Oh. Not with him, obviously. Not that I even want that. Totally against my new rule. So why do I feel…disappointed?

“We can’t have an odd number,” Indira adds. “It’ll mess everything up.”

“You can’t do it?” I ask Indira. There is nothing I’d rather do less than struggle through a bunch of conversations with strange men.

“I’m in charge of the event, and I have a girlfriend,” she says, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, I really can’t,” I say to Ryan. “I have to run the store.”

“I’ll watch it for you,” Ryan says.

I bark out a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

He makes a face like, Excuse me? I didn’t mean he’s incapable of watching my store; I meant, You really want me to meet a bunch of other men? If the situations were reversed, if Ryan was joining a speed-dating event while I had to sit a few yards away and listen…

I wouldn’t be so eager. In fact, the thought makes me queasy.

But apparently, it doesn’t bother him one bit. Good to know.

“Fine,” I say eventually. “But now you owe me.”

I follow Indira over to Happy Endings, and as I sit down with my first date, a knot tightens in my stomach. I force it down and muster a smile. But I can’t stop wondering:

Why did Ryan ask me to do this?

And why does it bother me so much that he did?

20

Ryan

I’ve been talked into a lot of bad ideas in my life, but this might be the worst.

Josie’s over at Happy Endings now, sitting across from someone who isn’t me. Telling a story or making a joke to someone who isn’t me. Smiling at someone who isn’t me.

I may not know what I want with her, but I do know this feels…terrible.

To quote Miss Taylor Swift—in my defense, I have none. Except that Indira looked like she was about to cry when she begged me to ask Josie to sit in. I offered to find an eligible bachelorette over at Beans or even on the street outside, but she said a “rando” was too risky. And in her words, “We don’t like Josie, but at least we know her.”

Except I think I do like her.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this past weekend—although to hear BookshopGirl tell RJ about it, her weekend was nothing special.

Anyway: I caved.

It’ll probably be fine. I mean, what are the chances Josie hits it off with one of these guys? They have to be minuscule. Right?

But so were the chances that my online crush and my IRL nemesis would turn out to be one and the same.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

—