Today Tonight Tomorrow

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “Earth-shattering,” he says.

  “What just happened? Agreed.”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Well, yes, but I meant you.”

  ROWAN

  good morning

  this is a friendly reminder that you have one (1) minute and counting before I wake you up

  5:31 a.m.

  WHEN I WAKE up, I’m immediately hit with that panicky feeling you get on weekends sometimes when you’re convinced you’re late for school.

  Only I’m not late, I no longer have school, and Neil McNair is in my bed.

  He’s on his side next to me, one arm thrown across the pillow, the other around my waist. The early morning sunlight slants across his face, turning his hair fiery. He is beautiful. The sky is a clear cobalt canvas, yesterday’s storm forgotten.

  It finally feels like summer.

  As though sensing I’m awake, he pulls me closer, presses a kiss to the back of my neck. The reality drips back in. Neil and I had sex last night. Well—an hour ago, technically this morning. And it was good.

  “Did that really happen?” I say aloud.

  “Yes, unless you and I both had the same intensely erotic dream.”

  “I prefer the reality.” I snuggle closer. “Was it okay for you? Do you feel different?”

  “We’ll have to do it a few more times to know for sure,” he says with that wonderful smirk of his. “Yes. It was incredible. I’m not sure if I feel different, exactly. Mostly, I think I’m just happy. And… it wasn’t terrible for you?”

  I answer by pressing myself into him, dropping kisses down his jaw, onto his neck. “You make me really, really happy too. I hope you know that.”

  He holds me tighter. “I love you, Rowan Roth,” he says. “I can’t believe that’s a thing I get to say.”

  I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing it. I whisper it back, into his skin. I run my hand down his freckled arm, then pull on it to peer at his watch. “As horrible as it sounds, we should get up before my parents do.”

  He kisses my bare shoulder as I force myself to a sitting position. “Don’t think I don’t expect your book report on my desk by tomorrow just because we had sex.”

  “What book?”

  “Hmm. The Age of Innocence? Moby Dick? The Turn of the Screw?” He thinks for another moment, that lazy-sly smile appearing again. “Hard Times?”

  “Is that an autobiography?”

  “No, it’s Dickens. At least three pages, please,” he says before I push him back down on the bed.

  * * *

  About ten minutes later, he grabs his T-shirt, pulls it on. “So what do you think? Should I be all cool and sneak out the window?”

  “I think you might have to.”

  “I guess I’ll see you at KeyArena for graduation. Which is now tomorrow. Wow. I should really work on my valedictorian speech.”

  “And the next day,” I say, “we can have a Star Wars marathon. Or go on a real date.”

  “And this?” he says, gesturing to my sheets. “We should definitely do this again.”

  “We should definitely do this a lot. At least until August.” That sudden heaviness pins me to the bed. “So… that’s a thing we’re going to have to deal with.”

  Neil must notice the change on my face because he stops halfway through buckling his belt and comes closer. “Artoo. Hey. We’ll figure it out.”

  The nickname melts me.

  “I just… I’m not ready to say goodbye,” I say, surprised by the unexpected break in my voice. “I can say goodbye to the rest of it, to school and to our teachers and to everyone else—but I can’t say goodbye to you.”

  “You don’t have to.” He cups my face, running a thumb along my cheekbone. “This isn’t the end. Far from it, hopefully. If we haven’t annoyed each other to death by the end of the summer, then why can’t we keep going? New York and Boston aren’t that far apart.”

  “A little over four hours, by train.” Exploring other cities with Neil—it sounds too wonderful.

  “And we’ll be back here on breaks,” he says. “You and I have to always be the best, right? So we’ll be the best at long distance, if that’s what we decide to do. But right now…” He gestures to the room around us. “Right now, we have this.”

  I let it sink in, trying to be okay with that uncertainty. As much as I’ve idealized the happily-ever-after, I can’t deny that he’s right. Today isn’t my epilogue with Neil—it’s a beginning.

  I’ll leave the happily-ever-afters in the books.

  “I think I can do that,” I say, and reach for him again.

  The love that I wanted so desperately: this isn’t what I thought it would feel like. It’s made me dizzy and it’s grounded me. It’s made me laugh when nothing is funny. It shimmers and it sparks, but it can be comfortable, too, a sleepy smile and a soft touch and a quiet, steady breath. Of course this boy—my rival, my alarm clock, my unexpected ally—is at the center of it.

  And somehow, it’s even better than I imagined.

  Author’s Note

  SEATTLE DIDN’T ALWAYS have my heart.

  A city built on Duwamish land, Seattle has been inhabited for thousands of years. It was incorporated in 1869, after pioneers noted a lack of “marriageable women” and recruited about a hundred from the East Coast to serve as brides for the city’s early residents. The city flourished after a gold rush but lost its business district to the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, then quickly rebuilt. Two twentieth-century world’s fairs were instrumental in the city’s progress: first the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, and then the Century 21 Exposition in 1962, which gave us the Space Needle. Today, Seattle is a hub for both start-ups and big tech.

  I’ve lived here my whole life, first in a suburb known for its connection to Microsoft, then in a college neighborhood, and now on a hill in North Seattle not unlike where Rowan lives. As a teen, I was captivated by the idea of reinventing myself on the other side of the country, and I was eager to escape. I was sick of trees and clouds and gloom. When it became clear I’d be attending college in Seattle, I focused my energy on applying for internships and later jobs outside the state.

  It wasn’t that I resigned myself to loving Seattle when nothing came to fruition. I didn’t feel stuck. Rather, it was a gradual appreciation of the sights and culture and people. The music, too—I have yet to meet someone who’s more of a music snob than someone who’s grown up in Seattle. I like to think Seattle and I have a relationship where I’m able to poke fun and the city doesn’t mind. I’m doing it out of love.

  When we see Seattle in pop culture, we usually only get a piece of it: rain, the Space Needle, flannel. I wanted to dig deeper—and so the game of Howl was born. While this book takes place in a very real city, it’s a patchwork of present-day Seattle and the Seattle I grew up in. Many of the landmarks are presently intact: Cinerama, Pike Place Market and the gum wall, the Great Wheel, the Seattle Public Library, the Fremont Troll, Kerry Park. Some of them I took fictional liberties with. Sadly, the Woodland Park Zoo’s nocturnal exhibit is no longer open. It was shut down during the recession, and though there were plans to rebuild, a fire in the building put those plans on hold. The Museum of the Mysteries was once a real place in Capitol Hill, but now exists online only at nwlegendsmuseum.com. I should also mention that Rowan and Neil really have quite incredible luck finding parking spots.

  When I began writing Today Tonight Tomorrow, it was important to me that Rowan love Seattle, even if she was committed to leaving it behind for college. This book is a love letter to love, but it was a love letter to Seattle first.

  Cities are perennial works in progress, and it’s possible some of the setting details have changed by the time you’re reading this. More and more of my favorite holes-in-the-wall are becoming condos and townhomes, and before they were my favorite holes-in-the-wall, they were someone else’s favorite something else.

  This is my third book that takes place in Seattle, but there is stil
l so much I don’t know about the place that’s always been my home. If and when I leave this setting behind, it will always be in my veins and in my storyteller’s soul.

  Seattle, you are weird and wonderful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK IS a happy one, but I began writing it during a difficult time. While I have always been drawn to dark and heavy books, for months after the 2016 election, I couldn’t bring myself to open one of the many guaranteed heartbreakers waiting on my shelf. I wanted to read—I don’t know who I am if I’m not in the middle of three books at once—but nothing was calling to me. And that’s when I found romance novels.

  I’ve always loved romantic subplots, but I was largely unfamiliar with romance as a genre, and the more I read, the more I realized this was what I wanted to do next. My first two books had bittersweet endings and plenty of levity, but there was also a lot of despair. I didn’t know if I could write a fun book—even all my shelved manuscripts are dark dark dark—and yet suddenly, it was all I wanted to write. Rowan wasn’t actually a romance novelist in my first draft, but after I’d spent so much time learning the genre, it felt right to turn her into one. Nora Roberts, Meg Cabot, Christina Lauren, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Alisha Rai, Sally Thorne, Courtney Milan—without their books, I wouldn’t have been able to write a romance about romance.

  I’m ashamed to admit that my younger self was a lot like Neil, a lot like the people who judge an entire piece of pop culture before reading, watching, listening. The truth is that romance novels made me really and truly happy in a way books had never made me feel before. I’ll always love dark books, and darkness finds its way into romance novels too, but there is such a comfort in knowing an HEA is waiting for you. And yet it still manages to feel earth-shattering every single time.

  There aren’t enough adjectives for my phenomenal editor, Jennifer Ung. Thank you for being immediately on board with a book so tonally different from my first two. Somehow you understand exactly what I’m trying to do, even when my intentions get lost between my brain and the page. My books are infinitely better because of you.

  Thank you to Mara Anastas and the brilliant team at Simon Pulse: Chriscynethia Floyd, Liesa Abrams, Michelle Leo, Amy Beaudoin, Sarah Woodruff, Ana Perez, Amanda Livingston, Christine Foye, Christina Pecorale, Emily Hutton, Lauren Hoffman, Caitlin Sweeny, Alissa Nigro, Savannah Breckenridge, Nicole Russo, Lauren Carr, Anna Jarzab, Chelsea Morgan, Sara Berko, Rebecca Vitkus, and Penina Lopez. Laura Eckes, thank you for designing the cover of my dreams, and Laura Breiling, thank you for the perfect, perfect illustrations. To complete the Laura trifecta, thank you to my agent, Laura Bradford, for soothing my author anxiety and making the business side of writing run so smoothly.

  Kelsey Rodkey, maybe it’s fitting that this book begins and ends with you. The insightful notes, the pep talks, the flailing, the memes… thank you for all of it. I adore you, and your friendship is so dear to me. HAGS! I’m immensely grateful to the friends who offered feedback in various stages of this book’s life: Sonia Hartl, Carlyn Greenwald, Tara Tsai, Marisa Kanter, Rachel Griffin, Rachel Simon, Heather Ezell, Annette Christie, Monica Gomez-Hira, and Auriane Desombre. Thank you to my publishing confidantes Joy McCullough, Gloria Chao, Kit Frick, and Rosiee Thor, and thank you to my favorite coffee shop coworker, Tori Sharp. I am never letting any of you go!

  I shared the earliest version of this book at a Djerassi workshop in June 2017, helmed by the spectacular Nova Ren Suma. Thank you, Nova, and thank you to Alison Cherry, Tamara Mahmood Hayes, Cass Frances, Imani Josey, Nora Revenaugh, Sara Ingle, Randy Ribay, and Kim Graff. That week in the mountains was one of the highlights of my career.

  Ivan: these are the first acknowledgments where I can call you my husband! I’m so glad you’re my person, and thank you for making the best deadline food.

  It’s always a little terrifying sending a book out into the world, and the support from readers, bloggers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers has made that experience much less terrifying. You all are INCREDIBLE, and I’m grateful beyond words for the posts, tweets, emails, and word of mouth that have helped make it possible for me to keep doing my dream job. With all of my heart, thank you.

  More from the Author

  Our Year of Maybe

  You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

  About the Author

  Rachel Lynn Solomon writes, tap dances, and collects lipstick in Seattle. She is the author of You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, Our Year of Maybe, and Today Tonight Tomorrow. A longtime Pitch Wars mentor, she lives near a zoo with her husband and her tiny dog. You can find her online at rachelsolomonbooks.com and on Twitter and Instagram @rlynn_solomon.

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Rachel-Lynn-Solomon

  Simon Pulse

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  rachelsolomonbooks.com

  Also by

  RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON

  You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone

  Our Year of Maybe

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition June 2020

  Text copyright © 2020 by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2020 by Laura Breiling

  Illustrations on pages i, vii, 9, 23, 33, 43, 61, 101, 113, 126, 138, 157, 169, 213, 221, 233, 252, 266, 329, 336, 346, 352, 359, and 365 copyright © 2020 by Laura Breiling

  Confidential stamp on page 69 by Zerbor/iStock

  Emojis on pages 98, 127, 144, 222, 224, and 360 by denisgorelkin/iStock

  Wolf illustration on pages 86, 150, 199, and 292 by Omar Mouhib/iStock

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  Designed by Laura Eckes

  Jacket designed by Laura Eckes

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2020 by Laura Breiling

  Author photograph by Sabreen Lakhani

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Solomon, Rachel Lynn, author.

  Title: Today tonight tomorrow / by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

  Description: Hardcover. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2020. | Audience: Ages 12 and Up. | Audience: Grades 10-12. | Summary: “Throughout the years both Rowan and Neil have been at competition with one another on everything from who has the best ideas for school functions to which one will be their graduating class’s valedictorian.

  However, in the twenty-four hours left they have as high school students, the two learn they share something much deeper than a rivalry”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019029488 (print) | LCCN 2019029489 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534440241 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534440265 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Competition

  (Psychology)—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Jews—United States—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S6695 Tod 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.S6695 (eBook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn
.loc.gov/2019029488

  LC eBook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029489