’m sure it wasn’t Kennedy.’ Right? You didn’t send her a card, did you, baby?” “Of course not,” I say, as if the idea that I would is incredulous. I tap the can of soda and flash a big, fat false smile. “Thanks for the soda.” “Anything for you,” my mom says, and I can breathe again. I make my way upstairs. As I reach the second floor, I hear her phone ring. “Hello, Daniel. So good to hear from you,” she says, and I stop walking, watching her from the landing. She crosses her ankles together, resting them on the coffee table. She is a beautiful woman. She is long and lean and put together; her hair is raven and her eyes are green and she has never not commanded a room, or a party, or an entire block. Men fall at her feet; she is the Pied Piper and I don’t know how she does it, but she plays her tune and they follow and they fawn and they lay down before her. “Well, of course you should talk to your sweet wife, Daniel. You love Tokyo. Let her know how hard you’ve been

looking for work, how much it means to go on this trip.” My insides twist as I witness how she does it. She worms her way into his life, posing as the friend, the confidante, giving him marital advice. She pauses and waits for his volley. “I totally understand. But you need to help her see it that way,” she continues, and I know she is just laying the groundwork, because soon she’s suggesting they discuss the matter of his Tokyo trip over coffee. It’s as if someone or something just cranked me up a notch, turned the timer on a once-dormant, nowticking time bomb inside me. I try to ignore the noise and the sound and the tightness in my body because nothing matters, nothing ever changes. I walk back to my room, scribble Amanda’s dad’s name down in one of my notebooks, then the conversation I overheard. I want to remember every detail. I want to be able to call them up if I need them. I hide the notebook away, slam my backpack on my shoulder, and head downstairs. My mom is still on the couch, still chatting with him. “Of course. We’ll meet tomorrow. I’ll help you with everything.”

I bet. She looks at me and asks where I’m going. “Out,” I say “Can’t you stay? Hayes is coming over to review the latest foreign deal, and then we can all get something to eat.”

I pushed my fingernails into my palms. Don’t say a word. “You used to love going out with Hayes and me,” she adds. Say nothing. I’m so red-hot with rage right now, that if I speak I’ll reveal all the things about Hayes that I’ve never wanted to share. I press my lips together. Words could destroy me right now. “Kennedy, are you okay?” “Fine,” I mutter. “Just need to exercise.” I grab Joe. I need to get my mind off the fact that I’m about to lose another friendship because of her appetite for men. I push down hard on the pedals, putting distance between myself and that phone call, myself and my mother.

Our Stolen Kisses Two days later we went to the Chocolate Cafe. I chose a seven-layer bar and you ordered a chocolate milkshake. We were on a date. Holy smokes. WE. WERE. ON. A. DATE. I was sure my emotions were apparent to anyone and everyone, like a neon sign blaring across the night. You must have known. But then, I could sense your nerves too. I saw it in the way you fumbled with the paper on the straw, in how you swallowed as you held open the door for me, in the way your fingers slipped the first time you reached for the bills in your wallet to pay. We wandered over to nearby Abingdon Square Park, that tiny little triangular patch of park atop the Village that’s like an oasis in Manhattan, stuffed cozily inside its own walls of trees and flowers. We sat down on a park bench and you had your chocolate drink in hand. “It’s so good. It’s like an iced hot chocolate,” you said, back to your cool and confident side that I adored as much as your nervous one. “Do you want to try it?” “Yes,” I said, and took a drink, using the same straw. My lips had touched where yours had been. I looked at the straw, at the mark my lip gloss had just left on it. “Lipstick marks.”

“I like them,” you said. My skin tingled. I was so keenly aware of your nearness. “My lipstick marks?” “Your lips,” you answered, your blue eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them before. Full of heat. There were no nerves anymore. Just sheer sexiness. Unabashed want. I thrilled inside, hot tingles racing through my bloodstream. The questions were over. We were both in the same place, same zone, same need. “Can I kiss you?” you asked, and my skin sizzled from head to toe. “Yes.” Our lips barely brushed, but it was electric. It was fire and lightning, and the sky breaking open. In that whisper of a kiss, we became a we, even as we both held back, aware that too much too soon would ruin us. But we both knew, in the soft press of our lips, in the hands on arms, hands on hair, hands so eager to touch, that there was no turning back. With each breath, I felt the daring rush of danger, of skiing a black diamond, of speeding without getting caught, of hiding something wild and naughty and wonderful. I was on top of the world. When you pulled away, that dazed look in your eyes told me you were buzzed too. I memorized that look, and the feel of our kiss. It was the kind of kiss that erased any

others before, that blotted out any to come, that stood its ground as the kiss against which any and all would be measured. “Wow,” you said under your breath. Then we stopped kissing and we did what we came to do. We cast the revival, choosing the three leads. We were pleased with the selections, and with our own ability to play co-casting directors. I ignored the fact that the musical didn’t have a happy ending. You and I will have a happy one, won’t we? We will rewrite Chess.

Chapter Seventeen Kennedy I need speed. I need danger. I strap on my helmet and blast off the sidewalk onto the road. I hear a voice call out my name. I turn my head momentarily, but all I see is a flash of color—bright orange —before I turn my attention back to the traffic I must navigate on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. Soon, I weave over to Seventh Avenue into the early evening traffic, riding into it, blaring toward downtown, streaking past cars and trucks and delivery vehicles. I keep going, pedaling, squeezing in and out of tight little jams when Broadway cuts Seventh Avenue. With each block, the memory of my mother’s conversation with Amanda’s father sheds in a trail behind me. A car door opens and I swoop. I’m off to the side, scooting around a cab as I soar ahead, my focus narrowing solely to the street and my role in it. The cab slams its brakes at the red light, but I whip through as the cars from Thirty-Ninth Street bang their horns at me. I’m faster than they are and I bolt past them. Then I tear across Chelsea, and I fly as the streets jut out at crazy angles in the Village. There’s an ambulance now, catapulting toward me, zipping into St. Vincent’s as I swing around the back of it, nearly

clipping my leg on the bumper. By the time I hit Tribeca, the back of my shirt is sticking to me, and my lungs are searing, but I haven’t stopped once, not for a light or a pedestrian or a car. Then Seventh turns into Church Street and my lungs jump into my throat. I push them back down again. A minute later I’m jetting past the Federal Reserve Bank and soon, soon, soon the edge of Manhattan grows bigger and I see trees looming closer and Battery Park is just one stinking block away. I tuck my body even tighter, my head lower, my eyes fixed only on the prize. Almost there. Seconds later, I stop, my breath coming in heavy pants as I yank off my helmet. I made my best time ever. Sixteen minutes. Little victories, Caroline would say. My phone rings. “Hello?” I answer without even looking. “Don’t tell me I’m going to have to visit you in the hospital again like that time when you broke your foot from skateboarding into traffic.” His voice sends a charge through me, lighting me up. He hasn’t called me in four months. We’ve only texted. He knows me. He knows I needed more than a text tonight. He knows me better than anyone. “I am safe and sound in Battery Park,” I say, loving that he worries. “You ride like a Kamikaze fighter pilot,” he says in a

careful warning. “I know.” Then there’s a pause. The air between us crackles like it always has, like it has its own energy or frequency. One of us is going to bend. One of us is going to break. “Come back,” he says, so much longing in his voice. “I don’t want to be there right now,” I say, running my hand roughly through my hair. “Come back later then.” “I don’t want to be there later.” “Someplace else?” he asks, and there’s so much hopefulness in the way he speaks. I can’t help but match it. I feel it too. I want it too. I want the hope and the happiness and the escape I’ve always felt with Noah Hayes, the only man I’ve ever loved. “Anyplace else,” I say, and as I give voice to the giving in, a feathery lightness dances through me. I am ready to stop staying away from him. “I’ll see you at our place in three hours.” Our place. I am lit up, I am ignited; a sweet return to the past that’s become the present again. It’s all so familiar and safe in its own way. The memories race back, tapping on the wall, poking their heads around corners, wanting to be seen. I give in to them; I hit Play and watch the reel of my favorite times from the six months when I was in my own secret affair with my mom’s business partner, her agent, her best friend.

Like the time we went to a Yankees game late last summer. He was at our house one afternoon, and he wielded two tickets, showing them like a magician would a playing card. Naturally, he gave my mom first dibs. But she declined. “I detest watching sports that my daughter isn’t playing. Why don’t you take Kennedy?” Like it was her idea. Like we hadn’t planned it that way. The day of the game, I went to the Mac store nearby and asked the makeup artist if she could paint a blue-and-white New York Yankees logo on my cheek. Then I went home, put on jean shorts, a blue T-shirt, and flip-flops and said good-bye to my mom. “Be sure to take a cab home, my dear,” she said, pressing one hundred dollars into my hand. “Hayes will make sure to get you one.” “Yes, Mom,” I said, then smiled to myself as I left the house as if I were heading to the nearest subway stop and planning to meet him at the ballpark. Instead, I walked a block up and a block over to the town car he’d ordered that was waiting. He pushed the door open from the inside and I slid in, shutting it with a satisfying click. All the people walking by after work or starting their early evening summertime jogs in the park were on the other side of the tinted glass. “Hi,” I said, with a conspiratorial grin.

“Hi.” His eyes twinkled. I ran my fingers along the leather seats. “Nice town car.” “You like me for my town car?” “Oh, exactly. Yes, that’s it exactly.” “Say it,” he teased. “Say you like me for my town car.” “Never!” “C’mon. Just a little?” he said, egging me on, but I knew that he craved the reassurance of why I liked him—and it wasn’t for the town car, because I didn’t care if he had a town car or not. I liked him for him, and not for the trappings of his job, not for the accoutrements of being a young, hot agent. I was probably the only person he interacted with on a regular basis, except maybe for his friend Matthew, who didn’t have an agenda. Or rather, it was that my agenda was the one he wanted—it was an unfettered agenda. I liked him for him, plain and simple, nothing more. “I’d walk with you to Yankee Stadium,” I said, placing my palm on his thigh. “All right, we’re pulling over now.” “Okay, maybe not that much,” I said, and then fingered the edge of his khakis. “You’re wearing shorts.” “You’ve seen me in shorts before. When I run in the morning.” “I’m just used to you in your perfect pants and perfect shirts.” “Then spend more time with me on weekends or at night and you’ll see what else I wear,” he said, raising his

eyebrow in invitation. “Someday.” “Someday soon?” His voice rose the tiniest bit. “Yes,” I whispered, making the promise I’d made to him over and over and over. That someday we’d be together for real. He was twenty-five then, and I had turned seventeen at the start of that summer. There was time for together for real. Down the road, not too far away, after I made it to college. He sighed deeply, a relieved sigh, like I’d just given him the present he’d always wanted. I was the present, I was the gift, what he wanted was me, all of me. He ran a thumb along my jawline. “How am I going to put my hand on your cheek and kiss you without messing up your Yankees logo?” “Were you going to be licking my cheek?” “No, funny girl,” he said, and placed a hand on my cheek. “I just like touching your face, okay?” “Why don’t you just try and see if you can not mess it up?” We spent the rest of the ride kissing in the town car, our own little private world, blind to the rest of the city. I had no interest in stopping, nor did he. We barely came up for air. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We were unstoppable in our kisses, in the way our lips needed to meet again and again, over and over. His hands were in my hair, cupping my cheeks, his fingertips tracing my

collarbone. When we arrived my lips were raw, but my painted-on logo was pristine. We watched the game, and we cheered and clapped and shouted all the players’ names when they came to bat, and he wrapped me in a huge hug, those strong arms circling me, when the shortstop hit a home run in the seventh inning to pull ahead, and I turned the hug into a kiss in the middle of Yankee Stadium. A deep, wet, hot kiss full of passion and fire, and lust for more. We were in a sea of happy strangers and the fact that we were lying to my mom didn’t matter to any of them. No one knew us. No one could know us. I didn’t live in a small town. I lived in a gigantic one. A massive one that could swallow you up, or let you swim in it. I was swimming in it and the water was nice and the current was pulling me along. New York City was my accomplice. New York City made my affair with Noah Hayes not only possible, but easy. He took me home after the game and came inside. “Safe and sound, like I promised,” he said to my mom. “You darling, man,” she said. “Now tell me everything. Tell me all about the game. Wait. Don’t tell me about the game. I don’t care about baseball. Tell me a story. Tell me something interesting about the fans.” I let him do all the talking as I walked into the kitchen to grab a Diet Coke. I opened it and leaned back against the counter, listening to him telling her stories. He’d look over at me a few times, and every time he did I thought how I was

the one who finally had a secret, I was the one who knew something my mom didn’t know, and I was going to keep it that way forever and ever and then some. For the first time in my life, I had the upper hand on her. And now I can again. Now I can with this secret. With the fact that he is Noah to me. That I am the only one who is allowed to use his first name. I roll uptown, riding to our place, twilight turning into night. I lock up my bike near the entrance to Madison Square Park. He’s already there, sitting on a bench, earbuds in his ears, the sleeves on his orange shirt rolled up. He grins the whole time as I walk over and sit next to him. I take the earbuds out of his ears and put them in mine. He’s listening to Broadway show tunes; this time to “Old Man River” from Show Boat. I smile at the music, then roll my eyes. “You and your show tunes.” “Me and my show tunes,” he says and I take the earbuds out and lay them gently across his thigh, my fingertips touching the fabric of his pants. He looks down at them, then rests his hand on the slats of the bench. I move my hand next to his, and now our hands are so close I feel warm all over, like a dark chocolate bar is melting all through my body. Somewhere, in the distance, a car squeals to a stop at a traffic light. It might as well be happening on Pluto. “Kennedy,” he says, then shakes his head, but he doesn’t stop looking at me. His eyes, those dark-blue eyes, are like a tractor beam and I can’t let go.

I inch my hand closer, my fingertips nearly touching his. The space between us is charged, buzzing with ions, desperate for contact. “Say the word,” I say, and I press the tops of my fingers lightly against his. I watch as he spreads open his hand, making room for me. I slide my fingers into his, flesh against flesh at last. The touch of his skin is at once a relief and a thrill. He locks his hand around mine and holds on tight. “I miss you so much,” he says, looking at me like he did in the car on the way to the Yankees game, like he did at the café, like he always said he would. I am happy. I am hope. I am no longer at war with myself. He is where I belong. “Me too,” I say, gripping his fingers so hard as the slowmotion connection of the moment snaps in a second. In a blur, I move. I straddle him. I climb on top of him, dropping his hands, and lacing my fingers through his hair. He exhales sharply, and his chest tightens. He grips my hips, holding them close, but not too close, keeping a sliver of distance between us, as he always did. We stare at each other. The months melt away and I fall back. Into his blue eyes. Into his touch. Into his arms. Here in Manhattan, on a bench in the park, the spring night slinking behind us, we are poised to smash into each other. To crash back into orbit. His lips crush mine, and it is a wild rumpus of kissing, a

chaos of lips and tongues and teeth. A pandemonium of sighs and moans and breaths and names. I grip his thighs tighter with my own, pressing against him, chest to chest, body to body, everything aligned. Everything fits, especially me with him, and him with me. He is the puzzle piece that slides into place in my heart, filling all the sad and empty spots inside me. He tugs me closer, and I move with him, wanting to eradicate any negative space still between us. I erase the final millimeters with more kisses, deeper, hotter, needier. I don’t know how long we kiss. All I know is it’s long enough for the kiss to threaten to turn into too much more, and that’s why he finally pulls apart, gently, but firmly, pushing me off. I follow the cue. I’m not ready either to go too far. I slide off him but stay as close as I can, arms around him, laying my head on his shoulder. He strokes my hair, murmurs my name in my ear. The sound of it whispers across my skin, setting off another round of goose bumps. “Kennedy, you have ruined me for anyone else.” I can’t help but smile. I’ve never had any power. I’ve never craved the power like that. But I have it because it comes from the one thing we have that no one can touch. I crane my neck, look up at him. “I’ve been ruined for a long, long time,” I said, threading a hand in his soft hair, and pulling him back to me for another kiss, telling him with my lips that he is mine, that I own him, and the way he kisses me back is all the confirmation I need that he wants to be

possessed by only me. The warm air drifts softly across the bare skin of my arms as a car screeches to a stop somewhere on the busy street. The sounds of New York don’t stop us, not when we are caught up in our favorite hobby—deep kisses that make your head foggy. Sometime later, I don’t know when, we stand up to leave. “I have something for you,” he says. “What is it?” I ask, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his white T-shirt underneath. The T-shirt fits him like a dream, stretched tight across his strong chest, showing the muscles in his arms. My heart skids against my rib cage. He is beautiful. He is mine. He hands the crisp orange shirt to me, and I press it to my nose, inhaling him, inhaling our secret. Then after another searing kiss that is a promise of ten thousand more to come, I unlock my bike and return home, to my bedroom, where I lock the door, and put his clothes on, falling asleep in his orange shirt, feeling safe once more.

Chapter Eighteen Kennedy After our first date at the Chocolate Cafe, we went to the Frick, one of my favorite museums in the city. He bought the admission tickets and we walked into the galleries on a quiet summer afternoon when the crowds were thin. I leaned in, speaking almost in a whisper. “I think this is the perfect museum. Want to know why?” “Tell me why you think this is the perfect museum,” he said. “Because you can do the whole museum in under an hour.” “Ah, so you’re not one of those people who needs to spend an entire day looking at art, considering it, staring at every single painting?” I shook my head. “I’d rather know the story behind the art. That’s why I want to study art in school—to look at history through art.” He moved closer as we walked past the first set of paintings. “I like that idea. It’s a cool way to look at history.” “Right? Through paintings. Through what they tell you about people.” “It’s kind of like psychology, in a way,” he said, as if he were mulling over the idea. “It’s all about understanding

people and what matters to them.” “Exactly,” I said, and smiled. He nudged me gently with his elbow. “Tell me some art history then.” “So, this museum used to be a house,” I began, launching into a history of the Frick. “The house of Henry Clay Frick, who was some sort of Pennsylvania businessman at the turn of the century and a huge art collector. This was basically his personal collection. And he bequeathed it all at his death as an art collection for the public.” Suddenly, I stopped talking. Noah probably knew this. He grew up near New York, he spent tons of time in the city as a kid, and he’d lived in Manhattan his whole adult life. I didn’t even have an adult life, and here I was, trying to teach him something he probably knew. Hell, he looked the part today, cool and sophisticated in his forest-green shirt, his dark-black pants, his fancy shoes, and trace of stubble. “But you probably knew all that,” I said hastily, and stepped away from him. He reached for my hand. “I didn’t know any of that, Kennedy. I’ve never been to the Frick before.” His eyes held me, steadfast and serious. “Thank you for taking me.” We strolled through the West Gallery, which boasted several Dutch paintings. He stopped at Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Young Woman , an image of a stocky, ruddylooking woman dressed in black silk, with a massive lacy

honeycomb contraption that rose up the length of her neck and met her at the chin. A similar collar adorned nearly all the subjects in the Dutch paintings in the West Gallery. “What’s the deal with the Dutch crumb catchers?” he asked, appraising the paintings. “They’re like these gigantic collars. I mean if you shook them upside down, I bet all this food would fall out.” I laughed, and next Noah gestured in the direction of a Francisco de Goya painting hanging in the corner. The painting was called The Forge and depicted workers forging metal. Noah leaned in to whisper. “Do you think Mr. Frick was playing poker with Mr. Guggenheim and they bet this painting? And then Frick won and Guggenheim said, ‘I dare you to hang it up. Yeah, how about in that corner that had the framed Elvis towel before?’” This time, I cracked up. I liked that he was sort of blasphemous. But mostly I liked what he was doing—he wanted to make me laugh. “It was probably one of those big black towels,” he continued. “With the King wearing the white leather studded jacket.” “You must have been a huge fan of his when you were a kid, right? I mean, he was popular back when you were growing up. That was his heyday, I think?” I teased him, waiting for his response. His smile took over his face and he shook his head at me. “Oh, my, aren’t you so funny.”

We checked out a Turner, then strolled past an exhibit of Fragonards, including The Stolen Kiss painting that was on loan from a museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In the picture a man plants a kiss on a woman’s cheek. “I like that one,” he said to me in a low, sexy voice. Goose bumps flared across my skin. “Me too.” There was no joking, no teasing, no making fun of the art, or each other. He reached his hand out to touch my hair, to brush some of the brown strands away from my neck. The slightest touch made my insides flip upside down. “It makes me think of you,” he said, soft and husky near my ear. I shivered all over and closed my eyes for a second to let the feeling race through me. “Then again, most things these days make me think of you.” I didn’t move. I simply lingered there, with his hand on my hair, his words in my ear, my body so dangerously close to his. I was aware, faintly, of a few museum goers walking by. “Let’s go the courtyard,” I said, gesturing to the rectangular courtyard in the middle of the house, with a fountain and benches. Soon, we were alone, out of the way of any prying eyes. He tugged at my arm and spun me around so we were face-to-face. His eyes raked over me, his gaze landing on my lips. “Can I give you a stolen kiss, K?” My body hummed and buzzed all over. “You don’t have to steal it, because I’ll give it to you freely.”

“Then I’ll take what you’re offering,” he said, and we reenacted the painting. I was on a slow simmer when his lips touched my cheek, and he held there, unrushed, unhurried. It was merely a kiss on the cheek, but I’d never felt this way before. I’d never felt my body want something, someone, so much. We pulled apart, and the look on his face was dazed. Like a punch-drunk cartoon character. As we sat down on one of the benches, he reached for my hand and wove my fingers tightly into his. Holding hard. I squeezed back. “What am I going to do with you?” he said in low voice. “What do you mean?” “What am I going to do about the fact that I am falling so hard for you?” Everything in me sizzled. I was alive, electric, turned up high. I was going to need a fan, or maybe a contingent of servants with palm fronds to keep me cool. “I’m falling for you too,” I said, because I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Do you think it’s bad that I’m older than you?” he asked, and he seemed embarrassed. But since I was in it with him, I’d be the last person to think his feelings were bad. Even so, I was glad he raised the issue. It would have been weird if he hadn’t brought it up. “No,” I said, shaking my head. Because I didn’t. His age —and he was only eight years older—didn’t matter to me. It wasn’t a big age difference; it wasn’t even that big a life difference. Many of my friends’ parents had the same or bigger age differences. “Do you?”

I held my breath, hoping, praying, needing him to say no. “Kind of,” he said. “I mean, I don’t even think this is legal.” “Actually, it is,” I corrected. “I looked it up. The age of consent in New York is seventeen. I’ve been seventeen since June. So, two months now. Since before I started coming to your office,” I added. He smiled a small smile. “Look at you. Checking out the facts. I’m flattered.” “I’m not trying to flatter you,” I said firmly, because the truth was important. The law even more so. Some states labeled eighteen as the age of consent; but God bless New York for marking seventeen. Besides, I was consenting. He was my choice. “I wanted to know. We’re not doing anything wrong.” God, if he ended it after that kiss, after that date, I was going to wither away. He was the only person I’d ever felt this way for. Being with him took away the hurt and shame from the pack of lies I’d told. “Still,” he said and his voice trailed off. “I kind of feel like a schmuck.” “Don’t,” I said quickly, and laid a hand on his. “Don’t feel that way at all. I like you so much, and I don’t think about the age difference. You like me, right?” “Obviously,” he said, and nuzzled me briefly, before turning serious again. “Still. We need to be careful.” “You mean no making out in museum courtyards?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I mean, nothing more than making out.” My cheeks turned red. We’d only kissed but we were already talking about sex. “Noah, I’m so not even remotely ready to go there,” I said. I’d never had sex, and I wasn’t ready to. If he wanted more, he was with the wrong girl, and that was that. He was going to have to be okay with this line or I’d walk. “You need to know that to be with me.” “I am on board with that. And I think that’s all we should do. Age of consent or not, legality or not, you’re in high school and I’m in—whatever you want to call it. After high school. You know how it’d look.”

Noah It would look bad. I ran a hand roughly through my hair and dropped my forehead in my palm. What was I doing? Regardless of having the law on our side, she was a teenager. I was supposed to be the mature one. Then there was that little bitty issue of her being my client’s daughter. I was skating on wafer-thin ice, but God help me. She was some kind of magic to me. She was everything I never knew I wanted, and she’d quickly become the one and only person I felt like myself with. In some ways, I was used to being alone. No brothers or sisters, no mom or dad, I was all work and no play. My

relentless focus on work and growing my career had paid off handsomely, and it had also kept me busy. But at the end of the day when it was just me, I was left feeling adrift. With Kennedy, I was anchored. She filled all the lonely spaces inside of me with her laughter, with her wry and witty humor, with everything we had in common. Sure, I probably should have walked away before I got in too deep. But here’s the thing about falling in love. All the movies, the books, all the TV shows will tell you that you can’t help who you fall in love with. You scoff and laugh and say Yeah, right. Of course you can help it. Until it happens to you. And you can’t help it. You are powerless to resist. Or really, you choose to stop resisting. Because rather than walk away from the forbidden fruit, I did what man has been doing for ages. Bit into it, and bit away the shame of how it would look, of what it would say about me to feel this way for a girl in high school. Damn the consequences; the reality tasted better than the risk. I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her close. “I didn’t plan this, K. I didn’t set out to feel this way.” “I did,” she said, sounding sheepish. “I’ve had a huge crush on you forever.” “You did?” I asked, wrenching back to look at her curiously. “Yes. I like you so much. That’s why I kept coming to your

office,” she said, like it was an admission of a secret. “You wanted to wear down my resistance?” “Did it work? My nefarious plan?” “Musicals, chocolate chip cookies, not a word about a TV deal. Yeah, I’d say it worked perfectly,” I said matter-offactly. Then I lowered my voice, down to the barest of truths. “And now I’m yours.” I’d never felt so vulnerable as in that moment. I was risking so much, but gaining so much more, because with her, I was so damn happy. “Are you mine?” she whispered, and I could hear the nerves in her voice, like she wanted to be sure and certain of all I felt. “Kennedy, I’m so crazy about you I’d want to be with you even if you liked hip-hop or hair bands, and I can’t stand either of those.” “You don’t have anything to worry about on that count. ‘So tell me why should it be true. I get a kick out of you,’” she said in the most enticing voice I’d ever heard her use, and it turned me on to no end.

Our Stolen Kisses You’d used the F-word. No, not THAT one. The good F-word. The falling one. You were falling for me, and I was falling for you, and we were falling together into the land of the fallen. You placed your hands on my cheeks, touching my face, then your lips found mine, and we kissed until the museum closed. For the first time in my life, I had something pure, something perfect, something the opposite of everything I’d ever known. I was happy. Happier than I’d ever been. I let your word —I’m yours—fill me up with a giddy kind of joy that comes only with falling in love.

Chapter Nineteen Kennedy One of the benefits to my mom’s habits is that it was easy to pull the wool over her eyes about my own affair. It was easy because she was preoccupied. It was easy because she was having her own affair with Jay Fierstein, my dad’s business partner. It was easy because I knew how to pull off the cover-up, having watched and helped her for years. It was a piece of cake for another reason too. Because she never would have suspected it. It never would have occurred to my mother that I might be involved with her agent. In her solar system, all the planets—Noah Hayes included—revolved around her. The notion that I might have knocked one of her planets out of her orbit would not even compute. But one night after a party, we were too risky. The usual suspects had already come and gone, and Noah was the last one there. The three of us relaxed in the living room. “It’s been so long since you’ve been at one of my dinner parties,” my mom cooed to me. That was yet another clue she failed to pick up on— the fact that I had suddenly become interested in her parties again. I was only interested because of Noah. “Mom, you’ve always known how to throw a good party,” I said.

She yawned deeply, then said she needed to retire for the night. “I’ll clean up,” I said. “I’ll help,” Noah chimed in. “What would I do without the two of you?” She kissed Noah on both cheeks and said good night, and did the same for me. She disappeared to her chambers, and at the sound of her door snapping shut, we both grinned. “Dishes?” I asked suggestively. “Let’s get into some hot water,” he teased back. We scooped up the plates and wineglasses from the coffee table and the dining room, collected cloth napkins, and gathered all the serving dishes. We loaded the dishwasher, and I loved how he lined the dishes up properly, in the right slots, just where they should go. He was neat like me. I turned on the sink to wash the rest of the dishes. Noah started to unbutton the cuffs of his purple shirt, a deep rich eggplant color, and I stopped him. “Let me do it.” The lights were low in the kitchen; the house was doing its own impression of dusky twilight. He held his wrists out to me, and I took my time, unbuttoning the right cuff carefully, folding it up once, then another time. The chance to be near him, even like this, was such a heady thrill. “I love your shirts,” I said, breathless. “Have I ever told you that?” He shook his head, pressed his lips together as if he were holding back all he wanted to say. I started to unbutton

the left cuff, slowly freeing the metal button from its holder as I continued my ode. “I love all your shirts. The blue and the purple and the green and the orange and the pink and the raspberry. I love them all. I love how they fit you, and how colorful they are, and how they’re just so you. I always used to think about what shirt you might be wearing before you came over. And I would run through all your shirts in my mind, because I’ve catalogued them all.” He closed his eyes briefly, holding on to the counter for just a second, his fingers cutting into the marble. “You have no idea how much …” he said, then stopped himself. He was careful with me; always careful to never say too much. I leaned into his neck, dusting my lips against his throat, listening for the little sigh to escape his lips. His fingers found their way into my hair, and soon he was kissing my neck, leaving a trail of hot, needy kisses along my throat. “Noah,” I murmured, arching my back, inviting more kisses, more touching, more him. “I love the way you say my name,” he whispered back, his voice growing more urgent as he speared his fingers into my hair. The water in the sink kept running. “Noah,” I said again, then again, then again. His kisses increased in urgency, his strong body aligning deliciously with me. We fit together so well with clothes on, pushing, pressing, grinding. We had the necessary barrier; we always did. But yet, with the firm press of his body so snug against mine, I melted. I burned. I seared. My mind knew I wasn’t ready, but my body craved more.

“I could use another glass of wine.” We ripped ourselves away from each other and plunged our hands under the faucet, like it had been scripted, like it had been planned. Neither one of us had expected my mom to reemerge. My heart was exploding in my ears, and I felt like someone had grabbed my stomach from the inside and twisted it, round and round. I didn’t even look at him. I didn’t even chance it. The floor was tilting, my face was scalding, I’d been caught and she was going to make it hurt. She padded her way into the kitchen, and a rabid fear ricocheted through me. But she simply refilled her wineglass, gave me a kiss on the top of my head, and waltzed back to her room. When her door clicked shut, I finally managed to look at Noah. His eyes were wild with worry. He didn’t say a word, just exhaled. We finished the dishes in silence, and when I turned off the water I whispered, “That was close.” “I know.” His voice was heavy, the consequences palpable in the stony look on his face. “I don’t want her to find out, Noah,” I said, like a prayer, like a plaintive plea even though he was on my side. “Trust me, I don’t either.” The noises started then. The awful sounds of her seducing someone, probably Jay, on the phone. I cringed and walked Noah to the door. I was embarrassed; I didn’t

want him to hear her getting randy on the phone with a man. As I opened the door I stepped outside on our front porch, shutting the door behind me. “I hate her boyfriends,” I blurted out. “You do?” “Yes. All of them. I hate that she talks to them on the phone and has them over and is loud and disgusting with them,” I said, the words spilling out in a mess from my lips before I could even take them back. It was the first time I’d verbalized to anyone how my mom’s habits made me feel. Disgusting. Enraged. Ashamed. There was no Caroline yet in my life; Noah was the only one I’d ever breathed a word to. He was my safety net. An angry tear slid down my cheek. Instantly, he pulled me into a gentle hug, his arms circling me, spreading warmth and comfort all through my bloodstream. “I’m so sorry, K. I’m sorry it’s been like that for you.” “I wish she’d stop, Noah,” I said, whispering into his chest. He nodded against me as he stroked my hair. “I know what you mean. I feel so bad that it makes you feel this way.” His soft touch, his complete understanding emboldened me. “I hate lying for her and covering for her and I hate that I know all these things she’s done,” I said, admitting more, letting go of the secrets I’d held dear.

“It was like that with my mom too,” he said, keeping me close as he shared more of himself. “With her drinking, that is. It’s so hard. I wish I could tell you something wise and insightful and all, but it’s just hard. And I know how you feel.” I felt safe there with him, unburdened for a moment. We untangled ourselves and it was time to say goodbye. “Here,” he said, reaching into his pants pocket for his phone. “Take my music,” he said, and mimed tapping. “Listen to Les Miz when you walk back into the house. It’ll shield your ears and you’ll have no choice but to think of me.” I grinned, knowing what he meant, as I reached for my phone. He tapped mine with his, and modern technology sent his playlist to my phone. “I’d think of you anyway. All night long,” I said, as I scrolled through the screen for his current show tunes playlist. He placed his fingers under my chin so I was looking at him. “Come over tomorrow. You can see all my shirts.” The next day I counted down the seconds until he left the office and texted me that he was on his way home. I was at my dad’s house that night, so I told him I was going out with some friends from school. I’d never been to Noah’s apartment before. He lived in a doorman building off Madison Avenue in the Fifties. The doors had brass trim and a green awning. The doorman had been given my name, so I simply told the mustached man in the suit that I was seeing Noah Hayes in 6E, and the man gestured to the

elevators at the other end of the small lobby. Sparks rose inside me as I pressed the button and waited for the door to slide open. I stepped inside a tiny elevator; one side was mirrored top to bottom. I took in every detail of his place; it was as if I’d gained admission to a secret hideout, the treehouse at the top of the street that I’d only seen from a distance before. A man’s home. My man’s home. Such a rush, such a thrill. Giddy with excitement, I nearly skipped out the doors when the elevator opened on the sixth floor, then I walked down the carpeted hallway and knocked on the last door on the left, waiting for him to answer, feeling like I was on a sugar high already. He opened the door, lips curled up in a smile that said we have a secret. He swept out his arm, letting me inside, watching me as I drank it all in—the dark-oak hardwood floors, the pewter coffee table laden with his gadgets, phones, tablets, then the tiny sliver of a kitchen with its white counters, a steel fridge, and the obligatory espresso machine that he told me he never used, since he preferred to grab a cup from the deli on the corner. A sleek television screen hung on the living room wall; I did a brain sweep to erase the image of him watching Lords and Ladies on that screen on Sunday nights. In my world, there was no Lords and Ladies. In my interpretation of Noah’s apartment, he only watched sports on the big screen. Across from the TV was a dark-gray couch, then an end table with a few framed

photos. I checked out the pictures; one of his mom, one of him in a graduation cap and gown, and one of Noah and his mom when he was my age. “You in high school?” I asked, holding up one of the frames. “Yep. Back in the day.” “You were handsome,” I remarked with a sly smile. He wrapped an arm around my waist. “Were?” he asked then nibbled on my earlobe, and I shivered against him. “Were, Kennedy?” he asked again, this time in a firmer voice, demanding an answer. “Were. And are,” I said as I turned around to face him, tracing his jawline with my fingertips, watching his breath hitch. He tugged me closer, held me tighter, made me feel wanted, then erased all thoughts in my brain with a deep, hungry kiss that made me weak in the knees.

Noah I took her by the hand and led her to my bedroom. My fingers gripped hers more tightly, as if that would keep me from throwing her down on the bed and touching her in all the ways I wanted to. Restraint was my watchword, and that’s why I held her hand tight. The tension was my reminder to keep everything on the level, a task made even harder as she trailed a finger across the edge of the navy comforter. I groaned, a rumble working its way up my chest

just from the sight of her touching my bed. I shook my head. “You in my bedroom is dangerous,” I said, and I was grateful to open the closet door seconds later. My work clothes hung, pressed and draped. She let go of my hand, glancing back at me with a naughty look in her eyes. Like I’d just escorted her into her fantasy realm. Maybe shirts truly were her weakness. I watched her every move as she reached out to touch them. It was insanely arousing the way her fingers traced buttons and cuffs and collars as she felt them all. The blue ones, the green ones, the pink ones, the purple ones, the white ones. She was mesmerized, and so was I. It was like witnessing her being turned on by an idea. Without asking, without saying a word, she reached for a cobalt-blue shirt, took it from its hanger, and slipped it on over her black shirt. “How do I look?” she asked, both sweet and seductive, as she buttoned herself up in my clothes. My clothes. The girl I wanted, the girl I’d tried to resist, then stopped resisting, was wearing my shirt, standing in my closet, mere feet from my bed. My breath fled my chest. She was so gorgeous and so damn edible. I was getting a medal for restraint because my hands itched to strip and explore every inch of her. But my brain and my heart kept me in control. I wouldn’t do something she wasn’t ready for. “So unbelievably hot,” I said with an appreciative groan. She turned her neck to smell the collar and the front of the shirt. “Smells good.”

I shut my eyes briefly and clenched my fists, needing to keep my desire in check. When I opened my eyes again, I watched her every move as she unbuttoned the shirt, hung it back up, and then removed a lemon-yellow one from its hanger, trying that on and modeling it. Next, a navy shirt. Then a white one. She was stunning in everything, and I had to dig my heels into the ground to stay in place, to keep from wrapping her up in my arms and kissing her in ways that would lead to lines we weren’t ready to cross. All it would take would be one move, one touch. I’d carry her to my bed, strip off all her clothes and kiss her everywhere. “You look good in all my clothes, K,” I said, my voice gravelly, as I teetered, so close to the edge of breaking the rules. She pressed her face into my shirts, pulling them near to her. My chest tightened with longing. My hunger for her threatened to rule the day, to break free of the chains I kept it in. Because I wanted her. God, how I wanted all of her. “I love them all,” she murmured. “I love the way you look in every single one of them,” I said. And the way I imagine you look out of them too. “Do you want to wear this one now?” She gestured to the cobalt-blue shirt she’d tried on first. “It smells like me.”

Kill me now. Like there was any way I’d say no. The smell of her was intoxicating, and I wanted to inhale her delicious scent all

night long. “Yes.” She handed me the blue shirt. I wore slacks and a white T-shirt, so I slid my arms into the sleeves, my eyes on her the whole time. I didn’t break the hold either; we were hooked on each other, no words would have told her more clearly that I had no interest in anything but her. I held out the cuffs, and she took my cue, stepping closer, her hands reaching for my wrist. Even that simple touch made my blood race. I stayed still, not moving an inch, as she buttoned each cuff. A barely audible groan escaped my lips. As she moved to the middle of the shirt, pulling the two sides together, I drew a sharp breath. My brain was flooded with images of what might happen next, like a relentless film reel flashing in front of my eyes of all this restraint snapping, and the two of us tumbling together, hands tearing at shirts, fingers tugging them off, clothes in a wild heap on the floor. She started midway up the shirt, dressing me, each button like a slow, sensual dance. Every press of her finger torched my blood. She moved lower, sliding each button through its hole, then adjusting the collar, her fingertips brushing against my neck. I could barely take it anymore. “K,” I whispered, both an invitation, and a warning. Don’t come any closer. If you do, I won’t be able to hold back. She must have sensed the danger, and knew it was up

to her to keep us in check. She stood on tiptoes and pressed a gentle kiss on my lips. I grabbed her shoulders, pulled her in close, kissed her harder, needing more of her. Taking a taste of her mouth, her lips, her tongue. It wasn’t enough, but it had to be enough for now. Then I let go, and exhaled sharply. “I had to do that,” I said. “Yes,” she said with a wild grin. “You did.” She stepped back, giving me space to tuck the shirt into the waistband of my pants. As I looked at her face, I didn’t see a seventeen-year-old. I saw a woman who wanted a man. Age was irrelevant. We were the same. We were instinct, we were desire, we were waiting. “Perfect,” she whispered. “You look perfect.” We went to a nearby restaurant. I was chancing it, having dinner with her. But I also wasn’t. We’d eaten out together before. Hell, we’d gone to Yankee Stadium together. We’d gone to shows together. We appeared as friends to the world. Dinner was not completely absurd. “I almost forgot. I have something for you,” I said after we ordered. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a slim pink jewelry box with a clear glass rectangular cutout in the middle. My heart skidded as I catalogued her reaction —excitement, anticipation, wonder. Exactly what I wanted her to feel. She clicked open the box and reached for the

silvery chain with three small stylized charms—a bicycle, a skateboard, and a lacrosse stick. The tiny wheels on the skateboard, the netting in the lacrosse stick, and the spokes on the tiny bike were pink—kitschy, cool, shiny, baubly, perfect pink. She pulled the necklace from its home and held it up to her chest. “I love it.” “You do?” “Yes,” she said, fingering the smooth silver of the miniature skateboard. “Where did you get it?” “I had it made for you,” I said, hoping she’d like it, wanting desperately for her to know she was special to me. “I wanted to give you something. But I didn’t want to just get you anything any guy could get you. I wanted it to be just for you.” “It is perfect. It’s perfect for me.” “You don’t have to wear it now. Really. I’m just glad you like it.” “I want to wear it now,” she said, insisting as she fiddled with the opening of the chain. “I want to wear it every day.” Those words—every day—were like a sweet song just for me. My bones hummed with happiness to hear her say them. I longed for an every day with her. “Let me do it,” I said, gently taking the necklace out of her hands and unfastening the clasp. “Come closer.” She pulled her chair closer and our knees grazed each other. That tiny contact was like a lightning bolt of want

slamming through me, but I tamped it down, always keeping things in check, as I reached my hands around her neck, fastening the necklace, letting it fall against her chest. The restaurant narrowed to only us; all the other patrons, the waiters, the hostess, the cooks were a blur of noise. She was my world. I let my hands linger for a moment, barely tracing her soft skin with my fingertips. She held my gaze the whole time, then touched her new necklace. “I love it, Noah,” she said, her eyes open and wide, never leaving mine. “I just love it.” “I love it too,” I whispered, and I knew, and she knew, that we weren’t just talking about the necklace. After dinner, we walked a few blocks over to Madison Square Park, framed on one side by the Flatiron Building, on the other corner by the MetLife Tower. We sat on a bench at the edge of the park, soaking in the warm air and the dark sky, as we watched the other New Yorkers walking by. “They’re on the way to a hipster party. You have to wear pencil jeans to get past the door,” she said, pointing to a pack of skinny, goateed twenty-somethings. “Soul patch gets you a free beer,” I added. Then I tipped my forehead to a tired-looking couple in their early thirties. “They’re wondering if it would be bad form to crash on the couch when the babysitter leaves.” “Sleep is definitely going to win,” she said, as a fortyish woman in a purple satin dress and silver sparkles braided into her hair walked past us. The woman held a wand with a

star at the point. Kennedy raised an eyebrow, and the corner of her lips curved up. “Either she entertains at children’s parties or she really is a fairy godmother.” I fixed a serious look on my face. “She’s totally a fairy godmother, Kennedy. She’s the real thing.” “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, then she spotted a girl who looked to be about twenty holding hands with a guy who seemed a few years older. They were our reflection, and we both turned to each other at the same time, recognition in her eyes. She laced a hand through my hair. I leaned into her hand. “They’re just happy,” she whispered. My heart tripped over itself in my chest. I was no longer man against the world. I wasn’t a guy holding tight to a job because it was all he had. I was a guy crazy for a girl, and the girl was crazy for me. There was no other way about it. “Very happy. Like us,” I added. “Like us,” she echoed. I traced her jaw with my thumb and I watched her reaction. Her eyes floated closed, and her breath hitched. I kept my hand on her face, touching her cheek as I brushed my lips softly against her, gently at first, a barely there kind of kiss. Her lips pressed harder, hungrier, and lustier, and soon, my arms were all around her, and her hands were all over me. I knew then in the feel of her hands, in the way they roamed my chest, gripped my arms, trailed along the front of my shirt. I knew in the sweet taste of her lips, in the sexy

little murmurs she made, but most of all I knew deep inside of me. She was the one. She was the only one. She filled me in ways that no one and nothing ever had. It pained me to break the kiss, but then it was also necessary. I had to tell her, had to let her know. “Do you know why I’m so happy?” I said, my voice low but strong, matching the way I felt. Her eyes widened as she asked me softly why. “Because I’m completely in love with you,” I said, with all the certainty in the world. Her smile was as wide as the sky. I swore I could see her soaring, as she cupped my cheeks, brushed a kiss on my lips, then whispered. “I’m so in love with you.” I tugged her in close. “This will always be our place,” I said because I’d never forget how it felt here in Madison Square Park, on a warm September night, surrounded by the sounds of Manhattan, to be in love with her. Here, with her, I was … complete.

Our Stolen Kisses I’d never forget how it felt to say those words. To be in our place. In love with you, in love with us, in love with our secret, with the island we were building, keeping out the whole wide world. There with you, I was … safe.

Chapter Twenty Kennedy Now here I am again. Safe again. And I don’t want it to come crashing down this time. Not when I am so close to the finish line I can see it. Not when my get-out-of-jail-free card is within reach. I’ll be eighteen in mere days. I’ll be at NYU in three months. I just need to get through June, July, and August. Then I will be free of my parents. Once I’m in college, I can do what I want. When I get out of bed Sunday morning, I take off Noah’s orange shirt, fold it carefully, and stuff it at the bottom of my backpack to return it to him later today. I text him: Shirt’s off.

Giving it back to you today. He replies seconds later. off? What’s on then? We banter like that for the next ten minutes, then he tells me he’ll be thinking of me when he heads to the library shortly for an event, and I’m sure you’d need an industrialstrength mop to wipe the ridiculous grin off my face, especially when I tell him I’ll see him later, since we’re going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this afternoon. My mother never goes to Brooklyn. My father doesn’t either. No one who knows me will be there. I hear my dad walk down the hall, so I click over to the

home screen on my phone, then double-check to make sure my backpack is zipped up. Not that he’d ever look through my bag, but once burned, twice shy. I so don’t need my dad seeing a sliver of orange fabric and then freaking out again. I shower and get dressed, counting down the hours until I see Noah this afternoon. As I turn off the hair dryer, my phone blasts out its ringtone for Amanda. I answer quickly. “Do you miss me?” “So much.” “What are you doing?” “I’m bored out of my mind. My mom is working—what else is new? My dad is out having coffee with a friend who may have some job leads for him, he claims. As if.” I wince knowing where her dad really is. Coffee with a friend is coffee with my mom. It’s a gateway meeting, an entree into something more. “So I decided since you’re going to prom with Lane, I need to meet him,” Amanda announces. Crap. Prom. Lane. I’d totally forgotten about that. It had completely vacated my brain. How am I going to go to prom with Lane when I have a secret boyfriend again? “Sure,” I say, noncommittally. “Hello? Kennedy, you are going to prom. This is a big deal. This is on our list of top five things that suck about an all-girls’ school and you found a loophole to one of the five. You get to go to prom. I want to meet your boyfriend. So there. Make it so.”

My heart flinches when she says boyfriend, because she can’t meet my real boyfriend. I can picture how it’d go— Amanda meeting Noah for the first time at Dr. Insomnia’s, holding back a surprise, then somehow reshaping her face into a happy look, when really she’d be thinking, Why didn’t you tell me your boyfriend is older? “First of all, Lane’s not my boyfriend, Amanda,” I say. “Semantics.” “But he’s not.” “But he will be.” “Doubtful.” “Why not?” I fall back into my pillow. “I don’t know, Amanda. It’s just … I don’t know.” “Well, whatever. You’re making me crazy. Let’s just all get coffee. I need you to entertain me. Call him and see if he’s free.” Amanda is nothing if not insistent. She will make a great reporter someday. “Fine.” I hang up, then quickly dial Lane’s number. “Thank God you called. Otherwise, I was going to have to put an ad on Craigslist for a girl with a red polka-dot umbrella,” he says before I can even say hi. Was it really just two days ago when Lane bought me the umbrella? My project with Lane feels like a lifetime ago. Because the life I want has returned to me in the meantime with the man I love.

“I bet you’d get a lot of takers,” I say, when I recover to the present. “Umbrellas have that effect on girls.” His voice is hopeful, and something in it feels too close, too intimate for me. Or maybe it’s the words. Words like girls and effect. I’m not sure I want to roll around in those words when it comes to Lane. I shift gears. “Do you want to meet at Dr. Insomnia’s in, say, an hour? My friend Amanda wants to meet you.” Lane pauses. In the span of his silence, I am guessing he’s considering, he’s wondering, he’s weighing the fact that neither one of us has met the other’s friends. Our friendship has always just been us, him and me. I fill the white space. “I mean, I know we’ve never met each other’s friends, but why shouldn’t we, right? No one needs to know we met at the shrink’s. We’re just friends, that’s all. And I told her we’re going to prom. She’s dying to help me pick out a dress. I can’t not let her meet you.” “Sure. Let’s do it. See you in an hour.” I call Amanda back and tell her to get ready. As I leave, I let my dad know I’m meeting Amanda and Lane. I’ve told him the truth, but the truth will also pad the lie I’m about to tell him to explain my whereabouts for the rest of the day. “And then we’ll probably see a movie or something,” I say, and the words come out so easily, so smoothly, because this is how it goes when you are a seasoned pro, when you’ve been coached by the best, by the person who

perfected lying to this man for most of her marriage. I maintain my false front as my dad smiles. “Have fun at the movies. Say hi to Lane and Amanda,” he says. “I will.” Inside, I want to jab myself with sharp pencils, a punishment for the little lies I tell him, for the ways I’m not the opposite of my mom right now, for the ways I am her imprint. I open the door to leave. “No bike today?” my father asks. I don’t look at him for this one. I don’t look at him because I don’t need my bike, because I’m meeting my secret boyfriend in a cab in a couple hours. “Nah, I feel like walking,” I say. Before I even reach the cobblestoned street, I crank up South Pacific, but I jump because the last song I want to hear right now is “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” Instead, I switch to “Some Enchanted Evening,” and the words and the music do what they’re supposed to. Make me forget what I want to forget and remember what I want to remember.

Chapter Twenty-One Kennedy Back then, I didn’t think much about the lies I had to tell, because the bubble of bliss was just that. Bliss. Perfection. Happiness. The fall of my senior year was the best. Every day, every second with Noah, was like a scene in some romance set in Manhattan, with secret dates all around the city that only we knew about. Stolen moments on the Staten Island Ferry late one afternoon, watching the big boat whip across the water as the sun beat down. Visits to Chinatown on Sundays, where we’d wander in and out of cramped little shops selling teapots with cats on them and red embroidered jackets. Popping into the theater to see a Saturday matinee of Jersey Boys, enjoying the half-price tickets he’d snagged that morning. Of course, the theater date itself was idyllic, the reason not so much. I’d needed to escape from my mom, especially since I’d heard her talking to Jay Fierstein, and he was on his way over. “Can’t wait to see you, handsome,” she’d cooed into the phone as I walked through the kitchen to make a piece of toast, and my chest burned when I heard her voice. I stopped in place, my hand clutched around the fridge handle as she planned her next tryst. I wanted to claw her

eyes out, claw his eyes out, claw out my own. Instead, I turned to Noah and to Broadway and to show tunes, and we spent the afternoon holding hands in the darkened Winter Garden Theatre as songs from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons took me away. That evening, we stopped in Sardi’s for appetizers, and I told him about the phone call. “I wish I could just make up a new story for my life before this year.” “What would yours be, K? What would you change?” I reached for his hand under the table. “Everything. First, my mom would never have cheated on my dad. Second, she would never have asked me to lie about it. Third, they never would have gotten divorced.” He nodded and stroked my hand gently, knowing this small action of his thumb against my palm soothed me. But more than that, telling him soothed me. Telling someone soothed me. He was maybe the only one besides my dad and me who knew my mom had cheated. “You know that about her, right? This isn’t news, is it?” He nodded. “Yes. I mean, it’s not like Jewel and I ever discuss it, but it’s not that hard to figure out. It never was. Besides, I think I have good radar in that department.” “What department? Detecting cheating?” “No. Detecting addictive behavior.” It was the first time anyone had ever used the word addict in relation to my mom. It was strangely freeing to

hear it, to know that someone else got what was going on. I didn’t feel so alone with her secrets. “Did you want to rewrite your backstory with your mom?” I asked. “Absolutely. I would have done anything to get her to stop drinking,” he said, and he sounded sad and wistful at the same time. “I wish I had known what she was like without all the drinking. I would have loved to have known her sober.” “Yeah. I know what you mean.” “When I was younger, I used to try to get her to stop. I would hide her beers, or empty them out. But she always found a way to get more. And so all I could do was just not drink myself.” I nodded, because that’s what I was trying to do too. I was trying to not be her, to not make the same choices my mom made. She didn’t know how to love. She only knew the merry-go-round. I vowed to never go on the merry-goround. And so eventually we made plans. As the fall cruised along, we laid out on a blanket one Sunday afternoon in Central Park on a rare warm day in October. We were off in a secluded spot, one of those cloistered corners where tall trees and stout bushes formed little inlets for lovers. We ate strawberries and cherries and mini hummus sandwiches. As the sun dipped farther in the sky, Noah read a new script from one of his other clients, and I read a book about the Impressionists and Manet’s

friendship with Charles Baudelaire, since my dad was helping a collector to acquire an Impressionist painting in an upcoming auction at Sotheby’s. I wanted to be able to talk to my dad about his work, to converse with him about his job. I finished the final few pages and then put the book down. “Good book?” “My head is stuffed full of facts about the Impressionists now,” I said. He placed the script pages next to him. “Tell me something about the Impressionists.” “Well, they were pretty much hopped up on absinthe all the time.” “So they were getting by with a little help from their friends,” he quipped. “Indeed.” I stretched out closer to Noah, resting my head on his chest. “It makes you think too about all the things that were going on in France at the time of the Impressionists. The Franco-Prussian War and the French Third Republic, and then in the midst of it all, this beautiful form of painting real life emerged. There has to be a connection.” “Look at you, already the art history major.” “And I haven’t even applied to college yet.” “Ah, college. That thing that happens in a year.” I shifted again, so I could look at his face, rather than the sky. “Yes, this time next year I’ll be in college.”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to detect the nerves in his voice. “NYU,” I said. There was no point pretending I wanted to go anyplace else. NYU was my first choice and always had been. I’d already finished most of the application. “I’ve always wanted to go to NYU. I don’t want to leave New York. This is my home. I love it here.” “Can’t argue with that.” “Plus, it’s close,” I said, and now the butterflies in me took off racing. I’d thrown it out there. I’d said it. The future of us, the possibility of an us next year and beyond. He traced the edge of my hair with his index finger. “It is close,” he said, but he sounded noncommittal. “Do you want me to be close?” “I want you to be where you want to be. I want you to go to school where you want to go.” “Right,” I said, knowing he was being magnanimous, knowing he had to say that, because he’d never be the guy who held his girlfriend back, especially not over such a massive life choice. “But now that you know my first choice happens to be a few blocks away, what do you think?” “K, I want to be with you always. But it’s college; it’s a big deal. You should make the choice free of me.” I hit him lightly a few times with my fists. “Stop being the good guy.” He grabbed my wrists and held my arms in place, shifting me with his legs, so I was straddling him. “You want

me to be the bad boy?” “You know what I mean.” “No, I don’t. Tell me what you mean.” His face was just inches from mine, and he was daring me to say more. “You make me crazy,” I said, and squeezed his hips with my thighs. “Strong thighs.” “Just tell me, Noah. Tell me what you want.” “How about you tell me what you want?” he countered. “You’re such a negotiator. You always make me go first.” His blue eyes sparkled. “A good negotiator.” “Fine,” I said, caving. “I want you. I want to be with you.” “You’re with me right now,” he teased. “That’s not what I mean, you goofball!” “Ooh, name calling. This is going to be a fun negotiation,” he said, tightening his grip around my wrists and easing my body closer to his. “I want to be with you always. I love you. I’m in love with you. And you’re the one,” I said quickly, testily. “There, I said it.” “It was heartfelt.” “Well, that’s what you get for making me go first. Your turn.” He loosened his hands and lowered me gently onto him, my chest against him, his arms encircling my back. “I want to be with you for real. For always, K,” he said,

holding my eyes with his, no joking, no negotiating now. “But I hate the thought of holding you back from college or in college, and I want you to be happy and to experience life and to enjoy everything and if that means you need to leave me, then I understand. But if you don’t need to leave me, then I will be the happiest man on earth. Because all I want is to be with you. I want you to sleep over, and I want to wake up next to you, and take you to breakfast, and come home to have dinner with you.” My heart blasted off into another stratosphere. “I want that too.” “And,” he said, brushing his lips against my neck, sending a shiver through me, “I want to be the one who takes you to the revival of Chess.” I wrenched back to look at him. My eyes were wide with excitement, I was sure. “Is there going to be one?” I asked, practically crossing my fingers and holding my breath in hope. He jutted up his shoulders. “Word on the street is Davis Milo is going to direct a revival,” he said, mentioning a Tony-winning director I adored. Sparklers ignited inside of me. This would be my dream date with my man. “We’re going to go. We have to go,” I said firmly. He rolled his eyes. Playfully. Oh so playfully. “Obviously, we’re there opening night.” I pressed my hands against his chest, staring at him. “Do

you really think it will happen?” “I hope so. And when it does I’m going to take the woman I’m madly in love with. And I’m going to kiss her outside the theater, and during intermission, and maybe even when the cast takes its curtain call.” “Nobody kisses like us,” I said. “Nobody,” he repeated, then lowered his mouth to mine, claiming my lips in a hazy, heady kiss that melted me from head to toe. Eventually, we stopped kissing and I sighed happily, picturing our future. “I’m going to write you a love letter. I’m going to write a letter to you about all our kisses, and how much I love you,” I told him, cupping his cheeks. “Write it,” he said, both an order and a wish. “Write it and ruin me for anyone else forever.” I raised an eyebrow. “Will a letter ruin you?” He ran a hand through my hair, sighed heavily. “I’m already ruined for anyone else.” We kept up during the fall and through the new year, juggling, and managing, and as my mom carried on with Jay Fierstein, I grew closer and closer to her agent, so close we started talking details about the future. Then those plans came crashing down in three seconds. * When my dad saw pieces of my letter in the early winter this year, he could tell from certain words in it that I was writing

to an older guy, to someone who worked in an office, who wore slacks and shirts to work, who liked art. He asked if the letter was to Jay, his business partner. I sensed an opening. A chance to protect myself, to keep my own secret, to keep the guy I was madly in love with—Noah— out of the line of fire. I did what my mom had taught me to do all those years. Spin. Contort. Make a fable of the facts. I made myself look sad, forlorn, ready to cry as I claimed I’d been in love with Jay, but that it was all unrequited, that I just had a crush on Jay from afar. I even said, to make it more believable, that I tried to kiss Jay once. I said the kiss lasted for three seconds max. I said Jay pushed me away because it was wrong. That all the kisses I detailed in that letter were fictional, were wishes for kisses. That might have been my best performance ever— acting as if I liked Jay, when I hated him. Acting as if Jay was noble, when he wasn’t. But I knew my dad and Jay had been on the outs already. My dad had suspected that Jay was skimming some money off the top of the company, so their business partnership was already falling apart. I just delivered the punishing blow with those alleged three seconds that my dad could never get out of mind. Then I begged my dad not to breathe a word. I pleaded with him not to say a thing to Jay. I claimed I was so embarrassed over the whole thing. I told him I’d see a shrink. I’d do anything. My dad agreed to stay quiet. He never said a word to

Jay about those three seconds. He never asked his business partner about my alleged crush on him. My dad did what he knew how to do. End things coldly and clinically and preserve whatever was still intact of his dignity. But those fictional three seconds that never happened did what I needed them to do—they protected me, they protected Noah, and they served as payback to Jay for screwing my mom behind my dad’s back. I know Jay deserved it. I know he’s scum. But it’s not as if I can take the high road here.

Chapter Twenty-Two Noah The grassy, musty smell of old books fills my nostrils as I walk past tattered copies of Treasure Island and Moby Dick, the spines nearly breaking. As comfortable as I was as a kid with the divas of showbiz, with the velvet curtains, and late nights in lounges, I was equally at home in a library, the only place where my mom would leave me alone if she had to attend an audition. I find the small lecture room easily, and I slip in silently. The room is half full. A woman knits in the front row, and a man reads the paper in the back, and everyone is quietly waiting. I take a seat in the middle as Tremaine walks in. When he sees me, he stops briefly in his tracks, so quick it’s nearly unnoticeable. He nods and heads for the lectern. He clears his throat, says hello, and begins his talk. He chats about finding his passion, about how humor writing can help people learn to read, and about how important it is to chase your dreams. He talks too about the things that made him happy when he was a kid – reading, laughing, writing jokes. It amazes me that this guy is known for his sharp, espionage-centric hits, but literacy through comedy is what makes him tick. He doesn’t advertise these small moments in a library on a Sunday morning, but I’d heard he does them from time to time, and simply shows up, like

when Woody Allen used to appear at bars and play his sax. After he finishes he chats with some of the crowd. I wait for them to clear, then head to the lectern, extend a hand, and thank him. “I was surprised to see you here,” he says, and the small grin tells me my presence is not a bad surprise. “I had it on my calendar. I’m a big believer in following your dreams. It’s always good to hear others talk about it too,” I say, looking him in the eyes, letting him know I mean this earnestly. “I’m glad you enjoyed the talk.” “Hey, David,” I say, tossing out a question as we chat in the quiet room, surrounded by old and new books, and the quiet hum of the air conditioner. “What else made you happy when you were a kid?” He smiles, and claps me on a shoulder. “Besides books and writing? Well, do I need to say it? The girls. Always the girls.” I laugh deeply, and he joins me. “They do have a way of making the bad things seem better.” “Girls are vexing and wonderful. I’ll take the bad with the good and the good with the bad. That’s what I really want to write next. Screw all this spy stuff. I want to write a love story,” he says, as he begins packing up his messenger bag, sliding his notes into a side pocket. “What’s the setup?” “The guy’s been in love with a girl for years,” he says

quickly, as if it’s obvious. Maybe it is to him. Maybe it’s a story that comes from a certainty inside him. “Does he get the girl?” He winks as he slings his bag on his shoulder. “Tune in at eight and we’ll see.” “But of course not till the season finale,” I add. “And even then who knows if it’ll have a happy ending. Not all love stories do, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful.” I nod several times. “Truer words,” I say quietly, as we leave the room. “We’ll call it The One That Got Away.” A sad wistfulness drifts through my veins at the name. “There’s always a girl like that.” “Always,” he says, and he claps me on the back. Then I leave. Because I have a girl to see in Brooklyn in an hour.

Kennedy You have never seen eyes look like saucers until you’ve seen Amanda take in the visual feast of Lane for the first time. Oh, and that thing people do when their jaws drop? Picture Amanda as a cartoon character whose mouth plummets to the ground like a cash register drawer, then cha-chings back up.

“Amanda, this is Lane,” I say after we find Lane at a table inside a bustling Dr. Insomnia’s. The place is packed with Sunday afternoon coffee drinkers, and I have an hour with my friends before I meet Noah. “Lane, meet Amanda.” “It’s a pleasure,” Lane says as he rises and shakes her hand. Then, like a character from a romance novel, he plants a delicate kiss on her hand. She blushes the color of a fire engine. “Hi-lo,” she manages, some combination of “hi” and “hello.” “Dork,” I say, and we all sit down. Amanda laughs, then Lane asks if we want something. “Caramel mocha pour moi,” Amanda says. To me, Lane asks, “Espresso for you, Kennedy?” “Mais oui.” While he orders, Amanda leans forward and grips my hand so hard I swear the veins are going to burst. “Holy Mary, Mother of God. He is like Abercrombie & Fitch made real,” she says, as her eyes do their planet-size imitation. “He’s not bad looking,” I say with a shrug. “How are you not madly in love with him?” “It’s not like that,” I say softly. “No. It is like that. It should be like that. How do you hang out with him all the time and not want to pounce on him? You’ve been holding back on me, haven’t you?” “I swear, nothing has ever happened. And we’re just

going to prom as friends.” “You told me on Friday you thought he liked you.” “I think I was wrong. I think it’s just a friend thing.” “Can I have him then?” she says, like it’s a joke. But I can sense the sliver of truth in her question. “Sure,” I say, feeling generous, because I’m going to have to find a way to let Lane down gently about prom anyway now that I’m back with Noah. Maybe I can maneuver Amanda into going. Maybe Lane can take Amanda instead. Amanda reaches into her purse and reapplies her lip gloss, smacking her lips together. “For real?” “For real,” I say, then I snort like a pig just for her and tell her it’s my totally honest snort. “I just don’t get it. I don’t get how you guys can hang out and he’s so hot and you’re not into him. Are you in love with someone else? Do you have a secret lover I don’t know about? C’mon, now is the time to fess up.” Like I said, Amanda will be a great reporter someday. She just has this way of sniffing out the story. But I’m like a sleazy politician who knows how to fool the constituents, because all it takes is one quick, easy fib. “Yeah, the headmistress at the Agnes Ethel School,” I say, and Amanda cracks up. Lane returns with our drinks, doling them out with his winning smile before he sits down at the table. “So, Lane, how do you feel about Kennedy finally

bringing you out in public?” Amanda says with a wink. He laughs. “Clearly, I’m thrilled that she’s no longer embarrassed of me,” he says, segueing so easily into the conversation with Amanda. Soon the two of them are discussing everything from school to movies to the state of journalism, and it’s a volley rather than an inquisition, so I enjoy my espresso and the fact that I don’t have to navigate a new set of untruths. I join in from time to time, but mostly I let them do the talking and I let my mind wander to last night’s long-awaited reunion in Madison Square Park, to how wondrous it felt to be in Noah’s arms again, and to how I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care anymore about all the reasons I’m not supposed to do what I’m doing. I finish my drink and head to the counter for another, a little bit buzzed from the highlight reel I’ve just watched in my head. As I wait for my drink, my eyes wander to Amanda and Lane, who are chatting like they were born to chat with each other. When my drink is ready and I return to the table, Amanda is telling Lane about our English teacher who claims to be from Stratford-on-Avon, but she overheard him at a restaurant talking in a standard American accent. Lane laughs. “I wonder what other dark secrets he’s hiding.” I expect Lane to give me a look when he says dark secrets, a wink and a nod to my shared secrets. But he doesn’t. The remark is real and he means it for her. A tiny bead of some strange foreign feeling – maybe jealousy? –

snakes through me. Then I remind myself that Lane’s not mine, I have someone, and I don’t even know why I’d feel any envy at all. “He’s probably never even read Shakespeare. He probably does his class prep with Wikipedia,” Amanda says in her own version of a British accent. He leans in closer to her, narrows his eyes, and nods his head knowingly. “I have a feeling all the teachers in all the world are doing that very same thing. I’m convinced there is a vast conspiracy of Wikipedia-inspired teaching in all of high school.” “We really should uncover it,” Amanda says, scooting nearer too as she folds her hands together on the table. “Yes, let’s put your reporter skills to good use,” he says, and the weird, misplaced sensation worms its way faster through me, wriggling and squirming, and I tell it to stop, I shout silently at it to leave me alone because I don’t have feelings for Lane. Then it hits me. It’s not envy. It’s worry. It’s the fear of my worlds colliding. It’s the fear of Lane, who knows about Noah and my mom and all her affairs and all my lost friends, smashing into Amanda, who I’ve managed to shield from the dirty sides of my life. I’ve kept these two friends separate for so long, and now I understand why I erected a wall. Because I need them both, and I’m terrified of losing Amanda if she learns about my after-hours life, and my after-dark mother. I’m petrified of secrets leaking from the sordid side of my life into the

clean side. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and as they chatter more about their hypothetical plans to unveil the laziness of academia, I seize the opportunity to look. It’s Noah, telling me he’ll pick me up in twenty minutes on the corner of Jane Street and Eighth Avenue. I’m about to reply I’ll be there when another text pops up on my screen: Such a delight to have coffee with you, too, D. Until the next time … Forget the snake of worry. Now, it’s a dragon of rage because my mom sent a text to me that she meant to send to Amanda’s dad. I close my eyes and let the ball of anger course through me, traveling through my body, until I am gripping my phone so tight, I want to throw it across the coffee shop. “Excuse me.” I push back quickly, heading to the street, and call her. “There you are, baby. I’ve missed you.” “You sent me a text you meant for him,” I hiss. “ For D. Honestly, Mom. Can’t you even make sure your texts to your boyfriends go to them?” She gasps and it sounds so natural, like that’s exactly how she’d express the shock of a misdelivered text. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I meant to send that to Diana. She’s one of my new writers on the show and we just met to discuss a new storyline that I’m so excited about.” “Do you honestly think I believe that?”

“Baby, stop this. Please. There’s nothing going on at all with your friend’s father.” I seethe inside, and speak through gritted teeth. “Daniel, Mom. You know his name. You used it the other day.” “Daniel,” she says lightly as if it’s the first time she’s even breathed it. “Yes, that’s it. Daniel. Thank you for reminding me, dear.” “I have to go. I’m sure Diana’s storyline is just fantastic,” I say and stab my finger against the End Call button. I stare at the phone. The phone is my mom right now, the phone is all the things I can’t say to her, and all the ways I contort the truth too. I take a deep breath. I inhale. I count to three. I start to reply to Noah, the one thing that will calm me down. But my fingers are shaky and I mess up the words. I try again, and my fingers slip once more. I glare at the phone like it’s my mortal enemy, like it’s a teeny tiny little person with her arms folded across her chest, feet planted firm on the ground, standing guard against me. I flash my phone a dirty look as I chuck it at the sidewalk. But it’s a sturdy bastard, so when I pick it up, it’s still ticking. “You okay?” It’s Lane. “Fine,” I grumble. “What’s going on, Kennedy?” “Nothing. Stupid phone not working. It’s all frozen,” I lie. “Perhaps this might not be the best way to fix it though.”

“Where’s Amanda?” “Right here.” I turn around and Amanda’s standing on the sidewalk too, hands parked on her hips. “What’s going on?” “Nothing,” I mutter. “I have to go.” Amanda grabs my arm. “Hey. You just threw your phone on the sidewalk. You’re not leaving.” She turns to Lane and tips her forehead to the coffee shop. “We’ll be inside in a minute.” I love her for taking charge, for not letting Lane be the one to talk to me, even though he’s the one of them I could tell. He’s the one who knows about my mom. But he obeys, and retreats inside. Amanda wraps an arm around me. “Are you pissed at me for talking to Lane?” Amanda is very direct. Amanda is also very wrong. “No,” I say, taking some small comfort in my ability to tell the truth for one second. “Really?” She gives me a pointed look. “Really. I’m fine with it.” “Because it seemed like you were pissed that we were chatting.” “It’s fine. I swear it’s fine,” I say because I have to keep my worlds separate. The walls must be maintained. “Then why did you throw your phone?” Sometimes I contemplate telling Amanda about my

mom. But then I remember Catey, and how she’s gone from my life. A few months ago I ran into Catey at a nearby bookstore. While waiting for a coffee in the bookstore café, I scanned the crowds and saw her by the magazines. She raised her hand to wave, and I waved back. Before I could even process that it was the same Catey, the guy behind the counter handed me my drink, and when I turned around she was gone. I look at Amanda, at her blue-gray eyes, her long darkblond hair, looped into a low ponytail, and the prospect of us being reduced to a random bookstore encounter someday keeps my lips clamped shut. Although I want to tell her that our parents suck, that her dad is a jerk, and that my mom is the worst kind of woman, I know that if I open my mouth, the best friend from high school will be out the door too. “Just my mom giving me a hard time,” I say in my best irritated-with-my-parents voice. “She doesn’t want me to stay at my dad’s tonight, so she’s insisting I come home for dinner now.” Amanda looks at her watch. “It’s two. It’s not dinnertime.” I roll my eyes. “I know that. But she wants me to read a script before dinner, so I really have to go,” I say, then I lean in and give Amanda a big hug, so she can’t see my eyes, and know that I am half—half truth-teller, half liar, half daughter, half person. I assemble myself for the people I am with, to shield my secrets and to hide theirs. Right now, I loathe this chameleon I’ve become. “I’ll go say ‘bye to

Lane.” “I’m calling you later. You’re not acting like yourself,” Amanda says. “I wish you’d tell me what is really going on with your mom.” I wish I could. I wish I could stop it. I can’t though, so I’m just going to duck and hope it doesn’t hit where it hurts. “She’s just …” I trail off. “You know. Moms. They exist to drive you crazy.” “I do know that,” she says, and drapes an arm around me as we walk back inside Dr. Insomnia’s. She kisses me on the cheek and excuses herself to the restroom, while I say a quick good-bye to Lane. “You cool with me leaving you here?” “I am always cool,” he says. “I will be so cool in my powder-blue tux at prom in two weeks, don’t you think?” I fake laugh. Or I fake a laugh. I can’t tell. “Will you wear a powder-blue dress with ruffles?” he asks. “Definitely with ruffles,” I say, even though the words that should come out of my mouth are I’m back together with my

boyfriend so I can’t go. How does my mom pull this stuff off? How does she manage to juggle all those guys when I don’t even know what to say to Lane about Noah? Shakespeare was right about tangled webs.

Chapter Twenty-Three Noah My stomach drops when I see the name flashing across my screen. I take a deep breath and steel myself. As I leave the library I answer. “Hey,” I say, mustering up my best confident voice, reminding myself that Jewel hasn’t a clue I’m on my way to see her daughter. At least, I hope she doesn’t. And as crazy as this may seem, I’ve never truly lingered on how she’d react if she knew about Kennedy and me. I suppose I’ve always assumed that at some point Kennedy would be old enough for us to be open about it, and no one would need to know we started when she was younger. Yeah, that probably makes me naive. “Hello, you darling man. I wanted to check on the licensing deal we made for Lords and Ladies lipstick,” Jewel says, launching right into business, as she always does. Doesn’t matter to her that it’s two in the afternoon on a Sunday. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me either. I’ve always loved talking business with her, or any client. Right now, I couldn’t be happier to chat about lipstick with her because it means she doesn’t know the things I keep from her, so I do my best to ignore the prickly knot of guilt inside my chest. “And do you think the ruby red shade accurately

represents the Lords and Ladies brand promise?” she asks. “Absolutely. It’s the color of the show,” I say, then answer her other questions about other hues. As I walk and talk alongside the slow pace of Sunday traffic, I try to convince myself I can juggle Jewel’s career and romance her daughter at the same time. Surely, I can walk this tightrope. It is worth it. No one will ever know. When the call ends, I ring my friend Matthew, because I need distance between Jewel and Kennedy. I need him to bridge the call with her mom, and my date with my girl. We chat about sports, the new band he’s covering, then his trip to visit his brother in LA soon. “What are you up to now?” he asks, as I hail a cab. Once inside the yellow car, I tell him. “Meeting Kennedy. Seems we got back together.” He sighs heavily. “Be careful, mate. That’s all I can say. You just need to be careful.” “You’re not going to tell me to stop?” There’s a pause, and in that pause I almost want him to say yes. I want someone to hold up a hand and knock some sense into me. “Not my place to. And hey, you never know. Plenty of relationships have started on rockier shores.” “Right,” I say, pushing a hand through my hair, and leaning my head back against the seat. “I just want you to look out for yourself too. It’s a really

risky situation.” I nod, then thank him as I hang up. But honestly, I’m not even sure anymore what the greater risk is. I could lose Jewel, or I could lose Kennedy. At the moment though, there doesn’t seem to be any question which way I’m leaning. Especially not when the car pulls up to Eighth Avenue and Jane Street. She’s waiting on the corner, and a grin lights up her face that makes me forget anything but her.

Kennedy I try not to breathe in the scent of the sunflowers. Sunflowers reek, which is ironic considering how big and blazingly colorful they are. But the orchids are blooming by the lily pool terrace and they smell wonderful. We walk away from the smelly flowers and closer to the deliciously scented ones and now, here, and forever, all is right in the world. Noah’s hand is in mine, we are far away from Manhattan, and I’m surrounded by blankets of flowers, of succulent reds and delicate pinks and blinding oranges. I pull him into a secluded section of the gardens. The butterflies and dragonflies shield us as we kiss. I run my hands through his hair, my fingers sliding through the soft brown strands. It’s like coming home, the feel of him. He slants his mouth to me, his lips finding mine; the slow, sweet connection that was severed for months is back in

full force. He tugs me closer, his fingertips trailing along my cheek in a way that feels tender and hungry at the same time. As our lips fuse, and our breath mingles, I know right now neither one of us cares what anyone thinks of us, or if anyone is saying he’s too old for her or she’s too young for him, because this is New York City and we aren’t the only ones doing this. We aren’t the only ones with a few years between us. “Are you really mine again?” he whispers with some kind of wonder in his voice. I nod, sighing happily into his embrace. “Yes. I really am.” We spend the rest of the afternoon wandering. First the Herb Garden. “This is my kind of place. What’s better suited for a vegetarian than rosemary and sage?” “I’m suddenly hungry for a salad,” he says, stroking his chin playfully. Then we stroll through the Shakespeare Garden, which is bathed in green, with its lush bushes, trees, and shrubbery. “It would be funny if Shakespeare really wrote here,” I say. “The Bard in Brooklyn,” Noah says, musing on the words. Then he snaps his fingers. “Hey! That sounds like the name of a musical.” “You should produce The Bard in Brooklyn. That could be your next career move. Backing musicals. You know that’s what you really want to do.” “I’m going to be a revival man all the way though,” he

says. He holds out an arm grandly, like a character in a musical about to launch into a show-stopping number. “I can see it now.” “You should work with Davis Milo. Wasn’t he going to direct that revival of Chess?” He nods. “Supposedly it’s being workshopped. But those things take forever.” “I’ll wait for it. I’ll be there opening night.” He stops walking and faces me. “I’m taking you.” “Or I’m taking you,” I toss back. “You know what you need to do? Once you start producing musicals, you need to have this kick-ass one-line bio in Playbill, like the one Cameron Mackintosh has. You know what his Playbill bio says?” “Of course. And I would do the same.” So, we say the next line in unison: “Noah Hayes produces musicals.” “See? How much better does it get than that?” “It doesn’t.” “It’s as if it says, ‘This is my mark on the world, and it’s so powerful all I need is one verb and one noun.’” “That’s all I’ve ever wanted too: name, verb, noun. Done.” Out of nowhere, I spot a flash of gray hair. A familiar lopsided grin. A pair of narrow brown eyes. The hair on my neck stands on end. Jay Fierstein. My mom’s former lover, my dad’s former business partner. I spin around, my heart racing, my skin crawling. But I don’t see him anywhere. Noah keys in on me. “Hey. You okay there?” he asks,

concerned. “Did you see someone you know?” “Jay Fierstein,” I say as I scan for the bastard. “Your dad’s not in business with him anymore, right?” I stop searching for Jay’s beady brown eyes. He’s gone. I look at my boyfriend. “How did you know?” “K, it’s been a few months. I hear things.” “Did my mom tell you that?” “Probably,” he says, flustered a bit at my questions. “What do you know about him?” I park my hands on my hips. For some reason, it bothers me that this family secret has leaked out. “Not much, counselor. Why are you quizzing me?” “I don’t know,” I say, sighing and jamming my hand in my hair. Now I’m pissed at myself for being pissy with Noah. “It’s just …” “Hey,” he says softly. “You can tell me.” A thought flashes through my mind. Can I tell him that I threw Jay under the bus? If Jay is following me, does that mean Jay’s back together with my mom? Why is Noah even asking me these questions? A horrible thought attacks my brain. Would Noah use me to stay close to his biggest client? To ferret out information about my mom that would help him keep her? My mind races rapid-fire over our relationship, hunting out moments that would reveal his intentions were less than pure. I don’t find any, but just like that, I’m doubting him. Try as I might to swat the thoughts away, they’re in my head,

implanted, like a listening device. I remind myself that he has so much to lose by being with me. He’s only with me for me. But as we leave the Gardens, I want to punch both my parents. This is what happens when you know too many secrets and you’ve grown up with too many lies. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. You both suck. * That evening I join my dad at the dining room table. He has an intense look on his face as he flips through several crisp white legal-size pages. My mom, I bet. She’s probably bugging him for something. I bet she wants to stop paying him alimony. Part of me was shocked when I learned he was taking alimony. The guy was steel and never let on he knew she cheated, but he deigned to take money? “What’s going on?” I ask as I plop down onto the chair. He doesn’t answer. I watch him as he shifts his jaw, nearly grinding his teeth. “What’s wrong, dad?” He sighs, his shoulders rising briefly, then shakes his head almost imperceptibly. “Jay,” he hisses in a low voice. I stop breathing. Air whooshes out of my lungs. “What do you mean?” “This,” he says, and stabs the papers with his index finger. “He’s suing me.”

My jaw drops. “What? Why?” “Breach of this. Breach of that. Trying to put me on the line for the business split.” My blood turns cold. He banged my mom, he follows me, he sues my dad. My father gives me a pointed look. “Kennedy, I don’t know what you ever saw in him. I truly do not understand how you even wanted to kiss him. Even if it was only three seconds.” My father looks sickened. I cast my eyes downward, ashamed that I have to keep up the lie. “Dad,” I say, but I don’t know what comes next or what else I’m supposed to say. All I know is I don’t want him to know the truth. He thinks I was in love with Jay. “I’m going to call him and let him know exactly what I think.” “No,” I say as my heart speeds up. I don’t want my dad to know I lied to him all these months about Jay. I don’t want him to think I’m just as bad as my mom in the honesty department. “I mean, it’s not worth it. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m over him,” I say, proffering up a lie, another layer to the big lie. “Just leave that part alone, Dad. Please. Please, just don’t talk to him about me. I don’t feel a thing for him anymore. I promise.” He presses his teeth together again, gritting them behind his closed lips. This is gnawing away at him. I can tell by the way he holds everything in, the way he tries to be impervious. But the act of keeping it all together ties him in knots instead. Watching him, I am awash in guilt because

of the lies I’ve told, the lies I tell. Like mother, like daughter. He shakes his head. “Kennedy, the man let you kiss him for three seconds. Do you have any idea how much I want to erase those three seconds from recorded history?” He slams a fist against the wood table. “But I shut my mouth then. For you. Because you begged me to. And now, he has the audacity to sue me? Me? To sue me?” I want to tell my dad that I think Jay is horrible, that he is a backstabber. Because Jay is. But if I say the truth, I’ll look suspicious. So I weave more fables. “It was one tiny kiss and he pushed me away. I swear. It was nothing,” I say, and I wonder if my mom ever felt as awful as I do now when she lied to my dad. Because I feel disgusting. “And if you talk to him, you’re just going to get mad. And it’s going to inflame him. It’s going to set him off and things will be worse. You have to be cool. You have to be above it all. You have to handle this through a lawyer and not let on anything about”—I suck back in the gulp I feel as I spew a lie —“about one stupid three-second kiss.” He eyes me suspiciously. “Was it only one kiss?” “I’ve told you. That’s all it was; the rest was me making up stuff I thought I wanted,” I say, and to have to tell these fibs again tastes like gravel in my mouth, though I’m ever grateful he only saw pieces of the letter. “Just go through your lawyer and I am sure he can get Jay to back off.” I reach out and pat my dad’s hand, then grasp it. He squeezes back, holding on tight, and I watch him for a

moment, so unraveled, so rattled by this. I am responsible, I’ve brought him to this. I feel dirty, I feel tainted, but I also feel relieved. I’m getting my way, I’m getting what I want, and I’m keeping my own secret. It’s worth it, right? This kind of love doesn’t come around often, and you have to seize it, fight for it, and protect it if need be. To finally return to a good love—well, I’ll gladly pay the price for it.

Chapter Twenty-Four Noah “And I can reserve the booth in the back?” I ask, tipping my forehead to the quiet table, tucked out of the way. “Absolutely, sir,” the woman in the crisp black skirt and white blouse tells me, as she taps on the computer screen at the hostess stand. She studies the screen, then lifts her face to flash a smile. She rattles off the date – Kennedy’s birthday. “Eight p.m. that evening. It’s all yours.” “Great,” I say, then give her my name for the reservation at Happy Cow, a vegetarian restaurant that Matthew’s wife, Jane, raved about as the best in the city since she, like Kennedy, doesn’t eat meat. I could have made the reservation online or on the phone, but I wanted to see the restaurant first, check out the tables, and make sure I secured the best one for her birthday night. I have gifts for her too—a new addition to her necklace that I had specially made, and a night to ourselves at a quiet inn in a small town along the coast of Connecticut, far, far away from New York City. As I leave and enter the details in my phone, I imagine a red circle around the date. The red circle would say “FREE.” But does her eighteenth birthday really change a thing?

Yes. No. Maybe. An arbitrary line in the sand, she’ll still be barely starting college. And I’ll still be here—a guy in a suit, owning an apartment, doing all the things I do on the other side of college. The age difference doesn’t bother me, but I’d be an idiot to think it wouldn’t bother others. My only hope is that it won’t matter to the people I need in my life—my boss, my clients, my business. But then I remind myself that showbiz is the world where anything goes, where labels and judgment are reserved for critics and about content. Not about personal choices. Lifestyle choices. Romantic entanglements. I click over to my playlist and turn on “There’s No Business like Show Business,” sending a wish to the panel of imaginary judges of my life and choices, that my chosen field will somehow give me some immunity. My cell phone buzzes as I reach the crosswalk. I grab it. I don’t recognize the number. For a split second, I flash back to the gardens, to Kennedy’s worries about Jay, to the unfounded fear that somehow Jewel has me by the balls now. I tell the fear to screw off and answer it anyway. “Hayes here.” “Hey, it’s Tremaine. Want to get lunch and talk about The One That Got Away?” “I do.”

Kennedy A few days later I ride around the city in a town car with Noah after school. He has thirty minutes free before an early dinner with a client. We talk and make out, but mostly we make out. He drops me off two blocks from my mom’s house, and I cup his cheeks and plant a searing good-bye kiss on his lips. “See you tomorrow. Somehow,” I whisper. “Somehow,” he echoes and then I walk away. I reach my block and stop short when I see another letter. It’s tacked up to the street sign a few feet away from our front steps. Unease runs through me. How many letters have I dropped? How many have fallen from my backpack? I look at the letter on the street sign. It’s the James Joyce we left for Bailey last week. Again. I see a note scrawled in pencil on the bottom.

Did you have to read Ulysses in English class? What did you think? I hated it.

Of course I hated Ulysses, but why are you asking me and who are you?

I glance up and down my street, as if I can sweep the block for the culprit. I see no one, so I figure it could just be some Upper West Side smarty-pants type who found this copy floating down the block and decided to offer his or her two cents. Someone who just had to weigh in on James Joyce. But as I walk up the steps to my mom’s brownstone, I haven’t managed to fool myself. After all, Bailey called my mom the other day about a postcard. Now, she must have figured out the whole thing. I stop at the door, my hand hovering over the doorknob, as I weigh the scenarios, and the possibility of Bailey stirring things up. Since nobody knows for sure that I sent the letters, would it be such a bad thing if Bailey confronted my mom on her own? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be a very good thing? Isn’t this everything I’ve ever wanted? A sly smile creeps onto my face. The letters are returning; but they’re not coming back to me. They’re on track to hit the person who messed up all these lives.

Her. Maybe by seeing her actions slam into her face, she’ll stop. This is what I have wanted all along. As I walk inside she gets the first word in. “I went shopping for you today, darling.” I’m taken aback, so I take off the gloves. “You didn’t have to do that.” “I wanted to get you some early birthday presents. Now, come sit down, so I can show you all these delicious purchases.”

She pats the couch and I take the spot next to her. My stomach rumbles. I didn’t eat much today. “Want me to make you something?” “I’m fine.” “I can make you a toasted peanut butter and honey sandwich if you want,” she says. My favorite food of all time. I wish she was all bad. I shake my head and gesture to the shopping bags at her feet. She rubs her hands together, then considers each bag. “Ah, let’s go through this one first,” she says. She dips her hand into a white shopping bag with the words “Les Bijoux” in curlicue script on the side. “First, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice for you to have something extra pretty for college, and I found this gorgeous piece.” She extracts a silver necklace with a gleaming faux diamond pendant hanging in the middle. “It’s beautiful,” I say. “Put it on.” She unhooks the necklace, pushes my hair off my neck, and fastens it. The pendant falls above my charm necklace. I touch the silver strands of the new one. “It’s perfect for your eyes.” She doesn’t suggest I take off my charms, even though her fancy jewelry would look better riding solo on my neck. For this, I’m glad. She doesn’t know where my charms came from, but she knows I wear them every day. She knows I don’t take off the charms. She knows me so well. She digs into another bag and pulls out a handful of the

soft faded tees I like. One is dusty pink with a green stylized dinosaur, another light blue with an upside-down monkey, still one more is black with a pair of cat’s-eyes in the upper right hand corner. From another bag she gives me new jeans—the size and style I like. “You were always a good shopper,” I say. My mom can shop for anyone. I’ve never once had to return an item she bought for me, and I’ve never once faked liking something, like I do when I’m reading her scenes. “It’s good to know if the writing thing doesn’t work out, I can always have a fallback career as a personal shopper.” “Mom, I think the writing has already worked out,” I say, reassuring her. She twists her own necklace absently, a doublestranded heavy gold braid. “I’m worried about the story arc for next season. They say you’re only as good as the next season and this one’s a mess, Kennedy. A total mess.” “I’m sure it’s not a mess. You’re a great writer.” Another twist on her necklace. “I just don’t know …” “Mom, it’ll be fabulous! LGO will be thrilled. Your fans will love it,” I say, and I mean it with my whole heart. My mom breathes out. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I rely on you. How much I trust you. You’re the only one who I know is telling me the truth.” A sad thought flickers through my mind—does my mom distrust everyone too? “Do you want to do something tonight? Go see a movie? Go out to dinner? Just us girls.”

“Sure. Let’s go out. Let’s go to Mr. Pickles,” I say quickly because she sounds so damn eager and hopeful. I don’t want to crush her. She beams. “Your favorite sandwich shop.” “How can you argue with a sandwich shop that offers not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six vegetarian sandwich options?” “I can’t argue. Especially not when the roast beef with pesto mayo and corn spread on grilled sourdough is positively divine.” She stands up, reaches for her ruby-red purse, the size of a feedbag, and nods toward the door. “Let me change first. I want to put on my new clothes.” Her sweetness is almost enough to make me forget what I overheard the other day. It’s nearly enough to erase the accidental text message she sent me. But I have to stay strong. She has my best friend’s father in her crosshairs, and I am tired, I am so damn tired, of all the collateral damage from her affairs. I can’t let the clothes and the kindness and the way I am the only one wear me down once more. When I reach my room, I empty my new sartorial booty on my red chair. I take off the jeans and brown lacy tank I wore for my “car date” earlier and pull on the blue monkey T-shirt, then the new jeans. I move over to the door and consider my outfit in my full-length mirror. I’m still wearing the new necklace, which doesn’t quite match the rest of the ensemble, and my charms. It’s kind of a haphazard look. I peer closely, and I swear I can see whisker burn on my chin,

around my lips. I touch my face, feeling for the remnants, the marks of kissing someone who has a five-o’-clock-shadow. I can see them. Does my mom not see them? I lean my nose to my neck and sniff myself, wondering if I smell like him, if I smell like I’ve been kissed by a man. I can smell his scent on me. In the mirror, I can see all these parts of me. I can see all the different pieces, all the ways I assemble myself for different people—for Noah, for Lane, for Amanda, for Caroline, for my dad, for my mom. For me. I don’t look like myself. I don’t look like a girl who’s about the pull the rug out from under her mom. But that’s who I’m about to become.

Chapter Twenty-Five Kennedy The next day, I make a mental note of Caroline’s shoes—a satiny taupe—as I walk in the door. I say hello, but I don’t give her a chance to make shrinkie-dink small talk. I dive in. “I’m seeing Noah again, nobody knows, my mom is fooling around with Amanda’s dad, Lane asked me to prom and I said yes, Jay Fierstein is following me around and also suing my dad, the women I leave letters for are figuring it out and calling, and someone is also sending letters back to me by leaving them on my doorstep.” The corner of Caroline’s lips curls up. “Just your average week in between visits.” “Also, I decided that I’m going to send more letters to everyone, so eventually this whole thing blows up on my mom and she’s forced to stop.” Caroline raises an eyebrow. “Really? You think she’ll stop?” I nod, my jaw set. I’m resolute. “She’ll have to. She’ll have no choice. Her covers will all be blown.” Caroline purses her lips. “I’m not so sure you can do that to an addict.” “I’d be forcing her to hit bottom,” I say, my voice rising as I stab the air for emphasis. “What choice would she have?”

“She’s an addict, Kennedy. A junkie. You can’t force her to hit bottom. She has to find it on her own,” Caroline says, her tone so calm that it rankles me. “She’ll find it this time. She’ll have to.” “Bottom isn’t something other people make you find.” “I’m expediting it for her. Moving things along.” “And then what happens?” “Then I move out, go to college, move in with Noah, and live happily ever after,” I say, holding my hands out wide as if to say isn’t it obvious. Caroline nods. She doesn’t scoff or smirk or laugh. She should do those things. I recognize the incredulity in what I’ve just said. But it’s also what I desperately want. “How are things with Noah now that you’re back together?” “Never been better,” I say, straightening my spine, energy coursing through me as I think of him, and how being back with him is like having gravity work correctly again. “Are you going to tell your dad this time? That you’re involved with your mother’s agent?” I shrug. Consider my cuticles. Tug at a dead piece of skin. “Do you think you should?” Another shrug. Another push of my finger into the nailbed. I don’t meet her eyes. “Kennedy. Look at me.” The tone in her voice, strong and

commanding, forces me to look up. “I think you should. I’m just going to say it. I definitely think you should. You and Noah have enough challenges in this relationship and the least you can do is start it honestly.” “My dad will flip.” “How do you know?” “Um, maybe because he flipped in the first place when he found the letter!” “And you told him the letter was to Jay. To his forty-fiveyear-old business partner. Not to your mother’s twentysomething agent. So it’s hard to know what he’d do, isn’t it?” “He has a history of flipping,” I say through clenched teeth. “And you know what? I don’t need this crap from my parents anymore. I am this close,” I say, holding up my hand and showing a sliver of space between my thumb and index finger, “to getting out of their homes. I don’t need to mess it up.” “What are you going to do?” I flash back to my kamikaze rides through traffic, to the balancing act I pull off of weaving daredevil-style through cars and cabs and buses. I can do that. I can do anything. “Not mess it up.” “Okay then,” Caroline says, and folds her arms across her chest, imitating me. “Okay then,” I say, like a copycat. She skips a beat, waits for me. “Kennedy,” she begins,

and tells me I am setting myself up to be hurt even more by my mom. She tells me too that relationships with older men rarely work. “You’re wrong. You’re just wrong,” I say, crossing my arms. We have reached an impasse. She doesn’t bend, and I won’t either. When I leave, I am fueled by tankers full of frustration. I am driven by years of the pent-up pressure of secrets and lies. I want to light them up, watch them catch fire and burn into the night sky. I am huffing and puffing when I meet Lane downstairs. “We need to send more letters. Lots of them,” I inform him. He shakes his head, clucks his tongue. “Kennedy, I think it’s time we call this whole thing off.” “No,” I say, tension reaching new heights inside my bones. “I have to do this. I want to finish the amends. I want to do this right. I can’t do it without you.” “Kennedy. Let’s just get a coffee.” “I don’t want to just get a coffee. I want to finish this off. C’mon. I’m leaving the Balzac letter tonight. My favorite love letter ever and you know it.” He raises one eyebrow curiously. “I thought you’d never leave the Balzac, since it came out of an affair.” “It’s for Mrs. Steigler,” I say, staring at him sharply. Using her name. He knows what happened with her. The name should jar him.

But it doesn’t. He shakes his head. “K,” he says in a low voice. “I think we need to stop this. Let’s do something else. Plan a skydiving trip. Go bungee jumping. White water rafting.” I grit my teeth and purse my lips. “Please.” He sighs, shakes his head. “You’re on your own.” But, really, that’s all I’ve ever been. * I know Mrs. Steigler. Well, know is a loaded word. I don’t know what she does for a living, how old she is, or even her true hair color. But I know she cares deeply about keeping her family together. I know because she told me. She tried to stop my mom through me. She is any woman. She is everywoman. She is the devastated face of a woman scorned. I’m not even sure how my mom’s affair with her husband began, but I can tell you how it ended in excruciating detail because the cuckolded wife caught on. The conversations I overheard between my mom and Mr. Steigler indicated something bad was about to go down. Mr. Steigler said things to my mom like “I think my wife might suspect something,” and my mom said things like “How much do you think she knows?” That’s why I was enlisted in the cover-up. I was told to

answer the phone any time it rang from here on out. My mom was only taking calls from her agent. This rule applied to both the home phone and the cell phone, since evidently Mrs. Steigler had found a potentially incriminating text exchange on Mr. Steigler’s phone, which meant she now had the mobile number of a certain LGO showrunner and was dialing it A LOT. The orders from on high were clear. Never give in, never surrender. My mom figured Mrs. Steigler would eventually stop calling if she only reached a gatekeeper. In a one-week period during my junior year of high school I fielded no less than twenty phone calls from Mrs. Steigler. I put on my smile each time, saying “Ms. Stanza isn’t available. May I take a message?” Sometimes I delivered the messages, but mostly I just pretended to write them down, while I closed my eyes and cringed as Mrs. Steigler said through her teary rage, “Please tell her I want to know how she could do this to another woman.” One morning I saw her across the street. She stood on the opposite side of the block, wearing dark sunglasses, a raincoat, and what was obviously a long black wig. I wanted to go to her, to put an arm around her, maybe even give her a hug, to tell her he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth anyone’s tears. She came to me, instead, running across the street, cutting me off. “Please tell her to stop,” she said, her palms pressed together as if in prayer.

Someone had just punched a hole in my chest. I could feel my skin and bones collapsing around my heart. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered, letting my hair fall around my face like a shield. “Yes, you do. You’ve been answering the phone. All I want is for it to end. All I want is for her to stop.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, like the cover-up robot I’d become. “Please. We have a daughter too,” she said, grasping for something, anything, to get me to go along with her. “I have to go,” I said, my heart caving in. She grabbed my sleeve. “I’m begging you,” she said, her voice like gravel. I never said anything to my mom about the incident. If I had told her, she’d just have laughed. My mom would end it when she was good and ready. Two weeks later, Mr. Steigler stopped coming by. I knew it had nothing to do with Mrs. Steigler’s time frame and everything to do with Jewel Stanza’s. When Jewel Stanza is done with a man is when Jewel Stanza is done with a man.

Our Stolen Kisses Sometimes, I picture all the kisses to come. The places we’ll have them. I see us kissing in the rain on a cobblestoned street in Paris, under the sun while strolling on a San Diego beach, next to a waterfall in Kauai. I don’t just imagine what the kisses will be like though, because I know they’ll be wonderful. I think about how we’ll feel. If we’re in Paris, in San Diego, in Kauai, we’ll feel free. That’s what I long for the most. The freedom to be in those places with you. The freedom to be anyplace with you. Someday, right?

Chapter Twenty-Six Kennedy For the first time in months, Lane and I go our separate ways after a shrink appointment. I do not go home. I do not call Noah. I do not get coffee. Instead, I tell my mom I’m with my dad and I tell my dad I’m with my mom, and I spend the next few hours doing my best approximation of a bike messenger, crisscrossing the grid of Manhattan, making my deliveries around the island, even as it rains, even while the drops mat my hair and turn my clothes into wet layers I’ll have to peel off later. I feel nothing as I tack up the letters outside homes, near doorjambs, around archways. I’m only creating these public displays because that’s how we’ve done it, though what matters are the words inside the envelopes, hidden for now behind addresses and stamps, but soon to be revealed when they arrive in cramped New York City mailboxes. Anticipation runs under my skin, the wish that I could speed up time, like a movie reel watched in fast-forward, until I reach the scene when my mom’s life comes crashing down, splintering into broken pieces around her. I’d watch that scene in slow motion, with a bowl of popcorn, hitting Rewind over and over, popping kernels into my mouth. I wouldn’t laugh, but I’d be satisfied. Because that scene would mean I’d made it to the other side.

Somewhere in the East Eighties, the rain stops and the streets glisten. I cross back over to the West Side, taking pride in my ability to maintain my catlike agility even on a slick New York City street. I slow down when I reach the final house, one that’s just a few blocks away from the brownstone where I grew up with both my parents, the place where my mom still lives. I hop off my bike, walking it down the street with my hands pressed lightly against the handlebars. I turn the corner onto the block I’m targeting and as I do I have this sense that I’m being followed. I turn around quickly, expecting to see Jay Fierstein. But he’s not around. I push a few strands of drenched hair off my face and pull my wet shirt away from my skin. I keep walking, my bike alongside me, tense and watching. I have that feeling again, so I stop again. The result’s the same—no one darts into a doorway or slinks behind a potted plant to hide. I hop back on my bike and ride up and down the block, but I don’t see anyone I might know. I resume my task. I affix the final letter to the doorway of Mr. and Mrs. Steigler’s brownstone, wondering what color her hair really was beneath the wig. Did she stay with him? Did she stay together for their daughter? Does her daughter know? I’ll never know. I’ll never know how the others were affected by my mother’s choices. I won’t ever know who else has a black hole in her heart from the lies that tunneled

through it. One of the letters won’t stay put and it blows away. I tape up the rest. I reach into my backpack and take out the stamped, sealed envelopes—letters to many of the wives of many of the men who’ve spent time in my mother’s bed over the years. The Balzac. They can all have the Balzac. They can all have my favorite—the words the French novelist Honoré de Balzac had sent to the very married countess Eveline Hańska. It was a tragic love, and a wrong love, and yet their letters were beautiful and spoke to the kind of deep, abiding, lifelong love you could feel for someone. It’s time for the wronged to know. It’s time for me to get rid of the brick in my chest that’s weighed me down my whole life. I need to kick the past where it belongs—out of the way of my future.

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them. I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me. As for my heart, there you will always be …

I spot a blue mailbox at the end of the street and dump this stack of letters into its big blue mouth, willing them to arrive quickly, because this time the letters aren’t anonymous. This time they’ve been signed by my mom. I know how to forge her name. * I stop at a nearby bench and lean Joe against the back of it. I sit down, pull out my phone and call Noah. “Please tell me you’re at my house right now,” I say. He laughs, that sexy laugh he has. “Nope. Didn’t even get a summons to appear. But you know I’ll meet you anywhere you want. Say the word, K.” My body feels warm, like it’s humming, buzzing even, from the way he says K. A knowing smile surfaces on my face, a private little grin between this man and me, this man on the other side of this island, a few miles from me. “Tell me about your day. The best parts—the food you ate, the music you listened to.” I close my eyes as he shares the details of his lunchtime Chinese chicken salad with David Tremaine and his afternoon listen to the cast album of Once while he worked on contracts for clients. “You left something out, Noah,” I say, sounding like a flirt and loving it.

“What did I leave out, Kennedy?” he asks, flirting back. “What you wore to work today.” “Charcoal-gray pants. Black shoes. Silver disco shirt.” I laugh. “That I want to see.” “I told you I was half raised by drag queens.” “And now?” “T-shirt and shorts.” “You look good in a T-shirt and shorts,” I say, remembering the outfit he wore to the Yankees game last summer. “You should come over then,” he says, and I can hear in his voice how much he wants me to. I can hear his hunger. It matches mine. “I want to,” I say, and I’m surprised at how bold I’m being, but I want to be there with him. Plus, if he’s not at my house, it likely means a man is at my house, which means I really don’t want to be at my house. An idea strikes me. “I’ll call you right back.” “I’ll be waiting.” I hang up and dial Amanda. “What are you doing?” “Staring at my phone, waiting for you to call. And you did. My life is complete,” she says, then emits a playful sigh. “Seriously. What are you doing?” “You’ll laugh.” “I won’t.” “No. You will. It’s so lame. Especially since my parents

aren’t even here.” My ears prick up. This is the sort of intel I was hoping for. “Tell me,” I insist. “Reading the news.” I laugh. “See! I told you you’d laugh.” “You’re such a news junkie. It’s cute,” I say, then shift gears. “Where are your parents?” “My mom is out of town at a conference in Miami. She’s speaking at it, presenting or something. And my dad is out at some work thing, but he said it’s supposed to run super late. Wink-wink.” I wither inside, a small part of my heart turning blacker, but I press on. “Do you still think he’s fooling around?” “Totally. I’m sure he’s with the wench tonight. Like I can’t figure out what it means that he’s at a ‘networking thing that’s going to run super late’ when my mom is out of town.” We chat for a few more minutes, then I tell her I need to get on my bike and ride downtown to my dad’s. Instead I call Noah. “I’m on my way. I’m riding over. See you in seven minutes,” I say. My mom’s used me to cover up for her for years; it’s only fair that I get to use her affairs to cover up my tracks. I’m lying to both my parents tonight, but they have each used me in their own way to hurt each other, to help themselves. I’m only doing what they taught me, I reason, as I race across town, without a soul in Manhattan, in the whole

world, knowing where I am tonight. As the warm air whips past me on Fifth Avenue, I hardly feel like a girl still in high school for one more week. I hardly am. I might still spend seven hours a day there, but I am a girl of this city. Knowing how to navigate Manhattan is the class I excel most in. New York is my real school. I’ve learned everything I’ve needed to survive from this city. I reach his building and walk my bike into his lobby, saying hello to the doorman who knows me, and tells me he’ll lock my bike up in the storage room. I thank him and head to the sixth floor, where my boyfriend opens the door looking super hot and super sexy in his shorts and T-shirt. “You look like you got caught in the rain,” he says, eyeing my wet hair and damp clothes. “I did. Earlier.” “I like your hair like that. But then again, I like your hair any way you wear it,” he says, fingering a strand of my wet hair. “These jeans are kind of sticking to me.” I point to my blue jeans. “Do you like boxers?” I nod, and he takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. He squeezes tight, his touch a signal that I’m his, and he’s mine. It is a small, but potent reminder, that he likes every part of touching me, and I feel the same for him. He walks me to his bedroom and offers me several pairs of boxers to choose from. I take a plaid pair, and then ask for

a shirt. “Take your pick,” he says and I choose my favorite purple one, trailing my fingernails down the front as I glance suggestively at him I go to his bathroom and change, leaving my slightly damp clothes hanging on the shower curtain to dry. When I walk into his bedroom, he’s lying on top of the navy comforter, hands behind his head. He says nothing, just raises an eyebrow in appreciation of my new outfit. One that brands me even deeper as his. Here, in his clothes again, I am showing my loyalty. To him. These clothes are the sign, even though we are the only ones who know that I belong to him. I bring the collar of the shirt to my nose, and inhale him. My eyes flutter closed and when I open them, his are darker and completely fixed on me. “Come here,” he says, in a hot, husky voice. I’ve never seen so much desire in his eyes, so much heat. “Come here now.”

Noah As she walks to the bed, I picture that red circle on the calendar. But it slips from my mind in a second in the curve of her hips, the look in her eyes, the way she licks her lips once, her tongue darting out. My body is a tightrope. My blood heats and my skin burns with want for her, especially when she reaches the

bed and crawls to me on her hands and knees. In. My. Clothes. My throat is dry, and my lungs are on fire as she slinks closer. My hands are at my sides, balled into fists. Clenched. Want thunders through me, and it’s nearly impossible to keep my hands off her. Not when she drops her mouth to mine. Not when she scoots on top of me, poised above me. Not when she laces her hands in my hair, and kisses me hard. Harder than she ever has. We’ve always excelled at the slow and soft kisses; the measured, controlled ones. The kisses where you melt into each other. But this feels like a first. Because it’s raw and heated, and she clutches at me tightly, her hands sliding out of my hair to grip my shoulders as our lips crash together, and we swallow each other’s moans. In this moment, I barely know how I’ve managed to keep my hands above her waist all those times we were together last year, and I hardly know how to do it now. Or if I even can anymore. Because when I pull gently on her lower lip with my teeth, she gasps in the sexiest, sweetest way. It kills my resolve. I shift her off me, and in seconds, she’s flat on her back on my bed, and I’ve pushed up her shirt and am kissing the soft skin of her stomach, licking a path up her body. Before I even realize it, she’s unbuttoning her shirt—my shirt—and then her breasts are exposed. I freeze. Because she’s so fucking beautiful, and she’s here for me. Of all the choices she could make, she’s chosen me, and I never want to break that trust.

I don’t move. I just stare. Like it’s the first time I’ve seen breasts. It’s not, but it’s the first time she’s stripped off her top for me, and her body calls out to me like a siren song of longing. “Touch me,” she whispers. I don’t move. I just stay there, poised above her, the muscles in my arms taut. This is another line in the sand. The moment when I touch her in more intimate ways. I shut my eyes, but by the time I’ve opened them seconds later I’ve found no reason not to obey her wishes. Soon, I am kissing and touching and tasting her breasts, and she’s arching her back into me, threading her fingers through my hair. Every lift of her hips, every move in her body urges me on. She moans and gasps, and tugs me even closer. At some point, I break apart, stopping only to kiss her, and when I do, it reminds me that above the waist is a safer zone. For now. “Noah?” she whispers, my name a question. “Yes?” “Do you want to?” I laugh once. “Of course. But we can’t.” “When can we?” I run my fingertips along the column of her neck. “When I can take you away from here. When we can go away somewhere. Someplace special. Just you and me. I want

everything to be amazing for you. Do you want that?” She nods. “Yes. But I want you now too,” she says, and her voice is breathy and desperate and the closeness to her is killing me. “You have no idea how much I want you,” I grit out, never taking my eyes off her. She rubs her thigh against me, and I groan from the touch. “Actually, I kind of do know,” she says in a murmur that makes me smile. “Well, what can I say? Touching you turns me on,” I tell her. She ropes her arms around me. “Touch me more then,” she says, her voice a bare plea. The need in her green eyes, the quick lift of her hips, breaks me down. “Are you sure?” I ask carefully, raising an eyebrow. She nods and breathes out. “So sure.” Then she chases it with a barely audible please, Noah, and I am lost to her wishes, I am drowning in this untamed desire for the girl I love madly. She dips her thumbs into my boxer shorts, and pushes them down her legs. I take them off the rest of the way, my hands gently caressing her legs as I return to her. She is naked before me and I am in awe. It is such a privilege to touch her like this. It’s like being given a Stradivarius, something precious and rare, and you must treat it with reverence. I start slow, listening to her cues. Soon, I am touching her

and tasting her and crossing all the lines, but she’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever had. She responds like a dream, moving like water, sounding like a poem. She becomes a blissful mix of noise and motion, and then complete abandon, as her hands grip my hair and my lips consume her. She arches, then cries out, and nothing, nothing, nothing has ever been better than this. A minute later, I am next to her, waiting to feel shame or disgust. She might be legal, but she’s not eighteen yet. Even so, the only emotion I feel is utter rightness. She wedges her body into mine, grabs a fistful of my shirt, and asks me to take it off. “We are not going there,” I warn her. Like I can suddenly lay down the law when I already proved I can keep moving the line. “I just want to feel you,” she says, as she removes my shirt, and spreads her hands across my chest, then my waist. Her touch is extraordinary, and that tightrope is stretched as far as it can go. I want so much more of her, but I have every faith in the world that it will happen soon enough. When it’s supposed to. This certainty in her, and us, and the future is one of the greatest things I’ve ever known. “You’re going to make love to me someday soon, aren’t you?” she asks, her eyes wide and innocent. “Yes. I am. And that’s exactly what it’s going to be,” I say, cupping the back of her head, and pulling her close. “I know,” she whispers quietly into my chest. “I know.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven Kennedy At precisely six fourteen the next morning, Joe and I arrive at the steps to my mom’s house. She’s not an early riser, so I’m positive she’s still nestled in her California King–size bed, a black satiny mask covering her eyes. Amanda’s dad will be long gone; she probably sent him home sometime in the middle of the night. I carry Joe up the steps. At the top step under the mat, I see the corner of an ivory-colored piece of paper. I bend down to retrieve it, pulling the rest of the paper from under the mat. The paper is folded in thirds. Quickly, I open it. One of the letters I posted last night has made its way back to me. The hair on my arms stands on end. There’s a note too, a personalized one just for me.

K, I’d really like to see you again. Chills shimmy through me. There are only a few people in my life who have called me K. I spent the night with one of those people, so I know Noah didn’t leave this note. The other ditched me when I asked him to finish off the amends. Is this Lane’s way of telling me something? Or maybe it’s just his way of apologizing or something for last night, for not going with me?

I look at the letter again, reading over the words I printed, words from Balzac to Hańska. Lane must have returned it to me, tucked it under my porch while I was riding across town. The bigger question is why. I hide the letter inside my backpack and head inside, strapping up Joe to the wall. Next comes the shower, blow-dry, makeup, a fresh pair of slacks and a blue starched blouse and I am ready for another day in my final week of high school. “Good morning, darling,” my mother says from the kitchen as I walk downstairs. I smell coffee roasting. “Hi, Mom,” I say, as she stretches her neck from side to side, working out the kinks. She wears a red dressing gown, mid-thigh length and silk. I keep a few feet of distance between us as she asks how I slept. I answer “Just fine,” but all I can think is, I got away with it.

I slept at your agent’s house last night and you don’t have a clue. I feel like I’m grinning from the inside out, I feel like cinnamon sugar on toast. Getting away with something tastes wonderful. Especially when that something is as fantastic as what Noah did to me last night. My stomach swoops in memory; a hot rush of sparks takes off inside as I remember how it felt to call out his name. I better go before I linger in Lustlandia. “’Bye, Mom,” I say, and head for the door. She moves in for a hug. When she wraps her arms around me, my nostrils meet up with her morning scent. She smells like sex. I unwrap myself from her, squirming out from her arms. “I have to go.”

“I love you, sweetheart. Be good today.” “Yeah. You too,” I say, but it’s an empty wish because she’s not capable. But then again, I suppose I’m not so good these days either. As I walk to school, my phone dings with a text from Lane.

I hope you didn’t get caught in the rain last night. Or if you did, that you had an umbrella to use. A red, polka-dot umbrella. The umbrella he gave me. Was it more than an umbrella? My brow furrows. Does he truly feel something for me? I stop at the Central Park West crosswalk, waiting for the little white man in the light to tell me it’s safe, and it’s as if the traffic and the people and the city are compressing around me. The people on the other side of the street seem so far away right now, like their faces and bodies are collapsing, turning tinier. And then, just like that, they’re zooming in on me. My world is both miles away and in my face, and the light changes and I cross the street, but my feet are heavy, and the concrete looms close and I know I’ll have to sit down soon and get a grip. I don’t have a clue what to do about Lane. Or when my mom will be smacked in the face with my letters. Soon I find myself in English, next to Amanda, and I have that desire again to tell her everything, to word vomit up all the things I keep inside me, to confess how I used her last

night, how I knew her dad had to have been at my house, but I say nothing, and she’s strangely sullen all through class. When the bell rings at the end of first period, she whispers, “My dad didn’t come home till three thirty last night.” Her eyes look glassy. The vacancy in her pretty blue eyes turns to anger. “I hate him for what he does to my mom.” “I hate the woman he’s fooling around with,” I say, the words sliding out, unplanned, unbidden.

When school ends and lacrosse practice is over, I track down Lane and tell him I need to see him. We agree to meet for pizza on Lexington in the Seventies, near his house. As I walk across town, I rewind to last night. It’s like Noah and I stepped off a bridge together, and instead of falling, we flew. To be honest, I was never sure if I’d want that kind of closeness. I grew up surrounded by the wrong kind of intimacy, so I had no idea if I’d want anything like it for myself. But with Noah, I want it all. I want everything. I felt so free in his arms last night, so right in his bed as I gave myself to him. There’s no question – I want so much more of him. I call him, and he answers on the first ring. “Hey there,” I say. “Let me guess. You’re still feeling the aftereffects of last

night,” he says with a sexy kind of confidence. I laugh knowingly. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was thinking about.” We flirt like that, suggestive and naughty, as I walk uptown, past the buses spewing exhaust, the cabs blaring horns, the pedestrians chatting on their phones too. As I reach the pizza place, he says something that nearly makes me blush. “Nothing has ever turned me on more than the way you said my name last night.” I moan. I actually moan. Because the memory slides over me, warming me up. “I want you to do it to me again. Maybe tonight,” I say as I lean against the brick wall outside the shop. “That can be arranged. Consider it another early birthday present.” “I like the presents you give me,” I say, because I can’t seem to stop this kind of naughty banter with him now that we’ve started down this path of more than kissing. “K, I will give you anything you want, any time. Come by this evening.” “I’ll be there later. No one will have to know,” I say, and then he tells me he’ll call me later because David Tremaine is heading into the office for a meeting. “No one will have to know what?” I flinch, and let out a surprised squeak. Lane has appeared out of nowhere. “You surprised me,” I say, smacking his arm.

He laughs. “I can tell.” He raises his eyebrows and surveys me. My cheeks are red and I wonder how much he heard. This situation feels eerily familiar, like the tables have turned. Especially when he says, “So no one will have to know what?” The flush in my cheeks deepens. “Oh, just talking to Amanda. She whacked me in lacrosse practice, and we were joking that no would know she did it,” I say, the lie gliding off my tongue seamlessly. I turn away quickly, walking into the pizza shop as a wave of self-loathing crashes over me. I don’t want to be like my mom. I don’t want to be a liar. “Do you know what bugs people the most?” Lane asks as we sit down at a table with a red-and-white checked tablecloth. “No. Tell me what bugs people the most.” I tense inside, dreading the answer. He’s mad at me. He’s going to tell me through one of his facts. “Hidden fees,” he says, shaking his head, and laughing. “Followed by not getting a person on the phone, then tailgating, then incomprehensible bills, then dog poop left on the ground.” “Seems relatively minor. All of it,” I say as I open a menu. “Want to split a cheese pie? I’ll forgo pepperoni for you.” “You’re the best. Thank you for your abstinence.” He orders when the waitress comes by, adding two Diet Cokes. “You better make hers a double,” Lane adds, and

winks at the waitress. It’s a joke, and she doesn’t get it, so she kind of just stares at him from behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Her sandy brown hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. Lane waves a hand in the air. “Just two Diet Cokes, please.” She nods and walks away, writing the order on her pad of paper. “Sheesh. What’s the world come to when you can’t make a joke about a soda? See, that would be one of my pet peeves. That would be my biggest annoyance. Lack of appreciation and understanding of sarcasm.” “That is indeed irksome,” I say. Lane scratches his right hand across his jaw, a Godfather-like gesture, then adopts a Marlon Brando tone. “So, what can I do for you?” I give him a look. “You called this meeting,” he adds. I shrug one shoulder. “What? Now I have to have a reason to hang out with you? I thought we just hung out,” I say, even though I can feel the tension, it’s real, it exists, it’s the shadow between us right now. I relent. “Fine, I know you’re pissed at me because of last night, because of the letters. But look, I had to do it. I have to get things sorted out in my life. And that’s why I want to be totally direct here.” I reach into my backpack for the letter I found under the doormat this morning. I unfold it, smooth it open on the tablecloth, and explain how, when and where I found it.

He turns it around, reads the words from Balzac, then the handwritten words. K, I’d really like to see you again. “Weird. Who do you think wrote it?” The waitress brings us our sodas and Lane takes a drink. “Who do I think wrote it?” I ask, furrowing my brow. He nods. “Yeah. It’s a little weird, don’t you think?” I hold his eyes with mine. “Lane.” “Kennedy.” “Didn’t you …” I start to ask. “Didn’t I what?” “Well, you call me K. You knew I was leaving the letter. You know the Balzac is my favorite.” He doesn’t say anything right away; just taps the table with his fingers. “Balzac,” he says, lingering on the name of the writer. “Such a funny name, don’t you think? Do you think everyone teased him on the playground with that name?” It’s like I’m in an alternate universe and the Lane I thought I knew has been misplaced, and been replaced by this slightly off version who doesn’t quite fit into the old one’s skin. I stare directly at him. “Lane, did you leave this letter for me?” He looks me in the eyes finally, his crazy hazel-greenbrown eyes meeting mine. “You want to know what annoys

me most? If they had called me for that survey, I’d tell them what annoys me most. Lack of directness,” he says. “But I’m being direct. I’m being totally direct.” “Right. And I would do the same. If I had feelings for you, I’d tell you. I wouldn’t leave a letter on your doorstep. A letter meant for a married woman.” Red rushes to my cheeks. I hold my hands up, the sign for surrender. “All right. Got the message.” He stands up and pushes his chair back. All I can figure is I’ve made him so mad he’s going to leave. But he walks around the table and sits next to me, pulling a chair closer to me, so close he’s got one of my knees between his legs. “Are you just going to remind me you don’t like me or something?” “Do you want me to like you?” I don’t know how to answer or what to answer, so I don’t. If I felt off balance this morning walking to school, that was nothing compared to how I feel now. The whole world is tilted on its side and I’m not seeing or feeling or thinking straight. “Do you?” he asks in a softer voice. “Because if I liked you, I would tell you. I would be direct. I would be up front,” he says staring hard at me. He places a hand on my leg, and his voice softens. “I would ask you to prom.” He waits for me to say something. His words are his confession. “But you said,” I start to say, but I’m stuttering and

sputtering. “You said I was your closest friend. That you wanted to go as friends.” “If I were being direct, I’d tell you right now that that’s all true, but yes, there is more to it than that. So much more,” he says, the last words in a heated whisper. Our eyes lock and they don’t let go. I watch as he presses his teeth against his lower lip for a second, then breathes my name. “Kennedy.” “Lane,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s a stop sign or a stark recognition of how my life could have gone. Lane, and his umbrella gifts and friendship and beautiful heart, is precisely the type of guy who’d be perfect for me – he’s the same age. There would be no questions, no second glances, no need to hide. He is another choice I could have made, and if I had, I wouldn’t live a life weighed down by so many secrets. As that choice plays out before my eyes I don’t move. I don’t do anything. Nor does he. We are frozen in time. We stay like that, inches away, stoic, solid statues, so close we could kiss. Perhaps, in some other chooseyour-adventure version of my life, we would kiss. Maybe in some parallel universe he’s the person I’m meant to be with – the guy my age. But I fell in love out of time. I fell in love with someone else. And the one thing I know about myself, the one thing that is still true, even as everything else shifts and wobbles, is this—I am not my mother. I raise a hand and place a palm against his chest. “I’m seeing Noah again.” He draws a sharp breath, then drops his head. He

presses his fist against his mouth, as if he’s holding in all the things he wants to say. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, because I’m not sure what to say. I feel like I’ve done something wrong. He snaps up his head. “What are you sorry for?” “What do you mean?” Lane’s jaw is set hard. His eyes are narrowed. This is a side of him I haven’t seen before. “You were talking to him before, right? When you said ‘No one will have to know’?” I sigh, admitting the truth of my life. “Yes.” He shakes his head. “Why’d you lie to me?” I gesture at him, at his angry reaction. “Because of this. Because of how pissed off you are.” “I’m not mad that you’re seeing him. I’m mad that you lied about it,” he says, pushing back his chair, the legs scraping loudly on the floor. He fishes into his wallet and tosses some bills on the table. “What’s that for?” “For the pizza. I’m not hungry anymore.” I stand up and stare at him like he’s an oddity in a curio shop. “Why are you leaving?” “Because I’m pissed for real now,” he says through gritted teeth, speaking in a low hiss. “We’ve always been abundantly honest and you just point-blank lied to me, Kennedy. It pisses me off, and I don’t want to talk about it. I want to leave. So I’m going to go. Good-bye.” He turns on his heels and walks out as the waitress

brings the cheese pie to the table. My stomach rumbles, and I’m embarrassed that my body has the audacity to be hungry at a moment like this. I drop my forehead to the table, alone and empty in a pizza shop in Manhattan.

Chapter Twenty-Eight Noah Tremaine twirls a pencil between his thumb and forefinger. Up. Over. Around. He hasn’t missed a beat. He twirls and talks, stretched out on the leather couch in my office. “Here’s the thing,” the gray-haired man posits, his brow scrunched up in thought. “I wonder if a TV show is truly the best venue for this storyline.” I nod several times from my post in a comfy chair across from him. “You think it’s too much will-they-won’t-they drama to sustain over many years and many seasons?” He stops twirling, sits up straight, and taps his finger to his nose. “Exactly,” he says, enunciating each syllable in emphasis. “Because what’s the heart of the story? Is the heart the back and forth, or is the heart the path to being together?” “Or to not being together,” I toss out. “Because that’s an option too.” “Exactly. I haven’t decided if the hero deserves The One That Got Away.” “The heroes don’t always deserve the girl,” I say, musing on the topic, wondering how the viewers would see a guy like me. If I’d be worthy of the girl. I suspect the jury might be out on that one.

“You see,” he begins, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, excitement flashing across his eyes, “I’m not convinced I want to put the characters through the kind of hell that a TV show would require of a romance.” I raise an eyebrow. “You’re thinking the kind of a hell of a movie is better?” He nods. “Can we sell it as a movie?” We haven’t even agreed to work together yet. But this is the process. This is how a guy like Tremaine decides who to trust with his creative gift. Besides, I don’t need a contract to want to be in this room with him bandying about ideas. “The hero has been in love with the girl for years, but she won’t let herself be with him for some reason. Maybe she’s hung up on the past, or there’s something in herself that she needs to deal with first. And the hero, well, he can’t bear the thought of her being the one that got away,” Tremaine offers, raising an eyebrow as he waits for my response. “But why is he so in love with her? That’s what will make this fly or not.” “That’s always the key,” he says, and I’m about to respond when Jonathan pops in, looking all smooth and polished in his pin-striped suit, ready to play the part of the closer. Only, I don’t need him to. Tremaine doesn’t want a car salesman. My muscles tighten, and I hope Jonathan doesn’t mess

this up. Because Tremaine is a special kind of writer; and he needs someone who gets what he’s trying to do. “How’s it going, gentlemen?” he asks. “It’s going great,” Tremaine says, and I can’t complain about that answer.

Kennedy I pick listlessly at the slice of cheese pizza, wishing Lane were here to split it with me. I wish I knew what to say to him, but he so clearly didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And now I’m facing the Friendship Executioner once more, only this time it’s my crime—lying—that’s brought me here. I flash back to Catey, and all we shared. She’s no longer a part of my life, and I’d hate for that to happen to Lane. Hell, Catey is the reason the pizza in front of me doesn’t have pepperoni on it. I start to box up the pizza so I can take it to Lane as a peace offering. But as I quietly run through what to say, I realize I have no idea what words to use. I don’t have the training in this level of honesty. I shove the pizza to the edge of the table, grab my backpack, and zero in on homework. Such an indignity to have to finish homework before I see my boyfriend tonight. Doing French translations and calculus equations makes me feel like a kid. But I’m so

damn ready to shuck all this and start the next part of my life. The part where I have freedom. When I finish I decide to take a taste of that freedom now, so I jam my computer into my bag, and head to Noah’s. We barely say a word as I drop my bag inside the doorway, and fall into his arms. He backs me up against the wall, his hands cupping my face as he drops his mouth to mine. The day is gone in his touch. His kisses overwhelm me, they erase the memory of Lane’s dismissal, of his hurt, of his anger. They blot out the whole damn world. “How was your day?” he whispers as he kisses my neck, his fingers spearing into my hair. “Crappy,” I say, as I grasp his shirt collar and bring him closer. “Why?” he asks as he layers kisses along the column of my throat. “Had an argument with a friend,” I mutter, as his hands find their way under my shirt. I arch into him. The electricity sparking through my veins obliterates the fight with Lane. All I want now is to feel good again, and Noah is the only one who can give me that magic pill. “What can I do to make you feel better?” “More of what you’re doing,” I say as I work open the buttons on his shirt. He inhales sharply as I roam my hands over his chest. “You’re going to make the next ten days incredibly hard,” he says on a groan.

I wiggle my eyebrows. “I know. But I’m up for the challenge.” “The birthday challenge,” he says, as I take off his shirt and turn him around so his back is to the wall. I bend down to kiss his chest, his abs, and then right there—that line above the waistband of his pants. The taste of his skin drives me wild. I want to know all of him, to touch him in every way, to explore his body with my hands and mouth. Want pulses through me, a deep and powerful desire to cross every line. My fingers dance across his flat stomach; my lips follow, as I kiss him, driven by so much longing. I lose hold of reason as I start to undo his belt. In a flash, his hands are on mine, stopping me. He tugs me up. “We have to wait,” he says, his voice strained. “I don’t want to wait any more,” I say, because I’m sure this—sex—would obliterate my crappy afternoon. “I know,” he says, keeping a tight grip on my overeager hands. “But we promised to wait, and I have something special planned.” Then he tells me about the restaurant, and the inn, and my heart grows wings and tries to soar out of my chest because it’s all so perfect. The fact that I’ll have to concoct a new set of lies to spend the night with him doesn’t bother me. I’m so good at lying now, I could teach a class. The only thing I don’t have to hide is how I feel. Noah is my freedom, so I seek more, in the hope that it will erase the hurt earlier in the day. I bring my hands to his cheeks.

“You really won’t let me touch you?” I ask, though I know the answer. I’m merely setting up my next question. “No.” He shakes his head for emphasis. I’m not entirely sure why me touching him isn’t acceptable, but him touching me is allowed. Maybe there is some unwritten rule that while we crossed one line last night, we can’t cross another. Right now, I’m perfectly content with that ruling because my body is selfish. My body wants. I have only kissed one other boy in my life, and while Noah and I mastered kissing long ago, last night with him was like an awakening, unleashing a deep craving inside of me. The floodgates have been opened. “Would you think I’m terribly greedy if I wanted you to make me…” I start, but I can’t breathe the final words out loud yet. So I cup my hand over his ear and whisper the rest of my request.

Come again. His breath hitches, giving me the answer I already knew. “You know I will. You know you’re all I want,” he says, and his voice feels hot, betraying his desire that he can’t hide any longer. Somehow, I am his weakness, I am his tipping point, I am the exception for him. “You are my everything,” he whispers. I lower my hand to his, and guide him where I want him. “You can be greedy with me, anytime, K,” he says, and he unbuttons my pants. His fingertips brush against my

skin. My heart stutters and my body aches to be closer. To be felt. To be caressed into that liquid, heated, dreamy state. He’s still tentative with me, like I’m fragile. But I’m not delicate and I never was. He just needs my permission every step of the way as we venture down this new path. So I cover his hand with mine, and slide his fingers inside my panties, between my legs. That’s all he needs – the complete confirmation that I’m not just okay with this, but that I must have it. He gives me what I need. Him. His hands. His touch. His devotion to me, heart, mind and now body. I suppose I should feel vulnerable or strange backed up against his wall, my hands speared into his hair, my neck arched, my moans echoing across his apartment, as he touches me. But there’s no space in me for anything else but this intensity, this tenderness, this blissful abandon to him. I am floating, I am flying, I am in heaven. Only better, because I’m here on earth loving every second of being alive. * But those stolen evening hours with Noah don’t have the effect I want in the morning. The temporary bliss wears off, and I’m left still hurting. My friends matter too much to me. The next day after school, I text Lane to ask if he’s home.

When he says yes, I call the pizza place, order a halfpepperoni, half-cheese pie. After I pick it up, I march straight to Lane’s nearby building. Because hell if I’m going to let this new friendship face the same fate as old ones. When he answers the door to his apartment, his eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Kennedy,” he says, stumbling on my name. I hold up a hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I lied to you. I don’t have an excuse and I’m not going to give you one, except it was natural, and it’s what I’m used to. But that doesn’t make it right or okay that I did it to you.” I place my hands together, imploring him. “And I’m not above begging for forgiveness because your friendship means too much to me. I can’t and I won’t lose it.” I dig my heels in, straightening my spine, standing up tall. “I simply refuse to. I refuse to let you stop being my friend.” That cracks him up, and he shakes his head. “Refuse, huh? How exactly will this refusal manifest?” “I’ll camp on your doorstep till you take me back,” I say, feeling the slightest bit lighter now that his lips are curved up in a grin. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Because you mean too much to me. I messed up, and I hope you accept my apology and know that it comes from me just trying to figure out how to be a real friend and tell the truth about myself. Will you forgive me? I brought a peace offering. Or really, a pizza offering,” I say, thrusting the cardboard at him. He eyes it suspiciously. “Is it yesterday’s?” I shake my head. “Nope. A whole new one.”

He takes it, drapes an arm over my shoulder and pulls me inside. “I’ll take it. Because I have a confession to make too. I really was hungry yesterday, and I still am now.” I elbow him playfully as we walk into his apartment. It’s empty. His mom must still be at work. “You lied too,” I tease. He shrugs and flashes me his trademark grin as we park ourselves at his kitchen table. He folds up a slice and dives in. I grab one for myself. In between bites, we talk. He asks me to tell him about Noah and how we got back together. I share it all—my mom, Amanda’s dad, Jay and the lawsuit, and the Botanic Garden. I tell him all these things, and when it’s all on the table, when we’re holding slices of cheese pizza up to our mouths and taking bites, we have moved on past what he said yesterday, beyond my own false words. We are back to where we were a few days ago. We are friends, and he hasn’t left. I started over and I told him the truth, and he’s still here, and we’re still here. He hasn’t abandoned me. This is better than scoring a goal in lacrosse. This is better than a kiss. This is the best. When we finish and it’s time for me to go, he puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me square in the eyes. “K,” he says, then laughs. “Can I still call you that?” “Of course.” “I have a million thoughts and feelings and opinions, and I’ll admit too that I’m annoyed that that guy, because I can’t

say his name, and I still can’t believe his name is Noah, and it’s not fair he gets to have like the ultimate good guy name, has got you again, but you need to tell your parents what’s going on. Please, please, please do that.” I shake my head quickly. Adamantly. “I can’t tell my mom.” “You have two parents. Tell your dad,” he says gently. My skin prickles with worry. “He would freak.” “Let him.” “I mean really freak. Like freak out and forbid me from seeing him.” Lane looks at his phone, pretending to check a calendar on it. “If memory serves, you’re nearly eighteen and off to college in three months. Tell him.” I nod. “Is that a yes?” “It’s not a no.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine Kennedy That night, the next day, and into the next night as I ride the subway downtown to my dad’s house, I weigh the idea of coming clean about Noah. I consider it, turn it over, mull it, all the while trying to figure out who left the letter at my mom’s house the other morning. I’m not any closer to knowing, nor am I any closer to a yes when I walk up the five flights of stairs to my dad’s house in the Village and unlock the door. My dad is sitting at the dining room table, his laptop open, typing away. He has a steely look in his eyes, a look I have seen before, a look he reserves only when talking about my mom. “Hi, Dad.” I feel nerves everywhere, in my throat, inside my mouth, deep in my belly. “Hello, Kennedy.” His voice is ice. He is talking to me like I’m my mom, and it makes me feel awful. He swivels his laptop around and points to a picture on the screen. Noah and me this weekend. At the Botanic Garden. He clicks to the next one. Noah and me getting into a cab. Then the next. Me walking into his building the other night.

Then the last one. Me leaving the next morning, the green awning behind me. “I received these from Jay Fierstein’s lawyer. I think he assumes they’ll be useful in his lawsuit. I’m not sure I agree, but frankly I don’t give a damn about the lawsuit right now. I’d like to know more about the double life you’re leading. Because I assume your mother,” he says, and that last word comes out like spit, “doesn’t know about this.” I shake my head. I can’t deny. I can’t speak. I can’t form words. The earth is splitting open and blood pounds in my head. Mercilessly. I grab hold of the doorway as the ground starts to sway beneath me, threatening to swallow my traitorous heart whole. He drops his forehead into his palm. “I expected more from you,” he says to the table, and the words aren’t stalactites anymore. They’re wind, sad and lonely, they’re the spoken sound of disappointment. My chest caves, and my heart literally aches with shame. I try to say I’m sorry, I try to say It’s not what you think. But there’s no point, because it is what he thinks—it is his daughter lying to him. That’s what these pictures say. My legs become sandbags. I sink down into the chair because if I stand I might collapse. My dad’s head is still in his hands, so I’m looking at the top of his skull, at his everexpanding bald spot. Minutes pass by. There’s no ticking clock in this room, but in my head I can hear the hands moving second by second. “I’m sorry.”

He looks up. His face is the map of a defeated man, a man who has lost, a man whose wife wore him down, whose daughter is following her lead. “I’m sorry,” I say again because what else can I say? He looks at me. At least he looks at me. There’s only sadness in his eyes. There’s no disgust. I cling to the possibility that he doesn’t hate me. I cling to this so tightly it becomes my only hope. “I’m sorry, Dad.” Then I start to cry. He looks at my tears, at the silent streams running down my face, and he switches sides, pulling me close, my face to his chest. I cry more. He does not comfort me with words, he does not say It’s okay, like he would if I were still a little girl. But this—the warmth of his arms, the familiar spot on his shirt where my tears have made their mark over the years—tells me he is still my dad. He still knows how to be a father. He knows how this works. When my eyes are dried, I look up, and he speaks. “How long have you been involved with Noah Hayes?” I twitch for a second; it’s weird hearing anyone call him Noah, even Noah Hayes. But perhaps it’s because of this, because my dad uses the same name I use, or maybe it’s because my dad is a parent, and I’m not his enabler, I’m not his confidante, I’m not his partner in crime, that I tell him everything. Like I did that night in the kitchen three years ago. “The letter I wrote, the letter you found earlier this year,

wasn’t to Jay,” I say. “It was to Noah. I wrote him a letter about all the kisses we had, and all the kisses I wanted to have. I was involved with him all last summer and fall. Until you found the letter.” “Why did you say it was to Jay then?” my dad asks quietly, carefully. I look away, the tears build up in my chest, in my throat again. How many ways can I hurt him? How many varieties of embarrassment can I inflict upon him? The pain is a fist in my gut, pushing up through my chest. I force out the words, like stones in my mouth, “Because Mom was involved with Jay.” My dad swallows hard, grits his teeth. I wonder if it’s a subconscious move, a muscle memory from the way he works his jaw over and over in the night, if it’s his body’s response to stress or shock. “And by saying it was Jay I had a crush on, I figured I could protect Noah, and throw Jay under the bus,” I add, explaining myself. My dad laughs for a second when I say that—throw Jay under the bus. “That’s where he belongs,” my dad says. “I know. I hate him. And I knew even by saying we kissed for three seconds that it would be enough for you to hate him too. And I love Noah, so I wanted the guy who was actually being a scum to be the one you hated.” He rolls his eyes, something he has never done before

with me. “Why are you doing that?” “You can’t love Noah,” he says dismissively. “Why not?” “You’re too young. He’s too old.” “He’s not that old! He turned twenty-six a few weeks ago. I’m going to be eighteen next week. We’re only eight years apart.” “You think that makes a difference?” “Yes, and nothing has happened.” I feel my face flush. I can’t believe I’m discussing my sex life with my father. He points to the computer screen again. “You spent the night at his place, Kennedy. Try telling me that again.” My eyes bug out. “Oh my god, you’re assuming because I slept there that I slept with him? I haven’t had sex with him.” He cringes. “You honestly expect me to believe that?” “Actually, I do, Dad. I do expect you to believe it,” I say, taking some small solace in the truth of this statement. “I have a hard time believing you, Kennedy, considering how you manipulated all the facts before.” “I had reasons!” “So? I’m sure your mother had her reasons for spinning tall tales too.” A plume of anger streaks through me. “Don’t compare me to her.” “How is this different? Tell me.”

“Because I lied about Jay and Noah for good reasons. For the right reasons.” “There are no right reasons to lie,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me in the first place you liked Noah?” “Oh, gee. I don’t know. Maybe because he’s Mom’s agent and friend and because he’s older than I am.” “And as you can see, those would be all the reasons why you shouldn’t be involved with him. Not to mention that it’s creepy and weird that he wants to go out with a younger girl.” “I think it’s unfair and judgmental that you don’t believe I’m capable of making a mature decision about who to date,” I say, crossing my arms. “Is it really mature to tell lies? To deceive your parents? To go out with him for half a year and then start it again and lie and blame someone else?” “It’s not as if you and Mom have made it so easy to tell the truth,” I say, my chest tightening, like I’ve been backed into a corner. He huffs out a heavy sigh. “Kennedy, please. It’s wrong.” “I’m not cheating on anyone.” My voice rises with desperation as I fight to convince him. “Don’t make me pay for Mom’s mistakes.” “But you lied to me too,” he says in a fierce low voice. Then a whisper. “Just like her.” I move my chair closer to him, and now it’s my turn to reach for his hand. “I’m not her. I haven’t done the things

she’s done. You can be mad at me all you want for not telling you sooner. And you can say I never would have told you if you hadn’t found out. But guess what? Now you know. And now I’m telling you everything. It started last June and I pursued him and he resisted for the longest time, but I was the one who kept visiting his office and asking him out, and eventually he went out with me. And I get that you think that is wrong or gross or inappropriate or whatever, but ask yourself if it’s truly so unreasonable that a smart, funny, thoughtful, sensitive guy who’s eight years older could fall in love with your daughter? I’m your daughter. I’m me. You’re supposed to think I’m amazing. You’re supposed to think I’m incredible. Is it so unreasonable that someone else could think those things too?” My father looks hard at me, but I can tell the edges of his anger are muting. He softens as he says, “I’m also supposed to think no man is ever good enough for my daughter.” “I love you, Dad.” “I love you, Kennedy.” “He is good enough for me.” “No one is. Not him. Not anyone.” I sense an opening. “Aren’t you glad it wasn’t Jay Fierstein after all?” The corners of his lips curl up. “I can’t believe he has the gall to sue me after this,” my dad says, shaking his head, as he stares at a framed print on the wall, an image of a silver goblet fallen on its side, of a lemon half peeled. I think

back to the time Jay and my dad traveled to Amsterdam, to help a big museum in New York put together an exhibit of Dutch still lifes, like those by Heda. How do you do turn around and stab your business partner in the back by canoodling with his ex-wife? “I can’t believe your mother … ,” he starts, but doesn’t finish. He won’t bash her in front of me. He reaches a hand out to mine. “Let’s go pay her a visit.” My eyes bug out. “What do you mean?” “I think it’s time she knows that I know what’s going on.” I shake my head. “No. I can’t do that.” He nods firmly. “You can and we are going to.” I shake my head more. “You have nothing to be afraid of,” he says, like a coach encouraging me to get back on the field after a fall. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the scene I have been trying to engineer for years. I dance around the truth, I toy with it, I taunt my mom with the bits and pieces I know, daring her to admit all, goading her to tell the truth. But now it’s going to happen, and I am terrified. Fear lodges inside me as we hail a cab and head uptown. I knock on her door.

Chapter Thirty Kennedy My mom answers, and she doesn’t let my father’s presence deter her from plastering a welcoming smile across her face, and holding out her arm grandly to invite us in. Her entourage is here—the usual LGO suspects, and even Bailey and Sean, so I guess my mom convinced Bailey that nothing ever happened. Noah sits on the couch, and for the first time ever I don’t want to see him. His face is blank, but I suspect it’s deliberate, like he’s trying to hide his surprise. I know because I’m doing the same. “Good evening, Jewel,” my father says. “My darling Eric.” She leans in and gives him an air-kiss on one cheek, then the other, like they’re French or something. I wish I were in France right now, I wish I were in Brooklyn, I wish I were at Dr. Insomnia’s. Anywhere but here. “Hello,” he says, waving to the guests. “Everyone having a good evening?” The guests nod, but they’re not stupid. They know the exhusband doesn’t come by often, or at all. They’re all shifting, reaching for bags, grabbing for phones. “Oh, don’t leave on my account. This could be the best part of the party.”

With that, Noah steps in. “I think we’re all going to get out of here right now,” he says, and that’s all the others need to hear. Within ten seconds, my mom’s entourage is at the door, saying good-bye. My dad grab’s Noah’s arm. “You can stay.” Noah glances quickly at me, worry flashing across his eyes. I nod to the door, urging him with my eyes to leave. “No, really. I insist,” my dad adds. I look at my dad. “Don’t do this,” I plead softly. “Not this. Not here.” He breathes hard through his nostrils. He opens the door wider and lets Noah go. It’s just the three of us now—mother, father, daughter— the remains of a family. “You sure do know how to clear a room, Eric,” my mother says, then reaches for the bottle of white wine on the coffee table. “Wine? It’s from Spain. Your favorite.” She holds out the bottle and an empty wineglass. He shakes his head. She pours more in her own glass, then sits down on the arm of her couch. She kicks one leg back and forth, showing off the red-soled leather high heels she’s wearing. My dad remains standing. I stay near him. Maybe because I’m on his side. Maybe because I’ve always been on his side. “Do you know why I left you, Jewel?” She scoffs, so loud and deep you’d think she patented

the technique. “Really? You came uptown to rehash the greatest thing that ever happened to me?” “Because you cheated on me.” I expect her to be shocked. I expect her jaw to drop. Instead, she fires right back. “Newsflash. I know.” “Many times. And then you did it with my business partner.” “That wasn’t cheating,” she says after a hearty swallow of her wine. “You and I weren’t married then.” I think my mother might have no soul. How can she be so callous? “You don’t think it’s just the slightest bit wrong—wrong meaning immoral, inappropriate, slimy—to sleep with my business partner?” “If I had been married to you at the time, yes, then you’d have me on that one.” She speaks clinically, as if she’s evaluating a business offer. “But seeing as we’re not, I’d have to say the bigger bone to pick lies with Jay.” “Who’s suing me now,” my dad adds quickly. “That’s why I say never have a business partner. Those situations can be so messy. Speaking of messy situations, it would seem our darling daughter is involving herself in areas she ought to stay out of,” my mother says, and peers archly over at me. Forget the detente of the shopping trip. Whatever my mother swept under the rug the other day is being swept right back out. I’ve stepped over a line, and Jewel intends

to let me know what happens to people who cross her. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’ve been mailing letters to certain women I’d rather not hear from again?” “Like who?” I ask, in a small voice because I don’t know how to play this. “That Steigler woman for starters. She’s calling me again.” My mom shakes her head. “She’s so annoying. She just can’t leave me alone.”

She’s so annoying? My insides burn, and with that offhand dismissal, words that underscore how she has no notion at all of the collateral damage she’s caused, no sense of how her choices were a tsunami in other people’s lives because she only saw her own life, I finally know what to say. I straighten my spine. I muster my courage. “You made me lie to Mrs. Steigler. You made me cover up for you. And then she begged me to make you stop.” My father cocks his head to the side. “You make our daughter lie about your affairs?” My mother gazes haughtily out the window. “Kennedy has always loved helping me.” “You are a sick woman,” my father says, his eyes narrowing. My mother doesn’t respond to him. She turns to me. “Darling, I know all children want their parents to be together. And for that, I am sorry. I know divorce is an awful thing for a child to go through, but to send letters to these

random women and sign my name—” I cut her off, slicing my hand through the air. “This is so not even remotely about you guys getting divorced. Whatever! You’re divorced. Fine. I’m talking about the lies and cover ups and the way you asked me to be part of it all, Mom. Don’t you get that that’s messed up?” I want to jump and scream. I want to run around like a leprechaun on fire. Maybe then she’d notice the fire, the way it hurts, the way I didn’t want to be lit up like that my whole life. “I think there are better ways to draw attention to your hurt, Kennedy, than this strange letter act you’re engaging in. Why don’t we just talk about it?” she continues in a schoolteacher tone that inflames me. “As if that would work,” I shout. “What is this letter thing you keep talking about?” my father asks, interrupting. I explain quickly about the letters I sent, and the reaction they’ve, evidently, elicited. I return to my mom. “They’re not random women,” I point out. “You had me lie to them. You made me lie to Catey’s mom and to Mrs. Steigler and to Mrs. Lipshitz, who, incidentally, is a very nice woman. And to Bailey. And now to Amanda. It never ends, Mom. It never ever ends,” I say, and I feel like I’m trying to tear down bricks with my bare hands, peeling away at the mortar with my fingernails. But I’m hardly making a dent. “Darling, you act as if I have a drug problem. Or a drinking problem, God forbid, like poor Hayes’s mother. Do

you realize she died young? She was only forty-six. She basically drank herself to death. That’s a real problem.” She shakes her head, like the memory of his mother’s final days is too much to bear. “I went to her memorial service. It was so sad to see a beautiful life cut short like that.” I turn to my father, waiting for him, expecting him to pounce on this opening and say something about Noah Hayes and me. He keeps his mouth shut, very purposefully, pressing his lips together. He nods at me, and in this small gesture I know he’s not going to tell her, that she doesn’t need to know, and that he is on my side. I want to thank him again. To hug him again. I look back at my mom, calling on my reserves. This is my chance to tell her my truth. To speak from my heart about everything that hurts. “What you did is not nothing. I hated lying for you and I hated lying to dad and I hated lying to my friends. And now you’re after Amanda’s dad. Please just leave him alone,” I say as my voice breaks, and I cover my face with my hands. I’m going to cry again, because I’m so sick of this, so tired of her, and I want to have one friendship she can’t touch. She walks over to me, wraps her arms around me, like my dad did earlier. This is it, this is the moment when she says she’s sorry, when she apologizes for all she’s done. She is going to join me in crying, she is going to admit she’s messed up, she’s going to promise to change. “You’ve always been so deeply affected by things, my dear,” she says, and I pull her close, because she’s my

mom, and I hate her, but I love her. She has taken care of me, and she has loved me, and done right by me, and now she is doing what she’s supposed to be doing, she’s being a mom. She pets my hair, and I feel safe again, and I know she cares more about me than she does about them. “But truly, really and truly, I assure you, there is nothing going on with your friend’s father.” I yank myself away from her and smash my palms against my cheeks to wipe away the tears. “You are lying.” I push my hands in my hair and tug tightly against my scalp. “God! How can Noah stand to work with you?” When my mom arches an expertly plucked raven-colored eyebrow, I realize I’ve made a fatal mistake. “Noah?” “Hayes, I mean,” but I played my hand, and I can’t backpedal into bluffing. My face is flaming red, and I can’t look at anything but my shoes. “Why would you call him Noah?” she asks, curiosity dripping from her tone. “I meant Hayes,” I mumble. “But yet, you said Noah. Nobody calls him Noah. He is Hayes to everyone, including me. I didn’t think you even knew his first name.” I say nothing. “It’s curious,” she says, and returns to her cranberry couch, sinks down into it, her power position, swirling her wineglass. “Because, I’ve noticed that Noah seems a bit

distracted these last few days. I wonder if it could be”—she waves a hand through the air, then laughs—“but that’s silly. He wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t do that. I trust you’d know better. Am I right, Kennedy?” My dad places his hands on my shoulders. “Good night, Jewel. We’re leaving.” “Oh no you’re not. You crashed my party. And now, I find out our daughter calls my agent—my best friend—Noah. I don’t think anyone is leaving. I think we’re all sitting down and having a chat about this.” She pats the spot on the couch next to her, and I want to smack her, I want to slash her like I did to the Keeland Prep defender on the field, to ram my elbow into her gut and make her double over, tripping in her stupid red-soled shoes. “Let it go, Jewel,” my father says. “Let it go. So she slipped up. So she called him Noah. I call him Noah. She spends half her time with me. I’m sure it rubbed off on her.” “There’s only one way to know for sure how you’ve rubbed off on her, Eric,” my mother says as she reaches for her phone and stabs her fingers against the keypad. She waits while it rings. He must answer quickly, because she’s now saying “Noah” into the phone, drawing it out like it’s ten or twenty syllables, and she’s savoring every one. I don’t hear his end of the conversation. I don’t have to. Because the next thing she says is, “I’ve met your new girlfriend and she’s quite lovely. I have the feeling though that I’ve known her for a long time.”

Noah I’ve been preparing for this moment for more than a year. Anticipating it on every level. But even as it arrives, I’m knocked in the stomach and I deserve what’s coming because I certainly don’t deserve Jewel’s loyalty. I’ve violated her trust. I’ve taken something that wasn’t mine to touch. I’ve lied to my most valuable client, and to my friend. I drop down on the couch in my apartment, and listen to every word of her tirade. I let every single syllable hit me hard. In the heart. In the chest. In the head. Knowing I don’t have the right to recuse myself from her anger. “We are through,” she says, and hangs up. I’m not surprised at all. I’m not surprised in the least. Still, my body is empty. But it’s nothing—this hollow feeling— compared to picturing what Kennedy is going through. I can only imagine the kind of fresh hell Jewel Stanza must be raining down on her, fire and brimstone laced with arsenic. I could call Jonathan and give him the news. I could call Tremaine and try to lock him up. I do none of those things. I call Kennedy. Over and over. It rings and rings. She never answers. Frustration and worry eats away at me, but I know better than to just show up at her house. Neither one of her parents want to see me. Hell, I hardly know if she does either.

I grab my phone, hunt through photos, and finally find one that seems fitting. An image of a lightning strike across the sky, forming a jagged, neon heart. I’m about to hit Send when I see the photographer left an inscription on the image. “Love is like a lightning strike to the heart. It can kill you or make you burn more brightly.” The inscription makes me stop. I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to suggest endings. I only want beginnings with her. Over and over. I can’t let her be the one that got away. I find something sweeter. A cherry with a stem that curves into the top of a heart. I send, hoping I can do this small thing to make her life less bitter right now. But in the back of my mind, and far into the dark corners of my own heart, I have this sinking feeling that this is the end.

Chapter Thirty-One Kennedy We order Chinese food at my dad’s house. The choice is deliberate; pizza would feel too much like déjà vu, even though there is something very been-there-done-that about tonight. Though this showdown with my mom also hurts in a fresh new way. She’s dug a new hole inside me, cratered me in another place. But my dad hasn’t. He’s here. He stood by me. The eggplant tofu arrives and I dive into it with the chopsticks. My dad tackles the chicken with broccoli. We both fold ourselves onto the cushy couch, and in between bites I say thank you for the thousandth time. My phone is off. I can’t bear to talk to anyone right now. “Thank you for not telling her,” I say, and it means everything to me that my dad didn’t tell her. It says everything I have always believed about him. He holds up his hands. “Well, my not telling her didn’t do much good. I suppose in the end, the truth seems to want to get out.” “I guess I have to agree with that.” “And since we’re talking about the truth now, I need to tell you the truth and it’s a truth I didn’t realize until tonight,” he

begins, his expression as serious as his tone. “And it’s that I let you down. I had no idea how deeply affected you were by your mother, and that was stupid of me. I should have looked harder, talked to you more. But more than that, I shouldn’t have been so focused on self-preservation when I split up with her. I should have been more focused on you. I should have told her then, three years ago, that I knew what she’d done. But I was hurt, and I was selfish, and I only protected myself. I didn’t protect you from her.” “It’s not your fault.” He holds up a hand. “There are things that are my fault. I should have been honest with her three years ago. Then you might not have had to carry the burden of her choices. I am so sorry I left you alone to deal with all that. Your mother and I made a mess of our marriage. It was not for you to clean up, and I am sorry you had to.” His voice breaks, and he reaches for me now and hugs me, and this is all I ever wanted from either of them. An honest admission. “It’s okay, Dad,” I say, and then I pull away first. He forages into his chicken, then looks at me, clearing his throat. “But, Kennedy, just because I wasn’t going to tell your mother doesn’t mean I approve of your relationship with Noah.” My stomach nosedives. “I don’t want you going out with him. I don’t think it’s right.” His voice is soft, but clear.

I put my carton down. I’m not hungry anymore. But I’m also not afraid. The truth is out. There are no more lies between father and daughter, or mother and daughter. I started my relationship with Noah from a shroud of secrecy, I built it on a bed of the clandestine, but now everything is unveiled. I shake my head. “Dad, I already broke up with him once for you.” He narrows his eyes. “You broke up with him once to protect a secret,” he says, nailing me with the truth. “Fine. But it’s not a secret anymore, and I’m not going to break up with him for you. Even if I never told you I was with him, the fact remains, I broke up with him for you. So I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m not going to end it simply because you don’t want me to date an older man,” I say, feeling strong, and perhaps that’s because I stood up to my mom. Perhaps that gave me the courage to stand by this choice. He heaves a defeated sigh, but tries again. “I would like you to make the right choice here, Kennedy.” “I know. But the choices I make have to be for me. And I want you to love me even if you disagree with me.” In a second, he reaches for me, wraps his arms around me, and hugs me. “I will always love you.” Later, when I turn my phone back on I find a cherry with a heart-shaped stem. Instantly, a lump rises in my throat and tears rain down my cheeks. *

The next day plays out in slow motion, in a painful, molasses slog through classes, until finally I have an hour between the end of school and the time I have to arrive at our final lacrosse game of the season. I unlock my bike and race to Lincoln Center, since it’s close to both of us. He’s standing in a quiet corner by Juilliard. Waiting for me. There are no words. Only a crashing together. His lips meet mine, and we kiss in a mad frenzy, desperate, oh so desperate, to erase the last twenty-four hours, to unwind back to our safe cocoon. We are a tangle of lips and teeth. A chorus of sighs and gasps. I wrap my arms around him tighter, and he grasps my back. We can’t get close enough. When at last we separate, he breathes out hard, rest his chin atop my head, and whispers, “Thank God.” His worry is only for me, none of it for himself. “Do you still have a job?” I ask. He laughs lightly and we sit down on a stone bench. “Yes. I still have a job.” “You’re still working with my mom?” There’s no way. My mother would never abide by the kind of deception he’s practiced. She is the only one who is allowed to deceive. “No. She fired me last night. But that doesn’t mean I lost my job. K, I have other clients. I have other clients who do just fine as well. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t a blow, but the reality is when you’re an agent you have to operate under the assumption that clients come and go. You can’t

put all your eggs in that basket.” “Oh.” I’m surprised, and I feel strangely defeated. I mean, this is a good thing for him. But it also makes me wonder why we had to be so secretive in the first place if losing her as a client wasn’t that big a deal. Then again, that’s not the real reason we were a secret. Eight years was the real reason. He looks over at the doors to the Vivian Beaumont Theater; there’s a big poster promoting a revival of La Cage Aux Folles that’s opening soon there. In my mind, I can hear our favorite song from the show, “The Best of Times.” But it feels wrong to play the music in my head right now, the words about living and loving as hard as you know how. We did love hard. It worked, but it also didn’t. “I’m sorry you lost an important client,” I say softly, doing my best to separate her from me. Their relationship was important to him. Her departure has to hurt. He grasps my hand. “I’m not gonna lie though, K. I like your mom. She’s been a good friend. A great friend. I’m going to miss her like hell. She’s been good to me, and I don’t just mean financially.” I shift away from him, my antennae up. “You don’t mean…?” He shakes his head quickly. “No, I don’t mean like that. We were never involved, obviously. I wouldn’t do that. But she took a chance on me. She helped me build my career. Everything I am today is because your mom placed a bet

on me when I was no one. I was just in college, only an intern at an agency when we started working together. And what did I do years later? I lied to her. She trusted me and I deceived her,” he says, shaking his head, disgusted with himself. But he sounds heartbroken too. I should feel sympathy, but I can’t muster any good feelings for my mom right now, not after seeing how cold she could be, how easily she could face off against my father like a gladiator in an arena. I keep my mouth shut and listen. Then his voice veers to sadness. “She was there for me. She helped me get through my mom’s death. She went to her memorial service, and she made sure I was going to be okay. She was like a mom, in a weird way, to me too. That’s why I was there all the time, at your house. Before I even fell for you. I was there, because I guess I needed her to look out for me.” And that’s when my world stops moving. This is the moment. The point in time around which everything rotates. His words are an epiphany. They are the crystal clear realization of one cold hard fact—my mother is the epicenter of us. We don’t exist because of us. We exist because of a reaction, a chemical, chain reaction to her. We could never have come to be without Jewel Stanza. But more so, if she wasn’t who she is, we wouldn’t have needed each other. Had she been a normal woman, a regular mom, any other TV writer client, Noah and I would not have become misfit puzzle pieces furiously seeking the

missing one that fit. She’s a mom to me, and she’s a surrogate mom to him. She is the force of our lives, the hurricane that threw us together, and we’ve been caught in the eye, fooled by the calm of our secret hideout. We are too similar, too connected to her. Our love affair started in her shadow; it would always be shrouded in the half-light of my mother. I look at Noah, at those dark-blue eyes I’ve loved getting lost in, at his brown hair that’s so soft under my fingers. I am peering in a mirror, seeing myself reflected back. But he’s more than just my reflection, because I can finally see what he’s always been—an escape hatch. He’s been the tunnel I’ve been digging for years, he’s been the shield to protect me from her. For the first time, I am faced with the truth of this great love. That I don’t even know the why of it. I don’t know if I love him for him or because he’s the way I could get away with something finally, after all those years of her getting away with everything. She ruined my friendships, and I retaliated. I took her best friend away from her. I am no better than she is. I am the same. A tear slides down my cheek. “I can’t see you anymore,” I say, my voice breaking. “We can’t do this anymore.” “Why?” he asks, like he’s croaking out the word. “We just can’t.”

“Why? Tell me why.” How do I even begin to list all the reasons? I drop my head in my hands. Take a deep breath. He gently smooths out my hair. God, I will miss this. I will miss him more than I ever did before. My heart is gasping inside of me, choking as I look up, finally speaking the truth. “Because I don’t know who I am. I don’t even know how to live a life separate from her. I don’t know how to be a friend. I’m not even a very good daughter. I’m just stumbling through everything, and you’re the only thing that’s ever made any sense to me,” I say, as I run my fingers along the collar of his shirt. It’s too hard not to touch him. My leg is pressed against his. Our bodies are magnets, and they seek each other out even as we fall apart. “And if we go on I’ll never know who I am without this love,” I say, my voice breaking as a new round of tears rains down. At least I’m finally being honest. At least I’m telling him the big truth as the fountain patters behind us, and crowds walk by, coming and going in the middle of the day. “I love you more than I ever knew I could, but I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with life or anything. I’m a mess. And I can’t have you be the only thing in my life that’s right. That’s not fair.” “I know who you are,” he says firmly, his dark eyes on me, the look in them resolute. He lifts my chin gently with his fingers, so the hold between us can’t be broken. “You’re the girl who loves musicals, even the ones that didn’t make it. You’re the woman who looks for hearts in the middle of a

messy world. Who admires her father and wants to study art because of him. Who laughs at my jokes. Who loves to hear stories. Who seeks out absurd humor and overwhelming beauty.” I bring my hand to my mouth so all of Lincoln Center won’t see my lips quivering with tears as he keeps talking, his voice softer now. “You’re the one person who needed nothing from me but me. You’re the person who sees beyond the surface at what’s inside. You’re smart, and kind, and sarcastic and sexy,” he says, then slows, his breath shaky, as the last words come out in a painful rasp. “And you are unbelievably heartbreaking. And if you don’t know those things about yourself, you’re right. I can’t show them to you. You have to find them.” He stops and takes a deep breath, then taps his chest. “But I know who I am. I know what I want. I knew what I’d risk. And I’ve done it. My boss could fire me today and I wouldn’t care. I’ve always been certain. I will always be certain. You were worth it. You’ll always have been worth it.” “So are you,” I say, pushing past the relentless slide of salty tears. He puts his big hands on my cheeks, gently pulls me to him, and kisses my forehead. I want to melt into his arms, I want to slide back next to him, to let him hold me, to fall asleep curled around him again. Instead, I let myself savor the last time his lips will touch me, the last time I will feel him on my skin.

“You were worth everything,” I say, into his neck. I want to kiss him there, to tuck my face in the soft and safe crook of his neck, and escape. But I can’t use him for escape anymore. I have to escape myself first. He stands up. “Good-bye, K.” “Good-bye, Noah,” I say, and then I watch him walk away. He reaches into his pocket for his phone and pops the earbuds in his ears. I know he’s toggling over to Sweeney Todd. He only listens to Sondheim when he’s sad. I watch him the whole time, watch him walk away from the fountain, down the steps, onto Broadway, away from me, through the crowds, until I can no longer make out the outline of his broad shoulders, his back, his soft thick hair, until he fades into a sea of New Yorkers. Gone. I sit on the steel edge of the fountain for another minute. I hear a song from the Vivian Beaumont Theater drifting out. I turn, and a few actors are leaving the theater, singing the chorus to “Best of Times” as they go. How I would have loved to slow dance with Noah to that song at prom, to have the lyrics guide my heart with their urging to seize the moment, to seize love, because who knows what tomorrow brings. Who knows, right? I wipe my palms across my cheeks, erasing the tears. I check the time on my phone. I can’t linger here nor do I want to, so I take off for the final game. I make it to Randall’s Field in record time, then proceed to whale on our opponents, slashing with abandon, scoring like it’s

breathing, winning the championship trophy like it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I cheer loudly with my teammates and we jump up and down and we scream and we shout. For a moment, I’m fully seventeen and loving it. I’m a girl in high school, not an almost woman lost in time, trying to attach herself to a man, or fighting to detach from her parents. As we hoot and holler, I’m not defined by my mistakes or my lies. I’m just an athlete who likes scoring goals and who loves winning, and hanging out with her friends. I’m me.

Chapter Thirty-Two Kennedy It’s still party time for my mom, even a day later. We’ve won the championship and she wants to celebrate, since it’s a Saturday. But I don’t. If I’m going to live the life I want, if I’m going to become the person I want to be, I have to start by telling the truth. I knock when I reach the door because this home doesn’t feel like mine anymore. She answers and chides me, telling me I never have to knock, that I’m always welcome, and that she has baked seven-layer bars yesterday because she knew we would win. “I wanted to have your favorite dessert ready and waiting.” She scurries into the kitchen and brings a plate to the table. “Coffee?” “I always want coffee.” “Espresso. Double?” “But of course,” I say, wishing our relationship was a simple as her knowing my favorite drink, and my favorite dessert. But she’s not my regular waitress. She’s my mother, and we need to go deeper than desserts and shirts and coffee. We sit down and I take a sip, and it’s the best double

espresso I’ve ever had. I tell her this and she beams. But there’s a nervousness to her movements tonight, like she knows something else is happening, like she senses an undercurrent. It’s not about whether I fell in love with her agent anymore. Even so, I want her to know it’s over. “I broke up with Noah.” “Me too!” she says, like we’re sisters sharing secrets. “But not because of you. Not because you were mad at him.” “Mad doesn’t even begin to explain it,” she says, and she is back now to in-charge Jewel. She is a chameleon, my mother. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. I broke up with him because I was involved with him for the wrong reasons. I wanted to have something you would never know.” “Darling, we don’t need to keep secrets from each other. You can tell me anything.” She reaches her bejeweled hand across the table, her sparkly sapphire threatening to blind me as it catches a beam of the setting sunlight from the living room window. “Mom, listen to me. You asked me to keep secrets my whole life about your relationships. You asked me to keep secrets and you asked me to tell lies. And I hated doing it. So I went out with Noah.” “Hayes,” she says quietly but insistently. “Noah, Mom. He’s Noah to me. But the point is, that’s how deeply it affected me, how you lived, what you did. I

can barely have a normal relationship with anyone, not a boy, not a girl, because all I know is how to cover up.” She starts to protest, but I hold up a hand. “I broke up with him because it was the right thing to do. And I told Lane the truth about how I felt, or didn’t feel, about him. And I told dad the truth when he asked me about Noah. And it felt great not to lie.” I grip her hand tighter, like I can channel into her some of this strange newfound courage I’m gaining as I try to live without a safety net. She squeezes back, like she wants it, like she wants what I have now. The capacity to change. “What I’m trying to say, Mom, is I want you to change too. I want you to stop messing around with married men. That’s why I sent those letters. But now I’m asking you directly.” I stop talking. I wait to see something in her eyes, maybe an acknowledgment, maybe a willingness to hear me. It’s not there yet, so I ask a question. “Can you do that, Mom? Can you please do that?” Her face is stony, but behind her facade I can see cracks and fissures. Maybe I’m getting through to her. Maybe all I had to do was ask. The strongest sense of hope fills me and I’m flooded with reminders: how she helped me with homework, how she went to every lacrosse game, how she cheered the loudest, turned off her phone and only had eyes for me. How she was there for me. I hold on tight to that hope. I hold it close in my hands, like it’s a delicate baby bird. My mom shakes her head and her voice is weak, like a

child’s. Because she is the child. “I can’t stop,” she says. “I don’t want to stop.” I put my head in my hands, and press my thumb and my middle finger against the corners of my eyes. A voice inside me, maybe in my head, maybe in my heart, says Let her go. I push back from the table. I give her a kiss on the forehead. “Good-bye, Mom. I love you,” I say quietly, pushing past the lump in my throat as I stand to leave. She stays seated at the table, and this is it. This is the end. A tear slides anyway, as I shut the door behind me. On the stoop there is another letter waiting for me. It’s under the doormat again. I pull it out and open it quickly. It’s the Beethoven this time, “Immortal Beloved,” again. There’s a new line that’s been added to it, written out in pen by the sender.

Everyone wants to know who she was—this “Immortal Beloved.” Do you want to meet? There is a lot to say, I think. How about we meet by the Rembrandts at the Met. Tomorrow at 3:00? I was never a fan of English painters, incidentally, or English history either.

I fold the paper and jam it down into the front pocket of my backpack. I have a feeling I know who it’s from finally, and I let myself feel a small spark of excitement in my heart. I lift my bike and walk down the steps, knowing this is the last time I’ll carry Joe from the inside to the out. I won’t be living here anymore. I’m okay with that, I think. I have to be. I see a cab stop on the other side of the street. I watch as a man pays. Something about him looks familiar. I straddle my bike and wait. He opens the taxi door, then closes it, and the cab zips off. He looks over and up at the door to my former home. It’s Amanda’s father. My heart splinters as I push down on the pedals and ride away to find his daughter. * “That thing is like an extension of you.” “I like to think of it as an extra limb,” I say, petting Joe appreciatively. “Yeah, what would Freud say?” Amanda teases, as I wheel my silver bike beside her as we walk up Fifth Avenue, Central Park on one side of us. “I don’t know. What would Freud say?” “Heck if I know. I don’t put much stock in him. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know.” She waggles an

imaginary stogie. “Speaking of,” I start, sensing an entrée, a way to slide into the most awkward of all possible conversations I could be having on a Saturday afternoon, one day after a massive lacrosse victory, “I see one. A shrink, that is.” “Oh, cool,” Amanda says, unperturbed. “That’s so Upper East Side of you.” I laugh. “She almost asked me if I lived off Fifth Avenue when I started seeing her. Imagine her shock when she found out I’m a West Side gal.” “And she still admitted you into her practice?” “I’m a pity case,” I say, but I know we need to move past the jokes and the banter. I can feel my heart beating faster, my nerves skating back and forth under the surface of my skin. This must be what it feels like to open yourself up, to let someone see who you really are. “So, Amanda, that’s where I go on Mondays. When I just take off after school and don’t say a thing,” I admit. She stops walking and tilts her head to the side. “That’s okay. I get that you weren’t ready to tell me. That it was personal.” “You do?” “Of course,” she says, all nonchalant. Then she plasters on an overeager face and pretends to beg. “But now I get to be super nosy and ask you why you go. Tell me everything. Everything.” I gesture to a bench.

“Uh-oh. This is serious. You’re making me sit down.” We sit and I tell her everything about my mother, and my father, about how I grew up, the role I played. It’s like stripping bare. I feel naked and exposed, but even so I start at the beginning and I finish with her dad, who’s at my house right now. Correction. My mom’s house. I don’t live there anymore. Amanda stares at me, mouth agape. “Son of a bitch.” She doesn’t stand up or run away or leave. Not yet. There’s time for that. She leans her head back and pulls her loose hair into a ponytail with her hands. She shakes her head. “He is such a bastard.” She sits up straight, lets her hair go. “Shoot, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean he’s a bastard for being with your mom. I mean, he’s a bastard for cheating on my mom.” “It’s okay, Amanda. We don’t have to defend my mom here.” She breathes out hard. “Good. Because she’s a bitch too,” she says, but I can tell she’s not mad at me; she’s mad at my mom, but mostly at her dad. “Parents are so awful. They don’t get it, do they? They just don’t get it.” I shake my head. “Nope. They do not. They do not at all.” Then she snorts, this time combining it with a huff. “Hey! I invented another one! It’s the can-you-believe-our-lameass-parents-are-diddling-each-other snort!” I laugh and snort too. “Who would ever have thought we’d need that one?”

We laugh more, and we snort more, and then her arms are around me, and mine are around her, and we’re laughing so hard we can’t breathe. The situation isn’t truly funny, but the laughter is necessary. It is the only way through the absurdity. When we both finally calm down, Amanda holds a finger in the air. “Let the record reflect that my reportorial skills are officially awesome. Did I or did I not predict he was having an affair?” “You have a nose for news.” Then I turn serious. “Are you going to tell your mom?” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I need to see a shrink too to figure that out.” We sit in silence for a minute, and in the quiet my brain goes haywire and I picture that this is the last time we’ll hang out, that this is not just the beginning of the end, but that it is the end. “Are we still friends?” I ask nervously. “Of course.” “Good. I’m glad.” “Me too. I’m glad too. Hey, do you want to go get gelato and celebrate our championship or what?” “Absolutely,” I say, and as we walk to the nearest shop, I tell her about Noah, and her jaw drops. Then I tell her an idea I have for prom and her mouth forms the biggest grin I’ve ever seen, and finally I tell her about the letter I found on my porch and she agrees that it has to be from Catey. “I’ll go with you to the Met tomorrow and wait outside while you meet her,” Amanda says.

“That would be awesome.” I buy gelato. It tastes great. So do the amends. The real amends.

Chapter Thirty-Three Kennedy The first thing I notice is the ponytail. High on her head and white-blond. Her back is to me, her arms are crossed and she’s staring at a Rembrandt. As the sound of my shoes echoes across the museum floor, the girl turns around and shoots me a smile. In some ways, she looks the same, and in other ways she’s totally different. I am nervous because I have no clue what to expect, but even so there’s a warmth inside of me too that comes only from friendship; I am happy to see her. “Hey,” Catey says, and walks over to me. “Hi.” “I kind of have a thing for Rembrandt,” she says, tipping her forehead to the self-portrait the Dutch artist painted. “It’s hard not to. He pretty much rocked the paintbrush.” “He did amazing things with light.” “And with dark,” I add, and we’re right back in it. Talking, chatting, bantering. We always had the gift of gab. That hasn’t gone away, even despite the missing years. “Look at us. Like we’re a couple of art critics,” she says with a wry laugh, the nerves falling to the wayside the more we talk. I tell her I’m going to NYU, and she tells me she’s heading to Columbia to study art. Every word, every

sentence is easy. It’s not like a slide back to the past. It’s more of a simple step into the comfort of the present. Even when she says, “I’ve been following you.” “You have?” I say, and now the familiar worry rears its head again. Maybe the banter was just a farce. She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut so tight it’s like they’re sewn together. She opens them. “I wanted to reconnect. But I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. And then I saw you and that hot guy taping up letters near my house one day. I followed you more, and I started putting two and two together, especially after one showed up in the mail for my mom. And that’s when I started sending them back to you. Just to get your attention,” she says, biting her lip as she finishes her confession, the expression on her face telling me she’s not sure how I’ll react. Honestly, I’m not sure how to react either. But that’s okay. I’m learning to live with not knowing. “Oh, it got my attention all right. Why didn’t you just call or e-mail if you wanted to reconnect?” She shrugs, then whispers, her voice wobbly. “Probably because I still felt like crap that I never talked to you again after what happened with our parents.” “Me too,” I say in a small voice. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to handle any of it,” she says, and the honesty in her voice hits me hard, a reminder that so few of us know what we’re doing. That figuring out how to handle something so big at such a young age is a monumental task.

“Are yours still together?” She shakes her head. “Nope. Yours?” she asks, her tone laced with the slightest bit of anger toward her parents. An emotion I know too well. I shake my head. “Divorced three years.” She blinks once, twice, as if holding back her emotions, but she pushes on and gestures to a Vermeer on the wall, to the details on the folds of the woman’s blue skirt. “We should stay in touch. Especially if we’re both studying art. We can help each other, you know?” I nod. “Definitely.” I don’t think we’re talking about art anymore. “Do you want to get a coffee? Do you still drink the froufrou drinks?” she asks, her eyes lighting up. The sadness that was in them is erased. I smile broadly. I can’t contain it. I want nothing more than to get a coffee with an old friend who’s now a new friend. “I am hard core all the way. I can drink anyone under the table in a caffeine consumption contest.” “You’re on.” We walk up the stairs, then down a long hallway. “My friend Amanda is waiting outside for me.” “In case I turned out to be a psycho stalker?” she asks, arching an eyebrow playfully. “Yep. But I suppose she wouldn’t have been terribly useful outside. And speaking of stalking—” “—I’ll call or e-mail from here on out,” she says, with a

laugh. I laugh too. It’s so good to see her again.

Chapter Thirty-Four Noah Matthew and Jane try to pay the lunch bill, but I insist. I can already see the pity in their eyes; I don’t need them paying for lunch because they think I’m a sad sack. “I got this,” I say, laying a few bills on the table at a Korean restaurant Jane likes. On the way out, she drops a hand on my arm. “Are you doing okay?” I flash a smile. It’s completely fake. “I’m all good. Don’t worry about me,” I say, drawing on my best phony confidence. But somehow it fools her. The midday June sun blares at me as we reach Sixth Avenue. I grab my shades to block it out. “Seriously, mate. You okay with everything?” Matthew asks, weighing in. “I told you all, I’m fine,” I say, emphasizing the last word. I will be fine. Eventually. Maybe even someday soon. For now, the loneliness is like a cloak I can’t shed, even as I surround myself with work, and events, and scripts, and shows, and people. I have buried myself in the client hunt, Jewel’s exodus a reminder that you always have to keep swimming in this business. Fins up. “Besides, David Tremaine is coming by this afternoon to sign the agency

papers. You lose some, and you win some,” I say, trying to look on the bright side. Jewel is gone, but I’ve landed another top-tier writer. Matthew sighs heavily, then shoots me a rueful smile. “We weren’t really asking about work,” he says. “But I’m glad it’s keeping you busy.” Jane gives me a hug, pulling me close. “Hey. I know you miss her like crazy. But there will be others. I promise. There always are.” I scoff, even though it gives me away. “I’m sure,” I say, and after Jane takes off for an appointment, Matthew and I return to our building. Inside my office I do my best to drown in a sea of work. It’s barely been a week, but I’ve already given up hope that there will be a text, a picture, a message from her. This time it’s for good, and hell, I’m sure it’s for the best. She wasn’t ready, I was, and that’s that; that’s the great divide. At least I’ve got my job. Luck landed on my side and I managed to slide under the radar, unscathed from scandal. As I finish a contract for a junior TV scribe who nabbed a gig writing for a hospital drama, I check the time on my computer. Tremaine will be here soon, so I tuck the papers away. There’s a rap on my door. It’s barely open so I say, “Come in,” but Jonathan is already inside. “Hayes, we’ve got a problem,” he says, smacking his palms together as he huffs out a sigh. “What’s that?” I ask, leaning back in my chair.

“I’m going need to let you go.” I sit ramrod straight. Shock courses through my bloodstream. “What?” “Yeah,” he says, holding out his hands as if he’s sorry. “Here’s the thing. I thought it was a little odd that Jewel left us. Jewel never said why when she parted ways, and that’s what was so strange to me. We made her shitloads of money. She had you over her house all the time,” he begins, scratching his head as he paces across the carpet of my office. My face turns flush, and I swallow, knowing where this is going. “So when she took off for my competitors last week, I did a little digging. Talked to Bailey o n Lords and Ladies. Talked to some others. And let me tell you something: I don’t give two shits what our clients do in their personal lives. Jewel Stanza can do whatever she wants. And I don’t give a shit about my agents’ private lives,” he says, and he stops pacing to stare hard at me. Shame washes over me, but I stay strong. I don’t look away. I will take what’s coming like a man. “You might think because this is showbiz that anything goes. And while I’m fine with you pursuing deals and grabbing them by the throats, the one thing you don’t do is fuck a client’s kid.” The shame disappears. It turns into anger and righteousness as it burns through me. But I tamp it down as I say through clenched teeth. “I didn’t have sex with her.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Whatever. I’m not

interested in the semantics. You have fifteen minutes to pack your stuff. Get out.” Fourteen minutes later, I carry a box of scripts, picture frames, a few books, my favorite mug, and my laptop to the elevator. The momentary rage that resides in me has disappeared. Because I knew this was coming. It was a distinct possibility from the day I started letting Kennedy come to my office. It’s been more than a year in the making, and today is only the sealing of what was always my eventual fate. It’s hard for me to have expected anything else. As I reach the lobby, I spot Tremaine in the elevator across from me, looking down at his phone. The doors are already closing on him.

Chapter Thirty-Five Kennedy I blow out the candle on the cake my dad made for me, still amazed that he actually baked. He slices me a piece, and I take a fork and dig in. It’s chocolate and it’s not bad, but I can hardly get it past the lump in my throat. Still, I try. For him. He gives me a new phone as a gift. “I’d have gotten you a car, but you never drive in Manhattan,” he says jokingly. My eyes widen. “I don’t want a car, but can I get the equivalent in cash value?” He laughs, and I try to join him, but it’s too hard. He’s not the one I want to spend my birthday with. Nor are Catey and Amanda either, but even so I meet up with them to do karaoke and try to laugh, as if Bruno Mars and Imagine Dragons will somehow make me forget my real plans for today. It works. For a while. Until darkness falls, wrapping its arms around the city. Tonight I was supposed to be with Noah, and the empty ache inside of me is so strong that I make excuses with everyone so I can be alone in Madison Square Park. I find our bench and turn on a playlist on my new phone, wishing I could feel his arms around me, instead of feeling

so alone.

Noah The inn calls to ask if I’ll still be there tonight. “I canceled it a few days ago,” I say as I run along the reservoir in Central Park, not bothering to hide the irritation from my voice. “Oh that’s right. I’m so sorry for the mix-up, Mr. Hayes. I apologize and hope you have a good evening.” I hang up, my hand still clutching the phone as I sprint past a group of heavyset, middle-aged men ahead of me. I’ve logged five miles so far tonight, probably one hundred since Jonathan canned me; maybe I’ll run the whole night. Anything to distract me from the date on the calendar, and the downward spiral my life has taken in one short week. Later, after another lap around the water, and a hot shower, I sink down on my couch, checking the time once more. It’s nearly ten, and I only have two more stinking hours to go before this miserable day is in the books. Reaching across to my coffee table, I grab the one gift I couldn’t cancel—the charm I had made for her necklace. It’s a silver locket with a picture of the deer with the white heart on its butt. She would have treasured it, and I would have been so damn happy to give it to her. I run my thumb across the smooth silver surface, and am so tempted to throw it at the wall. Anything to get her away

from me. But I can’t because my entire body is hollow, and I’d do anything to get rid of this gaping hole in my chest. Instead, I spot a wooden box that’s used to hold coasters, so I drop it into that. Even out of sight, it taunts me, reminding me of the night I gave her the necklace this was supposed to become a part of. We went to Madison Square Park that night. Maybe that’s why I can’t shake the feeling that I know where she is right now. I grab my keys and phone and head for the park. A dangerous kernel of hope starts to take root, but when I reach our bench, it’s empty. She’s nowhere to be seen, but I swear I can smell her.

Chapter Thirty-Six Kennedy “What do you think?” Amanda asks, turning in front of my mirror. “Perfect,” I say. “Really?” “Look at you. You’re hot,” I say, and connect with her in the mirror that hangs behind my bedroom door. She’s wearing a shimmery red dress with the thinnest of straps. The dress falls to just below her knees. She scored a pair of matching heels—four-inch cherry-red ones with a sparkly pattern on the spikes. I’m wearing a green dress. It’s the color of money, the color of envy, the color of lush green grass after it rains. But it’s not as pretty as Amanda’s and that’s the point. I pull my hair up into a French twist and clip it. “You never wear your hair up and you should because it looks amazing,” Amanda says. I fasten the necklace my mom gave me a few weeks ago and the silver pendant drops down against my bare skin. I touch it once, thinking of her¸ wishing she could see me going to prom. But she can’t, and she won’t, except through the pictures my dad will take that I’ll send her tomorrow. I run my fingers over my three charms next. I still wear the

necklace Noah gave me. I don’t think I’ve ever taken it off. “You should just call him,” Amanda says. I pull my fingers away and brush an unseen piece of lint off my dress. “What? You just like the way the necklace feels in your fingers?” she continues. I roll my eyes. “Not gonna happen for so many reasons.” “By the way, I can’t believe you wore that thing for a year and I had no idea where it came from.” I pretend to blow on my fingernails, like they’re hot. “What can I say? I’ve got game. This girl knows how to keep a secret.” Amanda takes out a bottle of lotion, the kind that leaves a shimmery sparkle behind and tosses it to me. “For your shoulders,” she explains. “Yeah, figured that much out already,” I say and put some on. I toss the bottle back to her and she tucks it away in her bag. “We look perfect,” she announces. “Are you nervous?” “Are you nervous?” “No,” I say. “Of course not. It’s totally normal for a guy to take two girls to prom, right?” “And to think you were worried about going to prom with an older guy.” Amanda knows pretty much everything about Noah. I’ve told her tons of details in the last two weeks, and she loves slinging them back at me when she can. She also

likes Noah. Well, she likes what I’ve told her of Noah. How could she not? He was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. He was my beautiful escape, and I only miss him when I’m breathing. The buzzer rings and Amanda squeals. I point at her. “You squealed!” She covers her mouth, feigning embarrassment. “What is wrong with me?” “You smeared your lipstick now. I can’t take you anywhere.” I reach for a tissue and thrust it at her. She peers into my mirror and fixes her makeup. I hear my dad open the door. “Good evening, Lane.” “Hello, Mr. Stanzlinger.” “Nice job with the double corsages. I trust you’ll have the girls home at a reasonable hour.” “Of course, Mr. Stanzlinger.” Lane sounds nervous. “I’ll go fetch them.” Fetching, of course, involves walking five feet to my bedroom, since this is New York and space it at a premium. My dad appears in my doorway. He raises an eyebrow, and the corner of his lips quirks up. “Your threesome is complete,” he says, enjoying our unusual arrangement for prom. He gestures to the hall. “Allow me to present you to your suitor, please.” We leave my room and there’s Lane waiting in the foyer.

He looks gorgeous and then some, but that’s what I have come to expect. He is, quite simply, empirically handsome. Amanda walks out and I watch her inhale Lane. I can tell she’s knocked off her feet by him, from the way his auburn hair invites fingers to be run through it to how his hazelgreen-brown eyes can hypnotize you. He wears a tux, black pants and jacket, crisp white shirt, and bow tie. There are no powder-blue ruffles in sight. He watches Amanda, who looks gorgeous in her red dress, then he shifts to me. He hands me the corsage, then gives one to Amanda. My father leans in to stage whisper to him. “You’re supposed to put it on them.” “Oh, right,” Lane says, and his cheeks flush. He’s used to girls, but taking two to prom in our most unusual trio would try any boy. He fumbles with the plastic container that holds a red rose. I watch as his fingers stumble across the opening. He flips the container open and takes out the flower. Amanda holds out her hand and he slides the corsage onto her wrist. He does the same to me with my flower. My father snaps some photos and then sends us on our way.

Noah It’s a Saturday evening in early June and even though Tremaine’s not my client anymore, I still dress the part as I

head to Speakeasy to meet him for a drink. He called earlier and said he wanted to catch up, so I return to my agent wardrobe, opting for the cobalt-blue shirt. I’m still an agent; my client list is just much thinner. But hey, it’s bigger than a week ago when I had none. I’m working from home, manning my own phones, trying to land deals like I did before. I’ve nabbed a junior writer on a fledgling late-night comedy series, and I’m betting he’ll go big. When I enter the bustling midtown establishment, I spot Tremaine with his wife and join them at a table. “Can we get you a drink?” she asks. “Just an iced tea for me,” I say. “I’ll head to the bar to order,” she says, then excuses herself. Tremaine shoots me a strange look. “What was that that all about?” I furrow my brow. “What was what all about?” “You leaving the agency and not going after me?” I laugh because I’d thought he was talking about his wife heading to the bar. “Sorry if I offended you by not trying to steal you from Jonathan. Figured that was the least I could do to my old boss.” “So you’re gone. What’s the story? I heard some chatter about a girl.” “You heard right,” I say, then give him the CliffsNotes of the CliffsNotes. I’m tired of pretending. I’m worn out from

covering up. Besides, I like the guy and I’ve always been up front with him. No need to be a different person now that I’m not his agent. “Girls are vexing. I told you that,” he says, and wags a finger at me, like he’s admonishing me as a father. But he doesn’t seem pissed or annoyed. “They are. But I trust Jonathan is taking good care of you.” He scratches his chin. “Yeah, about that.” He stares at the ceiling, then back at me. “I really wouldn’t know.” I shoot him a quizzical look. “What do you mean? You signed with him, right?” He shakes his head slowly, and a smile forms across his face. “I didn’t. I wasn’t interested in working with Jonathan. But if you were to tell me you’re starting your own shop, that might interest me.” A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. The first real smile I’ve felt in weeks. “As a matter of fact, I have started my own shop.” He nods approvingly. “Excellent. And since you didn’t try to poach me, that’s all the more reason for me to ask this question, since I admire your integrity. Would you like a new client?” “I would love to represent you.” He extends a hand and we shake.

Kennedy

When we reach the sidewalk, there’s a gleaming black limousine idling by the curb. Amanda gives me a look that might as well be a massive thumbs-up. The chauffeur scurries out to open the door, but Lane waves him off, preferring to hold it open himself. The three of us spread out across the backseat, Lane in the middle. He drapes an arm around me, another around Amanda, and says in a low Barry White voice, “Hello, Ladies.” We all crack up as Lane pretends to be our escort, then a rich businessman, then a power player who ordered up two young ladies. Minutes later, we’re all gasping from laughter as the sleek black car pulls up to a hotel on FiftySeventh Street where Lane’s school holds its last dance of the year. The chauffeur beats Lane to the door this time. We head inside and step onto the escalator that carries us to the second floor. A doorman opens the glass doors to the ballroom and I stop in my tracks. It’s twinkling—sparkly silver and shimmery lights with silver balloons coat the ceiling and silver cutout stars line the walls. “I guess the theme this year is silver,” Lane remarks as we walk onto the dance floor. A loud, fast beat echoes throughout the cavernous room. Guys and girls, and girls and girls, and guys and guys, are moving their hips to the music.

I grab Amanda’s arm. “It’s like heaven!” She nods enthusiastically. “I know!” She turns to Lane. “We’re easy to please. It’s the all-girls’-school upbringing.” He laughs. “That is indeed good to know.” I sense an opening. Or rather, a chance to create one. And that’s what I’ve been hoping to do tonight. “I’ll get us sodas. Why don’t you two dance?” “Okay,” Amanda says, and she’s seconded by Lane. He gives me a quick look before he starts to dance, but I know he doesn’t like me the way he used to, and I’m glad. I want him in my life as a friend. I ask the bartender for three sodas. The bartender hands me the beverages, but I’m not ready to return to the dance floor. There will be time enough for me to bring them their drinks. “Thanks,” I say, and I lean against the bar, watching my friends. I wait and the music slows and the swaying starts. There’s an awkwardness at first. Amanda and Lane both shuffle their feet, and neither one knows exactly what to do with their arms. I tense, trying to will them to move closer, trying to use the force to guide his arms to her shoulders, then around her back. Soon enough, he figures it out, and she slides in closer, and they have this dance. The lights dim and silver disco balls descend, spinning kaleidoscopic swirls across the hardwood floor. I’m pretty sure this won’t be their last dance of the night. I take a sip of my Diet Coke, thinking of someone who’s not here,

wondering how he’d look on the dance floor with me. Instinctively, I touch my necklace. I twirl the charms in my hand, listening to the music. I turn to the bartender. “So this is prom.” “So this is prom,” he echoes. “This is what everyone gets all excited about.” “Yep. This is what everyone gets excited about.” “I can see why.” Soon, soon, I will join my friends. I will seize the moment, because in some ways, this is the best of times after all. I let that word reverberate in my head.

Time. It clangs and echoes loudly in my mind. It insists on being heard. It tells me it knows something. Time is what we were missing. That’s what Lane and Amanda have in their potential favor; that’s what Noah and I lacked. I swivel around as an idea shoots through me, landing like a meteor in the backyard, exploding open with possibilities. “Do you have a pencil? Or a pen?” I ask the bartender. He fishes for one in his pocket and hands it to me. I grab a napkin, and begin writing. Or really, I finish writing. Because there is a letter I never sent. A letter that only had a beginning. It had no end. And so I finish it.

Our Stolen Kisses At prom, I think of you, and I find the answer. The answer is time. What if we were one of those couples that met out of time? What if I’d been two years older, or you were five years younger, or we met at work, or in Europe, or on the subway? Would we still have fallen so hard, and so far? We’ll never know, will we, what would have happened if the time was right? They say time heals all wounds. But does it close the gaps too? Maybe it can. Maybe in a year it turns an eightyear time gap into dust. Maybe it turns a girl who didn’t know what she wanted into someone who became certain. Maybe it turns twenty-one stolen kisses into endless given ones.

Then I write the final line.

Chapter Thirty-Seven Many Months Later: Kennedy My mom invites me to take a trip to Italy with her over winter break. “Florence is irresistible to any art history student,” she writes in an e-mail that promises fabulous dinners too as she tries to lure me with reminders that the country’s plethora of pasta is calling my vegetarian heart. “We’ll fly first class and it will be divine! Say yes, please!” I keep waiting for her to tell me she’s done, she’s changing, she’s in therapy. But those words haven’t come, and this is all we have now. These e-mails, the occasional phone call. It’s been several months since I moved out of her place for good. I live in the dorms, but when I go “home,” it’s always to my dad’s. Like me, he’s making changes too. He stood up to Jay Fierstein, and Jay backed down, dropping the breach of contract lawsuit. I’m proud of my dad; it’s been so much easier for him to seethe inside, to just take it. This is progress for the iceman. But as for Jewel, she is still my mom. And it is almost Christmas. I relax my rules temporarily and reply. “Have a Merry Christmas, Mom. Let’s meet for lunch before your

trip,” I write. But lunch is as far as I’ll go. My mom has a new agent now. I know this because I looked it up online. Plus, she mentioned once in a phone call that Noah hadn’t even tried to win her back. I ignored the comment, but secretly I was glad to know he hadn’t gone crawling to her after I was out of the picture. He’s moved on professionally and I read in the trades that his new agency is soaring. No surprise there. I close my laptop, tuck it inside my dark-pink messenger bag, and place some bills on the table at my favorite diner on campus. The coffee here is good, and it fuels my final exam prep. I leave and a cold December wind whips by. Tightening my scarf around my neck, I hunt for my gloves. I find them inside my computer bag and pull them on to warm my cold hands. New York is having a particularly harsh winter. Shivering, I cut across Washington Square Park, where even the hardy street performers have packed up for the day. I walk past the main NYU offices, with Christmas decorations up already, then push open the door to the library. The whoosh of ventilated heat is like a car in a black-asphalt parking lot in August—the complete opposite of the Arctic outdoors. I unwrap myself from my coat, sit down at a table, and pull out my Survey of Art book. I pore over sculptures and artists and paintings. When I come across a Fragonard, my heart tugs, like an old wound flaring up, as I remember one of my first dates with Noah at

the Frick and how he made me laugh at the art, how we kissed like the painting. I peer more closely at the image in my book as if this representation can wipe away the aching inside me. But half of my heart is still hurting, still missing. I hope it will hurt less and maybe soon it will hurt a quarter, then an eighth, then one-sixteenth, then I won’t even feel the aching. It’ll just fade with time. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe I’ll always miss my first love. “I walked past Noah’s building the other night,” I say to Caroline later that evening. We’ve worked through a lot in our time together. I’m pretty sure it’s helped, all the talking. But all the listening is what’s helped most. “Did you go in?” My lips quirk up, like I’ve been caught. “Well, not in exactly.” “Then what exactly?” she asks, but she’s not mad, she’s just curious. “I just wanted to see if my name was still on the list with the doorman.” “And was it?” I nod. “And what do you think about your name being on the list?” “I guess I hope it’s always on the list,” I say softly. If my name hasn’t been crossed off, then perhaps the invitation remains open for a someday down the road. “Because every day I feel more ready.”

She raises an eyebrow, eyes me curiously. “For?” I glance sideways, like she should know what I mean. “You know. The thing you don’t think will work out.” “I never said it wouldn’t work out, Kennedy,” she says, correcting me. “I said it rarely works out.” “Well, maybe we can be rare then.” “Maybe you can.” “Do you think so?” “I’m not going to predict,” she says. “You know what I think. You know the risks. You don’t even know if he’d want you back.” I nod. “I know. He might have moved on. He probably moved on. But I’ll never know.” “Unless you try.” It’s as much a blessing as I’m ever going to get from anyone, so I’ll take it. But more than getting a blessing, I have given myself permission. I have given myself forgiveness. And I have given myself a clean slate. She nods, and then we’re both quiet for a moment. But what I really want to say is I hope someday I’ll go inside again. I hope someday I’ll ride in the elevator up to the sixth floor. I hope I’ll knock on his door. I hope he’ll be waiting for me. And I hope I’ll be ready then. But I can’t ask him to wait. I can’t ask myself to wait either. I can’t live in the future, and I can’t live in the past. I have a test to take, and friends to get together with, since Catey,

Lane, and Amanda are all coming over for a mini holiday party at my house in a few days. When I finish my final exam the next day, I text Catey that I rocked it as I head to midtown to meet my dad for lunch on Forty-Fourth Street, the heart of the theater district. I send the text and look up from my phone. But I stop in my tracks as I walk by the Belasco Theatre. My feet can’t move. I am glued to the sidewalk. The whole world turns still, and I swear I’m seeing things. I blink several times, as if the mirage in front of me will stop shimmering and return to what it used to be. But the poster … it’s here. It’s real and it’s beckoning to me. I step toward it, tentatively, one hand out, as if I need to touch it to prove it’s real. It’s happening. A sign. A sign for Chess. The revival. Opening in three weeks. I’ve been so immersed in school and my new world order that I missed the news that it had moved beyond workshop and into production and rehearsals and casting. I bring my hand to my mouth, pressing my fingers against my lips as wonder spreads through me. My heart skips all its beats, my mind races forward to the future, to the prospects, to the possibilities. I push open the door to the lobby. The ticket window is open. I don’t even have to think twice. I buy two tickets for opening night. Then I go to the bank, visit my safe-deposit box and

remove the only thing I have that’s priceless. Carefully, I slide the letter into my bag. When I return to my dorm, I reread the final line I wrote that night, then I add some new ones. They are as necessary as all the words that came before. I ride over to Noah’s building. The doorman lets me in. The elevator takes me to the sixth floor. As hope floods my body, I walk to his apartment and I slide it under the door. There are no guarantees. I have no claim to him, and no right to expect anything but a rebuff. All I know is, I’ll never know unless I try.

Chapter Thirty-Eight Three Weeks Later: Noah I read the letter again for the fiftieth time. Maybe the five hundredth. I adjust my tie, look in the mirror, and run my fingers through my hair. Then I take off the tie, tossing it on the floor. The day I received the letter three weeks ago knocked me to my knees. I almost didn’t open it. I crumpled it up, threw it in the trash and walked away. Ten minutes later, I grabbed it from the top of the wastebasket and smoothed it out. I started to read it, making it through the first three kisses before I shoved it to the other side of my coffee table and slammed the door behind me. How the hell could she send me that letter now? After she walked out and left me with another open wound? I went for a run, up and down Madison Avenue, trying to burn her off in the cold night air. When I returned, the damn letter called out to me. I made it through more pages. With each word, the desire to punch a wall intensified.

Maybe that’s how I was supposed to feel. Angry. I don’t like being jerked around. Nobody does. And here she was sending me the letter that split us in two. The letter I said would ruin me. It did. But then I was ruined long ago. Way before a letter. I read it again the next night, and then the next, and the next. With each time spent reliving us, my anger began to fall to the ground like snow dissolving on the street. In its place were only memories of all those days and nights, kisses and laughs, plans and feelings. So much more than I ever expected. So much more than I’ll ever have again. Reading her story of our kisses was like watching our love affair on the screen, from that early spark of awareness to the tipping point before our first kiss to the night in the park when we were no longer falling. We’d fallen. We were in love. We are. I’ve dated since we broke up again. I’ve had a few interesting dinners, movies, and shows. Even laughed a few times. I haven’t monked up. But nothing has compared. They are all black and white and she is color. She is all my colors. Because I know who I am. My story is simple. It’s not complicated. It’s not unusual.

I’m just a guy who’s in love with a girl. I head to the lobby and hail a cab. Along the way, I open the letter once more and read the final words again. The last line of the letter itself sparked that dangerous hope in me again – What if time was on our side? But after so many words that melted my heart, it’s the practical ones that matter right now. I turn the page from the final sentence to the next page. The postscript.

I go to Dr. Insomnia’s Coffee and Tea Emporium every afternoon with my friends. You know how to find me. I will be waiting for you. I have always been waiting for you. It’s always you. The cab stops in the Village. I pay the cabbie, thank him, and step out onto the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop I’ve never been to. Her place. I peer through the glass window, scanning for her. A guy in a beanie wraps his arm around a girl with pink hair. A trio of tattooed punk girls are spread out on a couch. A young mother and father drink lattes as the mom rocks a baby. An older woman with gray hair taps away on a laptop. In the far back of the shop I spot a guy tipped back in his chair. He’s talking animatedly, likely telling a story to three girls. One has bright blond hair, one is dark blond, and one I can barely see. Then she laughs and turns to the window, like she’s waiting for someone.

I will be waiting for you. My heart bangs against my chest, leaps into my throat. And I can’t help it. I’m grinning like a fool. There she is, and as I walk to the door and pull it open, her mouth falls open. Her eyes widen, and then she pushes back her chair, and walks to me. We stand in the middle of the coffee shop. Pop music plays overhead. I have no idea what song it is. The sound of espresso machines whirring and patrons chattering mingles with the unknown tune. “Hi,” she says, going first, her voice breathy, her green eyes lit up and sparkling. “Hi.” “Forgive me.” I tilt my head. “For what, K?” “For leaving.” “I don’t think you need forgiveness for that.” “I don’t want you to hate me.” “I could never hate you.” “I don’t want you to be mad at me,” she says, reaching for her necklace, absently touching the charms, as if the necklace settles her. “I’m not mad at you,” I say, because I dealt with that emotion already. I’m past it. I have let go of anger. I only feel want and hope and potential. “I want you to love me.”

Kennedy His rapid-fire responses slow down, and he seems to consider what I just said before he answers me with a question: “You think I stopped?” My heart expands, grows inside my chest, filling me up. But not stopping isn’t enough. Being so in love isn’t enough. The reasons need to be right. “I didn’t stop either. And I need you to know that I love you for you. I love you not just because it’s a secret, not just to piss off my mom. I love you because you’re you.” “You broke my heart twice, K. Are you going to do it a third time?” I shake my head. “How do I know?” “I don’t know. How do you ever know?” “You don’t ever know. You just take the chance anyway.” “Take the chance,” I say, hope expanding inside me. So much hope that I don’t know how I’ll ever feel anything else. There can’t be room in me for anything but this. “You,” he whispers, then takes my hand and grasps my fingers, his eyes never straying from mine. “You,” I repeat, wanting him to know that this time is different. This time is for all time. Sometimes a person can start as a shield or a secret but then become something more. He is my something

more. Here, with my hand in his hand, I ask him. “Do you want to meet my friends?” “I would love to.” We walk, hand in hand, to the table. They are all quiet, and I can tell they’ve been whispering about me. I clear my throat. “Lane, Catey, Amanda. This is my,” I say, then stop, look at him, the man I love madly, searching for the word, the title, the designation. “My Noah.” He laughs, that warm, deep rumbly laugh that thrums through me, filling me with happiness. “Evidently, I’m her Noah. Nice to meet you, Lane, Catey, and Amanda.” He extends his hand to shake with each of my friends, then sits down and joins us for coffee. It’s not a perfect fit. The five of us don’t slide into conversation like it’s all natural. But somehow, our quintet works. * It is not my eighteenth birthday tonight. That day is long gone, but I celebrate the way we had always intended. Together. We don’t book an inn or run off to a five-star hotel. We don’t plan the moment this time. We just stop resisting because we don’t have to hold back anymore. His home feels like mine. Or really, like ours . I no longer have to ask permission or spin a fable to be here. I am here because I can be. Because I make all my own choices now,

including this one. Everything about tonight feels right, from the second he unlocks the door to his apartment, to the way we kiss and unbutton furiously as we stumble to the bedroom, to my clothes landing in a heap on the hardwood floors. I wait on the bed, the lights on, watching him strip off his final layers of clothes and grab protection. I can’t take my eyes off him. Seeing him like this makes my throat dry and heart pound. He is so stunning, and so mine. I grasp his shoulders and tug him down on me, whispering that I’m ready. “Me too,” he says. It hurts at first, but soon it doesn’t hurt. The pain washes away, and in its place comes something wonderful. This deep physical connection. This intensity that comes from this love. I can’t believe I waited so long to feel something so good, so pure, so blissful. But I am so glad I did. We fit perfectly, legs and hips entwined, lips and breath tangled. This is everything. This is the sky and the sun and all my music. This is the song I will play on repeat and never grow tired of. He is the only one I will ever want. “Hi,” he whispers in my ear. “Hi.” “Is it okay?” I nod as he moves in me. “It’s so much more than okay,” I

say on a gasp. A sharp, fevered intake of breath as he hits someplace inside me that bathes my brain in pleasure. My toes curl, and my spine tingles, and my hands grip his back. He looks in my eyes, and the intensity of his gaze is almost too much to bear. Somewhere inside of me I’m still nervous. It’s my first time, after all. But mostly, I’m thrilled that I have so much more of this ahead of me. With the man I love, and he knows exactly how to love me this way. How to hold me, how to fill me, how to take me over the edge. Because I’m there now, and it’s like a whole new world here on this other side with him. I’m light-headed, buzzed on the new sensations rippling through my body. I grin happily as I trace my fingers down his chest. He didn’t take my virginity. I gave it to him. “Can we do that again soon?” “Anytime you want.” * The next night, I slip into a silver dress and black heels at his apartment. Noah holds my coat for me, and as I put it on and button it I admire his attire—black pants, sky-blue shirt, black jacket, no tie. Never a tie. “Wait,” he says before we go, and I tilt my head to the side as he opens a box on his end table and takes out a small silvery object. “This was your birthday present,” he

says as he brings it to me and clicks open a locket. Sparklers ignite in my chest as I run my finger over the picture. “You found the deer,” I say, and I’m sure my eyes are twinkling. He unhooks my necklace, slides the new addition on, and clasps the chain around my neck once more. “You told me once they gave you hope,” he says, then runs his fingertips along my cheek. “I was right to hope.” “I always hoped for you,” he says. He takes my hand and we leave, heading for the theater. Inside the lobby of the Belasco, we thread our way through the crowd of men in suits, and women in glittery dresses, of men in jeans and women in simple tops. Not everyone is fancy, but everyone is abuzz with the hum and anticipation of an opening night, of taking part in the thrill of the curtain rising for the very first time. He tugs me closer, and I hold tight to his arm, glad to be next to him. We are surrounded by people like us. Those who love the theater. Who love a show. Some of them might be in love with love, like I am. Some might just be in love. I am that too. We are with our people, only this time we don’t sneak out to the alley to kiss, we don’t pretend we’re here as anything but who we are—together. We make our way to the usher when a man calls out to my boyfriend. Using his name.

“Noah!” I’m not used to others calling him that, but somehow it seems right to turn around and see David Tremaine. Noah has said only good things about the man. He admires him, and I’m glad that they are working on the movie together that Noah sold last week to a Hollywood studio. They seem like a good match. Noah told me he bought David tickets to the show tonight as a congratulatory gift. “David, good to see you,” he says, and claps the grayhaired man on the back. “The seats are amazing. I just wanted to find you and say thank you so much for the tickets. I can’t wait for the show to start.” David turns to me, an expectant look in his eyes. Noah pipes up. “David, I want to introduce you to—” David cuts him off. “You don’t have to tell me. She’s the one who didn’t get away,” he says to the two of us, shooting us a wide smile. Noah wraps his arm around my shoulder tighter as I shake David’s hand. “Yes, that’s me,” I say, and I couldn’t be happier to be known this way. “Good to meet you finally. I’ve heard a lot about you. Take good care of him,” he says, tipping his forehead to Noah. I stand on tiptoes, plant a quick kiss on Noah’s cheek, and say, “I will.” It is a promise. To David. To Noah. To myself. For any girl who’s ever struggled in love. For any girl who didn’t

want just a second chance, but needed a third chance. I make that promise for all of us. The girls who fell in love out of time. Who fell in love when they weren’t ready. Who found a way to try and try again. We reach our seats, and soon the overture begins and the theater darkens. Noah squeezes my hand, and I look at him—savoring the happiness in his eyes one more time— before we turn our attention to the stage. This revival is better than the one we cast on our first date, even though it still doesn’t have a happy ending. But we do. We have a happy ending because we’re just beginning.

Acknowledgements Every now and then a book enters your life as a writer and you can’t let it go. This is that book. I started 21 STOLEN KISSES six years ago and it’s been through twenty revisions and rewrites. Maybe more by now. I stopped counting. Each and every rewrite, I LOVED spending time with Kennedy and Noah, even though it took me a long while to finally tell the story I wanted to tell, and to figure out what that story was. I stayed with it because this is the book of my heart. This is a book I fought for, a book I went to battle for. I don’t know precisely why I couldn’t let it go. I can’t say that it’s because of this or because of that. All I know is 21 STOLEN KISSES is the story I had to tell. Maybe because, ultimately, it’s a story of a love affair that should have been impossible, but insisted on working out anyway. Along that winding, twisting path to publication there were many people who believed in this book too. Michelle Wolfson found it a home, trusted my instincts, and went to the mats. Meredith Rich guided me through the edits that turned it into the story it was meant to be. Courtney Summers believed in Noah and Kennedy well before anyone else even met them. Kelly Simmon never forgot that this story mattered to me. My family and my husband supported me through every single rewrite, never questioning, always encouraging.

My dogs were by my side as they always are. And through it all were the two loudest voices – Kennedy and Noah. I love you guys, and hope you are enjoying your happily ever after. You earned it.

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney Copyright © 2015 by Lauren Blakely The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means, (including without limitation electronic,

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