I wrote to Terry and introduced myself. I cc’ed Alix and Noa as directed, though Alix told me Noa never got involved in logistics. I couldn’t help fangirling a little and mentioning the fact that the love interest’s last name, Drenthe, happened also to be my middle name. How reading this manuscript was the first time that my middle name hadn’t struck me as a punishment. I was not expecting an email back from Noa herself two minutes later.

  Dear Drenthe,

  Welcome to the hell of working with yours truly!

  I should be able to peel myself off the floor long enough to receive your package around one this afternoon.

  I have never labored over anything the way I labored over my five-line response to Noa Callaway:

  Noa,

  The rowboat fight scene is one of my favorites. Not just in this draft. In any novel I’ve ever read. But I agree with Alix that it’s not serving this story. Maybe it’s the opening scene of your next book?

  If ever you need someone to grieve the darlings that must be cut, email me. They’ll get a moment of silence over here.

  To my unending amazement, throughout the next week, I got an email from Noa every day, with the subject lines: Cut Darling #1, 2, 3, and so on. Each contained a single line, a paragraph, or a plotline on the chopping block.

  I called BD and read some of them aloud to her, relaying to Noa all the places where my grandmother had laughed. I climbed out on my fire escape and voice-recorded myself shouting lines of interior monologue into the Second Avenue traffic. I scrawled in Sharpie one extravagantly beautiful description of a woman’s hair on the sole of my Converse, then I walked all over Brooklyn that weekend, taking a picture for Noa of how the line had gotten its day.

  You’re making this more fun than it has any right to be, she’d emailed me back at midnight.

  Even after the book went to print, even years and several books later, sometimes I’ll still get an email about something Noa hates having to cut: the tiny pink flowers in her basil pot, half an inch of hair, a man in line for a taxi, her mother’s dinner after a fall broke her arm.

  The day Fifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad was published, a dozen white tulips were delivered to my office in a mason jar, with a note saying These also had to be cut.

  We’ve worked together on seven books since then, and our process has been the same: Alix gets the ranting and resistance; I find ways to make Noa’s revision process less painful. I’m like the fun uncle to Alix’s single mom.

  Only now . . . Alix is gone, and where does that leave Noa and me?

  Yesterday, Terry called to set up a face-to-face meeting with Noa. I was so shocked, I’d agreed to the suggested time immediately, without thinking about my own calendar. Then I had to cancel last minute on Ryan’s senator’s birthday in D.C. He isn’t thrilled, but I’ll figure out a way to make it up to him next week.

  I know this meeting goes against Sue’s wishes, but in what world could I say no to meeting Noa Callaway? I figure what Sue doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Besides, the meeting wasn’t my idea. I’m just the one over here thrilled about it.

  I pull up Terry’s email on my phone for the four-hundredth time. I’m supposed to meet Noa at four o’clock in front of the chess house in Central Park. She’ll be looking for me.

  This information set my mind whirling, because even though my face is a Google search away, I can’t imagine Noa Callaway stalking me online. Still, I wasn’t going to question Terry on how Noa would identify me. I’m wearing BD’s vintage Fendi skirt suit—dressed down with Converse, knit tights, and a scarf Aude gave me for my birthday. To be on the safe side, I brought a copy of Two Hundred and Sixty-Six Vows, which I’m carrying face out.

  I’ve always wanted to play at the chess house, with its shaded arch of benches and stone tables in front of the redbrick building. I’ve suggested it to Ryan on a few warm Sunday afternoons, but he doesn’t have the patience for the game.

  The February sky is clear and crisp. Turning west onto the path at Sixty-Fifth Street, I hear the chess players before I see them. For a gang of largely retired women, they swear like sailors and slap their timers like bongos. BD would fit right in.

  “You gonna take my bishop before we die, Marjorie?” a player asks from one table.

  “No way, Betty, I’m not falling for your Siberian trap,” her opponent says.

  There must be a dozen players, ranging from sixty to eighty, rotating around four boards. My eyes and intuition scan the group, eliminating half of them. I know Noa Callaway, and she’s not the diminutive Russian lady with lipstick on her teeth. I’m trying to make eye contact with a platinum blond boomer with diamond-rimmed bifocals at the tip of a Roman nose, but she’s focused on advancing her queen and not looking up. Which, honestly, is so Noa Callaway of her.

  I draw closer. If I can just catch her eye, then I’ll know. I can take five seconds to acclimate to the reality of her. Then I’ll be good. I can focus on not fucking up this meeting, on being professional instead of an adoring fan. But before she notices my approach, my gaze is disrupted by her opponent, who is looking right at me.

  I freeze when I realize I know him. It’s Ross, from the launch party. Man of the Year. Edible confetti shower sharer. Thrower of lightning bolts through my body.

  Look away. You have one job.

  He smiles at me, a sly expression on his face. I see they’re in the endgame, and that Ross’s queenside pawn majority is rolling.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi.” My cheeks ignite. I’m not dressed for lightning storms today.

  “Checkmate, bitch!” the woman says all of a sudden. If she isn’t Noa Callaway, I give up. But when she looks at me, the blankness in her gaze hits me hard.

  I raise my book and say her name, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s calling to the other women in the group.

  “I finally beat Ross!” She pumps her fists as women rise and swarm the table. Everyone needs proof. When they get it, Diamond Bifocals disappears in hugs.

  “Want to play?” Ross says, gesturing for me to sit down.

  “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to meet someone.”

  His smile pulls me close, then drops me with how quickly it vanishes. I turn my gaze away, make myself available to Noa Callaway.

  “Lanie,” Ross says.

  “Excuse me,” I say, waving an apology as I back away. “It was nice to see you again.”

  “Lanie.” His voice commands my attention.

  And then—my stomach sinks. Because I get it. It’s like the force of gravity has doubled. That’s how heavy I feel as Ross and I regard each other for a long and silent while.

  “You?” My legs feel shaky. I drop onto the bench.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh my god.”

  Noa Callaway has an Adam’s apple. Noa Callaway has chest hair. Noa Callaway has a deep voice and a firm handshake. By all estimation, Noa Callaway has other firm things, too.

  The years of emails, the online chess games? All this time, it’s been him?

  I think of reading Ninety-Nine Things furtively in my college dorm room. The way that story spun my life in an entirely new direction, toward this version of me, right here, right now. I think of my Ninety-Nine Things list, snug in Ryan’s wallet, the man it led me to.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t seem to catch my breath.” The scarf is too tight around my neck. I gulp from the water bottle in my bag. I close my eyes and try to speak. “How . . . how could I not have known?”

  “I could have sworn you did know,” he says.

  “Why would you think that?” I hear the anger rising in my voice.

  His lips part. His eyes widen. He’s like a zookeeper realizing the grizzly is about to attack.

  “The other night, at the launch,” he says. “I was worried that seeing me was what threw you off onstage.”

  “Threw me off?” Could he be more tone-deaf? “I was thinking about the readers, about my obligation to deliver Noa Callaway’s next book to them. I was genuinely overcome with fondness for those women. Not that you’d know anything about being genuine.” I clap a hand over my mouth, then let it slide down to my heart. “Your fans will lose it if they find out who you really are.”

  His eyes dart around the park, then lock on mine. “Why would they find out? Isn’t it in everyone’s best interest to keep this between us?”

  “They trusted you.”

  It’s less embarrassing than saying I trusted you.

  A silence follows. He seems completely unaffected by the idea that he’s betraying millions of readers, and that I am now complicit. How is it possible that the book that changed my life—that convinced me Ryan is the one!—was written by an asshole?

  “I’ve always wondered where you learned to play chess,” he says, pointing at the board between us.

  “My grandmother taught me,” I say, distracted.

  “Did your grandmother dress you, too?” he asks, taking in my Fendi suit.

  I stand, heart pulsing, barely able to restrain my rage. It’s a good thing the chessboard is inlaid upon the table; otherwise I’d slam it on his head so hard it’d knock his next three novels out of him.

  I straighten my blazer. “Yes. It was hers. And it’s fabulous. And the Noa Callaway I was led to believe existed would appreciate its timeless elegance.”

  He stands up, too, which makes me move more quickly, stuffing my book and scarf and water bottle back into my bag.

  “This isn’t going well,” he says.

  How dare he. My idol has been desecrated. The very reason I got into publishing pulled out from underneath me. Everything I loved about love is in question. And he thinks it’s not going well? I turn on my heel and speed walk away.

  “Lanie.” He follows me past the chess house.

  I don’t know where I plan on going. I’d like to run very far away from here. I’d like to buy six pints of ice cream and hide under my duvet for the rest of my life. I’d like to enter a wormhole where my longtime hero is the inspiring woman I always imagined—not this guy.

  I think of Sue forecasting turbulence. This is more like dual engine failure.

  “You need me,” Ross says as we pass the Dairy, children running out around us, clutching new souvenirs. I stop in my tracks.

  “What?” I hear myself. I sound demonic. And I feel even darker inside.

  “You need me. This book,” he says.

  He’s right. If I don’t want to get fired, I do need him, and I need to coax his next book out of him. Peony needs him. All the other decent human beings I work with need him. That means they need me not to quit right now.

  He looks over my head as he delivers his next gem. “Don’t conflate art and artist. If you’re concerned about my readers, then focus on my books, not me. I’m not the origin of my books’ meaning. Society is the only author.”

  “Oh, give me a break.” I start walking again, calling over my shoulder, “People love cheap clothes, too, but hey, who cares about sweatshops, right?”

  “That’s my point!” he persists. “ ‘The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.’ ”

  I ball my fists in rage. I’ve loved the essay Ross is quoting ever since I read it in Intro to Literary Criticism in college. But at this moment, in this rage, “The Death of the Author” begins to take on a new, more tempting and literal light.

  “Roland Barthes did not toil in relative obscurity,” I say, “just to give some spoiled millionaire permission to be a prick.”

  He laughs, throwing back his head as we exit the park and wait for the light at Fifth Avenue. “See? Now we’re having fun.”

  I wonder if he’s a legitimate sociopath. Would he be having so much fun if his entire career felt as tenuous as mine does now? Why doesn’t it feel that way to him? The light turns green.

  “I need to go,” I say. I practically sprint across the street.

  If I could only run back in time and never read a Noa Callaway book. But then where would I be?

  The fucker is running after me.

  “Maybe you should ask yourself why my gender is so disturbing to you,” he shouts. “Isn’t it aggressively heteronormative to assume I have to be a woman?”

  “Goodbye, Ross,” I shout back.

  “Lanie, please,” he says, surprising me.

  I stop. I turn around. His tone and expression are more earnest than they’d been a moment before. I find this more unbearable than when he was being a pseudointellectual jerk. How can this be so uncomfortable? When there were two computers and the comforting labyrinth of the internet between us, Noa Callaway and I had such amazing chemistry.

  “Will you come up?” he asks. We’re standing beneath a building’s awning, and he points at the door. “This is me.”

  “I know. I’ve only been sending you packages here for seven years.” I glance up at the building, which I’ve speculated about so many times, imagining a very different Noa Callaway inhabiting its penthouse.

  There’s no chance I’m going up there. I’ve been disillusioned enough for one afternoon. I need space from this man to figure out what the hell I’m going to do about him.

  “No, thanks,” I say.

  “Don’t you think we should talk about the book?”

  His words jar me into seeing how far astray we are from any semblance of professionalism. This was all supposed to go so differently. And it’s not entirely his fault. Maybe only ninety-five percent. I take a deep breath, let it out. I think of everyone depending on me to deliver the new Noa Callaway book.

  “I’m listening,” I say. “I don’t need to be in your penthouse to listen.”

  “Fine,” he says.

  “So? Talk.”

  “Wow. You know, you’re different in person.”

  “You did not just say that,” I say, shaking my head. “Are you finishing the draft, or what?”

  He doesn’t answer right away.

  I fill the silence. “We’re going to need a better title than Thirty-Eight Obituaries.”

  “Oh, that,” he says, scratching his chin. “Yeah, I scrapped that idea. Didn’t I tell you?”

  No, he failed to mention that. Among a few other key details he’s left out of our email exchanges. And just like that, my promotion goes from provisional to phantasmal.

  “What’s wrong with the obituaries concept?” I say. Our sales team had loved the idea. Sue had loved it, too.

  He shrugs. “Too New York–centric. I want to do something fresh.”

  “All your books are New York–centric!” I want to scream but manage to keep my voice to an angry whisper. We are standing on the street in the middle of Manhattan, after all, and his identity is a secret to everyone but unlucky me. “That’s your brand. It’s what your readers like about you. It’s why Vogue called you the ‘Queen of Gotham Love.’ Remember?”

  For years I’ve admired how Noa’s books aren’t just love stories between a couple, they’re also love letters to the city I adore. Even Vows, with its Italian wedding scenes, started off with a magical proposal on the Staten Island Ferry.

  “I’ve used the city up,” he says. “Run out of landmarks for the characters to kiss in front of.”

  I roll my eyes because of course he’d reduce the poignant love in so many Noa Callaway books to cliché.

  “And in its place, you’re planning to write . . . what?”

  “I’ve got some irons in the fire.”

  “Oh god.”

  He’s lying. Everything about him screams he hasn’t typed a word.

  “You look worried,” he says. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “For you.”

  “For us. We’re a team now, Lanie.”

  I’ve got to get out of here before I get arrested for assault. But I can’t let him know how much he’s gotten under my skin.

  “Look . . .” I want to say Ross, but it no longer fits. “What should I even call you, now that we’ve . . .” I trail off. It’s wrong to use the word met about a person I thought I knew. I had shown myself to Noa Callaway in my emails. I had allowed my life to be brightened by hers.

  His.

  “My real name is Noah Ross,” he says. “Most people call me Ross, but none of them know what I write. Why don’t we stick with Noah?”

  “Okay, Noah.” I cross my arms, level my gaze at him. “You’ve got two hours.”

  “To do what?” His laugh sounds dubious.

  “To send me what you’ve got. Your . . . irons in the fire.”

  Noah looks at me like I’ve suggested we get matching neck tattoos. “You know that’s not how I work.”

  “It is now.” I hope he can’t see my knees shaking. “Your manuscript is four months late. I’m not going to get fired because you’re tired of success. So organize your ideas and send them to me. You said we’re a team now. Well, my team wins.”

  Chapter Seven

  I am in a funk not even Taylor Swift can penetrate. I yank out my earbuds and kill my playlist, breathing frost as I jog along the river.

  After the disaster of meeting Noah Ross, I knew I had to keep moving. I think more clearly when I’m not standing still, and there was no way I was going to sit idly by the rest of the evening, checking my email and waiting to see what he’d send.

  I went home just long enough to hang up BD’s Fendi suit, feed Alice, and grab my running shoes.

  Now, I appeal to the pavement of Manhattan, to the fading blue sky with its high cirrus clouds, to the lights coming on across the river and the steam rising out of subway grates and the pickle-scented air by the bodega, to the noise and the hustle and the mingle of eight million dreams—please, help me figure this one out.