Praise for Colleen Oakley
Close Enough to Touch
“Oakley, in this irresistible novel, succeeds in examining the myriad ways in which people relate to one another, even at arm’s length.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“One of the most thought-provoking love stories of the year.”
—Real Simple
“It is easy to get lost in this vividly told story with characters and a fictional malady that are utterly believable. Oakley’s second novel should build on the author’s popularity and continue comparisons to popular authors such as Jojo Moyes.”
—Library Journal
“Oakley’s sophomore novel is a treat. . . . Fans of Jojo Moyes and rom-coms set within the stacks of libraries will rejoice.”
—Booklist
“Heart-wrenching and humorous, Oakley delivers an out-of-the-ordinary love story with steady quips and endearing characters. . . . [Jubilee’s] journey from recluse to recovery is fascinating.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Oakley masterfully creates a high-stakes story that still feels solidly real. All of her characters are well-rounded and charming, especially Jubilee. Readers will cheer each time she takes a risk and delight in her triumphs. A romantic, sweet story about taking chances and living life fully.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A breathtaking story about love with all the odds against it. Two lives coming together at a time when they are both learning how to live again. Colleen will tug at your heartstrings with this powerful and touching novel.”
—Anna Todd, bestselling author of After Ever Happy
“The story of three wounded souls denied the human touch they desire, expertly conceived with all the warmth and affection of an enormous bear hug. A real achievement.”
—Steven Rowley, national bestselling author of The Editor
“A witty, inventive and bittersweet story of a reclusive young woman forced to venture into the world where complex medical issues become tangled with longings of the heart.”
—Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me
“It’s so rare these days to find an utterly original heroine like Jubilee—one who is bravely living an almost unimaginable life. Gripping, raw and moving, this is one of my favorite novels of the year.”
—Sarah Pekkanen, bestselling author of Skipping a Beat and The Opposite of Me
“In Close Enough to Touch we meet Jubilee Jenkins, who has a life-threatening allergy to human touch, and Eric Keegan, a good guy whose life isn’t going according to plan. Colleen Oakley expertly weaves Jubilee’s and Eric’s stories together, ensuring we laugh a lot and cry a little as we fly through the pages. This is a heartwarming, unconventional love story you won’t be able to put down.”
—Karma Brown, bestselling author of Come Away with Me and The Choices We Make
“Oakley delivers a story that overflows with compassion, humor and the impulsive need to read just one more chapter until you reach the very satisfying end.”
—Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author of The Favorite Daughter
“Colleen Oakley writes a unique twist on love. . . . With effortless charm, wit and just a touch of heat (pun intended), Close Enough to Touch’s offbeat characters warmed my heart with tender moments and heartbreaking revelations.”
—Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake and Luck, Love & Lemon Pie
Before I Go
“Oakley has set herself a tricky balancing act here, blending a comic sensibility with the depth and poignancy her subject requires. She pulls it off.”
—People
“Colleen Oakley’s debut deftly balances sorrow with laughs and compassion.”
—Us Weekly
“With compassion and humor, Oakley makes us feel for this dying woman and understand her final wish.”
—Good Housekeeping
“An impressive feat. . . . An immensely entertaining, moving and believable read.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Oakley tells this story with such confidence and grace that readers will find themselves fully invested in—and emotionally braced for—the unfolding tragedy.”
—Atlanta magazine
“When a young woman gets the news that her breast cancer has returned in an aggressively lethal form, she immediately sets out to find the next wife for her beloved, but helpless, husband. Our heroine’s determined until the moment comes when even she questions if this is how she should be spending her final weeks.”
—New York Daily News
“Oakley knocks it out of the park in her treatment of a very sensitive subject . . . pleasurable, thought-provoking reading.”
—Athens Banner-Herald
“Readers will want simultaneously to hug Daisy and give her a good shake when she goes off the rails. . . . Highly recommended for laugh-out-loud fans and the tearjerker set.”
—Library Journal
“Oakley has produced an affecting work that, while avoiding maudlin sentimentality, makes the reader care about Daisy and her determination to live while dying.”
—Booklist
“It’s impossible not to feel Daisy’s pain, confusion and sadness as she thinks about what life will be like after she’s gone. . . . This emotional novel will make readers laugh through their tears.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Oakley expertly tugs at the heartstrings with well-rounded characters and a liberal dose of gallows humor.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In Before I Go, Oakley addresses the oft-asked question: If you only had six months to live, what would you do? In her deft hands, what could easily turn maudlin becomes a funny and insightful journey with Daisy, and the love of her life, Jack. If you loved Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You, this book is for you.”
—Catherine McKenzie, bestselling author of Hidden and Forgotten
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2020 by Colleen Oakley
Readers Guide copyright © 2020 by Colleen Oakley
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Excerpt from the motion picture The Wizard of Oz (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939). Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Oakley, Colleen, author.
Title: You were there too / Colleen Oakley.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017291 | ISBN 9781984806468 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781984806475 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3615.A345 Y68 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017291
First Edition: January 2020
Cover art and design by Vi-An Nguyen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author
’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For my husband, Fred
CONTENTS
Praise for Colleen Oakley
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
DOROTHY: It’s funny, but I feel as if I’d known you all the time, but I couldn’t have, could I?
THE SCARECROW: I don’t see how. You weren’t around when I was stuffed and sewn together, were you?
THE TINMAN: And I was standing over there, rusting for the longest time.
DOROTHY: Still, I wish I could remember, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. We know each other now, don’t we?
—The Wizard of Oz
Prologue
The sky is still blue.
That’s what seems impossible to me. Not the fact that I’m somehow flat on my back, when just minutes earlier I was standing upright, both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Or that seconds before that, I was staring at the business end of a gun (a gun!), pointed directly at me (me!), as if I were on a movie set instead of in a throng of strangers milling about, oblivious that their lives would all soon be inextricably connected.
I blink, squinting against the electric cerulean of the sky, marveling at its continued beauty, its steadfast cheerfulness, somehow unmarred by what it just bore witness to. And then my other senses come screaming back one by one. And I’m aware of the heavy weight against my chest, a body pinning me to the asphalt, the drumbeat of my heart thudding in my ears.
Twisting my neck, I tear my eyes from the sky, and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The blood is everywhere. Or maybe it’s not, but like a piece of spinach wedged in a tooth, it draws the eye. It’s the only thing I can see.
Panic grips me. I turn to the left, my eyes frantically searching. And that’s when I see him. The top of his head, anyway.
It’s still.
Like a fruit bowl in an amateur painting.
Like the sky.
Like my breath.
I try to inhale, to fill my lungs, but I can’t, and it’s got nothing to do with the weight on my chest.
Move, I think. Or maybe I say it out loud, but I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or to the body trapping me to the ground.
Regardless, neither obeys me.
“Get off!” I shout, pushing with all my strength. And finally, I’m free. I inhale again, the thick metallic smell of blood filling my nostrils.
I don’t think it’s mine.
But I don’t know anything for sure.
Or maybe, that’s not true.
I knew this was coming, didn’t I? The signs were always there, jumbled up like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, but there just the same.
I try to stand, go to him, but my knees buckle, as I realize the other thing I know for sure—and I can’t believe I ever questioned it, even for a second.
It’s him.
It’s always been him.
Chapter 1
The office is cool and sparsely decorated. I count the plants (three), watch the second hand of the brass clock on the bookshelf make two full circles on its axis, stare at the large canvas on the wall, a lone red smear of paint in the center. I look anywhere but directly at Nora, the pristine, chignoned, straight-backed woman sitting in the executive chair across the desk from me—not because she’s flipping through my portfolio and I’ve never quite gotten comfortable with witnessing the judgment of my work, but because she’s wearing a neck scarf. Just seeing it, wrapped tightly like a noose, knotted right at her clavicle, makes my skin crawl with anxiety. How do people wear things wrapped around their throats? I’ve never understood it. Even as a kid, if my mom put me in a turtleneck, I would grasp at it, wheezing and crying and carrying on until she let me change.
I’m pretty sure I was strangled to death in a previous life.
Harrison says that’s morbid, but I once heard one of those late-night television psychics say that a lot of the fears we’re born with stem from events in our past lives. Like, if you are terrified of swimming in the ocean, maybe you drowned or were ravaged by a school of piranha or something.
Harrison also says I should stop watching so many of those late-night television psychic shows.
The room is silent, save the sharp machine-gun-fire rapping of Nora’s pen against the desktop. A pattern has emerged. She pauses the pen when she turns a page and then resumes as she gazes—thoughtfully, I hope—at the photos of my paintings.
There are thirteen art galleries in Hope Springs, Pennsylvania (excessive for a town with two thousand inhabitants, if you ask me, and I’m an artist). Only three show contemporary work, this one, and two others who have already turned down my paintings. Translation? This is kind of my last shot. But I’m hopeful, because at least here, I actually have a third-degree personal connection—my old college professor Rick Haymond called in a favor to a friend, who in turn called Nora, and now here I am.
“Mia?”
“Yes?” I say, meeting her eyes.
“Is this a portrait of . . . Keanu Reeves?”
I clear my throat. “Um . . . yes.”
Her pen stills. She looks up at me, expectantly.
“That was part of my latest series.”
She waits, and I clear my throat again.
“Have you ever watched The $25,000 Pyramid?” I ask.
“I’m sorry?”
“The game show.”
“I—I believe so.” She narrows her eyes, unsure of where this is going.
“You know how the celebrities start saying a bunch of random words, like ‘wheels, buttons, beach balls,’ and then the contestant has to guess what the category is—like, in this example: Things That Are Round?”
“OK.”
“Well, I find that fascinating—the groupings of seemingly unrelated things that actually do have something in common. That’s how I choose the themes for my series.”
She continues to stare at me, and I can’t decide if she’s perplexed or bored. “And Keanu Reeves?”
“The theme was: Things That Are Mediocre.”
Her eyes remain locked on mine, but she doesn’t respond. She reminds me of a detective on one of those cop shows, the patient one, willing to wait out the suspect. I cave. I would be a terrible criminal. “Also in that series is the orange Tootsie Pop.”
“The orange Tootsie Pop,” she repeats.
“Right, because orange isn’t bad, but it�
�s nobody’s favorite, right? And then, let’s see, Capri pants, store-bought tomatoes—that’s why I painted them with the sticker still on—Easter . . .” She breaks eye contact as I’m speaking so I trail off.
She stares at the image for a beat and then looks back up, her face twisted. “You think Keanu Reeves is mediocre?” she says. “But he’s so handsome and self-deprecating and . . . respectful of women.” The last phrase she emphasizes so forcefully her hand clenches into a fist.
“Yeah,” I agree lamely. Because he is all of those things, and the way she’s gushing tells me it wouldn’t be prudent to explain that it’s his lack of acting range I’m referring to and not him personally. “It was funnier when I painted it. Before . . .” I trail off again because I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Before he became some kind of national treasure?
“Hm,” she says and flips through a few more pages noncommittally. Then, more to the desk than to me, she says: “How . . . interesting.” But the way Nora’s voice goes down at the end and not up in praise is how I know she doesn’t really think it is interesting. And how I know that I’m not going to get a showing at this gallery, either.
* * *
When I step back out into the midday June heat, I nearly run smack into two guys linked arm in arm. The one in man sandals and teal gingham shorts pulls the other back to let me pass. “I’m so sorry,” I say, as my hand goes to my stomach, a protective mother’s instinct for the fetus currently residing there, then I scoot around the men and out onto the street. Dodging in and out of other well-dressed tourists, I pass a chocolatier, an olive oil boutique and a store that sells nothing but spices. Seventeen kinds of salt! I whispered to Harrison when we, too, were another one of those tourist couples five months ago, and ducked in to look around. I never knew there was more than one. Having known me and my lack of culinary skills for the better part of eight years, this did not surprise him.
On Mechanic Street, the cell in my shoulder bag vibrates and I dig it out. A text from Harrison.
How’d it go?
I scroll through my gifs until I find a picture of an army tank and text it back.
You Were There Too Page 1