Chapter 1
Three years later
“Wait wait wait wait…” Sloane, my roommate, started.
She was in her pajamas, bonnet on her head protecting her curls, and sipping a glass of white wine.
She’d come out of her room when I got home and perched herself on the couch, ready for me to summarize the date.
For as long as we’d been roommates (more than two years now) this had been our ritual.
“You’re telling me you gave him your leftovers? ”
“Yes,” I groaned, pouring myself a glass of wine from the bottle on the counter.
“The guy who cuts his meat into tiny pieces?”
“My dad nearly choked on a piece of steak once,” I said, carrying my wine to the couch. “Had to get the Heimlich from a fellow restaurantgoer and everything. Maybe Lance has too.”
Sloane curled her lip. “Did he still hold his fork in his entire fist while he ate?”
“It’s unique,” I insisted.
She rolled her eyes. “A free meal is a free meal no matter who you have to eat it with, I guess.”
I cringed. “I paid.”
“You paid last time!”
“I know. I panicked. He started talking about flat-earth theory. And he was on the wrong side of that argument! I practically threw my credit card at the waiter.” I don’t know why.
I didn’t have extra funds just lying around to pay for all dates.
At twenty-seven, my job was still the same one I’d had for the last four years—assistant to a literary agent.
And even though in the last couple years I’d gotten to take on a few of my own small clients, in every other way it was the same: same responsibilities, same office, same boss, same barely livable salary.
We should’ve split the check. I usually split the bill on dates, but Lance was into the I pay this time, you pay next time idea.
As if there were going to be an infinite string of next time s.
“Thank god he brought up his thoughts on the Earth’s shape,” she said. “Or you would’ve been in love with him by next week.”
“I would not have,” I said, but only half-heartedly.
We’d met in a yoga class three weeks earlier when I’d stumbled and knocked him over while attempting the Warrior 2 pose.
We’d exchanged numbers before the class was even over through whispers and giggles under the annoyed glare of the instructor.
Lance was cute and asked me questions about myself, a low bar, yet one many men couldn’t make it over.
He’d made it to date three. I thought we were on our way.
Then he brought up his conspiracy theories and the perfect future I had envisioned came crashing down.
“I’m just saying…” she sang.
“You have no room to talk,” I said to Sloane.
“You’re happily in a relationship now. You’ve forgotten about the discovery phase.
The discovery phase is the absolute worst part of a relationship.
I hate having to start from zero with someone, to answer the same questions over and over again and ask the same questions over and over again.
Decide if we’re compatible over and over again. ”
“So you were willing to live with fist fork for the rest of your life so you could avoid having to explain what a slush pile is again?” Sloane twisted her smartwatch on her wrist.
“Among other things,” I said. We both knew I wasn’t going to marry Lance, despite how much I tried to convince myself his habits were charming.
“You know what this means?” Sloane said.
I took a sip of wine. “No, it doesn’t.”
“It does.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t need them. I’m meeting people the real way.”
“In yoga class? That’s the real way?”
“Yes! It was romantic.” I was a romantic at heart.
It was why I wanted to be a literary agent.
I wanted to put love stories in the hands of the hopeless romantics of the world.
Plus, I was really good at seeing what did and didn’t work in a story.
At seeing how to shape a book into the perfect combination of conflict and romance.
And through years and years of reading love stories, I wanted my own.
Not one that involved swiping right. I’d seen it happen not just in stories but in real life, time and again. Why couldn’t it happen for me?
“It really wasn’t,” she insisted. “Your meet-cute obsession is narrowing your field of potentials. How many new people can possibly cross your path when you go to the same four places every day?”
“Rude.”
“True.”
“Dating apps are no better. They are all a big, unromantic scam, wasting our time and money. A software engineer once told me that they can’t re-create real interaction anyway, so they’re a pointless way to meet—”
“I don’t need another rant about how you wish you lived before social media and apps and how true romance only happens organically through shared experiences, history, and in-person chemistry. This attitude is why you’re still screwing Rob.”
I gasped and heat crawled its way up my neck and clung to my cheeks.
She pointed, her wine sloshing over the edge of the glass in her opposite hand.
“I knew it! Dammit, Margot, you should have to put five bucks in the Bad Decisions jar for that.” She gestured toward the jar on the bookcase that had started as a joke and was now an even bigger joke because it was half-full of money.
“I am not screwing Rob!” Which was true.
I just still occasionally, against my better judgment, wanted to screw Rob, which was why my cheeks were cherry red at the moment.
Rob was my boss and the last real relationship I’d had.
Real being a relative word. Our timing had been off from the very beginning.
He was going through a divorce, he was emotionally unavailable, he was…
my boss. It had been a relationship full of shared looks, bathroom makeouts, and weekend rendezvous.
It was filled with high highs and really low lows.
It was wrong. God , I knew it was wrong.
But in the midst of all the boring dates I’d been going on for the last several years, sometimes it felt like the only exciting thing in my life.
Sloane was the only person in my life who even knew about that so-called relationship.
She stood. “Sit down. I’m going to make you your special slushie and you are going to download the dating apps again.”
“Nooooo!” I whined.
She headed for the kitchen. “You prematurely deleted them.”
“I didn’t. I was on the edge of something with Lance.”
“The edge of the Earth?”
“Ha, ha.” I reached for the book I’d left on the coffee table earlier and sank deeper into the couch.
I opened it to where a piece of dental floss was acting as a bookmark.
“Maybe I’ll just stick to my book men from now on,” I said.
“Celebrate a Me Era where I read more and work on a promotion and, you know, be more consistent than once every six months with yoga. I don’t need a man. ”
“Is it possible to read more than you do?”
“It is,” I assured her.
“You’re right, you don’t need a man. And I agree with that promotion thing, make that happen, it’s long overdue. But”—she pushed a button on the blender and the sound of ice being pulverized filled the room for sixty seconds—“everyone needs a little fun.”
I knew why she really wanted me back on the apps. She thought without them I’d become preoccupied with Rob. It was hard not to when I saw him day in and day out.
My book was plucked from my hands and she held out my drink.
“Don’t lose my spot!” I called as she shut it and deposited it on the table.
“Spot is safe,” she said as I accepted the drink.
Then my cell phone was placed in my free hand.
I sighed, resigned, took a sip of slushie for courage, and cringed.
She’d made it strong tonight. I scrolled to the app store and pushed the get button on my go-to dating apps.
I watched the little cloud and arrow symbols as the icons were brought to life on my screen.
The more colorful they became, the more my heart sank.
This should’ve felt like I was taking charge of my life.
So why did it always feel like I was giving up?