The Ex Vows - Softcover

Joyce, Jessica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593548426 ISBN 13: 9780593548424

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Estranged exes must stick close together to save their best friend’s wedding after a string of disasters in this swoony and steamy second-chance romance from the USA Today bestselling author of You, with a View.

Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago. 

With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized. 

What’s not on her list? Eli arriving from New York with a new rule-breaking attitude or the all-inclusive venue burning to the ground, leaving the bride and groom in dire straits. Nor does she anticipate Adam asking her and Eli to help him make a miracle happen. Together.

As Georgia and Eli rush up to Napa Valley to pull off the perfect wedding, their old chemistry comes back in technicolor. Somewhere between cake tastings gone wrong, disastrous DJ auditions, and Eli’s heated attention, Georgia starts recognizing the man she fell in love with before. And if she lets herself break her rules, she might find what they’re building isn’t the something old that ruined them—it’s a chance at something new.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jessica Joyce lives happily-ever-ongoing with her husband and son in the Bay Area. When she’s not writing character-driven, realistic and relatable tales of millennials who are just Doing Their Best while falling in love, you can find her listening to one of her dozens of chaotically curated Spotify playlists, trying out a new skincare face mask, crying over cute animal TikToks, or watching the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice.

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Chapter One

Thirteen years later

This wedding is cursed

"Not again," I mutter.

To the untrained eye, this text probably looks like a joke, or the beginning of one of those chain emails our elders get duped into forwarding to twenty of their nearest and dearest, lest they inherit multigenerational bad luck.

In actuality, it's been Adam's mantra for the past eight months.

Adam is the brother I never had and I'm truly honored to be along for the ride on his wedding journey. But had sixth-grade Georgia anticipated I'd be fielding forty-seven daily texts from my more-unhinged-by-the-minute best friend, I would've thought twice about complimenting his Hannah Montana shirt the day we met.

My Spidey senses tingle with this text, though. It hasn't been delivered in aggressive caps lock, nor is it accompanied by a chaotic menagerie of GIFs (my kingdom for a Michael Scott alternative). Whatever has happened now might actually be an emergency.

Then again, the wedding is ten days away. At this point, anything that isn't objectively awesome is a disaster.

I pluck my phone off my desk, typing, What's the damage?

A bubble immediately pops up, disappears, reappears, then stops again.

"Great sign."

It's nearly four p.m. on Wednesday, the day before my week-long PTO for the wedding starts, and I still have half a page of unchecked boxes on my to-do list, plus a detailed While I'm Away email to draft for my boss. I can't leave Adam hanging in his moment of need, though. What kind of best woman would I be?

No better than the largely absent best man? comes the uncharitable punchline. I slam the door on that thought. It's not like I've minded executing most of the best-people activities; it's been a godsend for multiple reasons. It's just so typical of him to-

I catch my own eye in the computer's reflection, delivering a silent message with the downward slash of my dark eyebrows: Shut. Up. I'd rather think about curses than anything tangentially related to the subject of Eli Mora.

Not that I believe in curses at all.

Except . . . deep down, I do worry that Adam's been hounded by bad vibes since he proposed to his fiancée, Grace Song, on New Year's Eve. Their plans have involved a comedy of errors that have escalated from bummer to oh shit: the wrong wedding dress ordered by the bridal salon, names misspelled on their printed wedding invitations twice, and-the one that nearly got me to believe-their wedding planner quit three months ago because his Bernedoodle had amassed such a following on social media that he was making triple his salary as her manager.

For Adam, whose natural temperament hovers somewhere near live wire, it's been a constant test of his sanity. Even Grace, who's brutally chill, the perfect emotional foil for Adam, has been fraying.

But then, she would've been fine eloping. Every new disaster probably only further solidifies the urge to book it to Vegas.

Adam's texts tumble over one another:

Georgia

Our fucking DJ

BROKE THEIR HIP

LINE DANCING AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY

IN NASHVILLE

I need to know what I've done in my 28 years on this dying earth that is causing this to happen

I start to type, but he beats me to it.

That was rhetorical, Woodward, DON'T

Clearly Adam's shifting out of his panic fugue, so I shift into fix-it mode. It's the reason he came to me out of everyone-he knows I'll step up without hesitation.

Deep breath. Nothing's burned to the ground, right? I text back. This is problematic but not fatal. We'll come up with a new list.

The bubbles of doom pop up again and I wait. Again.

I wish I could say my eagerness to jump into this shitstorm is fully altruistic, but since I got back from a six-month work stint in Seattle three months ago, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen Adam, all wedding-related. This has been the only way to reliably stay in his orbit.

For now, anyway.

Here's the thing: I'm a list girl. I learned the magic of them long ago-the way they can streamline tasks and expectations. Needs and emotions. How they can take a messy, chaotic thing and make it manageable. They've been my coping strategy since I was a kid. They quiet my mind and untangle my emotions so that I stay cool, calm, and compartmentalized. So I'm not a messy, chaotic thing.

Needless to say, it aggrieves me that I can't list my way out of my recent realization: my closest friends have fully shifted into phases I'm not in-falling in love, cohabitating, building social circles with other happy couples that make me the extra wheel, a feeling I avoid as resolutely as Trader Joe's on a Sunday. My time in Seattle only made it more obvious, and I hate that there's no checklist that'll pivot me off this path.

It's not that I expected an epic welcome home party, but I did expect to come back to my favorite people still living in the same city as me. Instead, I returned to an entirely different landscape: Adam and Grace moved to Glenlake from their apartment in the Inner Richmond six blocks away. Jamie Rothenberg, my other best friend and roommate for the last five years, went and fell in love while I was gone, too, and moved into her girlfriend's Oakland bungalow right before I got back.

Really, though, it's fine.

Okay, sure, loneliness is gnawing at me, a feeling that's been familiar since I was old enough to know what it was (kindergarten, when my dad couldn't make it to my holiday concert and I sang my solo to our neighbor, who showed up in his place). Yes, I can feel it curling up next to me at night in an apartment that used to echo with Jamie's honking laughter instead of the reruns of New Girl I put on a timer so I can sleep. Absolutely, watching two of my best friends find the kind of love I once thought I had is fairly soul-destroying. As is being knee-deep in my best friend's wedding festivities, knowing that in ten days I have to stand beside-

My phone buzzes. I jump, shaking off that unwanted, side-swiping thought, and turn my attention to Adam's text: Can you help with a DJ list that isn't shitty?

That deserves a voice message. "Can I help with a list? Seriously?"

Like all the other times Adam's called me in for support, it's a serotonin hit that chases the lonely feeling away.

And once the wedding is over, what happens then? a quiet voice asks. Like all my messiest thoughts, I wrestle it into submission.

Adam's follow-up text comes as a Teams notification dings politely on my computer. My head swivels on instinct, ponytail sweeping across my cheek.

Nia Osman: can I borrow you for 5?

Adam and my boss needing me play tug-of-war on my people-pleasing tendencies, but only one of them is paying me.

Nia needs to chat, I text. Take a deep breath, listen to your Calm app. I'll come back to you on the broken DJ ASAP.

My phone chimes twice, but I ignore it, mentally apologizing to Adam as I start the short trek down the bright white hall to Nia's office.

"Georgia!" a voice calls when I'm nearly at her door.

I turn to see Shay, a recent engineer steal from our biggest rival, walking up.

"Hey!" I say, clocking her wide smile. A gold star materializes on my mental chart; somewhere, an HR angel gets its wings. "How's it going?"

"Amazing. I love my team and my boss and-" She laughs self-consciously, tucking a blond curl behind her ear. "Actually, it'd probably be easier if I listed the things I don't like." Her green eyes widen. "Which is nothing!"

I smile, feeling the familiar endorphin rush of a role well filled. I adore my job. I've been here nearly five years and knew as soon as I interviewed with Nia that it was the perfect fit; now I get to do the same for the people I bring in.

"These...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593548426
• ISBN 13: 9780593548424
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland