Chapter 28
OWEN
I shuffle myself up onto an elbow and try to blink away the sleep as I smile down at my phone screen.
I did think about texting George last night to let him know what happened, but I wasn’t sure if that would be an intrusion. Clearly, I left the poor man hanging. I tap out a response.
Owen
We talked. She copped to running a covert, listicle-based, matchmaking blitz. She promised to stop.
His answer comes back almost immediately.
George
Do we believe her?
I laugh out loud, my voice breaking the silence in the empty apartment.
We are cautiously optimistic. We are also going to thoroughly vet any new suggestions she makes going forward.
Good call.
This is not my first Zoe rodeo.
Zodeo?
Zoe-odeo?
It could be either, but I’m suddenly getting weird flashes of some kind of cowgirl-themed sex tape and this is my cousin we’re talking about, so I think we’d better stop.
And my best friend. Agreed.
We will never speak of this again!
He sends me a zipped mouth emoji. I’m smiling so hard my face hurts.
But after a minute of dumbly grinning at my phone, I realize we’ve covered everything we need to.
Owen
Well, I’ll let you get back to your day.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like it takes a little longer for the next response to come through.
George
Yeah, you too. Have a good one!
I close the app and set the phone down. And then I’m sitting alone in George Knight’s apartment, in George Knight’s bed, feeling the strangest sense of missing a man I don’t really know.
As I climb out of bed and shuffle my way to the kitchen, something else strange happens. I realize I no longer feel like I’m intruding being here. Instead, George Knight’s fancy Upper West Side apartment feels like somewhere I belong.