Then he sat back in his chair and stared at the pebbled glass door with his name on it.
From now on his path in life would be pointed steadily forward, right at the fresh waves coming for him, rather than the choppy ones that had just passed underneath and battered him.
Hell, they can only hit you once.
It was all about what was coming up. And whether you could handle it. And even if you couldn’t handle it, it was about how you tried to handle it.
Being alive and living were also two distinct things, he had come to realize. The former was strictly biological; the latter was everything else.
Yeah, safety was one thing, an important thing. But actually living was something else. He had decided to pick the something else. And it had cost him plenty, maybe more than even he realized right this minute. Yet he had a pretty good idea.
It cost me everything else.
And so Aloysius Archer settled back in his seat and waited for somebody, anybody, to walk through that door.
Acknowledgments
To Michelle, thanks for always being there for me, and handling everything else so I can sit and spin stories!
To Michael Pietsch, Ben Sevier, Elizabeth Kulhanek, Jonathan Valuckas, Matthew Ballast, Beth de Guzman, Anthony Goff, Rena Kornbluh, Karen Kosztolnyik, Brian McLendon, Albert Tang, Andy Dodds, Ivy Cheng, Joseph Benincase, Alexis Gilbert, Andrew Duncan, Morgan Martinez, Bob Castillo, Kristen Lemire, Briana Loewen, Mark Steven Long, Thomas Louie, Marie Mundaca, Rachael Kelly, Kirsiah McNamara, Lisa Cahn, John Colucci, Megan Fitzpatrick, Nita Basu, Alison Lazarus, Barry Broadhead, Martha Bucci, Ali Cutrone, Raylan Davis, Tracy Dowd, Melanie Freedman, Elizabeth Blue Guess, Linda Jamison, John Leary, John Lefler, Rachel Hairston, Tishana Knight, Jennifer Kosek, Suzanne Marx, Derek Meehan, Christopher Murphy, Donna Nopper, Rob Philpott, Barbara Slavin, Karen Torres, Rich Tullis, Mary Urban, Tracy Williams, Julie Hernandez, Laura Shepherd, Maritza Lumpris, Jeff Shay, Carla Stockalper, Ky’ron Fitzgerald, and everyone at Grand Central Publishing, for always exceeding expectations.
To Aaron and Arleen Priest, Lucy Childs, Lisa Erbach Vance, Frances Jalet-Miller, and Kristen Pini, for getting better all the time.
To Mitch Hoffman, for continuing to make me dig deep with every book.
To Anthony Forbes Watson, Jeremy Trevathan, Lucy Hale, Trisha Jackson, Alex Saunders, Sara Lloyd, Claire Evans, Laura Sherlock, Stuart Dwyer, Jonathan Atkins, Christine Jones, Leanne Williams, Andy Joannou, Charlotte Williams, Rebecca Kellaway, Charlotte Cross, Lucy Grainger, Lucy Jones, and Neil Lang at Pan Macmillan, for continuing to send me to new heights.
To Praveen Naidoo and the crackerjack team at Pan Macmillan in Australia. Number one after number one. You’re the best!
To Caspian Dennis and Sandy Violette, for always being so supportive.
And to Kristen White and Michelle Butler, none of this happens without you two!