Cup Lover

Our narrator understands great love stories—their secrets and subtexts, their moments of euphoria and their dizzying falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed simple rules.

In the autumn of her final year at university, she meets two brilliant students from her 17th-Century Literature class: Sam and Yash. Best friends who live off-campus in the elegant home of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, fast-paced conversations, and lively card games. They give her the nickname Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love, and her own intellectual ambition.

But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon the narrator finds herself at the center of a tense and complex love triangle. As the end of the course approaches, the choices made will change these three lives forever.

Decades later, Jordan's vulnerable days of youth seem to have been comfortably left behind. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past colliding with the present, she returns to a world she left behind and must confront the decisions and disappointments of her younger self.