Alex Aster

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Alex Aster comes her adult debut novel Summer in the City—a swoony, fast-paced rom-com set in New York City in which a screenwriter and a sexy tech CEO go from lovers to enemies and back to lovers again…

Twenty-seven-year-old screenwriter Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. The only problem? She’s had writer’s block for months, and her screenplay is due at the end of the summer. 

In a desperate attempt at inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford (floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, and a new coffee shop to haunt included). It’s the perfect place to write her screenplay…until she realizes her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor” Parker Warren, her stairwell hookup from two years ago. It’s been a lovers-to-enemies situation ever since. 

When seeing him again turns into a full night of hate-fueled writing, Elle realizes her enemy/twisted muse might just be the key to finishing her screenplay... if she can stand being around her polar opposite. She writes anonymously, and he’s on the cover of every business magazine. He frequents fancy red carpeted events, and she doesn’t like leaving her emotional support five block radius. 

One summer. One wall apart. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. Both need a break from their unrelenting schedules, and a chance to rediscover the skyscraper glimmering, pizza crusted, sunlit charms of the city.  

Summers always end, and so will this agreement. It’s all pretend. Promise. 

Until it isn’t.

Summer In The City 

Sophia

I smile despite trying not to and turn toward the window so he doesn’t see. It doesn’t work.

“You smiled,” he says, with the awe of discovering a new product to patent.

“You did. And now I’m going to have to find it within myself to be funnier, because I want you to do it again.”

I open my mouth to tell Edith that I am not in this or any Marvel cinematic universe Parker Warren’s girlfriend, but Parker starts to make slow, low circles on the bottom of my spine, and what am I doing? Why am I letting him? Why do I lean into his touch just the slightest bit?

I look up, only to find he’s already looking down at me, studying me like he really does think I’m a wonder.

Parker turns around, and any fear of awkwardness I had anticipated between us after last night is put to rest. His face lights up, like he’s genuinely happy to see me.

“Why did you want that bracelet so badly?”

Parker’s answer is immediate. “It made you smile.”

I blink, not sure if I’m more shocked at the fact that he just spent three hundred thousand dollars on something that made me smile . . . or the fact that I don’t remember smiling at it at all. Then it hits me. “Parker,” I say very carefully, “I was smiling at the earrings behind it.”

His finger runs down the chain, dragging against my bare skin, all the way to the stone, and I shiver.

“It belongs on someone who can outshine it.” He lightly tugs the diamond. “It belongs on you.”

He leans his forehead against mine. We’re both soaking wet. His warm lips slip against my cheek as he brings them to my ear and says, “I remember everything.”

By the time we’re done for the day, and are in the car going home, I feel ... full. And not just because we went back and got another cannoli before we left. No, some part of me, some part I didn’t quite realize was so empty, has been poured into.

I fall asleep on Parker’s shoulder on the way back, to the rhythm of the shapes he’s tracing down my arm.

Then the doors open, and I see him. Parker’s on the phone. It sounds important. When he looks up at me, it slips out of his hand and cracks against the marble, shattering into pieces. He doesn’t even look at it. He’s looking at me.

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