Excerpt from Pool House by Mary Choi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A company had booked the house, so she'd been surprised when the tenant was Asian. He'd worn a Fleetwood Mac 1977 Rumours concert tee despite obviously being born in the nineties. His faded flannel pajama pants recalled college boys and by dint of him being visibly Korean and therefore feeling slightly less abstracted to her, she wished she'd worn a bra. When he found the mic, he'd looped the cable around its base and taken a step back, hand shooting up to his chest. She'd worried he was having some kind of medical event but then saw as he held her gaze, maroon splotching across his face, that he recognized her.

Two perfect silver droplets sprang out of his wide eyes like mercury and he made a snotty, gurgling sound as he swiped his forearm across his face and groaned. Holy shit, he said, face screwing into a full sob. You're Delilah Moon.

She remembers she'd taken his hand. It was plump, soft, and sticky to the touch like a child's, and the warm intimacy of it reminded her of handling wet money. The unanticipated effect of this sudden, fierce reverence stunned her with the shimmering, air-conditioned quality of very pure MDMA. The hit of uncut emotion flooded her with the euphoria of being picked first round for team sports. Of receiving a very public apology. The relief was overwhelming. She felt like herself again. She led him inside. His damp eyes in the kitchen light were dark gray.

Wabi-Sabi helped me get through my parents' divorce, he'd said of the network sitcom that had, at least according to certain critics, killed Moon's more serious film prospects.

He'd gasped when she kissed him. And when she took him in her mouth he shuddered and came almost instantly. He apologized and then thanked her. After, when he offered his hand to help her off her knees, she was so insulted by the gesture and its necessity, that she laughed then thanked him. She should have fucked him, she thinks now. She can't believe she hadn't fucked him. He'd been a deft kisser, lips soft, warm, and pliant, and when his fingers dug into her hair, she heard herself moan. She felt his erection at her belly and was aroused by the darkening dot of pre-cum on the dingy grosgrain drawstring of his pajama bottoms, but then remembered the reality of herself—the pilling nude seamless panties, the wild, coarse state of her pubic hair, the vaginal dryness that accompanied the night sweats—and dropped to her knees.

How old were you when your parents split up? she'd asked, pulling his pants down. Her other hand rooted in her own underpants where she felt heat and triumphant wetness.

Ten, he'd said, watching her.

If she'd slept with Howie, the last person she'd slept with wouldn't be Mac. A man who is now dead and who at the time had been freshly engaged to someone else. It all feels heavy and terrible now. Mac is not even Mac anymore but a waterlogged corpse and it feels like a contagion, his deadness. She thinks of maggots crawling inside her ears, thick cottony layers of mycological hoar eating through her skull. She touches her hair absentmindedly, thinking of cobwebs but also her silvery roots and how she will not only have to get a haircut but have it dyed.

Howie Yoo had left a week early, citing a work emergency through the app. The next tenant is a family from Carroll Gardens with two kids. They've stayed with them before. They don't arrive until next month but this time they want it for eight weeks. Two months without worry. Enough for the mortgage, pool cleaning, insurance, with some left over. Only the family's a pain in the ass. Covertly high-maintenance in the way of artists and leftists where they seek constant reassurance that they are easy. This time they're asking Moon and Stevie to leave the property entirely. They will pay extra off-app for the trouble of an empty pool house because they feel more comfortable this way. For privacy. She'd been tempted to deny their request, but now a new plan forms. She blows a raspberry with her lips, warming up, then makes the call. Her heart is pounding. She has no idea what time it is in Hong Kong. She hopes he is awake.

Excerpted from Pool House by Mary Choi. Copyright © 2026 by Mary Choi. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.