Meryl Wilsner’s spicy romance, their first with a nonbinary lead, where two lifelong best friends go on a nonrefundable honeymoon together and discover sometimes to find a happily ever after, you just have to ask.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Meryl Wilsner’s My Best Friend’s Honeymoon, which is out April 29th 2025.
Elsie Hoffman has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a year and a half. Ginny Holtz has been in love with Elsie for almost a decade and a half.
When Elsie discovers her fiancé already planned their wedding and honeymoon as a surprise and she’s expected to be in a white dress in seven days, she swiftly realizes she’s let herself become too comfortable with a future she never wanted. She breaks things off, and a week later is on a plane to the Caribbean for her non-refundable honeymoon with her best friend Ginny instead.
Ginny thinks it’s high time Elsie learned how to speak up for herself. So, they make a deal with her. For the next week, Elsie can have whatever she wants, wherever, however, and whenever she wants it, as long as she asks. They never expected Elsie to want them.
What starts as choosing activities and taking selfies soon turns to toe-curling kisses and much, much more. But what happens when the honeymoon is over?
Meryl Wilsner’s My Best Friend’s Honeymoon is about not only learning to ask for what you want, but for the happiness you deserve.
Chapter 2
Back when they were kids, Ginny thought romantic relationships were somehow a step up from friendships. That was what everyone said. Magazines and movies and all the kids in their school. The way Ginny longed for Elsie seemed to confirm it. If friendship were enough, then why did Ginny want to kiss her so bad?
If friendship were enough, why did Ginny want more? Sophomore year, they decided to do something about it. They were at the mall, sitting on the bench in the accessible dressing room while Elsie examined herself in the mirror in the sixth dress of the day.
“I feel like the color makes my skin look green,” Elsie said.
“I like the blue one better.”
“Yeah. Unzip me?”
It took Ginny two tries to unzip, their fingers thick and clumsy. Elsie didn’t seem to notice, just shimmied out of the dress and reached for the next one on the hanger.
Ginny’s stomach was in knots, but they were doing this. They had to do it before they puked right there in the dressing room.
“So, uh, the dance.” They looked at the floor. “Do you wanna go with me?”
Ginny should’ve listened to their gut. Because Elsie didn’t say no—oh no, it was worse.
“Obviously,” Elsie said, presenting her back to Ginny to zip up the next dress. “Even if there was someone I wanted to go with—like as a date—we’d still be going together.”
If Elsie hadn’t known them so well, Ginny could’ve played it off like that’s how they meant it: going as friends. Instead, Ginny flinched, the tiniest reaction they could manage to what felt like a knife to the chest, and even though she was only looking at them in the mirror, Elsie knew.
“Oh,” she said.
“It’s fine.”
Ginny went to zip her in, but Elsie stepped out of reach and turned around, holding the open strapless dress to her chest.
“No, Gin, I—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I didn’t realize you meant it like that.”
Ginny should’ve moved on, but they had to be sure. “Now that you do . . .”
It took Elsie a moment to reply, and her voice was quiet when she did.
“I don’t want anything to mess up our friendship, Gin.”
“Right, of course,” Ginny said. “No worries.”
They wanted to melt into the wall, or for a sinkhole to open beneath them, or to move across the country. Elsie pretended it wasn’t a big deal.
“We’ll still go, though, obviously,” she said. “You and me and Claire and Jake and Amrit. See who else wants to come. My mom will wanna buy you a corsage like last year. Or maybe a boutonniere? It’d be so cool if you wore a suit.”
“For sure,” Ginny said instead of crying. “Let me zip you up. I like this one.”
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They went to the dance in a group. Everyone came to Ginny’s house for pictures beforehand. Ginny had seen Elsie in the ice-blue gown in the dressing room—one of the dresses she tried on before Ginny had made a fool of themself—but it was different with makeup and hair, all glossed lips and a braided updo with a few perfect blond waves loose and framing her face. Her dress shimmered every time she moved.
Ginny had found a dark-gray suit at Goodwill and their mom hemmed the pants and sleeves to fit. They picked a bright-red tie so they wouldn’t be anywhere close to matching Elsie. Their tongue was too heavy in their mouth to tell her how amazing she looked. They didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
Elsie avoided eye contact while she attached a boutonniere to the lapel of Ginny’s suit jacket. Ginny’s face felt like it was the color of their tie.
“You look great,” Elsie murmured.
Ginny swallowed. “Thanks.” Swallowed again. “Same.”
They made sure not to sit next to Elsie at dinner. At the dance, every time a slow song played, Ginny went to the bathroom or to get a drink or outside to get some air, since it was so hot in the gymnasium. Elsie never came with.
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Even after the dance, nothing was the same.
Elsie was always a popular kid—skinny and blonde and pretty, even when they were awkward teenagers. She could’ve dropped Ginny, could’ve told someone, anyone, that Ginny had an embarrassing crush on her and made them an outcast. Ginny hadn’t quite figured out the gender stuff by then. To most of her classmates, she was the chubby weird girl. It wouldn’t have been hard for Elsie to leave her behind.
It was harder to stay friends, to push through the awkwardness, to relearn how to interact—how to compliment each other and sit together on the couch watching movies and hug hello and goodbye without it all feeling too heavy. But Elsie never let Ginny quit. She texted first, and often; invited Ginny any place she went. Elsie was perfect, determined, faking it until they made it. Like if she could pretend it wasn’t awkward for long enough, someday it wouldn’t be.
Ginny wanted so much for that to be true, but they didn’t believe it. How could anything ever be normal again, when they kept catching Elsie with this look on her face—concern and pity.
They got through it somehow. Ginny wasn’t sure how, really, but eventually things evened out between them. Elsie stopped looking at them like that, and they stopped second-guessing everything they wanted to do or say to Elsie, and it all worked out.
Ginny knows now: what they’d wanted wasn’t more, it was just different.
None of their romantic relationships have come close to their relationship with Elsie, much less been somehow more just because they were romantic. Elsie is always going to be the most important person in Ginny’s life. To this day, they’re so fucking grateful that Elsie didn’t let fifteen-year-old Ginny mess that up.
Do they still ache for something different sometimes? Sure. Even with how often they’re together, Ginny would gladly take more. There’s no such thing as too much time with Elsie. Beyond that, they’d like to kiss her sometimes. They’d like to plan a life together that’s more concrete than we should start a queer commune together and we’re gonna be roommates in the retirement home, right? But overall, “something different” wouldn’t actually be that much different from what they already have. So that occasional ache doesn’t matter. It’s not going to mess anything up. It just means Ginny’s not very good at relationship advice.
From My Best Friend’s Honeymoon, by Meryl Wilsner. Copyright © 2025 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
