What is the formula to finding true love?

Life is pretty perfect for Marsie Penny—she has great friends, a career she is passionate about, plus financial security. The one thing missing is a partner to share it all with. Frustrated by the online dating scene, Marsie’s created an algorithm to help find her perfect match. Could she have gotten her formula wrong, though? Her feelings for colleague Jason Ellis just don’t add up. Jason believes in love at first sight—which is ridiculous. And he doesn’t tick off any of her boxes...except for his charm, his warm smile and his cute butt. But all it takes is one heated kiss to make her wonder if she should rethink her numbers.

“You make my job interesting, Marsie.” His teeth glinted through his easy smile.

She knew that smile, had seen him flash it at many other people, and still it relaxed her. It also made her less interested in what might be happening in the dating app on her phone than what could happen if Jason sat down in one of her office chairs and leaned back against her desk again.

Maybe she’d come around and sit on the edge, pull one leg up so that her skirt fell open just so...

No. Stop. Jason was too short. And that was only strike one against him. He was also too smooth and too charming and they worked at the same place. He didn’t have the kind of education she was looking for in a man. Or the type of career. That was a total of six strikes when only three were needed.

“Speaking of jobs, I’ve got to be on my way to one.” His voice was easy, but the twinkle in his eyes made her wonder if he knew what she was thinking.

Since he’d come to her first cubicle a few years ago to remove a keyboard tray she’d banged her knees on, Jason had always made her feel like the world under her feet wasn’t stable.

Like if she moved too quickly or took a wrong step, she would fall.

Dear Reader,

Books come from funny places. Dating by Numbers came about from my own forays into online dating. Sensing my nerves, a friend recommended a TED Talk by Amy Webb, who said she hacked online dating. I watched the video five times. I took notes. I was there with Amy and I, too, was going to hack online dating. I read Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. I read Dataclysm by the OkCupid guy (both good books). I listened to an online dating episode of the Marketplace Money podcast where an economist debated the opportunity costs of “winking” versus sending an email. Perhaps I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I was Marsie in all her uptight, nervous glory.

That said, the first time I watched Amy explain her method, I thought, “Oh, but the guy who’s her hero wouldn’t pass her tests. He’d be the guy she never saw coming.” Of course, then I had to write that book.

Dating by Numbers was a fun book to write. I enjoyed playing with my own history of neurotic online dating and hope you will enjoy reading it. And, in case you’re wondering, I did find my own hero while online dating.

Enjoy—

Jennifer

Dating by Numbers

Jennifer Lohmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNIFER LOHMANN is a Rocky Mountain girl at heart, having grown up in southern Idaho and Salt Lake City. When she’s not writing or talking with librarians around the country about reading, she cooks and laughs with her own personal Viking. Together, they wrangle three cats. (The boa constrictor is better behaved.) She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.

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To Girls Night Out dinner club. Thank you for all your encouragement to date outside my comfort zone.

And to Megan Long, for pulling Reservations for Two out of a pile of contest entries and turning me into an author. And to Karen Reid, for shaping me into the author I am now.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

MARSIE PENNY GLANCED out her office door one last time before turning to her computer and entering her password into the dating website. She didn’t want to be filling out the profile now—especially at work—but one of her New Year’s resolutions was finishing the stupid thing. She’d promised herself that she’d have it done by today and, with the way things were looking at work, she wasn’t going to get home until after midnight. She was already behind schedule at work. Being behind schedule in her personal life as well would be beyond the pale.

The temptation to close the door was strong, but she never closed her door. If she did, someone was sure to comment. So, certain the coast was clear, she turned her back on the gaping maw of her open door and hit Enter.

“I know those colors.” At the sound of Jason Ellis’s voice, Marsie’s butt left the cushion of her chair and, once it made contact again, she spun around and slid her chair so her body blocked her computer. Not that she was embarrassed to be using an online dating service—everyone was doing it these days but...

Okay, she was embarrassed.

That wasn’t exactly right. Lots of the women at the research firm where she worked partook in online dating of one kind or another. Her cousins shared funny stories on the family’s Facebook group. She followed people on Twitter who talked about their experiences with online dating. But they were all using it casually. “To meet people,” they said. “It’s a good way to make friends.”

Marsie met enough people. She had enough friends. She wanted a husband and two children and, at thirty-five, she had to act fast.

None of which she would admit to Jason, who leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his usual office clothing. Today’s T-shirt was gray and long-sleeved, but no matter the color, the building’s manager and general handyman looked fit and manly. All he needed was a hammer to hang from the loop of his cargo pants to complete the image.

But regardless of how good Jason always looked, time was slipping away from her, and the research firm’s general fix-it guy wasn’t the person to help her keep the clock in her grasp. She recovered and shrugged. “It’s a good way to meet people,” she said, managing not to wince when the inane lie came out of her mouth.

“That’s what they say.” One corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile—a smile that seemed to put everyone but her at ease. His lopsided grin made her wonder what he knew that she didn’t, and she hated that feeling. “You know, if you want to meet people, you’re going to have to leave work. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this office when your car hasn’t been in the parking lot.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “All the more reason to meet people online.”

“Ha,” he said, with the smile of his that she preferred of all of them. This smile widened his eyes and showed his teeth. Jason had straight, white, magazine-worthy teeth. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him. “You could...you know...go to the gym or join a hiking club or go to a bar.”

She gritted her teeth to suppress a shudder. She’d tried the bar scene a couple times. She’d gone alone, willing to be “picked up” if the right guy came along. The dresses she’d worn had been cute, summery and flirty. She’d ordered glasses of white wine and smiled at random people.

Her friend Beck said it wasn’t the dresses or the wine or the smiles that had failed her, but the fact that she’d brought books to the bar each time. Marsie’s excuse—sitting in a bar alone is boring—didn’t stop her friend from laughing until she cried. “It takes a lot of guts for a guy to approach a woman and, you know, not be a creep. Sit there with a book and the hurdle’s even bigger. And you probably brought something like Dataclysm or another book about statistics and math with you.”

She and Beck had been friends for a long time.

Marsie hadn’t gone back to bars after that. She could read and drink wine at home. It was quieter there, and the wine was both cheaper and better quality.

But her experience with dating—or trying to date—was cringeworthy, and only Beck knew the whole story. She repeated a different bland lie for Jason. “I do get out beyond these office walls. But if you want to meet people, it’s best to keep your options open. The machine-gun approach, rather than a rifle.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you knew much about guns.” He took a step into her office, and she moved her body to keep her computer screen covered. Just because he knew what site she was on didn’t mean she wanted him to read her profile. Or, God, see her profile pic. Beck had said the picture was cute, but Marsie thought it looked like a fake her. An online her. A her that looked like fun.

Marsie had been accused of many things in her life, but fun wasn’t one of them.

“Only what I read.” As a teenager, she’d done some target shooting with friends, but she hadn’t shot a gun since high school.

“Based on what I know about you, I think you’d be more of an assassin than a gunner.” He took another step closer. A couple more steps and he’d be parallel with the two chairs in her office. If he got in the room that far, he might sit down. And if Jason sat down, he would want to chat. And when Jason wanted to chat, he chatted for a long time.

She didn’t have time for that.

“You’re the type of woman who would pick a stakeout position and hold it until mission accomplished,” he said, too close to one of those chairs for her comfort. “I’ll bet you date the same way. The work before the pleasure.”

Instead of protesting, her mind caught on what he’d said. “You think dating is a pleasure?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“No.” Honesty raced ahead of sense in her mind to answer his question.

“No?” His shock sounded genuine as he pulled out a chair so that he could sit. “What about it isn’t fun?”

“Well, I haven’t had much experience with online dating. Maybe it will get fun.” That was only a half-lie. She didn’t have much experience with online dating, but more the dating part than the online. She’d signed up for the site over a year ago. Last New Year’s Day, to be exact. She’d paid for six months of use and gotten a grand total of one terrible date out of it. Of course, at the time she’d signed up, at Beck’s urging, she had been in the middle of a big project at work. Snapping a selfie and posting an edited version of her résumé had been all she had time for.

This go-round, Marsie was doing it right. She and Beck had done a couple of photo shoots. She’d crafted the perfect profile and A/B tested a couple versions on Beck’s husband and his friends. More importantly, she’d scheduled time in her week for the next six months to meet people. Not a rigid schedule—it would be too much to expect that all men were available for a drink on Wednesdays after work. She’d set aside some Sundays for coffee, some Wednesdays for a drink and even a couple Tuesday lunchtimes.

Flexibility was the name of the game.

He waved a hand through the air. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see. Even if you don’t meet someone you want to sleep with, the world is full of interesting people and most of the single ones are doing online dating these days.”

“Including you.”

“So you think I’m interesting.” He leaned forward, his bicep flexing against the soft-looking cotton of his shirt as he rested an elbow on the edge of her desk.

None of the men Marsie had dated, including Richard, who she’d dated and lived with for three years before they’d both realized they made better colleagues than lovers, had enticed her to lean into his space like she wanted to lean into Jason’s right now. She took a deep, calming breath instead, concentrating on the air as it soothed the suddenly alert nerve endings on her skin.

And she definitely wasn’t tilting toward him in her chair. She was folding her arms on her desk and resting on her forearms. There was a difference.

“Yes, you are interesting,” she said slowly. “And you do good work. I appreciate that.”

He laughed. “Well, I’ve been put in my place, haven’t I?”

“I didn’t...” She stumbled over her apology, retreating from the space with her body as well as with her words. What hadn’t she meant? And why was she apologizing? She and Jason worked at the same company; appreciating his work was a high compliment. What did she know about his hobbies or reading habits or anything else that would make him interesting?

Though her mind raced from wanting to know more about him to how she could learn such things. He’d said he recognized the colors of the online dating site, and he admitted to using it. She could find him on there. Then at least she’d know what interesting things he did outside of work.

No. She discarded that thought right away. One of the worst parts of online dating had been seeing all the people who’d looked at her profile and then not initiated a conversation. Of course, she’d looked at profiles and not initiated anything, too, so she knew she wasn’t supposed to take the silence personally, but knowing was not the same as doing.

“I respect you as a worker,” she said finally. Respect you as a worker. God, no wonder Richard had said she couldn’t be passionate about anything that didn’t involve equations.

Besides, Jason wasn’t shy. If he noticed that she’d looked at his profile, there was no way he would remain silent. He’d come in her office and sit in the chair, put his elbows on her desk...and she would want to lean right back into him.

Silly. He wasn’t what she was looking for. Too short for one. Maybe an inch taller than her five-ten, and she wanted kisses that gave her a kink in her neck.

“Worker, huh.” Disappointment came and went over his face, too quickly for Marsie to register why what she’d said was insulting. Then he smiled at her and the back of her neck tingled. “You’re right,” he said. “Coming from you, that is a high compliment. And I’m flattered. Thank you.”

She cocked her head, examining his face for the teasing she was used to seeing in his eyes. When she didn’t find any, she reached up and rubbed the spot on her hairline where she could feel him, even though he was sitting on the other side of her desk. “You’re welcome.”

“So, do I get to see your profile?” There was the teasing sparkle that she was used to.

“No.”

“But I could help you with it. I’m a guy, and I know what guys want. Plus, I’m great at getting things from people.”

“I don’t want to get something from someone. I want to be liked and respected for who I am. And my profile reflects that.” She hoped.

“What if I look you up or come across it on my own?”

“Umm... Then I guess you see it.” The online algorithm was supposed to be spot-on. That’s what the creator had said in his book on datasets. In theory, based just on what she knew of Jason, his profile wouldn’t come through her matches. He wasn’t what she was looking for. Too...

She snuck another peek at his arms. Too much bicep and not enough sleek suit.

Her brain reminded her with a wag of her finger that just because he didn’t fill her requirements didn’t mean that she didn’t fit what he was looking for in a match.

No, of course she wasn’t. Men like Jason weren’t looking for a woman with a PhD who played the daily bridge question in the paper. He was friendly and outgoing and charming. He liked to talk and laugh and socialize. He wouldn’t be interested in quiet evenings at home. Plus, there were thousands of women in the area using online dating. She’d be lost in the masses.

“If I see it, and I think it can be improved, do you want me to let you know?”

She leveled her sternest look at him. The one that had gotten her through being the only woman in her graduate school cohort. Only once had the men made jokes about Barbie not being able to do math.

“With the condition that I get to give you feedback on your profile.”

“That’s a deal.” His smile flattened out into a seriousness that she didn’t expect from him. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d seen him be serious when arguing with contractors about the new office space. He just never let his seriousness get in the way of the rest of his life. It was one of the things she liked about him.

Though she was still surprised when the next words that came out of his mouth were, “We should be each other’s online dating support”—said with a straight face, even.

“Hmm,” she said, pretending to think about it. “No. I already have someone helping me with my profile, and you know what they say.”

“Never look a gift horse in a mouth?” he said with a raised brow.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

He shrugged. For a moment she thought she saw hurt flicker across his face, but she dismissed that as improbable as winning the lottery. “Well, it was worth an ask. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Sure,” she said, not meaning it. And judging by his raised eyebrow as he lifted himself out of her chair, he believed it as much as she did. Though he still said “Later” with a smile as he walked through her door.

He has a nice butt, Marsie thought as she spun her chair back to face her computer. She opened the document she and Beck had worked on for hours. The short profile put a lighter spin on her personality, as did the carefully crafted answers to the shorter questions like, “Favorite movies.” For example, they decided not to include Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty as the last book she’d read, even though it was. And a reread at that. Beck had told her to pick a novel, so she’d included the latest Jonathan Franzen, even though she’d hated it.

* * *

TWO NIGHTS LATER, Beck’s hand holding a glass of red wine was the first thing Marsie saw when her friend opened her front door. Marsie shifted her purse higher onto her shoulder, grabbed the glass and had taken a sip before Beck had the door fully open.

“Hey, that was my glass,” her best friend said once the door was fully open.

“No, it wasn’t,” Marsie said as she stepped inside and slipped off her shoes. “You’re still wearing lipstick. If this had been your glass, there would be lipstick on the rim.” She set her bag on the console table by Beck’s front door and dug out her laptop. It was a Lenovo laptop, because they came in orange and she liked orange. Maybe she should have a reason for this preference, like that it represented processing power or battery life. But she allowed herself one bit of silliness in her life, and her laptop color was it. Once her laptop was safely tucked under her arm, she took a long sip of the wine, then stopped to take a deep breath and let the alcohol warm her throat on the way down.

When she looked up, her friend raised an eyebrow and nodded to the glass, which had a near perfect kiss of Beck’s pink lipstick staining the crystal. “You must have a lot on your mind,” Beck said.

“I do.” Marsie took another drink. She needed the wine more than Beck did. “Do you need help with dinner?”

Beck laughed softly and shook her head. “No. But you can pour me another glass of wine.”

“In charge of booze. I can handle that tonight,” Marsie replied, taking another sip before following her friend into the kitchen.

The kitchen smelled like a dream of garlic and tomatoes and pork as a pot burbled away on the stove. “You make the best food,” she said, sliding onto a bar stool. She minded her responsibilities though, pouring a glass of wine for her friend before adding more to the purloined glass. She was the checklist queen and knew that checklists worked best when you took care of the important stuff first.

Beck filled up a big pot of water, put it on the stove and turned on the gas. She chuckled when she turned around to grab her wineglass. “You don’t want to wait until after dinner?” she asked, nodding toward Marsie’s open laptop and the printouts of her Excel spreadsheet on the counter.

“As of five tonight, thirty men have looked at my profile, five have winked at me—whatever that means—and two have said, ‘Hey.’ Action is required.”

“You could have written something in return.” Beck’s fingers trailed along her granite countertop as she came around the island and looked over Marsie’s shoulder. “You’re smart. You don’t need me every step of the way.”

“Ha. You weren’t at the bar for the disastrous date I had the last time I tried this all by myself. Clearly, I can’t be trusted.”

“That’s an n of one,” Beck said, mimicking one of Marsie’s favorite phrases, the thing she said whenever anyone tried to generalize to the entire population based on a small sample size.

“Yeah, I know. But I don’t want to waste any more time kissing frogs. There has to be a prince for me out there somewhere.”

“What’s this?” Beck pressed a finger on the printouts and glided the papers across the counter.

“It’s my rubric,” Marsie replied, not glancing up from her laptop as she signed into her profile. “So I can score profiles and know who to reply to.”

“Height, possible five points,” Beck read. “Education, possible ten points. Compatibility of television shows, possible two points. Attractiveness of profile picture—I like how you spelled out picture instead of writing ‘pic’—two points. Only two points?”

Marsie looked up. “I either think the profile picture is attractive, has the possibility to be attractive, or isn’t at all attractive. So three options, zero, one and two.”

“But isn’t attractiveness at least as important as height, which has five possible points.”

“Oh—” Marsie waved her hand in the air, then went back to her computer “—the final grade is basically a weighted average. Height and attractiveness of profile picture equal out in the equation, though education stays more important.”

“Right. How silly of me,” Beck said in that tone of voice she had when she thought Marsie had taken something too seriously.

“Here.” Marsie turned her computer around with the spreadsheet pulled up. “I put desired traits across the top and names along the side. I was just going to total the scores, which is this cell,” she said, pointing the mouse at the correct spot on the screen. “I was planning on basing all my decisions on that total score, but I’m worried that someone could skew their results by getting full points in all the minor desirables and zero points on the major ones. Like all cute and good taste in television, but not the kind of education I want my life partner to have.”

Marsie looked up to see if Beck was following her. Beck’s lips were pursed, so she was paying attention, but that was also a sign that she thought Marsie was being ridiculous. Which Marsie ignored. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about what she wanted out of a partner and creating an equation to match. Plus, the math was the interesting part. Filling out the profile, going on the dates...drudgery.

“I created this equation here,” she said, moving the mouse to another cell, “to give me a better understanding of how someone scores, assuming they are high in the desirables that really matter to me, like education, and low in the desirables that don’t, like where they’ve traveled to in the past. If someone scores 70 or higher in either the total score or 7 or higher in the weighted average, I’ll wink at them or respond to an email. If they score 80 or 8, I’ll message them. Before I’ll agree to a date, their total score through all forms of interaction has to have reached 90 or 9.”

“Your total scores are either 100 or 10? How’d you make that work?”

Marsie felt the sheepish look that crossed her face. “I massaged the equations a little. I like the round numbers.” Then she shook off her embarrassment as if it were a light dusting of snow. She’d had fun creating the equations. Sitting at her desk in her favorite chair, her lamp making a spotlight on the pages spread out over the wood, and a cup of tea that had already cooled because she’d been too diverted by the math to stop to drink it. Flow, that feeling of being so involved in something that the rest of the world fell away.

At the time, she hadn’t cared about how massaging the equation to force the round numbers would affect the validity of her system. It was her system, and she was going to be applying the equations equally to all of the men. Plus, she wasn’t handing her system into a professor to be graded. Beck was the only person who would see it. Sure, Beck made faces at Marsie’s silliness, but that’s what her friend called it: silliness. Like Marsie was just one of the girls.

When the flow had stopped and Marsie had looked up from her scribbles, what she had wanted was someone to share her equations with.

More silliness. Because if she’d had someone with whom to share her fun with spreadsheets, she wouldn’t need them in the first place.

But she’d kept the pages because the man she fell in the love would want to see them. He’d be amused by them, maybe even offer suggestions on how to improve them. Comment on the way she’d labeled the charts. Laugh about how much she liked round numbers. It would be a romantic moment they would share over a bottle of Chianti and spaghetti with a spicy marinara sauce.

No, maybe a grapefruity sauvignon blanc with fish tacos.

Beck pointed her glass of wine at the laptop, bringing Marsie back to the task at hand. “So, if you’ve got all this math to figure out who to talk to, why and how, what do you need me for?”

“The math will help me find the man, but you’re going to help me talk to him. I need help writing emails.” Not that Marsie couldn’t write. She could write persuasive articles full of graphs and charts and numbers, but writing a chatty, easygoing, get-to-know-you email would take her an hour a sentence.

She didn’t have that kind of time.

Beck laughed and pulled the computer toward her. “Okay, what’ve we got?”

“Well, I figure we can look at the first ten men on the site and see what we get. That will be enough for the night.” Maybe enough for the week. Online dating was, in theory, fine. Everyone was doing it, and it’s not like Marsie was meeting people at work or at bars or at the gym. Though, to be fair, she ended the bar experiment a while ago, and she was at the gym to work out not to talk, and she was at work to work. But she’d rather continue trying online dating than change her routine.

But fine in theory didn’t remove the squicky feeling that she would be looking at pictures of real people, reading what they had written about themselves, and then she was going to grade them. As if they were objects, not human beings.

She reached for the bottle of wine and poured herself another big glass. The spreadsheet helped with her uneasiness. It made the judgments of who to interact with and why less personal. What she didn’t know was if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Maybe it was just a thing, she thought, taking a long sip out of her glass. “Who’s first?” she chirped, picking up her pen and readying herself over her printouts.

Judging by the expression on Beck’s face, she wasn’t fooled by Marsie’s fake cheer, but she clicked on the first picture anyway. “He’s cute,” she said, turning the computer so that Marsie could see the screen.

“I’ll give him one point for attractiveness,” Marsie said, scratching a one into the appropriate cell. She’d always liked doing the work on paper before entering anything into a spreadsheet. It wasn’t always possible, but writing things out by hand helped her think.

“Only one? From what you said about your rating system, I would think a two.”

“His smile in the picture looks fake. But I’ll bet it’s nice in person,” she allowed.

“Whoever you award a two will have to be a paragon of attractive masculinity,” Beck replied. “And I can’t imagine that man will be any fun to be around.”

“That’s why attractiveness of the photo doesn’t have much weight in my equation,” Marsie replied tartly. “Ultimately, it’s just not that important to me.”

“By why... Never mind. I’m sure you have a reason for being picky about the scores you assign even when it’s not an important factor to you, but I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“Because accuracy is important,” Marsie said, even though Beck had specifically said she didn’t care.

“Accuracy and yet you massaged the numbers to get grades of 100 and 10,” Beck pointed out with raised brows.

The wine in her glass sloshed as she waved her hand over the papers and laptop. “This is an art, not a science.” They both laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement.

The pot on the stove burbled as it started to boil, and Beck slid out of her seat. “You rate the next one while I get the pasta in. But don’t move from the profile. I want a chance to see all of them.”

“You’re happily married,” Marsie said, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard over the cascade of pasta into the pot.

“Window-shopping,” her friend called over her shoulder.

Marsie laughed as she jotted down her notes on Waterski25. He was fine, she guessed. Got a 75, so she winked at him.

They kept going through the men as they poured more wine and slurped pasta. The more they sipped, the longer each evaluation took and the more they laughed, about the men, about dating, about the ridiculousness of rating people on a spreadsheet. And, as Marsie moved on to the last man, the splotches of tomato on the printouts had gotten extra funny.

She wobbled as she stood and had to brace herself on the counter.

“You didn’t plan on driving home tonight?” Beck asked.

“Not any longer.” The ground moved a lot more while she was standing than it had when she’d been sitting down. “Can I sleep here?”

“Sure. The sheets on the guest bed are clean. Do you need me to get out the aspirin?”

“No, I know where it is by now.” She didn’t indulge in this much alcohol often, but when she did it happened at Beck’s house. Though not often was still often enough to have a routine. She shook her head, regretting that action immediately.

“Thanks, Beck. For doing this with me. I’m not sure I could have done this on my own.”

“I don’t know what took you so long. It seems like everyone is doing online dating these days. Hell, my younger sister has three apps on her phone for it.”

“I liked the idea that I could do it on my own. Meet someone like they do in the movies.”

“You know, signing up for online dating doesn’t mean you can’t still meet someone while in line at the grocery store. Though that would probably be easier if you didn’t have your groceries delivered.”

“Only when I have a deadline at work,” she said defensively.

“Oh, get upstairs,” Beck said with a wave. “This won’t be so bad, you’ll see. You might meet some nice people.”

“That’s what Jason said.”

“Who’s Jason?”

“He does maintenance around the office. Caught me working on my profile. I think he’s one of those people with three dating apps on their phone.” Her lips had slurred over the word “think,” so she muttered the word under her breath several times until she felt like it came out correctly.

“Oh, well, I don’t know this Jason fellow, but it sounds like he has the right idea. Have fun.”

“I—” she paused, giving herself extra time to concentrate on the next word “—think my spreadsheets are fun.”

“They’re fun for you,” Beck said, placing a heavy hand on Marsie’s shoulder. “Just don’t let them get in your way. Math and statistics can’t solve all the world’s problems.”

“The hell you say,” Marsie said with a laugh as she grabbed her purse and stumbled down the hall to crawl up the stairs. “I’ll clean up in the morning.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and Neil will beat us both to it.”

“Ha!” Marsie looked up the long set of stairs that seemed steeper than usual. Which was probably the alcohol. Then she sighed, lifted her foot and began her climb. Like dating and finding a mate, one step at a time.

CHAPTER TWO

IF A DATE was going well, Jason usually ordered another drink. Not enough to get him light-headed, but something to hold on to while he and the lovely lady across the table talked and laughed. If a date was going south, he had, on occasion, ordered enough to drink that he had to Uber his way home after seeing the woman to her car.

Tonight was one of those other nights. Those nights when he was two hours and one drink in, and Allison hadn’t caught any of his polite overtures about the night being over. The waitress had disappeared into a black hole on the other side of the restaurant.

Not a black hole. The customer whose table she’d attached herself to was very cute. Even Jason could see that and men weren’t his type. However, he wasn’t the only non-cute-dude customer who wanted her attention and wasn’t getting it. Someone was going to complain to the manager soon. It might be Jason, if he could figure out how to get Allison to stop telling a story about her childhood cat and get out of this chair.

“My mom had said I shouldn’t name him Muffin, but it went with our breakfast animals. My brother had his dog Bacon and my dad had Pancake and...” She paused to drink from her water glass.

Good enough. “Allison, please excuse me. I’ve really got to use the bathroom.”

Her water glass was resting on her bottom lip as she looked up at him. “Okay. Sure. The best part of the story will be here for you when you get back.”

“I can’t wait,” he said, then kicked himself. He liked his job because he liked people. He got to work with his hands, improve the way the world worked one small repair at a time, and chat with all the interesting people who worked at the research firm. He also knew how to flatter people and make them feel good. Most of the time, he was sincere about it. But then there were nights like tonight when habit kicked in and Allison was smiling up at him, pleased that he was going to listen to some boring story about Muffin, and he wished he could be a dick, toss money on the table and leave.

As soon as he rounded the corner of the bathroom, he pulled a random waiter aside and asked him to get their waitress and their check. He needed to be done with this date. He and Allison had met for coffee earlier in the week and that had gone well. But the more she drank, the more she talked, and the more she talked, the less well everything went.

In the safety of the bathroom, he pulled out his phone and thought, for a moment, of texting Marsie to tell her that not all dates were fun. He’d run into a wall of chatter, he’d say. She’d be amused by that. Smile that superior smile of hers where the corners of her mouth lifted a hair and her cheekbones looked extra sharp. When she smiled like that, he knew she was trying not to laugh at him or his story because she thought it wasn’t fitting, but secretly—or maybe with people she felt comfortable with—she would burst out in a full gut laugh.

Or that’s what he liked to imagine with her starched button-down shirts and pressed slacks. Depending on his mood, he imagined her laughs to include her leaning over and him getting a nice peek down the front of her shirt to what was probably a sensible skin-colored bra, but which he always imagined to be red lace.

But he and Marsie worked together. They weren’t friends. Hell, Marsie didn’t even consider him a colleague. She’d said he was a good worker, not a good coworker. He may not have a PhD, but he was smart enough to know the difference between the two.

Plus, he had never seen her relax enough to laugh like he imagined. Maybe she didn’t know how.

Plus, he didn’t have her phone number. The message lost its fun if sent through work email. Too many strikes against the idea to count, he put his phone away, did his business, washed his hands and headed back out to his table, Allison and the check.

At the table, Jason made some excuse about getting a call about a broken pipe at work, slipped his credit card into the holder and looked at his date.

“This has been fun,” he said. It was better to be direct with these things than to leave a person hanging. He’d been ghosted enough times while dating, and he didn’t do it himself. Well, not anymore. One of many things he’d learned dating so much was that you either became a more understanding, more considerate person, or you became the other. Some of his friends had become the other. Drinks with them were a never-ending litany of complaints. They didn’t understand that you got back from the world what you put out into it.

He wondered if he should talk about this with Marsie. She was starting to date, and he didn’t want her to fall into that negative black hole. Then he blinked Marsie out of his head. Even if he was ending any chance of a third date with Allison, he shouldn’t be thinking of Marsie.

Bringing himself back to the present, he realized Allison had apparently been dating long enough to know what was coming. She looked at him, her brows raised. She thankfully looked more expectant than hurt.

“I don’t think this is going anywhere. You’re nice,” he said, meaning it. “But there’s no spark.”

The waitress picked that moment to grab the check. She gave him a dirty look, then passed Allison a sympathetic one.

To his surprise, his date laughed, and he liked her better for it. “Yeah. I didn’t think so, either.”

Huh?

His skepticism must have been clear on his face because she laughed again. “Don’t look so surprised. You tried very hard. But I don’t want to be with any man who needs to try so hard to be with me.”

This Allison was more interesting. Still no spark—he hadn’t lied about that—but he’d hang out with an Allison who shot him down before he’d hang out with an Allison who talked about her cat Pancake or Bacon or whatever breakfast item it had been named after. “You deserve better. That’s true. Good luck finding him.”

She shrugged. “I have a date tomorrow with a guy. It’ll be our fourth date. I have hopes for him.”

It was Jason’s turn to laugh. “So I’m the confirmation date.”

“Confirmation date?”

“You know, you’re really into someone, but you go on a date with a guy to see if you spend the entire date thinking about the person you’re really into or if your eyes roam. I’m that guy for you.”

“Yeah, I guess you are.” All pretense of this date going anywhere was over. Allison reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “I’d feel bad, but I think he’s on a date right now, too. Normally we text several times a night. Nothing from him tonight.”

“Such is the way of modern dating.”

“Oh, Jason, how long have you been dating?” She must have heard the weariness in his voice. A weariness he tried to pretend wasn’t there, because the sympathy in her voice cut a little.

He shrugged off her pity. “A while. Not that I haven’t had serious girlfriends, but none of them ever seem to stick.”

“No spark,” one of those girlfriends had said, when he’d asked why. That was the only reason she’d been able to give for why she was breaking up with him. Though, if he were being honest with himself, that particular relationship had been faltering ever since she’d started sending him links to different college programs for older students.

Allison’s face looked less sympathetic when she pursed her lips. “Sure you haven’t had trouble sticking to them?”

For a server who hadn’t paid them any attention practically the entire time they’d been in the restaurant, their waitress now picked the most inopportune times to pass by their table. Apparently, she’d heard Allison’s question which, following the other bits of conversation she’d overheard, made him look like the bad guy. The server’s book landed on the table with a smack, jolting his card and the pen onto the table.

“I don’t think you can come back to this restaurant,” Allison said, her eyes twinkling.

“At least not when she’s working,” he said with a gesture of his head to their retreating waitress. Which was okay. He didn’t like this place much anyway. The restaurant thought too highly of itself for his taste.

He collected the pen and his credit card off the table, added a tip to the bill and signed his name.

“Want me to pay half? I have cash.”

“Nah. If this guy is the one, your confirmation date might as well have all the trappings of a real date. It might be your last.”

She smiled, but his hopes that she’d forgotten her previous question were dashed when she opened her mouth and said, “Well, have you been the one giving up too early?”

“Is this a date or therapy?”

“Come on,” she said, giving him a gimme gesture with her fingers. “Look, we’ll probably never see each other again, and we’ve both been doing this dating thing a long time. You might as well be honest. What have you got to lose?”

She had a point. Maybe even one about him giving up on the women too soon. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think so.” He shook his head, shoving the book and the signed receipt to the middle of the table. “I don’t want to think so.”

“It’s the risk everyone talks about with online dating and dating apps. The pool of prospects seems to be so vast that the girl who is close enough, and might actually be better than you deserve, can’t compete with the possibilities of your imagination.” Allison said those words with no trace of bitterness in her voice. Flat, like those were the rules of the game and she’d played them, too.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked at dating as fun, which led credence to her statement. “But isn’t that what modern romance is? We all date and date and date until we decide we don’t want to date anymore, then we settle down with the person we happen to be with at the time?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, I think you take each person at face value and not think about how they compare to competition. Only the people able to do that get off the hamster wheel with someone. The others are either running forever or get spun off alone.”

“Yeah?” Jason wished he had another drink. Some excuse to sit here and keep talking to Allison. The removal of hope and expectation made their conversation interesting. “Sounds decidedly unromantic. Is that how you did it?”

“I like to think that I fell in love the old-fashioned way. I met a guy, liked him and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. Nothing unromantic about that. The computer helped some and hindered some, but no more and no less than relatives would have one hundred years ago. Only the skills I used to navigate it were different.” Her smile was soft, without a trace of irony, and her focus had drifted away from him, probably to the man in her life.

No denying it. He was jealous.

“Fell in love? But you’re out here with me.”

“Yeah. Stupid. I just realized, as the words slipped out of my mouth, that I’m really falling in love.” She nodded to the check still lying between them on the table. “I’m going to head out. Sure you don’t want to split that?”

“Leaving from here to see your guy?”

She rolled her eyes. “From a date with one guy into the bed of the man I love? No. Custody switch is tomorrow. I might as well get a head start on my cleaning. Got to keep up a good example for the kids,” she added with a wry smile.

Her chair squeaked against the floor as she backed it up. “Thanks for the evening. I enjoyed my dinner. And the conversation, especially the last part.”

He pushed his own chair back and stood. “Yeah, me too. Thanks for the advice.”

“You look like you need it. But hell, probably all of us do.”

They walked out to the sidewalk and Jason walked her to her car. When they got there, she leaned in and he gave her a hug. She was warm and smelled good. Postpressure, she’d proven to be interesting and funny. But it was like hugging a cousin for as much interest he had in her beyond tonight.

The truth of modern dating had to lie somewhere between her starry-eyed old-fashioned romance with new technology and his wondering if you got out of the game with the person you were with when you decided you didn’t want to play any longer. As nice as she was, Jason would still take his toys and go home rather than end the game now, with Allison.

Lucky man who had her, both being with a great woman and for finding that spark in the first place. Jason didn’t think he’d met any woman who could lure him to stop playing yet, and he’d been looking. He wasn’t lying to himself about that.

“Good luck with your guy,” he said as she got into her car.

“Good luck to you, too. It’s hard out there.” With that, Allison slammed the car door and she was out of his life.

Jason turned to walk to his car. He spent his career making and maintaining contacts, and he’d never quite gotten used to dating, where trying to keep in touch with everyone you shared a cup of coffee with was creepy. Watching someone like Allison, who was smart and interesting, drive out of his life would never be fun.

He shoved his hands into the pocket of his jacket. He’d be on Marsie’s floor on Monday to fix some guy’s desk and bring her a cup of coffee before asking her if she’d had any luck with her profile. He’d also like to hear her opinion on the flyby nature of dating. She was sure to have something unexpected and insightful to say. It was one of the reasons he liked working with her so much, beyond his hopes that she would lean over and he’d catch a glimpse of her cleavage.

He wasn’t a total dog.

CHAPTER THREE

WELL, I’M NOT sick to my stomach.

Rolling over in bed made Marsie reconsider her hopeful sentiment.

Yet.

Once her head had found its place on her shoulders, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and steadied herself with the help of the nightstand as she stood, her toes sinking into the plush rug. All things considered, she wasn’t that bad off. She didn’t vomit as she reached down for her clothes and the throbbing in her head hadn’t hit a level she would call pounding. She was too old to go through one, two—please, God, say it wasn’t three—bottles of wine with Beck in one sitting.

The mattress sank as her butt hit, helping to steady her when she put on her socks. Everything about Beck’s guest room was cushiony. Her feet sank into the rug. The mattress had practically swallowed her whole. The curtains had enough fabric to be properly called draperies. The only nonsoft things in this room were the tchotchkes covering every flat surface and the wood of the four-poster. The guest room made up for the rest of the house with its hard edges and modern furniture. Whenever Marsie stayed over, she wondered if this was what the rest of the house would be like if Beck lived alone, or if she put all her girly decorating energy into this one room and the effect would be diluted if she had the entire house to play with.

Not that Marsie imagined she would ever find out. Beck and Neil had been together since their first year of a college and, since Marsie had known them, had only seemed to grow into a more solid couple.

As she passed the mirror over the dresser on the way to the door, she considered checking her hair. But if her hair was as bad as she thought, she’d feel the need to fix it, and she didn’t think she had the energy. Better not to know.

The sound of a couple arguing assaulted her ears as soon as she opened the door. Not that Beck and Neil were being loud, but the anger in their voices pulsed through the house like a sonic wave. She shut the door, then backed into the room and sank her butt back into the bed with a sigh.

All couples fought, at least according to all the books she read—both when she had still been trying to work things out with Richard and in preparation for knowing if her own future marriage was healthy. Apparently fighting could even be good for a marriage. Better to get everything out in the open. Of course, all the books stressed the importance of how couples fight, but she wasn’t going to listen at the door to evaluate how Beck and Neil were doing.

Instead, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and opened her dating app.

Nothing.

This was what she had remembered from last time ’round. People said women were inundated with requests for sex and a boob shot, but she never had been. Which was fine by her. But despite all the preparation that had gone into this round of online dating, she was no more successful than when she’d plopped her résumé online and crossed her fingers.

Marsie Penny, you are smarter than that. She tossed her phone to the end of the bed. She’d also been told not to take anything that happened in online dating personally. Anyway, she’d started back into this thing only last night. There was no way she could interpret one night of no responses as an indication of her worthiness as a person. That was the hangover and listening to her best friend’s marital spat talking. Plus, if she allowed herself to go down this road, she’d be entering a dark, scary forest from which she might not return. She had to remain positive and not take anything that happened in online dating to heart.

Easier said than done. Especially with her phone still within arm’s reach. She had set herself up a schedule of when she could check for messages, and she’d be breaking that schedule if she checked again.

And Jason said online dating was fun! Well, she’d never understood Jason, and thinking about online dating and him didn’t help her comprehension. She needed to stop thinking about him at all, unless it was in relation to work. Work was safe.

What she needed was to get out of this room and leave her phone ensconced in the divot made by the down comforter. She could make it to the bathroom without infringing on her friend’s privacy. Though that meant she wouldn’t be able to escape fixing her hair.

Once out of the bathroom, her hair fixed and her mouth rinsed with mouthwash, Marsie made another attempt toward the stairs. She tiptoed, trying to be as quiet as possible as she got close enough to the top of the staircase to fully judge if the argument was over. Several breaths later, she deemed it safe to go down.

Beck was standing in the kitchen, her back to Marsie. The first drips of morning coffee hit the bottom of the carafe, and the delicious scent was beginning to make its way across the kitchen to Marsie’s nose. But even with the slight hangover, her friend’s shaking shoulders were more important than the first cup of coffee.

She put her hand on Beck’s lower back. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” Beck sniffed, still trying to cover up the fact that she was crying. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“How about I fix you a cup of coffee while you think about what you want to say.” Marsie kept one palm in contact with her friend while she got mugs out of the cabinet and set them on the counter. Then she busied herself pouring cream in a pitcher while the coffee finished brewing. When it was done, she made her friend a cup with extra sugar and cream, then steered her to the living room so they could sit.

Whatever Beck was crying over, it was not a conversation to be had sitting on bar stools.

Marsie had finished her entire mug of coffee by the time Beck put hers down, full, on the table, and looked ready to speak. “Neil and I are going to get a divorce.”

Marsie’s cup clanged on the glass of the table when she set it down with more force than she’d intended. “Like you’ve seen a lawyer and you’re getting your separation agreement ready, or like you’re fighting a lot and it’s scary?”

What she wanted to ask was, “Why the hell is this the first I’m hearing about it? I thought we were friends?” but even in her not-quite-hungover state, she knew that wasn’t supportive.

Beck reached for her mug, brought it to her lips, then set it back down without drinking anything. “No lawyers.” She sighed. “Maybe I exaggerated. I don’t know. Right now, it feels like divorce is coming at any moment.”

“What are you arguing about?” Marsie asked, her hand braced on the side of the couch. Of all her coupled friends, Beck and Neil were the ones she thought least likely to split. They’d been together forever, seemed to have the same life goals and, well, just seemed in step.

“Money, of course. Sex.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. Don’t all couples fight about those things?”

Beck shrugged. “Sure. I mean, we’ve always had tensions over what to do with our money and how much sex to have or who gets what fantasy. But the past couple months, it’s been different. Meaner.”

“Oh.” Marsie wouldn’t be so worried if Beck were crying, but instead her friend kept blinking away the tears in her eyes. Like if she didn’t cry them, then they weren’t there. She put her hand on Beck’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

Her friend looked up at the ceiling and blinked several times. It wasn’t enough to keep tears from running down her face. “I want a kid.”

And Neil didn’t. He’d never made a secret of that fact.

“Oh, honey.” Marsie wrapped her arm around Beck and pulled her close. Finally, her friend started to cry.

Beck cried noisy snotty tears onto Marsie’s shoulder. She shook with grief for several minutes while Marsie held on to her, not able to offer anything but support while her best friend fell to pieces in her arms.

When Beck’s sobs slowed, she sat up and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She had to use both arms and the fabric of her T-shirt was gross by the end. Wiping her cheeks with the heel of her hand didn’t do anything but spread the dampness around.

“Here, use mine,” Marsie said, offering up her arms. They looked at each other for a moment and giggled before Beck leaned over and wiped her cheeks on Marsie’s already damp sleeves. When she sat back up, they giggled again. Not that anything about this morning was funny, but they both needed the release of tension.

“Do you need a fresh cup of coffee?” Marsie asked.

Beck nodded. “And tissues.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.” It broke Marsie’s heart to see her friend curl up on the couch again, protecting herself from the grizzly bears of the world.

She got them both another cup of coffee and stuck a box of tissues under her arm. Beck drank about half her cup of coffee as soon as Marsie handed it to her.

“Thank you,” Beck said.

“It’s what friends are for.” The only sounds in the living room were the ticktock of the clock and the slurping of hot coffee until Marsie asked, “Why didn’t you say anything about this earlier?”

“You were starting online dating again and so into it with your research and your beta testing. I didn’t want to sound like a downer by complaining about my marriage.”

“I’m your friend. I want to hear about your downers.”

Beck’s head fell against the back of the couch. “God, now I’m failing at being a friend, too.” Her tone was light and she had a slight smile on her face, but Marsie could tell that her friend believed the nonsense she was spouting.

“You’re not failing at being a friend, but I hope you feel like you can talk to me. No matter what, we’re here for each other.”

Beck set her now empty cup on the coffee table and leaned against Marsie. “Always.”

* * *

BACK AT WORK on Monday, Marsie checked the clock on her computer. She was supposed to meet with the vice president in charge of research in twenty minutes. She’d prepare for the meeting, but she didn’t know what it was about, other than a new grant application. All her emails had been either replied to or sorted into the appropriate folders and...

And she was coming up with excuses to justify checking her online dating profile. She’d spent all of Sunday with Beck, goofing off and talking about everything under the sun that didn’t have a penis attached to it. Late Sunday afternoon a notification had shown up on her phone that there was a message. Marsie had ignored it.

But now that little icon at the top of her phone was calling her name.

Marsie spun around in her chair, away from her computer. Checking her profile on her work computer was a mistake she would only make once. She dug her phone out of her purse and set it on her desk. Then she took a deep breath and tapped the app.

“Are you looking at what I think you’re looking at?” Jason’s voice asked from her doorway.

“What?” She exhaled all her frustration and embarrassment into the word, inwardly cursing the universe. “Do you have a tap into my computer?”

He raised one finger and one eyebrow. “If I did, I’d have to have a tap on your phone, too.” He smiled, all charm and ease. “How’s online dating going?”

“Fine.” That was close to the actual truth of, I don’t know. Or, I’m afraid to look.

No. She swallowed her sigh. I don’t know would have been a true enough answer. She hadn’t wanted to do this alone, and Beck wasn’t able to go along for the ride right now.

“You don’t have a very good poker face,” he said, an amused smile dancing on his face.

“No, but I’m hard to beat online,” she retorted, pleased that she had clearly caught him off guard with her answer.

“You really play poker online?”

“Played,” she corrected. “The heydays of online poker winning are over, but it’s just a math game. And I’m good at math.”

He nodded, clearly still reeling from the shock of imagining her playing online poker but also, just as clearly, impressed. “So why economics instead of math?”

“My dad’s influence. I had this idea to follow in his footsteps.” Follow in his footsteps. Win his approval. Same thing.

“And, are you?”

She gave her head a slight shake. “Not really. I mean, I’m an economist too, but my mom’s influence means I’m here, studying health and the economy rather than making more money somewhere else managing a hedge fund.”

The firm’s wide-ranging studies and analysis into everything, including pharmaceuticals, economic policy and the environment, were aimed at improving social conditions around the world. A lofty goal that her mom approved of and father scoffed at.

As an adult, Marsie didn’t often think of that, the constant push and pull and tug from her parents. Baby boomers, both of them. They’d had this idea that love was enough to bring together their two disparate views on the world. And, if you counted that they’d made a baby who used a conservative-leaning social science to try to make the world a better place, they had brought their views of the world together perfectly.

If you considered “bring together” to mean stay married, that hadn’t happened. They’d gotten divorced when Marsie was two. Her dad had stayed in California. Her mom had run off, child in tow, to start an organic farm in Wyoming of all places. If her mom had decided to start a ranch, at least that would have made sense. But her mom didn’t believe in sense. She believed in signs and dreams and hopes.

Hopes didn’t grow enough vegetables to make money. They’d always had food to eat, and child support meant Marsie always had clothes, but she hadn’t just been the smart girl in a tiny school—she’d been the poor smart girl.

“Right. Better for me that you’re here and not at some hedge fund somewhere. You are one of the people who make my job interesting.” His teeth glinted through his easy smile.

She knew that smile, had seen him flash that smile at other people, and still it relaxed her, making her less interested in what might be happening in the dating app on her phone and what could happen if Jason sat down in one of her office chairs and leaned against her desk again.

Maybe she’d come around and sit on the edge, pull one leg up so that her skirt fell open just so...

No. Stop. Jason wasn’t tall enough. And that was only one strike against him. He was also too smooth and too charming and they worked at the same place. He didn’t have the kind of education she was looking for in a man. Or the type of career. Six strikes when only three were needed.

“Speaking of jobs, I’ve got to be on my way to one.” His voice was easy, but the twinkle in his eyes made her wonder if he knew what she was thinking.

Since he’d come to her first cubicle at this office to remove a keyboard tray she had banged her knees on, Jason had always been able to make her feel like the world under her feet wasn’t stable. Like if she moved too quickly or took a wrong step, she would fall. And she never knew what to do with that information.

There wasn’t a formula for social interaction. Not one that worked well, anyway.

“I’m going to grab a cup of coffee first,” he said. “Wanna come?”

“Sure.” She had wanted a cup before her next meeting. Plus, the world wasn’t stable when she was around Jason, but it wasn’t boring, either.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CONFERENCE ROOM her meeting was in was always either too hot or too cold—usually too hot. Jason said he’d done everything possible to regulate the room’s temperature, including adding the slight film that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the walking trail that connected many of the buildings in this part of the park. As she shrugged out of her suit jacket, she remembered that once, when she’d been complaining about this conference room, he’d told her to convince the VP to have blinds put in. “There’s only so much you can do for temperature control in a room that’s all windows and has no trees outside to provide shade. Especially in a building this old.”

Since this was the conference room closest to her office and where she usually had meetings, she’d taken his suggestions to heart, saying things like, “Wow, the sun is making the screen hard to see. Wouldn’t it be great to have roller blinds or something to provide a little better sun block?” whenever the right people were in meetings.

Jason had laughed when she’d told him of her strategy.

“Last time we met,” the grant writer, Roberto, was saying from his chair at the front of the room, “we said that we’d have the implementation and evaluation measures for parts one through four ready for the final document.” The mouse moved across the screen to the empty spot under “Implementation.”

Marsie wasn’t the only person who expected Roberto to keep talking, because the room was silent.

“Well,” Roberto said, “does anyone know why this area is still blank?”

Because the application isn’t due yet. Marsie didn’t say that. This grant was her baby, and she was pushing behind the scenes as much as she knew how. But she also knew that time pressure got work done faster than meetings and pointed silences.

The procrastination had driven her bonkers the first couple of grants she’d worked on. It still drove her bonkers, but she’d learned it was part of everyone else’s process, and letting it drive her to drink wasn’t a good use of her time or energy. So she’d gotten her portions done ahead of schedule and had been relying on relaxing breathing to help her wait for everyone else to work at their pace.

Roberto knew it, too. These meetings were a play, and they all had their parts.

“Marsie,” Roberto said, turning his attention to her and away from the rest of the people sitting around the conference table.

She looked over to the grant writer. “Yes?”

“Let’s talk about your budget.”

“Great,” she said. “I actually have some questions about your comments.”

God, it was boiling in this room. Her suit jacket was off, and she didn’t have anything else she could remove. My kingdom for a cold drink, she thought as Roberto scrolled down to her budget and started poking holes.

* * *

“HEY.” MARSIE LOOKED up from the grant application she was editing to see Jason leaning against the door frame, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bag of something in the other. She smiled at him, pleased when he smiled back.

“You look like you were studying hard. Should I say I’m sorry for interrupting?”

She shook her head. “I needed the interruption. All the lines are starting to run together. And I’m getting a headache.”

“How was your meeting?” he asked, taking a couple steps into her office. She shoved the papers across her desk, and he moved closer.

“Part of the headache. The grant application is due in two months. The meeting was a reminder of how far behind we are.”

“Two months sounds like a long time.” Marsie’s shoulders, which she hadn’t realized were tense, relaxed as he sat in one of her chairs.

“It should be enough, but we don’t have the data we need, I keep getting told my budget is wrong and...you don’t need to hear the rest.” She waved away the litany of complaints. “Anyway, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough time or that people are working nearly as hard as they should be.”

She shrugged. “But that’s always how these things feel.”

She should have waited until after this application was finally in before signing up for online dating. Except waiting was what got her into this predicament in the first place. Not enough time.

When she’d been thirty, she’d felt like she had all the time in the world. Silly thirty-year-old Marsie.

He looked at his phone. “It’s one thirty. Have you gotten lunch?”

She flopped her back against her chair. “I don’t know if I’ll get lunch.” Then her stomach growled, both embarrassing her and giving away how much she needed food.

He lifted his brows.

“I’ve got a protein bar in my desk. I’ll be fine.”

“A protein bar isn’t lunch. It’s barely a snack.”

“It’s not lunch or a snack. It’s desperation, but it tastes vaguely like a brownie, so it’s okay.”

He laughed. “Right. Well, here,” he said, leaning over the arm of the chair and digging around in the bag at his feet.

Curious, Marsie sat up a little taller. She knew she wasn’t able to hide the surprise on her face when he set a small salad in a to-go container on her desk, then followed it with a roll, a pat of butter, a fork and a little container of dressing. “What’s this?” she asked stupidly.

“Salad.”

“Is it for me?” She felt like her brain was running two beats behind. She hated that feeling.

“Technically, it was for me. But a brownie protein bar is an oxymoron, not lunch.”

“It’s a small salad,” she said, still not able to stop the idiocy from coming out of her mouth. He was giving her salad?

He gave her a long, searching look, probably trying to decide how she ever managed to get a PhD in anything. Then he shook his head, reached down again and pulled out a sandwich. “Ham and cheese,” he said as he set it on her desk. “You can have this instead if you want. But not both. I need lunch, too.” He was smiling, so she didn’t think he was angry. “I’ve got a bottle of Coke in the bag, as well.”

“Coffee and coke?” she asked with a raised brow.

“A man’s got to get his addictions covered somehow. You can have the coffee if you want, but I like mine different than you like yours.”

“The Coke is good.” She’d left her meeting with the hounds of work on her tail and had forgotten that all she’d wanted the whole time had been a cold drink. Now that Jason offered it, a cold Coke sounded like the best thing in the world. More important than either a salad or a sandwich.

The bag rustled, then a sweaty bottle of soda appeared on her desk. She reached out for the salad, too, slow in her lingering disbelief. “And the salad is good, too. I don’t know what surprised me more, that you have a salad for lunch or that you’re giving it to me.”

He shrugged and set his sandwich on her desk. “I’m giving you a salad because a protein bar isn’t food.”

“I’m still going to eat it.” She pulled the salad across the desk toward her. The salad was a much better lunch than her nonbrownie. She often forgot to eat lunch, and her workday was almost always worse off for it.

“You can call it a crispy brownie and I’ll call it dessert and we’ll both pretend.”

She chuckled. “Okay. Want to split my dessert?”

“Ugh. No.” He shook his head. “I had a salad for my lunch because I’m not twenty-five anymore, and I need the vegetables more than I need the potato chips.” He unwrapped the waxed paper around his sandwich, and Marsie realized she must be hungrier than she’d imagined, because his sandwich looked delicious and she didn’t like ham and cheese.

“Well, thank you.” She cracked the plastic container open and poured dressing on the greens. The dressing was white. It could be Caesar or ranch or blue cheese. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. It wasn’t food that had been sitting in her desk drawer for months. “This was sweet of you. Want something to drink other than coffee, since you gave me your Coke?”

“Whatcha got?”

“Warm Diet Coke,” she said, which was apparently enough to stop him as he was lifting his lunch to his mouth.

“Warm?” he said.

“Warm,” she confirmed. “I love Diet Coke. Though it’s not as good when warm. So I keep cans under my desk. In an emergency, it’s there for me to drink, but the fact that it’s not cold keeps me from drinking it on days like today, when I would falsify data in exchange for a cold drink.”

“I’m glad it didn’t come to that.” He took a bite of his sandwich, chewing while she stabbed at her salad with a fork. She was taking a bite when he swallowed. “I guess that makes some amount of sense.”

“Only some?”

The warm soda fizzed when he popped the can open. “Some. I’m still going to drink it, but it makes about as much sense as me justifying an extra beer at the bar on Friday nights because I had salad for lunch.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing as she picked up another forkful of salad. “So that’s the real story behind the salad. It’s not about the chips, it’s about the beer.”

“Well,” he said, hedging. His trim beard hid a small dimple when he smiled. She’d never been close enough to notice before. “It’s really about both. To be honest, the salad allows me to justify all sorts of things.”

“Yeah? Like what?” she asked, still charmed by the small dimple.

“Like this Diet Coke.” His brows were raised as he lifted the can to his lips and took a sip. “Hey, this isn’t so bad actually. I think I like it better warm. It’s better than warm water, which is what I was going to drink along with my coffee, since you took my Coke.”

“Where were you going to eat your lunch? Obviously not here.”

“Wish I was there instead?” One of the things she had always liked about Jason was that she could hear the teasing in his voice. She rarely had to wonder if he was serious. It made all their interactions easier for her.

But she still said, “Of course not.” Teasing voices didn’t mean there weren’t hurt feelings. She knew all about faking that everything was okay. “Curious, is all.”

“I was going to eat in my car, spiking my blood with caffeine from Coke and coffee, and listening to my audiobook. But this is better.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Thank you for the salad. I appreciate it.”

“There’s a cafeteria in the basement, you know, for when you don’t have lunch. We’ve gone to get coffee there.”

“I know.” She pushed the last of her salad greens around to get them coated in dressing, then speared them up on her fork.

“What’s your reason for not going down to get a salad or sandwich? I’m hoping it’s as fun as your reason for keeping warm Diet Coke in your office.”

Fun. People almost never used that word to describe her, and Jason using it made her smiley inside. “It’s not. Fun, I mean. Or convoluted, which is the other way to describe my soda reasoning. But when it gets to be early afternoon and I’ve not eaten lunch yet and I have a pile of work on my desk, it seems easier to keep working than to quit and feed myself. After all, dinner’s getting closer.”

“Well, I’m a three-squares-a-day kind of guy. Usually I pack my lunch. You’re lucky.”

“Yes.” She closed the lid of her salad container and picked up the roll. “Want to share?”

“No, that’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t have a knife, so she used the back of a fork to spread the butter around.

He was throwing away his trash when a flash on her phone screen distracted them both. He probably recognized the icon, and she didn’t want to deal with it right now, or hear his questions, so she slapped her hand on the phone and flipped it over, screen side down.

“I know what that is,” he said. “You don’t have to hide it.”

“It’s not important,” she lied. The paucity of responses she got in online dating meant that every small response took on a magnitude that far outweighed its actual importance. She knew it, and still that icon called to her. Look at me! I might be the one!

“I’d want to look at it,” he said, not moving from his spot near her desk. They were both staring at the Hello Kitty on the back of her phone.

“It’s either a message agreeing to meet me for drinks tonight, or it’s not. It’s a binary answer, so nothing to get too worked up over.” As soon has Jason left her office, she would flip that phone over and learn which it was. But right now, she used her hands to put the last of the roll in her mouth. Giving them something to do other than flip the phone over.

“It’s not really binary,” he said, probably just needling her. “Maybe the fellow is offering you drinks tomorrow night. Or dinner. Or meeting for coffee on Sunday.”

“Coffee this Sunday would be okay. That’s open on my schedule. No drinks tomorrow night. And I don’t know the man well enough to commit the time necessary for dinner. I have a grant application to finish and not a lot of time left to do so.”

“Wait.” Realization dawned on his face. “Do you have times set aside when you’ll go on dates and, if it’s not one of those times, you won’t go?”

“I’m busy. I assume the men are busy, too. I’m respectful of their time, and I hope they’re respectful of mine.”

“Respect isn’t an exciting way to start a relationship. Shouldn’t you want your heart to flutter or tingle or whatever romantic nonsense it is that people talk about?”

She tilted her head to get a different view of him as he was sitting back down in the chair. He’d talked about online dating being fun, how it was about getting to meet new people. It had never occurred to her that he might be looking for love at first sight or some sort of off the charts chemistry. Who besides her parents did that in real life?

And look where that had gotten her parents.

“Tingles would be nice, but respect is a better start. No matter how much you want in someone’s pants, the morning after will be awkward without respect.”

Something she said must have surprised him, because he blinked a couple times, then barked out a laugh. “Mornings after are generally awkward. And, if we’re being frank, being in someone’s pants doesn’t necessarily mean a morning after.”

It was her turn to laugh and she giggled. “This is not a work-related or even lunch-related conversation.”

“No,” he said with a big smile, “but it has everything to do with the guy who messaged you, and he’s who I’m really curious about.”

“Ha,” she said, perhaps even with a smile. “There’s no way I’m going to talk about Waterski25. It’s not happening.”

“What’s your profile name?”

“No,” she said, unable to stop herself from smiling.

“I’ll tell you what mine is.”

“No.” She was still smiling.

“Do you have a good profile picture? Did you fill out the ‘last read’ section down at the bottom? Where did you say that you hang out?”

“No, no and no.” Her voice sounded girlish and flirty, even to her own ears, but she was having fun and didn’t know how to sound serious again, not with Jason teasing her.

“No, you don’t have a good profile picture?”

“Oh, get out of here.” Her chair rolled as she pushed a hand against his hip. “We each have lots of work to do, and I hope to have a date tonight.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he said, backing away. “Next time, I’m bringing doughnuts and you’re showing me your profile picture.”

“I’ll take the doughnuts, but no way on the profile picture. And no questions about my online dating profile.”

“Come on. I’ll answer any of your questions about online dating. We can compare notes.”

“Get outta here.” She waved him away. And, with a flick of his hand at his forehead, Jason went.

He really did have a cute butt. And the cargo pants he always wore hugged that cute butt nicely.

She shouldn’t be looking at his cute butt. He didn’t fit her algorithm. She didn’t have to look at his profile to know that.

* * *

JASON WAS SMILING as he walked out of Marsie’s office. If someone had told him yesterday that prim and starchy Marsie Penny would use the words “someone’s pants” while at work, he would have asked when pot had become legal in North Carolina. Right now, he just wished he was still in her office, flirting and joking, rather than walking out to put together a bookshelf in some guy’s office.

At least he knew she had long fingers. He’d felt every inch of her hand when she’d put her palm against him and gave him a slight push. Elegant fingers, just like she was elegant in every other aspect.

He shook his hand. He never thought he’d describe a woman’s hand as elegant, but here he was. Unfortunately, his heart hadn’t fluttered. He had a date tomorrow night, and the few chats he and Willow had exchanged weren’t nearly as interesting as his talks with Marsie.

Maybe Willow would be more interesting in person. Her picture was cute, which was a good start for a heart flutter.

CHAPTER FIVE

MARSIE STOOD ON the street outside Raleigh Times and waited for her date. It was a Wednesday night, so the streets were quiet. Only a few groups of people and several couples had to walk around her, and not a single one of the bike-bars—made up of fifteen or so people bicycling and drinking in tandem around a bar—had passed her to yell.

She pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders, wishing she’d remembered her coat. The weather was warm for mid-January, but that didn’t mean warm. With working on the grant, she hadn’t had time to run home and change, so she’d switched out her suit jacket for a pretty light pink cardigan with a subtle sequin design in the hopes that she’d look less formal. The cardigan wasn’t as warm as her jacket had been. And in what world was a sheath dress less overdressed simply because she was wearing a cardigan and not a matching jacket, she didn’t know. But she was sticking with her story, because otherwise she’d feel self-conscious for looking like a banker while waiting for a date at a bar.

Everyone who passed her on the streets was wearing jeans. She should have made time to run home.

No, she had a grant to apply for. She should keep a date outfit in her office. Then she could look breezy casual at a moment’s notice. A trio of women passed in tight jeans, a variety of patterns and shapes to blouses visible through open coats, and high heels, giving Marsie the idea that she should put a couple different outfits in her office. Maybe she would go on a second date and need something else to wear. Or her one outfit wouldn’t be appropriate. She should be prepared. She’d go shopping with Beck this weekend. Beck would have ideas.

Her feet were starting to hurt. Pumps and a sheath dress. There was no way she looked like a fun date. God, even if she had changed her profile information from the boring description of her accomplishments to the light, offhand paragraph about nothing, she was boring at her core. She read math books for fun, for Pete’s sake. The grant application was all she could think of right now. There was no way she’d be able to make jokes and be personable.

And the stakes were too high to do anything else. So much pressure. If she wanted to be married and have kids, she needed to start now. She should have started earlier. She shouldn’t have spent so much time building a career.

Except her work was important and interesting. At least to her. It wasn’t interesting to anyone else. She should cancel the date before she bored Waterski25—Everett—to death.

Dammit. She recognized the self-doubt birds chattering in her brain. They showed up on a regular basis, especially when she was trying something new. The last time she’d tried online dating, those birds had followed her around like something out of a horror movie. She’d be sitting at a bar, enjoying her conversation, and the birds would swoop in and comment on some vague look in the man’s eye. That look isn’t interest. It’s his eyes glazing over. He’s bored. He’s glanced at the waitress five times in the past ten minutes. He wants the check. He’s bored.

The birds only sang one song, and they trilled that tune nonstop. She almost wished that the birds would pick on something other than whether she could carry on sparkling conversation. But wishing for them to warble a melody about her looks seemed like a death wish.

A girl had to be careful what she wished for.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. As she dug it out, she wondered if Everett had texted to cancel their date. Marsie’s self-confidence from work today had completely disappeared, and she wanted nothing more than to change into pajamas, curl up on her couch and binge watch something on HBO. To her surprised relief, the message was from Beck.

First date!!! :-) :-) It will be fun. Even if this

waterski guy isn’t for you, someone will be.

Marsie slipped her phone back in her purse. She was still smiling when a handsome man with wavy brown hair and a Roman nose walked up to her, his hand out in greeting.

“Marsie, I assume,” the man—Everett—said.

“Yes, hello.” The night was chill, but her date’s hand was warm, so that was a good start. And he looked like his profile picture. Another good start.

“Shall we,” he said, opening the door so that they could go inside the bar.

Raleigh Times was loud, as always. No matter how many people were in the building, the high ceiling and hard textures surrounding them meant sounds echoed. She and Everett would have to lean in to each other if they wanted to have any hope of hearing what the other person said.

A hostess took them to a small table near the window. If she were boring, he could entertain himself watching the people walk past them on the street. Or, she tried to yell over the birds in her head, if he were boring then she could watch the people walk past them.

Of course, Beck would tell her that dating wasn’t awful, and Marsie might have a great time and no one would need to stare at pedestrians because this could be the start of something amazing. Jason would tell her this was fun.

Since he was fun, it probably was. For him.

With that pep talk set to replay in the back of her head, she picked up the menu and looked for something to drink.

“You look like you came from work,” he said, scanning the food menu. “Do you want to get snacks, too? Or is this drinks only until further notice?”

Everett was attractive, and she hadn’t gotten any stayaway!!! vibes from him. He’d scored a 75 straight out of the gate in her algorithm, though she’d had to fudge the numbers a bit during their emails to bump him up to the 90 needed for her to agree to the date. So that was a strike against him. She ran through a quick calculation in her head and decided that her marginal utility from this guy was still going up.

“Snacks would be great.” What the hell. She was being open to new things. She wanted a relationship. And she was hungry.

They talked about the menu, what would be good to share and what they were each getting to drink. When the waitress came by, Everett ordered the chicken strips and lettuce wraps, then said, “I’ll have the Big Boss IPA and the lady will have the Mother Earth Lager.”

The waitress smiled at both of them, said, “Drinks will be out shortly,” and left.

“I could have ordered my own drink,” Marsie said. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more, that he’d ordered her drink or that he’d referred to her as “the lady.”

Everett’s eyes lifted in surprise. “Didn’t mean any offense. I respect women and feminism and all that good stuff, of course. But you look like the kind of woman who likes a man to take care of her.”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Really?” She had a PhD in economics and ran national studies on health care. She owned her own home, didn’t have any student loans and her car was paid for.

Of course, she reminded herself, there was no way he would know all that. So, in the interest of research and improving her algorithm, she lifted the corners of her lips and asked, “What about me says I like a man who takes care of me?”

For all the education that he had listed on his profile and as smart as his emails had seemed, to Marsie’s surprise, Everett was stupid enough to answer the question. “Your profile has a lot of exclamation marks. And the pink sweater confirms it.”

“Here’re your drinks,” the waitress said, sweeping between them and setting two glasses of beer on the table.

“Is that...” She didn’t know where to begin to question what he was saying, because all of it was ridiculous. “Is that what you really think?”

Her date took a long drink from his beer, leaving a little mustache of foam on his top lip. “I’m an old-fashioned guy.”

Marsie sipped from her own drink. Too much alcohol would only loosen her sense of propriety, and she hadn’t gotten this far in her career by letting her emotions get the better of her. Professors had waited, biting their nails, all through her grad school career, for any excuse to say she was too emotional to apply the logic and rationality needed for economics.

Too bright for the dismal science.

Those professors had never acknowledged that fear was an emotion, too.

Another bitter sip of beer down her throat and Marsie was ready for more conversation. “Tell me, what does it mean when you say you’re an ‘an old-fashioned guy’?”

Apparently, “old-fashioned” meant he would open his arms out wide and knock over his empty beer glass. He righted the glass without pausing a beat, then launched into a long explanation about men’s roles in the world and women’s roles in the world and how women wanted a man who would do all the planning and thinking for the household, while they took care of the “love.”

Marsie smiled up at the waitress as she set the food on the table and her date ordered another beer. Everett wasn’t the man for her, but she was hungry, so she might as well get dinner out of the date.

Food on the table, Marsie unwrapped her flatware and placed the napkin on her lap. Then she turned to her date. “And what about a woman like me?”

“A woman like you?” Everett asked, reaching for a chicken strip.

Marsie scooped some filling into a piece of lettuce and popped her food in her mouth. “If you remember from my profile, I have a PhD. I run large research projects for a living. Your education was one of the things that attracted me to your profile. And I assume you to mine.”

He appeared to give what she said serious thought while he finished chewing. Then he shrugged. “A woman like you is also not married, and you want to be. Independence isn’t really what you want. And your strategy hasn’t been working for you so far.”

Clearly. She picked up her napkin and wiped off her hands, then set the napkin on the table. Tonight, she would have to review where in her algorithm she could have caught “self-important asshole” and saved herself from this date. She wasn’t hungry enough for lettuce wraps to listen to a man telling her that she didn’t want independence.

And she was independent enough not to need to be here any longer. “I’ll be right back.” She didn’t wait for him to ask questions, but scooted back from the table and headed for the bathroom, purse in hand. On her way, she stopped at the bar and paid their tab.

Everett was almost finished with his second beer when she returned. Hers was half drunk. She had only a couple bites of her lettuce wraps. His chicken strips were gone. He looked up as she stood over the table.

“Everett, I won’t lie and say that I had a nice time, but I had an educational time and that’s important, too.”

“What?” He wiped mustard sauce off his lips. “Aren’t you going to finish your beer? Bad manners not to finish a beer someone else is paying for.”

“Well, then, we’re both lucky that you finished your beers, because I’ve already paid the tab. You’re welcome to finish both my beer and my lettuce wraps. I’ve some nice frozen dinners at home. I think I’ll eat those.”

Everett’s faced screwed up, reminding Marsie of a baby about to cry. “You’ll never get a man with that attitude.”

“You might be right,” she agreed. “And I’m okay with that. Have a nice evening.”

Marsie walked out of that date with a smile on her face. Not only had she learned something, but she also had a good story to tell Jason the next time they grabbed coffee.

CHAPTER SIX

MARSIE WAS WAITING for Beck at the mall entrance to Nordstrom, purse in hand and credit card ready to be blown. “Shopping, huh,” her friend said as she approached. “We’re not usually shopping buddies.”

“I don’t have shopping buddies,” Marsie said, giving her friend a quick hug. She knew what brands of clothing looked good on her, what sizes she wore in those brands and usually just ordered online. No shopping or buddies needed. “But I’m in a desperate situation.”

She didn’t realize how rude those words could sound until they were out of her mouth, but her friend didn’t seem to notice.

As they walked into the department store, Marsie gave Beck a rundown of her first date, including the boring cream sheath dress and silly pink cardigan with sparkles. “I felt out of place. I need something more casual. Flirty. Maybe a couple different outfits. I want to look cute.”

Marsie put a lot of thought into what she wore to work. Nothing too feminine, but nothing that looked too masculine, either. She had to strike a balance.

It would be much easier to be a dude and wear a nice pair of slacks, button-down shirt and boring striped tie.

“This doesn’t have to do with the things that jerk said about you never finding anyone, did it? I mean, I think you generally look cute. Serious, but you are serious, so why shouldn’t you look it?”

“I need a man to give me a chance to be something other than serious. You think I’m funny and fun, right?”

“Yeah, but I’ve had years to get to know you.”

Marsie stopped short, right in front of the escalator and turned to face her friend. Hurt must have been evident on her face, because Beck’s face fell. “Marsie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Some people are easy to get to know. They’re fun and easy and you feel like you have a connection the first time you shake hands.”

Jason. She’d been charmed the first time she’d met him. And the second time, when she’d been moving in to her new office and he’d come to help her hang some pictures and put together a bookshelf. He’d told silly stories about his ancient dog the entire time. She still remembered the one about his dog getting into a plate of cookies that his mother had made him, including the detail about the dog getting caught, looking guilty with cookie crumbs on his lips, and—while being scolded—bending over to lick the last bit of cookie off the plate.

“You’re not one of those people,” her friend continued. “You’re still waters that run deep.”

Marsie turned away from Beck to get on the escalator, not feeling the least bit better, even though her friend was trying.

“Well, I’ll bet my date thought he was one of the charmers.” She tried to throw some lightness into her voice, but given how tightly she was holding the banister, she doubted she was fooling anyone.

“I’ll bet your date is one of those people he thinks you should be looking for.”

“Fun and charming?” Marsie stepped off the escalator and turned to the sea of blouses, not even sure what she was looking for. At least when she opened the dating site and flipped through the photos of men, she had her algorithm to give her some guidance.

“No.” Beck shook her head. “What about this top?”

Marsie shook her head. Her friend was holding up a pink blouse with dark pink flowers and lace and so much fabric it looked like her high school home economics teacher could take the thing apart and remake it into a dress.

“It’s fun and flirty,” Beck said as she shoved it back onto the rack. “And you like pink.”

“I’m too tall. I’d look like a giant wearing a flowered blanket. That’s not cute.”

She pulled a cream sweater off the rack. Sparkly threads ran through the neck of the top, getting denser near the hem so that the bottom of the sweater was more gold than cream. “This one looks nice.”

“Yeah. Are you going to try it on?”

“I guess I should.” She draped the top over her arm. Hangers clicked against each other and the metal rack as they flipped through more clothes.

“What did you mean when you said you think my date thought he was the type of person I should be looking for?”

Judging by the searching look Beck gave her, her friend knew her too well to believe the casual tone Marsie was trying for, but she didn’t comment on it. She turned back down to the clothes. “You’re looking for a specific education and a specific type of job and a man who not only has a couple books listed under ‘last read,’ but that they’re books you approve of. You’re looking for you.”

They wove through the next set of racks to a new location that looked promising. Marsie still only had the one sweater over her arm.

“Are you telling me opposites attract? I don’t believe that at all.” Her parents were proof that opposites might attract, but they detracted just as fast.

“This is the top for you.” Beck held up her find and Marsie laughed. The shirt was a pretty metallic blue jacquard, but it couldn’t decide how it wanted to be a mix of both edgy and romantic.

“It should either be off the shoulder or have ruffles or have a high neck or an eye-catching collar. It can’t have all the above. Too bad, because it’s a pretty fabric.”

“It’s silk,” Beck said, putting the top back on the rack.

“So it’s probably more than I want to spend.”

Her friend checked the tags. “Three hundred and fifty dollars.”

“If I make it to the sex date with a man, I’ll consider spending that much on a top, but not when I’ve not even kissed a guy. And not on that top,” she said with a vigorous shake of her head.

“Wait? Which one’s the sex date?” Beck was still holding the top. She looked at it, shook her head and hung the blouse back on the rack. “Never mind. You have too many rules. I want to finish talking about opposites attract.”

“What’s there to talk about? Dating someone different from you seems very exciting. Then the sex wears off, and you’re left staring at someone you have nothing in common with while picking at your dinner. Which they made, so it’s nothing you like.”

“Your parents must really hate each other. Everything you’ve ever said about them makes me think that’s them talking.”

“Hate is a strong word.” And, if she were being honest with herself, was probably the right word for how her father felt about her mother. Her mom had always seemed a little sad about the whole thing, like she’d been reaching for an amazing dream, failed, and hadn’t yet managed to fully wake up. Even after more than thirty years.

Beck looked closely at Marsie, seeming to examine every line of her face. Then she went back to flipping through the tops like this was a casual conversation.

They both realized that this had stopped being a casual conversation a while ago. Beck had significant advice she wanted to give; she just needed to figure out how to say it. Finally, she stopped moving shirts around on the rack and put her hands on the metal rung. “It’s not that you’re not looking for someone who is the opposite of you, but that you’re looking for you. For someone with your education and your kind of job, who reads your kind of books and likes your kind of movies. Who’s your kind of introverted and wants to eat your kind of food. Like you’re a sock that got separated from its mate in the dryer.”

Beck suddenly looked sad, like she had a vision of Marsie’s future and it snapped her heart in two. “You’ll never grow. In fact, I think you’ll contract that way. You’ll shrink until you disappear. You need someone to challenge you.”

Her friend’s words hit a little too close to something that sounded true, and the smack stung. “My date wasn’t ever going to be a challenge.”

Jason would, but she was pretty sure he didn’t like the same kind of movies she did. And she wasn’t sure what she thought about his job. He was smart. Why was he doing maintenance in an office building?

You could ask him. Asking him would be inviting intimacy, which she wasn’t sure she wanted. Then she’d have to share parts of herself with him, and his smile might be more teasing than she was comfortable with.

Work was challenging enough.

“I’m not talking about your horrible date,” Beck snapped and Marsie stepped back, blinking in surprise.

“Sorry. That came out more harshly than I meant. That guy sounded like an ass. And there are asses out there. If anything, it should prove to you that a man who scores well on your algorithm has as much of a chance of being an ass as a man who only gets two points for being gorgeous. Date people who don’t pass your algorithm. Grow a little. Be willing to change your mind.”

Beck’s sadness wasn’t only about Marsie, she realized with a flash of insight. “How is marital counseling going?”

“Neil said he’s stopped growing in our marriage. I told him he would grow if he could ever change his mind about things. Like having a kid. The counselor told me that wasn’t a fair thing to say. That I wasn’t listening to what Neil was saying. That was where our last appointment stopped.”

“So you’re talking things out,” Marsie said, trying to sound hopeful.

Beck shrugged. They both stopped even pretending to look through clothes. Her friend’s marriage was more important than any number of cute tops.

“Is the counseling helpful?” Marsie asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell if knowing these feelings is good, or if I’d rather we pretended things are fine. Like I guess we were doing before.”

“Oh, Beck.” Marsie’s heart broke at that statement. “I’m sure it hurts. And is hard and scary. But you don’t want to be in a fake marriage. That sounds miserable.”

“I was happy. We were perfect for each other. God, when we met, we were even using the same shampoo and conditioner. I thought it was a sign.”

“You want a kid.”

“I could go back to saying that I don’t want a kid. We could pretend.” Beck’s voice was so flat that it was scary, like she didn’t have any emotions left.

Or maybe she didn’t want to feel them and so had shoved them deep enough that they gave her ulcers, but didn’t make her cry.

“What happens when you’re sixty-five, no children. You might regret not having children, but I think you’ll regret not going through the hard stuff to even try more.” As Marsie said the words, she realized they were directed at herself, as much as at her friend. The kid stuff, yes, but also that she could reach sixty-five and still be single and what would really piss her off was that she hadn’t truly tried. That she’d let her fear and a couple horrible dates trap her in that status quo.

No matter how pleasant the status quo was, if she didn’t want to be there, it was a prison. And her own fears could be as much of a jailer as any guy in jackboots holding a gun.

“I guess. Trying is so hard right now. We’re miserable. I’d rather be anywhere but my house.”

“I’m sorry, honey.” Marsie reached over and pulled her friend into a tight hug. “It’ll be okay. Maybe not in the way you want, but it will be okay.”

When they pulled apart, Beck was blinking away tears. “Thanks. I have to believe that, or I’ll give up.”

“Yup.” Wasn’t that the truth of life. No matter what life looks like, you have to believe.

“Let’s go buy your top and look at more. There are always more fish in the sea.” Beck rubbed Marsie’s shoulder and they turned to the cashier, ready to continue their hard day of shopping.

Maybe, Marsie thought, if she looked like fun, dating would be fun and she’d be able to laugh about it with Jason, like he laughed about it with her.

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