Sorry to my editor, Jhanteigh Kupihea, for missing just about every single deadline she assigned to me, for testing her abundant patience, and for mounting a serious campaign against her optimism. I hope I haven’t broken you completely. I understand if you have a voodoo doll made in my image and pierce it in the eye every single night. Honestly, if you don’t have one, I’d be disappointed.
Sorry to my literary agent, Cait Hoyt, for making you wonder whether I’d just been napping every time you tried to call me. (I was. I was napping every time.) She remains the only agent whose office I’ve nearly cried in, and I would be scared of her if she didn’t pay for every dinner we’ve ever eaten together. I’m convinced she would kill someone if I asked her. She probably already has.
Sorry to the entire team at Keywords Press, Atria, and Simon & Schuster, for all of my e-mails, questions, notes, and last-minute revisions. Sorry to Loan Le for having to decipher my e-mails to find the part where I was asking for more time past a deadline. Sorry to Ariele Fredman for all of my publicity demands, which include selling this book as a Happy Meal toy in every McDonald’s around the country. It’s a great idea and you should reconsider, if only for our nation’s youth.
Sorry to Koury Angelo and his amazing team for having to take photos of my face eating cold pasta, takeout noodles, and french fries for five hours. And sorry to Albert Tang and the rest of the design team at Simon & Schuster for having to look at all those pictures and turn them into an actual book cover. Sorry to everyone else who worked on my book, including Judith Curr, Jackie Jou, Kimberly Goldstein, Chelsea Cohen, and Dana Sloan.
Sorry to my own team, past and present, for making you check on me every day to make sure I hadn’t thrown myself off a bridge in the middle of writing this book, and also for everything else. Sorry to Courtney and Ashley for the fight I put up while they tried to convince me to take a chance on myself. Sorry to Vanessa, Adam, Andy, Andrew, Matt, Tess, Alexandra, Nora, Luke, and Josh for being a general pain in the ass.
Sorry to Harry Styles, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Liam Hemsworth, the guy from the Trivago commercials, Zac Efron, Taylor Lautner, Tyler Posey, Daniel Radcliffe, John Boyega, Nick and Joe Jonas but not the third one, Tom Daley, Jake Gyllenhaal, Oscar Isaac, Eddie Redmayne, Rami Malek, Bradley Cooper, Prince Harry, all the guys from Game Of Thrones, Ryan Gosling, Henry Cavill, John Legend, David Beckham, Idris Elba, Alexander Skarsgård, Matt Bomer, and Jamie Dornan for harassing you on the Internet.
Sorry to my friends for the anxiety I brought to the bar because I was supposed to be writing instead of drinking.
And most of all, sorry to my family—Mom, Dad, Anthony, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents—for subjecting you to almost three decades of my awkwardness and then turning you all into stories. I should’ve told you sooner that loving me came with a price.