Noah gazes back at me, that mesmerizing look in his green eyes. The one that had me transfixed from the first time I saw him.
I feel everything at once—
Relieved to hear his voice. Bewildered that he’s here. Overjoyed to see his face, his lips, his eyes, and all that shiny, tugable hair. Flushed with desire. Scared that we’ve messed everything up. Hungry to put my hands on him. And that lightning bolt that’s always in me when Noah is around.
So this is it. This scary, inconvenient, exhilarating, stomach-tightening, I’ll-do-anything-for-it feeling is finally, really, really love.
“Noah.” I can barely breathe. “What are you doing here?”
He takes a step toward me. Still ten agonizing feet away. He looks so beautiful, squinting in the sunlight, shading his face with one hand.
“I forgot to tell you where to buy BD’s souvenir,” he says. “So I figured I’d come show you.”
I drop my helmet, my keys, my purse. I run toward Noah and jump. He catches me in his arms. He holds me close. Our faces tip toward each other, our lips on the verge of what my body is screaming would become the most spectacular kiss of all time, including the Etruscan period.
“Is it us?” I whisper. “Chapter One?”
“That depends,” he says. “How much of it did you want to edit?”
“Small changes here and there.” I smile. “I think it might be more realistic if Dr. Collins slaps Edward after he tells her the truth.”
Slowly, playfully, Noah turns his cheek to me. I lay my hand gently on his skin. It’s warm and pleasantly rough where he hasn’t shaved since New York. He leans into my touch. He presses his lips against the center of my palm and I shiver with how much I want those lips on mine.
“The scene is who I want us to be,” he tells me. “The whole book is who I want us to be.”
I rise on my toes. I move my hands around the back of Noah’s neck. I press my lips to his. He meets me with tenderness, then with passion, cupping the back of my neck and pulling me closer. He tastes like cinnamon.
The seam between our bodies tightens, and it feels just like I fantasized it would—exhilarating, satiating, part-itch, part-scratch, brand new, and such a very long time coming.
“So,” I say, “how’d you like to go to your first launch party tonight, Noa Callaway?”
“I’ll go anywhere,” he says, and kisses me again. “So long as you go with me.”
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Tara Singh Carlson, who knew, among other things, that this book shouldn’t be about the CIA. To Sally Kim, for the insight into Noa Callaway. To Alexis Welby, Ashley Hewlett, and the terrific team at Putnam. To Laura Rennert, strong and elegant. To Morgan Kazan and Randi Teplow-Phipps, for the party on Forty-Ninth Street. To Erica Sussman, for tortoise intel. To Maya Kulick, for The List. To Shivani Naidoo, Courtney Tomljanovic, and Lexa Hillyer, for a million city rambles. To J Minter, original pseudonym. To Alix Reid, original boss. To the Author Mail crew. To inspiring breakups. To my family, love’s example. To Lhüwanda’s chin. To Jason, my kosher ham, who kept after me to write this one. To Matilda and Venice, for giving me the love I write toward.
By Any Other Name
Lauren Kate
A CONVERSATION WITH LAUREN KATE
DISCUSSION GUIDE
A Conversation with Lauren Kate
While you have written multiple books, By Any Other Name is your first romantic comedy. What inspired you to write this story?
In my twenties, I had a spectacular breakup during a cliffside motorcycle ride on the Amalfi Coast. Friends and family have been asking me to write about it for years, but until recently I couldn’t see beyond the heartbreak. I didn’t want to write a book about eating Ben and Jerry’s while Facebook-stalking my ex . . . delicious as that era was! So I started thinking about other aspects of this character’s life—like her job in publishing—that might see her through the darkness.
When I found a professional crisis to echo her personal crisis, it made me laugh. I’ve never written a comedy before, but this story refused to take itself too seriously. I mean, being dumped on the most romantic trip of your life is pretty funny.
Do you feel you are like Lanie in certain ways? How did you come to craft her character?
To prepare for this book, I cringed my way through diaries from that decade of my life. The details—a woman working passionately in publishing, dating thrilling but all-wrong men, summoning friends to emergency brunches, and seeking advice from a well-dressed grandmother—were there to be lifted, but I didn’t intend to make Lanie as deeply me as she became on the page.
Autobiography has never appealed to me. Fiction is making stuff up. But this story demanded it. Then again, if Lanie is me, she’s me from a bygone era, not me now, with two kids and a mortgage. I was glad to go back and visit her.
New York City is such a presence in this story that it almost feels like a character in and of itself. Where did you pull inspiration when crafting this setting and all the specific places Noa and Lanie visit?
Like Lanie, I showed up in Manhattan with a duffel bag and a dream. I was young and broke, which cast a glamor on the city. When mere existence is hard-won, the places you visit, like the Gapstow Bridge, feel legitimately magical.
Living in a great city changes you; I’ve gone through a metamorphosis each time I’ve moved to one. Lanie is evolving because of changes in her life, yes, but also, more simply, because she’s part of pulsing, vital place like New York.
What was your favorite scene in the novel, and why?
Lanie’s first in-person meeting with Noa Callaway. She goes into the scene so earnest and enthusiastic, wearing her grandmother’s Fendi suit. She ends up having an existential crisis in public and throwing her career and personal life into chaos. It’s IRL gone majorly awry. And after a long quarantine of online-only encounters, I can relate.
What do you feel lies at the heart of Lanie’s and Noa’s characters? What do you think is the true success to any relationship?
A successful relationship is at ease with the heavy and the light. I wanted to explore how Lanie and Noa(h) can have a stimulating intellectual argument one moment, burst out laughing the next, and share each other’s grief in the third.
The idea of revision is also at the heart of their romance. I think for many relationships, when one or both people change, it can feel scary, undesired. But as a writer and an editor, Lanie and Noa(h) understand what’s beautiful about change. They don’t expect each other to stay the same as they were in the first draft. They welcome the different versions each of them will become.