AS A FORMER THEATER KID TURNED PROFESSIONAL WRITER there is no greater creative joy than throwing something out into the universe and having someone else say, “Yes,” and thank you to everyone who was so excited about the idea for this book when I mentioned it, mostly joking, on Instagram. Turns out I was serious, I guess??
Whenever anyone asks how I like my agent I tell them I would die for her, and I am not actually being facetious. Elizabeth Bewley, thank you for your steady hand and killer instincts and for patiently explaining rudimentary publishing things I 100 percent ought to know by now. I trust you completely and I am so glad we finally found each other after being ships in the night for so long.
HarperCollins has been my home for many years, and I am lucky to have a truly excellent team there. Thank you to Millicent Bennett for your keen and sophisticated eye, Liz Velez for literally everything, and Heather Drucker, Rachel Molland, Megan Looney, and Lisa Erickson for all you do to get my books into readers’ hands. Thank you also to Michael Fierro and Jamie Kerner; extra thanks to Olivia McGiff for all your hard work on the cover, which is truly just perfect for this book.
A special thank-you to Suzette Lam and Susan Schwartz for the heroic last-minute assist.
Thank you to Sarah Enni and Zan Romanoff for their smart, engaging podcast On the Bleachers, which was hugely helpful to me as I tried to understand literally anything about professional sports. Mistakes are mine, which will not surprise anyone who ever knew me in gym.
Thank you to Lucy Keating for Jimmy Hodges’s gold chain.
Cristina Lyons and Sara Sicilian, thank you for lunch club and for all the rest of it. What a treat when two of your new favorite characters show up halfway through the book.
Tom Colleran, thank you for this incredibly beautiful life of ours. I really just love you so enormously fucking much.