You Have a Match(93)
A year of making memories of my own—the thousands I have saved in my camera roll, and more stamped into my heart than I could ever count. I glance around the room, drinking in the sight of my friends, old and new, gathered around the table; my sister, catching my eye with a smile; the sound of my mom and Pietra, cackling about something on their phones across the café; the velvety petal of Leo’s rose between my thumb and my finger. I close my eyes, breathe it in, and make one more.
acknowledgments
First of all, thank you to my little sisters, Maddie and Lily, the Blossom and Buttercup to my Bubbles, the keepers of my heart. I’ve loved getting older and seeing all the magical ways being a sister changes with time. I’ve gone from bossing the two of you around like it’s my job to learning more from the two of you than I’ll ever learn from anybody else. It is a unique privilege to have sisters, and I am endlessly grateful to be yours.
Thank you also to our big brother, Evan, who is the best brother of them all (and you can fight three of his sisters and also two Shih Tzus on that).
This book was written before the pandemic, but all of the efforts to bring it into the world were made during it. Even as I’m writing these acknowledgments we’re still living in it, and like everyone else, I have no idea what the world is going to look like in the next few months and years, let alone when You Have a Match is out. But one thing I never had to worry about was what would happen with it—everyone at Wednesday Books has worked so tirelessly and creatively to bring stories to life during these uncertain times and kept us a part of the process every step of the way, and for that I don’t know if a “thank you” will ever cut it. So while I can’t adequately express my gratitude for something that big, I will aggressively thank everyone there for the things I can. Thank you to Alex and Vicki for your support and the kind of edits that made me go “GALAXY BRAIN!!” a hundred times over. Thank you to Mara, for keeping my human self on track, and to Meghan and DJ for shouting “Book!” from the mountaintops. I am the luckiest human to get to work with y’all.
Thank you to Janna. It is the world’s biggest understatement to say none of this would have happened without you, but if I correctly state it, it will come out in multiple sentences of caps lock, and people will be alarmed.
Thank you to my niece, Marcella, for being born. I got to chill with your parents for a few of the coolest days of my life doing research for this book, and then you were cooking at the same time I was writing it. You came out much cuter! Flawless first draft! Your little baby smiles are my new favorite thing. You will be over a year old by the time this book comes out and it feels illegal that we’re letting you grow up so fast.
Thank you to the Barbee family for all of the Vashon adventures. Those memories are stamped into my heart forever, and so many of them made it into this book.
Thank you to 23andMe for telling me about my unibrow. Rest assured, I already knew.
Thank you to my vast writer-y squad. To Suzie and Kadeen, the kind of friends who don’t flinch when you yell in an otherwise dead silent cabin, “I’M GOING TO CONTROL-F + REPLACE-ALL TWO OF THESE CHARACTERS’ NAMES, IT TURNS OUT I HATE THEM!” when you’re 310 pages into a draft. To Gaby and Erin and Cristina, for endless conversations commiserating over books and writerly woes and always having the best advice—y’all are the most marquee friends a girl could ask for. To my soul twin, JQ, who now knows the publishing industry inside out because she has heard every trial and tribulation in exhaustive detail, and is the kind of brave I want both my human self and my characters to be. To my fellow Wednesday authors, who I’d die/kill for despite being a Hufflepuff down to the marrow of my bones.
Extremely bless everyone at AfterWork Theater. I’d be lost without you guys, and I mean that both emotionally and also literally because I’m a delinquent and watch y’all for all our dance cues. Cheesus only knows what I’d do without jazz hands and post-rehearsal Bud Lights and ridiculous ensemble backstories. It’s an honor being everyone’s Weird Dad TM.
And as always, thank you to my mom and dad. You didn’t just give me an awesome life, but the three best humans to guide me through it. I could write a bajillion stories and not come close to the magic of what you guys made for us.