Excerpt from THE PROJECT by Annie Lord:
1
We head down to the basement where the dance floor’s been set up. It smells like damp, and blue disco lights dapple over the walls. At the back, a guy in an Irish football top nods over the decks. He’s got a bony, birdlike face, one where you can see the skull underneath it. Maya, my best friend, who I dragged here tonight, hates this kind of music, this unce-unce-unce. She’s trying her best to look like she’s having fun because she knows how much I need this night to go well, sliding her hips left and right, braid snaking through the air, so shiny it could be glass. A little dishevelled knit top and then her toned stomach, a line moving down the middle like an R’n’B singer from the nineties.
My eyes flick up to the stairs to see if it’s him coming down but, again, it’s not. I can’t help it. When I was in the living room earlier I was the same – the doorbell would ring and I’d look over the head of the person I was speaking to and check who it was.
He’s probably not even coming. I tell myself that because it feels as though if I believe it then the opposite will happen. The universe always seems to work out that way.
Still, I move as if he were here, watching me. Letting my eyes go hazy as though transported by the music, copying the way Maya dances, her arms sliding around in the air above her like she’s backstroking through a swimming pool. ‘You’re so fun,’ he said to me once. ‘You make everything seem like a holiday.’
The words made my chest gooey as a chocolate fondant.
That’s what everyone else doesn’t get, what he says to me in private. They just think I’m this desperate girl who waits around for him as he goes from girlfriend to girlfriend, hoping for a turn that never arrives. If anything, it’s him who’s pursuing me, walking me home from nights out with his arm weighing on my shoulder, saying, ‘Fran’ – his most recent ex – ‘hates this sort of film,’ after seeing some three-hour silent film following a sheep farmer in the Netherlands or something.
I think things could be different this time. Not right away. We should take it slow. But he’s finally single after so many years. I was the first person he told. He asked to come over, sat on my bed with his head in his hands and told me the whole story – how they were at dinner and before the waiter could ask if they were ready to order drinks he had this realisation, heavy and inescapable, that he just couldn’t do it any more. But it wasn’t just that, there was someone else who he thought about a lot, who he likes, but he’s too scared to tell her. He looked boyish when he told me, his lips bunched to one side, pulling at the front bits of his hair. I leant over and squeezed his hand, so moved by his vulnerability, at the same time trying not to react in case he wasn’t talking about me, except I knew he was, and all my friends confirmed of course it had to be me. I got so good at telling the story, rehashing and snipping at it each time until I’d perfected the routine and people gasped at all the right moments, eyes wide, waiting for the next bit. Nothing happened. We just talked for hours until it was two a.m. and I couldn’t believe I had to go to work the next day, and then we had this long hug, his arms crawling up my back. In the weeks after, we started texting almost constantly, so much so that my wrist ached in bed at night and I started to lose circulation at the tips of my fingers – when you pressed them they’d go white. I liked it, my body reconfigured by him. I told Maya about it for what I thought was the first time and she replied, ‘I know, you said, three times actually,’ and she said it in a jokey way but I still felt embarrassed because I’d probably used the exact same words each time. Then me and Fin went on that night out for our friend Martin’s birthday and in the smoking area he nuzzled his face into mine, because kissing would be too much, I guess, might overwhelm us with something too powerful for us to handle. It was the most erotic thing that’s ever happened to me. I could feel how much more we both wanted to do but neither of us let ourselves. He said he didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but he thought about me a lot, and there was this Italian restaurant he wanted to take me to. I imagined us there, faces glowing in the buttery-yellow candlelight, the waiter making some joke about stealing me from Fin, and things after that, me at his parents’ seaside house in big wool socks and little striped boxer shorts reading a book on the sofa and him chucking it away from me because he’d be jealous that it was stealing my attention.
It’s not like I think anything will happen tonight, anyway.
He said he needed time to sort his head out and had to take a step back from us to work out what he really wants.
Actually, what he said was:
‘Hey kid, I’m really sorry I’m not going to make that dinner. I dunno I just feel so all over the place at the moment and I like you so much when I’m with you I don’t know what to think. I’ve had so much fun with you these last couple of weeks, and since I’ve known you really, but I just need to get away for a while to figure things out, gonna go to the seaside house, do some writing, and we can chat when I’m back? I have some stuff on my plate I need to resolve before then. This is probably a bit intense lol but I’m trying to be more clear and upfront with myself and others, I’ll see you soon though? You’re going to Gabby’s birthday right? Anyway, love x’
From the book: THE PROJECT by Annie Lord. Copyright © 2026 by Annie Lord. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE PROJECT by Annie Lord
From the acclaimed Vogue writer and author of Notes on Heartbreak comes a decade-defining romcom: a funny, sweet, and subversive debut novel, reminiscent of Dolly Alderton and Monica Heisey, about two women, tired of the London dating scene, who decide to transform their most annoying male friend into the perfect man.
When twenty-six-year-old Daisy wakes up next to James Stanley, she can’t believe what she’s done. She slept with James. The most boorish boy she knows. The black sheep of their friendship group. Someone who once told her that he’d never cried in his entire life—and sounded proud of it.
But sleeping with James is a casualty of a Much Larger Problem—there is not a decent, single man to be found in London. At least, that’s what Daisy and her best friend Maya think. All the good ones are taken. Even the average, not-so-good men have beautiful, educated, and accomplished girlfriends with perfect hip-to-waist ratios. Where have all the good men gone?
Fed up with the dating scene, Daisy and Maya decide to stop waiting and take matters into their own hands with “The Project.” Their goal? To build the perfect, eligible match out of some of the most lackluster, raw material. And who better to start with than their embarrassingly uncivilized (yet frustratingly attractive) friend, James?
Embarking on a series of social and cultural lessons—from art exhibitions to feminist book clubs, designer clothing stores to house parties—Daisy and Maya chaperone James on a journey of discovery.
But which of them will change more?
Coming of Age | Humor [ Harper, On Sale: August 4, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780063467392 / eISBN: 9780063467415 ]
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About Annie Lord
Annie Lord is British Vogue’s dating columnist and the author of the memoir Notes on Heartbreak. Her work has also appeared in The Guardian, the Sunday Times, Vice, The Telegraph, New Statesman, i-D, The Independent, and Dazed. She lives in London.
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