When he returns to Britain, having found that life as a tax exile gives him writer's block, temptation comes in the form of Sally, Richard's step-daughter.

    Just… gone. How is it possible that he was just here and then, in a flash, not? I had to move on eventually, right? I just wasn’t thinking it would happen this soon. Why did I have to meet him? This stranger who made things less… strange. This man who made life a little more bearable. How was I supposed to deal with my mother? My sister? My husband’s parents? The pressure from the outside world would be great. The pressure I put on myself? Far greater. I wanted to push him away. I wanted to. I just… couldn’t.

    She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

    Since her classmates are as cruel to her as when she last saw them on graduation day, she has no difficulty bailing on the event for the hotel bar. Only it’s there she comes face-to-face with the most painful part of her past.And he doesn’t recognize her.Taking full advantage of her anonymity, Kelsey gives herself one night with Rierson Perrault, the boy from her childhood dreams. Being no one's fool, she makes sure she’s gone the next morning before he can ask any questions. Ry didn’t realize the woman he spent the night with was Kelsey. But when he puts it together, he’s sick at heart. He’s lost his chance to reconcile with her; the only reason he went to the reunion to begin with. Kicking himself for not figuring it out sooner, he returns home embittered. When Kelsey and Ry meet again in the heart of New Orleans, will another fifteen years need to pass before they find the right words to say? Or will they finally listen to each other's hearts so their easy reunion can begin?