‘Nice to be here!’ I heard Dylan say from the kitchen.
I put my finger to my lips. Flick and Ayo nodded. I’d already read them the riot act. If we accidentally gave away that I was the one who ended up with Dylan before the finale aired, then we’d be in major trouble with the network. Even more than we already were.
It didn’t stop me tiptoeing closer to the kitchen so I could catch a glimpse of the world’s best man doing his interview with the current affairs show that aired right before theMarry Me, Julietseason premiere. ‘… really intense process,’ he was saying. ‘There were times when I wasn’t sure that it was going to work for me. But it all turned out all right in the end.’
‘Dylan, you’re the first person of colour to be the Romeo inMarry Me, Juliethistory,’ said the interviewer, who I could just make out on the Zoom screen of Dylan’s tablet. ‘Did that put a lot of pressure on you?’
‘A huge amount of pressure,’ he replied. ‘Anyone from a minority background will tell you how often you get held up as a figurehead for your whole community, and that’s never more true than when you fail at something. I was terrified that if I screwed up as the Romeo, then that would have widespread implications, not just for other people with Sri Lankan heritage like myself, but people of colour more broadly.’
‘But you didn’t screw up, did you?’ the interviewer asked. ‘Please give us some good news, Dylan. We’re about to see your love story start. Please tell us that you’re going to give us a fairy-tale happy ending.’
He smiled, that beautiful sunny smile that had destroyed me the first time I met him and had been destroying me every day since. ‘I’m very happy to tell you,’ he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye and then smiling that tiny bit wider, ‘that I met the most beautiful woman in the world on the show, and we’re blissfully happy.’
I pressed my hand to my heart. ‘I love you,’ I mouthed to him.
‘Now, we’ve all seen the promos,’ the interviewer said. ‘It looks like there are going to be some twists this season!’
‘Yes,’ Dylan replied. ‘There are definitely some twists.’
‘We’ve heard that yours might not be the only love story we get to see,’ the interviewer said. ‘Can you give us a hint?’
‘No spoilers,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see.’
Acknowledgements
Here for the Right Reasonswas the product of Melbourne’s long second lockdown in 2020. I was alone in my apartment when this idea came to me, just as I had been alone in my apartment every day for the months and months beforehand. I hadn’t been in the company of another person for… I can’t remember precisely, but definitely an unhealthy amount of time.
What I do remember precisely, though, is what happened when the idea forHere for the Right Reasonsand its companion novels came to me. I logged on to my regular Friday night Zoom with my friends. ‘Kate, Adele,’ I said. ‘I’ve had an idea, I think it’s bad, and I need you to talk me out of it.’
Suffice it to say they did not talk me out of it. The opposite, in fact. They actively encouraged me – to the extent that Kate actually ended up editing the book.
That is, in many ways, the story ofHere for the Right Reasons. Everywhere I turned I expected, and often activelysought, discouragement. But everywhere I turned I found only encouragement, and an astonishing amount of love and support.
Because of this, I have so, so many people to thank. First of all, there’s obviously Kate, Adele, and the friends on that Friday night Zoom (Anna, Meg, Katie, Claire, all of you!). You not only didn’t talk me out of this (even after I asked so nicely!), but you held me together during that lockdown, and all the lockdowns that followed.
The same is true of the other regular Zooms I had during the lockdowns. To my family: it wasn’t quite a regular weekend lunch, but seeing you every Sunday on a screen was wonderful. To my college friends, Steph, Mel, Rashmi, Mabel, Sonya: you’ll always be my OGs.
Even once I’d drafted this book, I didn’t really expect it would go anywhere. The fact that it has is down almost entirely to two people. The first is Alex Adsett, my literary agent, who gently pried the draft out of my hands and said, ‘Let’s just see if anyone wants to look at it, ok?’
The second is Cassandra di Bello at Simon & Schuster, who gave this book its home. I’ve never had someone go as hard for a book as Cass has gone for this one, and that level of belief and support has meant so much to me. It’s emblematic of all the support I’ve had from Simon & Schuster, and I’d like to thank everyone who’s worked with me and seen Cece and Dylan through from draft to publication. In recompense, I promise I’ll follow through and try to get better at TikTok.
I’d also like to thank Kate Cuthbert, my editor, who made this book immeasurably better (how are you so smart, Kate?!)and Marisa Wikramanayake, whose insights in her sensitivity read on the best ways to write Dylan were absolutely invaluable. Thank you also to Lizzie King for her advice. I regularly tell people that I’m not visual and I don’t understand pictures, but I know enough to know that Alissa Dinallo and Marcela Herrera did such excellent work on the cover and the illustrations – thank you for making this book beautiful!
Finally I’d like to thankThe Bachelor/ette Australia. I’ve been writing about this franchise for many, many years in my academic life (five published scholarly pieces and many more on the way!). I shudder to imagine the amount of words I’ve spent recapping this franchise for Book Thingo. If I tried to count them, it would break my brain, but it’s in the hundreds of thousands. I could have writtenHere for the Right Reasonsfive times and not come close to touching that word count.
I am not always complimentary towards the franchise. But without all that time spent writing about it and analysing and pulling it apart and exploring how it constructs stories and what it positions as romantic, I couldn’t have writtenHere for the Right Reasons. I’ve been asked several times what research I did for this book, and my first instinct is to say none, because I really did just dive right in. The real answer, though, is OMG SO MUCH, because of all the years I’ve spent engaged with the show. So thank you, Bachie. You might not always help people find love, but you sure helped me write this book.
Read on for a sneak peek ofCan I Steal You for a Second?
Coming 2023, pre-order now!
1
‘All right, Amanda,’ Murray said. ‘This is going to be pretty standard stuff, okay? Nothing that wasn’t on your application, nothing groundbreaking, no gotchas. All good?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, crossing my legs. I really wasn’t used to wearing dresses, and the thought that I might accidentally flash the camera had given me nightmares on no less than three of the nights we spent in hotel lockdown.
‘Look at me, not at the camera,’ Murray said. ‘Remember to answer in full sentences. The audience isn’t going to hear my question, only your answer.’
