Amelia Waxler Regrets Everything - A Novel

To kiss the girl or not? One fateful decision leads to two very different parallel futures … but only one true love.

When the cops showed up to a high school party twenty years ago, Amelia Waxler hid in a pantry with her friend, Grace. Mere inches apart, their eyes locked, time slowed, and in the space of a heartbeat, her world split in two.

In one timeline, Amelia kisses Grace. It’s beautiful, perfect, and helps her realize she’s gay. But after their disastrous breakup a few months later, Amelia spends the next twenty years making it her personality to leave before she can be left—girlfriends, jobs, cities. But when her dad gets sick, now thirty-five-year-old Amelia moves back home to Santa Monica and tries to do what she’s never done before: make a commitment.

In the other timeline, gay-panicked Amelia flees the pantry instead of kissing Grace, and they both get arrested for underage drinking. This Amelia spends her young adult life obsessed with not getting in trouble and being responsible—she has no idea what she actually wants or likes. When her relationship with her husband crumbles and her dad gets sick, she moves back home to figure out where everything went wrong.

For the first time since high school, the two versions of Amelia are in the same place at the same time...and so, in fact, is grown-up Grace. For both Amelias, there’s instant chemistry with Grace, but will their baggage doom their second chance at love with the girl who started it all?

This open-hearted homage to Sliding Doors explores how one choice—one kiss—might feel like it defines our future and who we know ourselves to be. But it may actually be the millions of little choices along the way that lead us right back to who we really are, and the person we’re meant to love.