This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, 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 © 2014 by Merritt Tierce
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Selected chapters were previously published, in slightly different form: “Suck It” in Southwest Review, vol. 92, no. 3 (2007), and subsequently in New Stories from the South 2008: The Year’s Best edited by ZZ Packer (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008); “The Dangler” in Reunion: The Dallas Review, vol. 1 (2011); and “The Private Room” in Dallas Noir, edited by David Hale Smith (New York: Akashic Books, 2013).
Jacket illustration by Rizon Parein
Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data Tierce, Merritt.
Love me back : a novel / Merritt Tierce.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-53807-7 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-385-53808-4 (eBook)
1. Teenage mothers—Fiction. 2. Single mothers—Fiction. 3. Waitresses—Fiction. 4. Restaurants—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.I365L68 2014
813’.6—dc23 2014003338
v3.1