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Chapter One

“Peony Press, this is Lanie Bloom—” I say, barely getting the phone to my ear before the voice on the other end cuts me off.

“Hallelujah-you’re-still-at-your-desk!”

It’s Meg, our senior publicist, and my closest friend at work. She’s calling from the Hotel Shivani, where, four hours from now, we’ll be hosting a blowout wedding-themed book launch for Noa Callaway—our biggest author and the writer who taught me about love when my mom couldn’t. Noa Callaway’s books changed my life.

If experience is any guide, we’re just slightly overdue for all our best-laid plans to go up in flames.

“No sign of the signed books. And no fucking pun intended. Can you see if they were sent to the office by mistake,” Meg says, a mile a minute. “I need time to arrange them into a five-tiered, heart-shaped wedding cake—”

See? Best-laid plans.

“Meg, when’s the last time you breathed?” I ask. “Do you need to push your button?”

“How can you manage to sound pervyandlike my mother? Okay, okay, I’m pushing my button.”

It’s a trick her therapist taught her, an imaginary elevator button Meg can press in the hollow of her throat to carry herself down a few levels. I picture her in her all-black ensemble and stylishly giant glasses, standing in the center of the hotel ballroom downtown with assistants buzzing all around, hurrying to transform the modernist SoHo event space into a quaint destination wedding on the Amalfi Coast. I see her closing her eyes and touching the hollow of her throat. She exhales into the phone.

“I think it worked,” she says.

I smile. “I’ll track down the books. Anything else before I head over?”

“Not unless you play the harp,” Meg moans.

“What happened to the harpist?”

We’d paid a premium to hire the principal from the New York Phil to pluck Pachelbel’s Canon as guests arrive tonight.

“The flu happened,” Meg says. “She offered to send her friend who plays the oboe, but that doesn’t exactly scream Italian wedding... does it?”

“No oboe,” I say, my pulse quickening.

These are just problems. As with the first draft of a book, there’s always a solution. We just have to find it and make the revision. I’m good at this. It’s my job as senior editor.

“I made a playlist when I was editing the book,” I offer to Meg. “Dusty Springfield. Etta James. Billie Eilish.”

“Bless you. I’ll have someone copy it when you get down here. You’ll need your phone for your speech, right?”

A flutter of nerves spreads through my chest. Tonight is the first time I’ll be taking the stage before an audience at a Noa Callaway launch. Usually, my boss makes the speeches, but Alix is on maternity leave, so the spotlight will be on me.

“Lanie, I gotta go,” Meg says, a new burst of panic in her voice. “Apparently we’re also missing two hundred dollars’ worth of cake balloons. And now they’re saying, because it’s Valentine’s goddamned eve, they’re too busy to make any more—”

The line goes dead.

In the hours before a big Noa Callaway event, we sometimes forget that we’re not performing an emergency appendectomy.

I think this is because, well, the first rule of a Noa Callaway book launch is... Noa Callaway won’t be there.

Noa Callaway is our powerhouse author, with forty million books in print around the world. She is also the rare publishing phenomenon who doesn’t do publicity. You can’t google Noa’s author photo nor contact her online. You’ll never read aTmagazine piece about the antique telescope in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. She declines all invitations for champagne whenever her books hit the list, though she lives 3.4 miles from our office. In fact, the only soul I know who’s actually met Noa Callaway is my boss, Noa’s editor, Alix de Rue.

And yet, youknowNoa Callaway. You’ve seen her window displays in airports. Your aunt’s book club is reading her rightnow. Even if you’re the type who prefersThe Times Literary SupplementoverThe New York Times Book Review, at the very least, you’ve Netflix and chilledFifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad. (That’s Noa’s third novel but first movie adaptation, meme-famous forthatscene with the turkey baster.) Over the past ten years, Noa Callaway’s heart-opening love stories have become so culturally pervasive that if they haven’t made you laugh,andcry,andfeel less alone in a cruel and oblivious world, then you should probably check to see whether you’re dead inside.

With no public face behind Noa Callaway’s name, those of us in the business of publishing her novels feel a special pressure to go the extra mile. It makes us do crazy things. Like drop two grand on helium balloons filled with floating angel food cake.

Meg assured me that when our guests pop these balloons at the end of my toast this evening, the shower of cake and edible confetti will be worth every penny that came out of my group’s budget.

Assuming they haven’t gone missing.