Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
ALEJANDRA
Dating has been an absolute nightmare.
Everyone I go out with is meh. Nice. Funny enough. Sometimes even hot. But still, every time, there’s something missing. And it’s driving me to complete frustration, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot figure out what it is.
I try—God, I try. I ask about their siblings, act fascinated by a job I barely understand, and even toss in that tinkling laugh where I flip my hair and touch their shoulder, really trying to put myself in a flirty mindset.
But at the end of every date, there’s still nothing.
No spark, no pull. Just the clock, counting down the minutes until I can go home.
At this point, I don’t know if the problem is them or me.
I walk toward Clara’s bedroom door, the way I always do when I need to escape my brain for a minute. She’s a long-suffering witness to my disastrous dating life, and the one who keeps me grounded.
Odds are, she’s knee-deep in one of her eighty-seven meetings, or solving a work crisis that shouldn’t be her problem, so I knock on her door softly.
“Come in,” she calls.
I push the door open and find her cross-legged at her desk, earbuds in, her dark blue shoulder-length hair clipped back with a few loose hair strands framing her face, and her glasses sliding down her nose, looking utterly adorable.
The second I appear in the doorway, Clara looks up from her laptop and frowns. “That bad?”
“Worse than last week’s,” I say as I walk toward her to give her a quick kiss on the forehead before throwing myself onto her bed, landing face-first.
Clara winces.
I’m here for our date post-mortem, because that was excruciating and I need to vent before I spontaneously combust. We’ve been doing this since college, back when we first started dipping our toes into dating, drawn in by the abundance of cute queer girls to go out with.
Every time one of us goes on a date, we end up finding each other at the end to talk about how amazing or how painful it was.
We’ve been through it all together, every phase of dating, messy situationships, ghostings, a few heartbreakingly intense breakups—mine, not Clara’s, she’s had the good sense to avoid dating altogether.
But we’ve also been there for the hundreds of great dates and hookups we’ve had.
I know what she likes and what she doesn’t when it comes to dating, and so does she with me.
Maybe more than any best friend should know, but we’ve always been ridiculously close, so knowing every tiny detail about each other’s dating lives—and lives in general—it’s who we are.
At this point, we know each other better than we know ourselves.
“What happened?” she asks, closing her laptop before inching toward the edge of her bed and pulling at the strings of my boots so she can slide them off.
“God, it was terrible.” I turn over and grab one of her pillows, hugging it tightly against my chest, breathing in deep until all I can smell is Clara’s shampoo—floral and sweet, mixed with her favorite cologne. It’s a smell that’s so uniquely hers and can calm the most hectic of days.
“She talked for two hours straight. I don’t think I said more than five words the entire date.”
“I’m sorry, that sounds awful. What did she talk about?
” Clara starts massaging the sole of my foot.
A low sigh slips from my lips before I can stop it, and my shoulders sink deeper into her mattress.
The steady push of Clara’s warm hands sends a slow ripple of relief up my spine, and muscles I didn’t even know were tense relax.
“Honestly, I have no idea what she talked about for the entirety of our date. Something about FinTech and how it’s ‘revolutionizing the industry,’ but honestly, I tuned out after the third mention of ‘blockchain scalability.’ I kept nodding and sipping my drink, hoping she wouldn’t notice that my soul had left my body.
At one point, I think she asked me a question, but I just smiled and said, ‘Yeah, totally,’ and that seemed to satisfy her.
By the time the check came, I couldn’t even remember her name.
Remind me to never again go on a date with someone who lists ‘networking’ as a hobby. ”
“Jesus, where did you find her? LinkedIn?” Clara laughs.
I laugh a deep, full laugh because I very easily could have. It had felt like I was interviewing her for a job—a job I’m sure she would have secured in the real world. She’s got passion, which isn’t bad. I just wish she had talked about at least one other thing, or even asked me a question.
“Lavender Spark,” I say, groaning.
“Well, that’s your problem.”
I nod, defeated. I’ve had the worst dating experiences with women on that app, but it’s the only one dedicated to sapphics. I’ve tried others, but somehow, I always end up getting messages from men, and I hate it.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all waltz into a bar and walk away with a million different numbers.”
Clara laughs as she sets my right foot down and grabs my left.
It’s so annoying how effortless it is for her. She just exists, and women line up.
“I’m done dating. I’m exhausted. I’m never going to find that one person who makes me feel all the right things. I don’t know why I keep putting myself through this. It’s clearly never going to work.”
“Oh, come on, you know that’s not true. You had a bad date. They won’t all be that way.”
“Not all, but a good 80% have been. I’m done with this app. I’m done with dating, period. If the love gods want me to find my person, they can have us grab the same box of cookies at the grocery store or something.”
Clara cracks a smile and rolls her eyes at me. She knows I’m being dramatic. “Well, I wouldn’t put too much thought into why this date sucked. It sounds like she should be dating herself anyway.”
“Yeah, but she’s not the only one who hasn’t worked out. I’ve been on amazing dates lately, but something is always missing, and I don’t know what. It’s really starting to bug me.”
Clara looks at me and frowns.
“What’s wrong with me?” I whisper.
“Nothing is wrong with you. Sometimes people don’t vibe. What do you think is missing?”
I prop myself up on my elbows and sigh. I wish I knew, but there’s literally nothing wrong with most of the women I’ve been seeing. It’s a feeling, like something isn’t entirely right, like there’s an invisible force holding me back.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, because if I knew, I’d have fixed it already.
Clara lies next to me. She puts one of her arms under my neck and wraps the other around my waist until we’re on our sides, staring at each other.
Our faces are so close that our noses touch.
This is usually the position we’re in when we have deep talks or check-ins.
It started around the time Clara’s mom died.
I’d hold on to Clara like this for hours while she cried and cursed the world.
Slowly, it became something we did every time we had a heavy conversation or needed the extra support and warmth of being near each other.
It’s as if we’re in a little cocoon where only we exist in this world, giving each other our undivided attention and support.
“Why has this been so important to you lately?” Clara nuzzles her nose against mine. “I know you love having that special connection with someone, but you’re chasing it harder than ever. What’s going on?”
I close my eyes, but I don’t need to think about it.
I know exactly why. Ever since Lily and Isabella—our best friends since middle school—got together a year and a half ago, it’s been impossible not to notice the empty space beside me.
Watching them has only made it clearer how much I miss having that kind of connection, and how much I want it again.
I’ve only been in love once, and that ended—at least officially—almost three years ago.
But we kept seeing each other until a few months ago, when I finally decided to cut things off for good.
I spent so long trying to fix whatever was broken, hoping we could save the relationship.
We kept sleeping together, even after she told me she didn’t want anything more.
I let myself become her fuck buddy, her booty call after dates.
I don’t even know how it got to that point.
I think somewhere along the way, I told myself it would help me move on, but it only made things worse. It only broke me more and more.
“I’m almost thirty, and I haven’t felt deep love or even a tiny spark of infatuation since I dated Mia,” I say, the air slowly leaving my lungs until all that’s left is an empty ache.
“She broke up with me almost three years ago. You’d think I’d be over it by now, but the more I go on these dates, the more and more I think she broke something in me so deeply I’ll never be able to feel that much love again.
I want to find that person who’ll make me feel .
. . as if maybe I’m not broken, someone to show me that I can love and be loved again.
” Tears start to sting at the back of my eyes.
I met Mia during my junior year of college, but we didn’t start dating until our senior year.
I was so sure she’d be the one I’d marry and form a life with, that she’d be the person I’d look over to and see on my deathbed.
I loved her so much. I even pictured having kids with her, something I’d never wanted to do in my life, but I saw it with her: the white picket fence, the home, the kids, and the grandkids.
I was completely blindsided when she showed up at my apartment one day and broke up with me a week before our fifth anniversary.
And to make it even worse, I had been going to propose.
I’d bought the ring, talked to her parents, hired a photographer, and planned out every little detail.
I had been all in, and in the blink of an eye, it was over.