I Almost Forgot About You

by Terry McMillan

  Stan and I are bicoastal. I love his apartment. I cook up a storm in that little kitchen, but I also love New York City.

  I redid my own kitchen. Blue stove. Tangerine fridge. Yellow dishwasher. It rocks. Naomi and Macy totally dig it.

  Stan still builds. He has quite a crew. Bakersfield is on the short list.

  Stan also keeps his word. He’s renovated a fifteen-hundred-square-foot studio for me in West Oakland. The garage at my house can handle two cars again.

  I seem to say Stan’s name a lot.

  I’ve sold twelve stools, seven chairs, five side tables, and a ton of pillows, all of which appear to have taken up permanent residence and found lovers in a very hip home-decor shop. Naomi and Macy knew people who knew people, and those people knew even more people. I have also recently started making ottomans. Covering them with wild and beautiful fabric and getting rather carried away.

  I have deactivated my Facebook account until further notice. I do not miss it. However, Mona was right. My third husband was number three of ninety-eight messages. Stan wrote this:

  Hello there, Georgia! Hope you’re well. I think of you often. If you’re ever in NYC, let me know. Would love to take you out for a slice! Love, Stan DiStasio.

  And last but not least.

  I do not regret quitting my day job.

  Even though you write alone, it takes the support of, confidence in, and patience from a lot of people during the journey. I am grateful to the following: Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson, my forever agents, for their faith in this story from the beginning and the great advice after reading the early drafts; my young, smart, insightful, and intuitive editor, Lindsay Sagnette, for her brilliance and not being afraid of me; my publisher, Molly Stern, for her faith in and general excitement for my past work and this story. I’m also grateful to Maya Mavjee, David Drake, and Rose Fox.

  Solitude is precious to a writer and sometimes hard to get, which is why I appreciate Adrienne Brodeur, the creative director of Aspen Words at the Aspen Institute, for giving me a monthlong residency in a very cool house in the mountains along with Boo Boo the Bear to keep me company.

  From there, I went back to Jamaica for another month, where Charlotte Wallace, manager of the Rock House in Negril, gave me a round bungalow with a sea view that helped me continue to bring this novel to life.

  I lie for a living. But in the hope of telling someone’s truth. I respect and admire all the women I know and don’t know for their bravery in changing lanes at a later (not late) stage in their lives. This party ain’t over. Yet.

  TERRY MCMILLAN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, and The Interruption of Everything and the editor of Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Each of Ms. McMillan’s seven previous novels was a New York Times bestseller, and four have been made into movies: Waiting to Exhale (Twentieth Century Fox, 1995); How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Twentieth Century Fox, 1998); Disappearing Acts (HBO Pictures, 1999); and A Day Late and a Dollar Short (Lifetime, 2014). She lives in California.

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