“Besides, I’m lousy at relationships,” I said. “Really. The longest one I’ve ever had was six months.” I had started dating a dark-haired, exotic foreigner far too cute for me, someone I met in a dance club and knew was an impossible choice for a stop-traveling-and-commit-yourself kind of relationship. Not that I noticed any parallels here. I hoped not, because that time I had gotten myself into a real mess with an emotionally messed-up guy. Paris had been my escape.

All three women gave me puzzled looks this time. “Well, that works out all right, then, since you’re only here for two more months. Besides, if he’s gay, you don’t really have to worry about it, do you? Um . . . Laura? Maybe you should take the feathers out of your hair.”

I clutched at the little blue dangling things, my last item of color. “What! They’re cutting-edge fashion.” The feather fad that year in Paris promised to be the only time in my life I would get to wear feathers in public without social ruin, and I had seized on the opportunity enthusiastically.

“You never know what can turn someone off,” Eva said diplomatically, twitching them away and passing them to Adela. I thought that if wearing feathers was likely to turn him off, maybe we should get it out of the way immediately. He might be cute but feather fads only came once a lifetime.

But it was too late. We were on our way to the restaurant.

The instant we got there, Eva’s eyes lit up like a wolf’s at the smell of blood, and I knew I was doomed. If I didn’t ask him out now, Eva would, and that was just too galling to allow.

I’ll skip over the giddy, giggling details of a three-course dinner among four women when one of them is planning to ask their waiter out at the end of it. It all went by in a blur for me anyway. I was too stressed. By the time we got the bill, I was a basket case, but Eva kept looking at me with an anticipatory gleam, just dying for me to bail.

You’re a sex goddess, I whispered to myself. Any man would love to go out with you. It’s much easier to believe my sex goddess pep talk when I’m actually better-looking than the guy in question. Butterflies swarming in my stomach, I pulled out the printed party invitation.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Adela’s voice penetrated my wound-up conscious, chiding the others. “We don’t want to give too big a tip. We don’t want to seem like we’re trying to buy him.”

I looked up. “Well, we don’t want to leave a small one. We don’t want to seem rude. And it’s not his fault if he doesn’t like me.”