The One That I Want
Page 25
“You’ll love it there,” he says, taking his free hand, turning my face toward his but instead kissing the curve of my shoulder. “You’ll take my Nikon.”
“I couldn’t,” I protest.
“You can,” he says. “Besides, that’s the only way I can be sure that you’ll ever come back.”
We sit there until the lights stop spinning, until the throb of the bass fades into a void of disparate voices who quickly scatter off to their parents’ borrowed cars, to the few splurged limousines, off into their night of well-earned celebration. Because tomorrow, they will wake up, we will wake up, and we will face another day, another mountain, another moment in the after. And if we are wise, which I hope that I am now, we will seize it so mightily, clench it so close, that we will never risk that it can break free, slip through our open fingers without warning.
There is the before. And then there is the after. Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you. These are the things I have seen, these are the things I now know, these are the things I will carry with me as I go.
Acknowledgments
This book was a true labor of love, sometimes more labor than love, and I’m deeply indebted to my editor, Sarah Knight, who read my initial miserable manuscript and thoughtfully helped shape the book in ways I’d never have dreamed of on my own. Many, many thanks to everyone at Shaye Areheart Books and Crown, who have been more generous, supportive, and hardworking than I could have asked for. Shaye Areheart, Annsley Rosner, Kira Walton, Christine Kopprasch, Karin Shultz, Allison Malec, and Jay Sones.
Elisabeth Weed—you are my Jerry McGuire. Thank you, thank you.
Thanks also to Laura Dave, Jessica Jones, Annika Pergament, Sarah Self, and everyone who entertains me throughout the day on Twitter, my blog, and various other online time-wasters. It takes a village. And of course, my last and dearest public display of gratitude goes to my family—Adam, Campbell, and Amelia, without whom this whole shindig would be meaningless.
About the Author
Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found. She lives in New York City with her husband and their son, daughter, and dog.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Allison Winn Scotch
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hal Leonard Corporation for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Human,” words and music by The Killers, copyright © 2008 by Universal Music Publishing Ltd.
All rights in the U.S. and Canada controlled and administered by Universal-Polygram International Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scotch, Allison Winn.
The one that I want : a novel / Allison Winn Scotch.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Married women—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction. 3. Visions—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.C64O54 2010
813′.6—dc22 2009039462
eISBN: 978-0-307-46452-1
v3.0