We sway a bit longer in silence. “I’ll be rehabbing soon,” she tells me. “I’m not telling anyone yet because it’s a long shot, but I might be back for the championship, if we make it.”
“We’ll make it,” I promise her.
“Anyway, there’s still a lot going on, but, I don’t know. With Dad and the press, it all starts to run together. I’m just trying to stay focused on right now, this year, getting better. And I see you doing okay and it makes me glad, like I have one less thing to worry about.” She looks away. “Not that I don’t worry.”
“We were best friends for years for a reason.” I hate using the word were and I see it cross Lia’s face, too, but we don’t address it. I go on, “Things seem good with Columbus. Now that it’s not a secret.”
She turns red, nods. “I guess they kind of are. It’s not perfect—our parents are just ignoring it, but it’s nice not to have it hanging over my head all the time. It’s weird that you don’t know all this stuff.”
I shrug. “It’s my own fault.”
“I guess so,” she says, and I hear the song starting to end. It sends me into a near panic. When the song ends, it might mean this truce is over. It might mean we never go back to how we were. Lia seems to sense that and tells me then, “Taylor says you’re family.”
“But family doesn’t mean close,” I reply.
“No,” she says. “God knows mine never has been.” Her blond hair curls around her face, no makeup smudged. She’s perfect in her own way, my best friend. “I never saw you as lesser, but I maybe didn’t want you to be so much all the time. You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry, too. Some of this is my fault. There’s no one culprit, you know?”
I don’t answer, enjoying our moment together. The song ends and we stop swaying. Drop our hands. People never think about it with friendships, but you can spend so much time touching one another. Standing side by side, putting an arm around one another, holding on after a bad day. It’s the most specific kind of intimacy.
And now it’s gone.
Lia looks tired from the effort of being on her leg for too long. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have made you do that. It was too much.”
“Nell,” she says, reaching up and brushing hair out of my face. “I’m glad you look so happy. And I’m sorry for the silent treatment. It’s not—I don’t want it to be like this. But it’s never going to be the same, you know? We’re going to have to figure out how it is now.”
I nod. “That’s what happens when you get older, right?”
“I guess so. But,” she continues, “I still love you. Nothing can ever change that.”
I bend down and hug her as tight as I can. She responds in kind. I whisper into her ear, a shared secret, “I love you, too.” And it’s not everything, but it’s something.
I feel like, one day, we might be able to put us back together again. And that seems good enough for now.
53
I leave Lia after that. Slide my shoes off at the back door of the marina’s ballroom, the one with the path down to the river. Tristan passes by and hands me a note scribbled on a ripped-up piece of paper. I look at her, my face a question, but she just winks and walks away. I uncrumple it and read, a smile finding its way onto my own face despite myself.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
I laugh then. Finally. Loudly. Because of course it was that one. Of course.
I walk outside onto the trail behind the marina. It goes down for a while to a dock leading to the river.
The river. Where everything in this town seemingly ends.
The only place where it’s ever felt like I begin.
The wood is cold against my feet. The night is overcast, the water even darker than the sky. I breathe in deeply, feeling a steady calm for a change. Sure in the silence.
I turn around at the sound of footsteps behind me.
Jackson is in an ever-faithful pair of khakis and an Oxford I know is red-white-and-blue checked like the All-American boy he is because I saw it in the light earlier. The top three buttons are unbuttoned, his tie hanging untied and loose.
“You read it,” I say, waving the paper.
“It’s a metaphor.”
“Everything’s a metaphor,” I return.
“It was a little stuffy,” he admits. “But I get it. The historical dystopia was a really bad analysis.”
I laugh, studying the contours of his face.
“People like us,” I finally say, “we’re too much for most people, you know?”
“I know.”
“I used to feel like, when we were together, like I didn’t know how I could feel so much at one time. Like, I’d always heard about people completing each other, but you and me, we were more like a match and a stick of dynamite.”
He presses his lips together. “More likely to light one another on fire,” he finishes like he knows exactly what I mean.
I half smile. “Dangerous,” I say, and he nods.
After a moment he says, “I wanted to take it all back, Nell, from the first time we were ever together, I wanted to unknow what I knew. I wanted to start over, to not have had this happen the way it did. To prove something to you.”
I stare at my fingers, knowing I’m going to admit it for the first time. “I wasn’t happy,” I say. “And you were the only person who forced me to see that. I wanted to be a person who was never real to begin with. I was existing, but there was no point in it at all.
“So, I don’t think I’d take it back. I would change some things the second time maybe, clean up a couple of errors, but I wouldn’t take it back.”
His eyes narrow. “I’d do it all over again. I’d hurt all the same if I could do it all again.”
“But we can’t undo what we did to each other. To everyone around us.”
“Or our parents,” he says like an agreement.
“The whole world,” I say. “The two of us together? We might destroy it.”
He laughs. “Actually, that part doesn’t sound so bad.” He walks up to stand next to me, looking out over the water with his hands in his pockets. “I was going to ask for a dance.”
I return his laugh, the sound loud and vivid against the night.
“I can leave if you want,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say, glancing over at him. I let the crumpled piece of paper fall into the river, absorbing water, blooming. Our eyes meet.
It’s so clear about certain things in life: They’re never over.
They’re always only just starting.
“It’s beautiful tonight,” he says, staring back out over the water. He scuffs his foot against the dock. “I remember the way you always looked at the water. That’s the first time I ever saw your eyes light up. Like it was in your veins. Like it knew you.”
“The only other thing I ever looked at like that was you.”
He’s quiet, thoughtful for a moment, eyes glued to me. “No one ever saw me that way.”
And somewhere in that space between heartbeats, I know what needs to happen. He meets my eyes, and I know he knows, too. I offer him my hand and he takes it.
“One,” I say.
“Two,” he replies, glancing at me with that old grin I miss so much.
“Three!” we say at the same time, both of our feet leaving the dock. My scream is the prelude before we hit. The water is like a shot of electricity, brilliant and intense. The river deep, cold, unknown. I’ve wanted to jump so many times and held myself back, waited. But the water rushes over me now, cold and clean and demanding. Everything is bright and new.
It’s like coming alive.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
You have in your hand a book that’s about a lot of things—river towns and summer and sports and that first obsessive love and how parents shape their children. But mostly, it’s about girls.
>
In today’s political climate, I find myself thinking a lot about how differently women are judged versus men, whether in fiction or the public stage. We, as a society, expect boys to want it all and encourage them to have it: competition, glory, sex, victory. And if those same boys make some mistakes along the way to get what they want, we don’t mind forgiving them. In fact, we often write their apologies for them: He meant well. Boys will be boys.
Girls aren’t offered the same leniency. She should’ve been smarter than that. Was too ambitious, too unkind, too overtly sexual, too much too much too much.
I wrote Winner Take All because I wanted to challenge this. To present a deeply flawed heroine—a girl who is not just intelligent and thoughtful, but also messy, mean, competitive, anxious. And I drew her carefully against her love interest, a boy who she sees as the ultimate entitled antagonist—rich, smart, and easy to love. Sometimes, I joke that this book is really about two terrible people who fall in love. But more than that, I wanted to challenge readers’ notions of why we so often find girls’ actions unforgivable but are willing and eager to accept apologies from their male counterparts. I didn’t want my main character to always be likable, but I wanted her to always feel real.
It’s easy to forget that every day, teenage girls face a massive amount of pressure to be perfect, and every day, they suffer in silence from undiagnosed anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking mental illness is something you need to handle alone. Here are a few resources to consider (in addition to a trusted parent, teacher, or other adult):
• Anxiety and Depression Association of America (adaa.org)
• Center for Young Women’s Health (youngwomenshealth.org)
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org)
• National Institute of Mental Health (nimh.nih.gov)
• OK2Talk (ok2talk.org)
• Teen Mental Health (teenmentalhealth.org)
At the end of the day, this book is about the girls I love the most. The ones who want the world. And won’t apologize for it.
Happy reading always,
Laurie
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I can’t believe this book exists. Seriously. There’s something about the reality of getting to keep telling stories after your first book that makes it even more surreal the second time around. Countless people, hours, and daydreaming made Winner Take All possible and I can’t thank everyone, mentioned and unmentioned, enough. But I will try my best.
First of all, none of this would be possible without my agent, Diana Fox, as ever, for always helping to turn my wild ideas into reality. I am endlessly appreciative of your tireless work to help me shape this book—and I mean “tireless” literally because we both basically stopped sleeping at various points throughout its creation.
My eternal thanks to my excellent editor, Erin Stein, for her guidance and encouragement as Nell and Jackson’s story came to life. Also to Nicole Otto for always keeping me on schedule and generally being the best. Ellen Duda did an absolutely incredible job giving this book its aesthetic—I can’t imagine Nell without the badass cover you designed. My thanks as well to Alexei Esikoff and Raymond Colon for their work on production, Caitlin Crocker and Amanda Mustafic for marketing and publicity, and Melissa Croce, Lucy Del Priore, Katie Halata, and Amanda German for getting this book out into the world.
Can’t say enough about my favorite hag ladies. Kristin Halbrook and Kody Keplinger came to my rescue with notes just when I most desperately needed them. Courtney Summers and Maurene Goo both raved about this book when I was sure no one would ever get it. Veronica Roth is the best listener a girl can ask for—appreciate each and every writing date. And to the rest of the fantastic authors who always have my back—y’all are the light of my YA life.
Thanks to my parents for listening, even when they have no idea what I’m talking about. I promise nothing is based on you. Drew, thanks for being rad. Answer my text. And to my entire extended family—thanks for being so supportive of my book-writing dreams.
To all my friends I blew off because I had a deadline: I’m sorry, I love you, please still hang out with me. Much love to Jamie, Sarah T., Campbell, Sarah W., Felicia, Meisha, Mitchel, Erin, Sarah C., Randi, and the many more generally awesome people I know. My coworkers have always made having a day job not so bad. Rachel, Maura, Mary, Abbie, Audrey, Emma, Claire, and Amanda—you have always been my people.
There’s never enough space to mention all the people who help a book to come together so my thanks extends beyond this list—I love you all dearly. And last but not least, I can’t say enough for my readers. My gratitude at being able to write weird little stories is so immense and I can’t believe y’all are out there, giving my books a chance. So, to everyone who picked up this book, none of this would be possible without you. Thanks a million. XOXO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie Devore was born and raised in small town South Carolina and graduated from Clemson University. She now lives and works in Chicago, where she misses the charms and contradictions of the South every day. In her spare time, she reluctantly runs marathons, watches too much TV, and works a “y’all” into every conversation. She is the author of the young adult novels How to Break a Boy and Winner Take All.
Visit her online at lauriedevore.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
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
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Laurie Devore
A part of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
fiercereads.com
All rights reserved.
If you take this book, keep in mind—you’re starting a game you will never win. And you’re not the only one willing to play dirty.
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Imprint logo designed by Amanda Spielman
First hardcover edition 2018
eBook edition January 2018
eISBN 9781250082893
Winner Take All Page 30