Excerpt from FROM SQUARE ONE by A.M. Woody:
“Open your hand,” Aaron says, and I do, frowning. He places a mint in it. “You don’t let me kiss you when your mouth tastes like food, so I came prepared.”
I toss the mint behind me. It clinks against the bleachers and falls into the darkness.
Aaron sighs in disapproval. “Riley, I thought we were going to reenact the physical parts of our dates, too,” he whines.
My heart takes an unfortunate stagger. I forgot about that aspect of the agreement. Scowling, I open my hand again, and Aaron plops another mint into it with a shiny ear-to-ear smile that makes me want to kick him. As I’m popping it into my mouth, another realization ices my blood.
If he’s giving this to me, does that mean we kissed on the first date?
I watch, dismayed, as Aaron sticks a mint in his own mouth, then pries his clothes off, leaving him in nothing but his black stud and swim trunks. The bluish lighting of the pool reflects against his pearly skin, making him look nearly ethereal as he turns to me.
“Well?” he asks softly.
I try unsuccessfully to keep my eyes above his collarbone. He’s definitely firmed up over the last year, which makes sense, considering his profession forces him to perform constant manual labor. He’s lean, but he’s solid. I can see the stoniness of his midsection, the indent trailing between his chest and ribs. His shoulders are more squared than I realized, and the shadows of the pool cast against him emphasize elevated veins snaking along his upper arms.
“I’m . . .” I hack through a hitch in my throat, hugging my shirt. “I’ll stay up here.”
Aaron scoffs, framing his hips. “What am I supposed to do in there alone? Drown?”
“Find a way to entertain yourself,” I say sternly.
“But I can’t bully you when you’re over here,” he complains, shuffling closer so he takes up more of my line of sight. “Besides, the sooner you follow my lead, the sooner you get to leave.”
Another good point. “Fine,” I mumble, kicking off my shoes and beginning to shrug out of my clothes. I pause when I realize he’s watching intently.
I swirl my finger at him.
He sniffles and turns around.
I know it doesn’t matter, since he’s going to see me anyway, but having him stare so unblinkingly while I’m stripping makes me squirm. “Is it cold?” I ask when I’m finished, inching toward the pool’s edge. Now that I’m only in swim trunks, the air seems unusually crisp. I continue hugging my arms to conceal myself, because I don’t want him to see . . . me. I guess. And the toll that everything has taken on my body.
Aaron hops up beside me like an excited puppy. If he had a tail, it would be wagging. “It’s usually cold,” he admits. “But don’t worry. I’ll—”
“If you say you’ll warm me up, I’m leaving immediately.”
Aaron sighs with dreariness. I must be ruining all the fun of this situation for him. “Let’s jump in,” he says, with a sidelong glance. “On three?”
“Whatever,” I mutter.
“One. Two . . .”
A sudden memory swirls into my head. My reflection in the water is different. My body is thinner, my skin more sallow, my expression warped with a scowl. Then I’m flopping into the pool with a shriek of surprise, and I hear raucous laughter . . .
I blink, and I’ve returned to the present.
I reel sideways and miss Aaron’s attempted shove by inches.
“You jerk!” I cry out, my fists shivering as infuriation battles exhilaration. I remembered something. “The first time we came here, you shoved me into the pool and laughed! And you just tried to do it again!”
Aaron’s eyes sparkle brighter. “You remembered?”
“A couple of seconds.”
“So if I reenact it,” he says, stepping closer, “then more of your memory may come back.”
I expand the distance between us. “You know, I don’t actually care to remember more details about this moment.”
Aaron laughs, warm and honeyed, and my flushed face cools in spite of my desire to cling to my fury. I should hate that sound, but it’s like an antidote to my tension, loosening my limbs and chilling my boiling blood. “Then we’ll edit the date and jump in together,” he says, ambling back to the edge. “No pushing, I promise.”
I’m not sure if his promises mean anything, but I can only avoid the inevitable for so long, so I reluctantly return to his side. Maybe I shouldn’t jump into a giant vat of liquid since I was in a two-day coma less than a week ago, but the lump on my head is gone now, and I admitted to Aaron during the drive here that I haven’t had any issues with balance, vision, or dizziness. Besides, part of me trusts that he won’t let anything happen to me.
“Three,” he says, toes dangling off the edge, that boyish smile splattered across his handsome face. “Two . . .”
I shouldn’t. It’ll make me just as bad as him. But I’m too petty to fight the abrupt thirst for revenge, so before he can get the final number out, I shove Aaron to teach him a lesson. Then I remember something crucial, and the triumph evaporates from my body.
When I push, he pulls.
He shouldn’t have the time, but somehow, he manages to pivot on his heel and seize my wrist. I shriek in protest as he drags me down with him, and the last thing I hear is mirthful laughter as I’m being swallowed by water.
Frigidity hits me like a brick wall, seizing my limbs. The warmth of Aaron’s touch dissolves in the pool. I kick upward and break the surface, coughing as I drag myself away from him. “You suck!” I snarl when his face emerges, but I’m not sure he hears me, because he’s laughing again.
“Predictable. You’re so predictable. I love you.”
“Shut up!” I say shrilly, seizing the pool railing and trembling forcefully as my body readjusts to the change in temperature. “Stop saying that so carelessly. We’re teenagers, so we don’t have the maturity to fall in lo—what are you doing?”
“Swimming,” he answers, butterfly-stroking toward me.
“Stop approaching me so ominously.”
He switches to a breaststroke, like that’s not worse.
“Stop approaching me in general,” I say, but he’s already on me, standing flat where I’m treading water, his onyx locks slicked back. He has a widow’s peak. I’ve never noticed.
“Your hair gets darker when it’s wet,” he notes, though I’m already distracted by his abdomen—now sparkling more intensely under the sheen of fluorescent blue water—being a foot from mine. “How was your day?”
I’m not sure why the question startles me, but it does. I wait for the punch line, but he’s merely watching me with genuine curiosity, the lighting making his irises glow. “Fine,” I say, too preoccupied with the sight of him to offer anything substantial. “Why?”
Aaron reaches out, then hesitates, his fingers hovering near my forehead. When I don’t protest, he plucks strands of sopping wet hair off my face. “Because this is a date, so I want to ask you things about yourself,” he says. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but I have a pretty big crush on you, sunshine.”
The pool’s iciness is melting away the longer Aaron stands beside me. “Then . . . how was your day?” I ask awkwardly.
“Fine,” he says with a playful wink, before shifting his hand through the water and tapping the back of my palm—a request, I think. When I don’t pull away, he carefully threads our fingers. “I was outside all day—you should’ve seen me before I showered. I was more grass stain and grease than human being.”
Aaron heaves a weary breath and tries slumping against my shoulder, but I float backward, causing him to face-plant the water. He picks it up and continues like I didn’t just dodge him.
“I spent hours chopping up yard debris, which didn’t do my back any favors.” He shrugs those less-narrow-than-I-thought shoulders, which still shimmer with water droplets. “I tore down a shed with Pops, which was fun. My mom rescheduled lunch with me, but that’s normal. I mostly wanted the day to end so I could see you.”
His sheer earnestness makes me swallow a lump of guilt. He’s giving me information in such a cozy, familiar way, it’s almost overwhelming. “Sounds busy,” I say weakly, because I’m not sure how to respond. He seems tired but also fulfilled—he’s not complaining so much as he’s just talking about what he did. I can tell he enjoys his job. “I didn’t know . . . um. That you were in contact with your mom. Do you have a good relationship?”
A look of raw dismay flickers across his face. It leaves as quickly as it comes, but it only heightens my shame at not remembering. “It’s complicated,” he admits. “Not something we need to talk about right now.”
My lips furl down. I guess I won’t push it. His thumbnail works the lines of my palm, like he’s sketching them into his mind. His eyes wander to my neck, where an ugly yellowish tinge lingers, then lower, where a persistent purple splotch spans my elbow. The joy disintegrates in his smile.
“They don’t hurt,” I mumble, though I don’t know why I care to tell him.
Aaron’s palm slips away from mine so he can smooth his thumb along my cheekbone. He seems despondent suddenly, so I allow him. “How much pain are you in?” he asks.
“I just told you—”
“Come on, Riley,” he pleads.
I’m fine. The words are fully formed in my mouth, but he’s watching me so insistently that I can’t push them out. “It’s not that bad,” I say, steering my attention to the water lapping against my collar. I wish we weren’t alone in this massive room, where every sound reverberates noisily against the high ceilings and tiles. The air leaving my mouth is ice-cold, and I’m glad for the mint, otherwise I’d be preoccupied with thoughts about how I smell like pesto.
“Has it been keeping you up?” he asks softly.
I should feel annoyed that he’s persisting, but his eyes are still glittering like silver sequins under moonlight, and I don’t have the fortitude to focus elsewhere. “I’ve been sleeping,” I claim.
He sees through my thinly veiled concealment of the truth and offers a small smile that twists my stomach into knots. His canines are sharper than most. More and more, he’s beginning to resemble a Labrador. “You look tired, Riley,” he whispers. His other hand shifts through the crystal water, and a shiver rakes my body when it sprawls over the curve of my waist, tugging, guiding me closer until our chests are inches from grazing. “Please don’t feel like you have to downplay your pain. The sore joints, the cold hands and feet, the headaches, the exhaustion. I promise I’m the last person you have to hide from.”
I stare at Aaron in disbelief, my lips parted. With every word, I feel the pain of existence resurfacing. An acknowledgment I suffocate by busying myself with other thoughts and tasks.
It hurts.
Obviously. That’s the thing about chronic pain. Even when it’s quiet, subdued, it’s always there. Iron supplements and special dieting don’t dissolve anemia’s symptoms—they only lessen the severity. My best days are normal people’s okay days.
“I don’t . . .” I swallow the hitch in my voice. “I don’t see why it matters. Why do you need to know the exact degree of my pain?”
Water glimmers in his soft curled tips and midnight black lashes. His palm is still fastened to my waist, his pinkie scraping the elastic of my swimsuit, stimulating enough that I hardly feel his other hand massaging my cheekbone. “It helps to know for several reasons,” he says. “I watch you constantly push through your own boundaries for others. If you’re having a bad day, you’d rather suffer through it than inconvenience people by shifting plans around. Knowing where you’re at helps me adapt. Like, sometimes it’s better to spend the day resting in bed rather than going out.”
Aaron presses a lingering kiss to my forehead. I’m too stunned to have the visceral reaction I know I should give him.
“And sometimes,” he whispers, “I just want to know because I care.”
My lip is trembling, so I try to gnaw it away. What could I possibly have to offer Aaron Beckham, who could nab anyone off the street and woo them with a wink and playful grin? With all my restrictions and unpredictable pain levels and stubborn attitude . . .
“I’m too much effort,” I say, and the frailty in my voice brings salty tears to my eyes. “There are so many people who don’t have inconvenient conditions . . . people who have energy and exciting personalities and unbroken bodies . . .”
“Riley.” His word comes with quiet breathiness, like he didn’t mean to voice it. “You have no idea how effortless it is to love you.”
Copyright © 2026 by Amanda Woody
Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
Narrator: Josh Hurley
Falling in love with your enemy? Impossible. Falling in love with him twice . . .
After an accident leaves Riley Wilson with amnesia, he can recall everything except: the crash that landed him in the hospital, the last year of his life, and having a serious boyfriend. Who happens to be his older brother's ex‑best friend. And the guy he despises more than anyone . . . Learning this information sends Riley spiraling. In what world could someone as sensible and meticulous as Riley have ever willingly agree to go out with Aaron‑the arrogant jerk who screwed up his brother's future? Riley would love nothing more than to start fresh and snip Aaron out of his life. But with his family being cagey about the past, and his memories far out of reach, he realizes Aaron might be the only one willing to help him remember the last year. Despite his brother's protests, Riley teams up with Aaron to unearth his missing memories‑even if it means starting from square one and reenacting every date, every kiss, every "first" they've ever had. All Riley has to do is not make the same mistake by falling in love twice.
Young Adult | Romance LGBTQ [ Viking Childrens Books, On Sale: October 27, 2026, Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593695449 / eISBN: 9780593695456 ]
A. M. Woody is a metro-Detroit-based queer author. They graduated from Central Michigan University with a degree in English and a certificate in creative writing. When not writing and reading happily ever afters,they can be found drinking caramel apple cocktails, playing Hades, or rewatching childhood shows with their siblings.
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