Like a Boss - Annabelle Costa Page 0,85

person, and it was really sexy. This boy was my first… well, everything. And he was the metric to which I measured every single relationship I had afterwards for a long time.

Why did we break up? Well, we were kids. And also, I was an idiot. But that’s a whole other story, which I might someday be inspired to write.

It’s because of this boy that I later became a physical therapist and ended up meeting a lot of other amazing individuals struggling with and overcoming physical challenges. For the first several years of my career, I worked in a spinal cord injury rehab unit, and I learned that no matter what barriers life throws in front of you, you can still find love and happiness.

Of course, now I largely work with a geriatric population. That’s why my books have so many cool old people!

I hope that answers any questions. And as always, I would love to hear from you at [email protected].

Thank you once again to all my readers!

Annabelle Costa

P.S. Keep reading for a book excerpt after the acknowledgments!

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my chick lit group for the cover feedback! Thank you to Avery Kingston for being an always amazing beta reader. Thank you to DG for your no nonsense feedback. And thanks to Ruth Madison for being the original publisher of this book.

Now turn the page for an excerpt from my book, My Perfect Ex-Boyfriend…

My Perfect Ex-Boyfriend

“I’m getting married.”

I nearly spit out noodles, tomato sauce, and ricotta cheese dramatically when my father says the very last thing I ever expected him to say in a million years. You don’t expect your sixty-three-year-old father to announce he’s getting married. You might expect him to say his gout is acting up, or he’s going to move down to Florida, or he’d like to turn in early after dinner. Getting married? Is he kidding me?

“Married?” I manage, as I choke down a sip of water from one of my father’s chipped ceramic cups.

Dad nods. “That’s right.”

It’s not that my father and I aren’t close. I come to his apartment every Sunday night for dinner, and he helps me out a lot with childcare because he’s retired and I’m destitute. We talk in a friendly way, usually about Lily or how my job is going. But let’s be honest—most women don’t feel comfortable confiding in their father about their dating life. And vice versa.

So I don’t tell him about my personal life and he doesn’t tell me about his. Of course, my personal life has been so nonexistent since Theo that I just assumed the same was true of his. As far as I knew, my father hadn’t been on a single date since my mother died. It comforted me to think that way.

Apparently, I’ve been completely wrong. My father is a player. How could he do this to my mother—the love of his life?

“Grandpa’s getting married!” Lily looks thrilled. “Can I be the flower girl?”

“Of course you can, my angel,” Dad says to her.

I push away my fleeting concerns of how much a flower girl dress is going to set me back. There are much more pressing things to worry about.

“Are you okay, Bee?” Dad asks.

My father has always called me “Bee.” He is absolutely the only one in the world who is allowed to do that—Theo tried it once and I let him know in no uncertain terms it was not okay (I wish I’d been as persuasive about his cheating). “Bee” is the first letter of my name, but also, when I was little, I had a round face and yellow hair, and Dad always said I looked like a bumblebee. My hair has since darkened to more of a chestnut shade like my mother’s used to be, and thanks to my poverty diet, my round face is a lot narrower than it used to be. But to Dad, I’m still “Bee.”

“How can you be getting married?” I feel like I’m about to burst into tears. “What about Mom?”

Dad frowns and the wrinkles on his face deepen. “Bee, Mom’s been gone for nine years.”

Technically, he’s right. But here we are, eating dinner in the two-bedroom apartment that he and my mother purchased together, eating at the creaky wooden table she picked out, drinking from cups she bought at Pottery Barn. How could she not constantly be on his mind? How could he move on? I repeat: she was the love of his life.

You can’t move on from something like that. You can’t.