Part One
One Decision at a Time
The years she went quiet. Eight chapters. Chicago. Six years with a man who never once needs to raise his voice for it to work. Drawn in soft watercolor, the way quiet years look from the other side.
Ruby's book
You don't disappear all at once.
You disappear one decision at a time. This book is about coming back the same way. Twelve dates with herself, written down years before she needed them, kept in an old yellow notebook.
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Instant PDF download. 115 illustrated pages.
If you came from The Hey I Didn't Send
She asked it too. Should I text him?
The Hey is for the minute before you text him. This book is the nights around that minute: the night she called Zoe instead, the night she called him anyway, and the night her phone stayed in her purse.
“I called Zoe from the sidewalk. ‘I miss him.’”
Chapter Fourteen · Missing Him
“I called him. I shouldn't have. I did anyway.”
Chapter Nineteen · His Version of Love
“My phone stayed inside my purse.”
Epilogue
The first scene
Ruby Wilder is twenty-eight, freshly promoted, drinking champagne out of a cracked flute with her best friend Zoe, the night she meets a man at a hotel opening. He looks at the wall she fought three months to keep blue and asks who chose it. Then she mentions the bar lighting is too bright, and he agrees before she finishes the sentence. Two words that will matter more than either of them can guess that night.
“You're right.”
Six years later, she can't remember the last time she said what she actually liked. Not about the lighting. Not about her coffee. Not about her own life.
What this book is
A book in two parts.
Part One is six years: how a woman who used to wear red lipstick to the grocery store and call her best friend without a second thought becomes someone who drinks her coffee black because a man told her she didn't really like it sweet. And believes him.
Then, unpacking a box, she finds a cheap yellow notebook. In purple ink, in her own handwriting, from the year before she ever met him, is a list: twelve dates with herself. Coffee somewhere new. A bookstore. A museum. All the way down to number twelve, which just says: Something I haven't thought of yet.
What happens when she starts keeping that list is the rest of the book. We won't tell you how it ends. She earns that.
About the author
Ruby Wilder
Ruby Wilder is 37. She lives alone near Chicago and owns an interior design studio, with four people on the team. The walls are still blue.
She has been sober for three years.
She writes at wilderbrain.com about the nights after someone leaves: the texts you reread, the story you check, the message you draft and don't send. She is not a doctor or a therapist, and she says so often.
She takes herself out to dinner on a fairly regular basis.
“That is how some cages are built. Not with locks. With suggestions.”
Chapter Two · Small Things
“You don't disappear all at once. You disappear one decision at a time.”
Chapter Nine · Coffee
“No number. No romantic rescue. No new man arriving to prove I was lovable.”
Chapter Twenty-One · The Impossible Restaurant
“You don't find yourself once. You choose yourself repeatedly.”
Epilogue
Inside
Twelve dates in a yellow notebook.
Part Two
Party of One
Twelve dates in a yellow notebook, and the nights in between, which is where most of the work happens. Told in photographs. She stops being an outline.
Date one
Coffee
Date two
Books
Date three
The Museum
Date five
Dinner for One
Date seven
Dancing
Date eleven
The Impossible Restaurant
- Coffee somewhere new
- Bookstore
- Museum
- Movie
- Dinner for One
- Cooking class
- Dancing
- Day trip
- Design exhibition
- One night somewhere beautiful
- That impossible restaurant
- Something I haven't thought of yet
Read the first page
Before Him.
Chapter One
Before Him
The year I met Graham, my life was finally beginning to resemble something I had chosen.
I was twenty-eight.
I had a small apartment in Chicago with windows that faced east, which meant every morning the sun climbed directly into my bedroom whether I wanted it to or not.
I complained about it constantly. I secretly loved it.
I worked for an interior design firm downtown and had recently been promoted from junior designer to project lead. The promotion wasn't enormous. It didn't come with an office or an assistant or enough money to suddenly become one of those women who ordered sparkling water without checking the price.
But it was mine. I had earned it.
My best friend, Zoe, brought champagne over the night I found out.
We drank from mismatched wineglasses because I owned only two proper champagne flutes and one of them had a crack running through the stem.
This book is for you if
You'll know her from the first page.
- You've had a text to him typed and not sent, and wanted something else to hold instead.
- You've ordered the same coffee for years because someone once told you that's what you liked.
- You're the friend who seems fine. Good job, good partner, nice kitchen. You just can't remember the last time you said what you actually wanted, out loud.
- You've missed someone you were right to leave, and didn't know both things could be true at the same time.
- You've thought about doing something alone, dinner, a museum, a movie, and made an excuse instead.
- You want a book, not a workbook. Pages you can sit inside, not a program to follow.
Ruby, with the first copies.
What you get
The complete book.
$19 $9 Launch price
- The complete book, 115 illustrated pages, delivered as a PDF.
- Read it on your phone, tablet or computer, or print it at home.
- Original watercolors and full-color images made only for this book.
- A short note before the story starts, and a page at the back with twelve lines, for a list of your own.
- Instant download after checkout. No shipping, no waiting.
PDF115 pagesIllustratedInstant download
Instant PDF download. No shipping, no waiting.
What readers say
What twelve dates felt like.
Be the first to leave a review.
Questions
Before you begin.
What format is the book in?
A PDF you can read on your phone, tablet or computer, or print at home.
Why isn't this priced like a regular Kindle book?
It's not a mass-market file. This is the illustrated edition, made only for this book. Original watercolors and full-color images, plus a blank page at the back for your own twelve dates. One PDF, yours the moment you pay.
How do I get it after I pay?
Instant download. The link arrives right after checkout.
Is it heavy to read?
It deals with coercive control, emotional abuse, heavy drinking and early sobriety. Nothing in it is graphic. Some of it is close. There's a page at the front with free, confidential helplines in the United States.
Do I need to read 45 Days of Evidence first?
No. The two books stand on their own.
What if I want a refund?
Email ruby.wilder@wilderbrain.com. The refund policy is shown at checkout.
The empty chair
“For years, an empty chair had represented absence.”
Somebody left. That is what it meant, for most of her life. This is the story of the night the chair across from her stopped feeling empty, and started to feel open.
Get the book, and find out what she orders when nobody else is deciding for her.
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PDF · 115 pages · instant download
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Ask, look, write it down. Forty-five times.
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Before You Text Him
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Twelve ninety-second tapes for the minute before you text him.
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