Raised by her father in Silverpine, Oregon, after her mother moved halfway across the world, Dani’s separation anxiety ran deep long before Parker ghosted her, so when she runs headfirst into him at a bar in New York City, she promptly runs out rather than reopen a door for the former best friend who’d loved and abandoned her. She had been just “six when…Mom packed up her easel and art supplies and flew back to Taiwan.” Losing Parker—the friend with whom she’d felt an “immediate spark—a seamless connection between two seven-year-olds, as if they’d known one another in a past life”—that might have been even harder. It made Dani harder too. Dani and Parker had been connected for 13 years, from elementary school through college on opposite coasts (Parker got a scholarship to play football at Oregon while Dani pursued her writing dreams at Columbia), until Parker’s no-show on Christmas Eve opened a wound that wouldn’t heal. But now, when Dani finds herself drawn to Parker against most of her instincts for self-preservation, she doesn’t begin an extended game of cat-and-mouse. Parker may be a former star athlete turned sports-marketing wunderkind and Dani a nerdy writer who lives inside her head, but it’s Dani who has the agency to grab Parker by the lapels and take what she’s long wanted. And when they rekindle the friendship, this time with plenty of steam, it’s drawn in artful detail, and both the chemistry and banter are fire.
