“Sorry—Merry Christmas. A sex app.” She’d finished her grading a week ago, and in recent days she’d been experiencing . . . urges. Dani had spent the year and a half since Vince had left genuinely not interested in sex, or at least not sex with other people. She wasn’t totally dead inside—she did sometimes turn on old Patrick Swayze movies and, well . . . Now, though, she was suddenly contemplating the idea of having sex with an actual human male. How did a person make that happen?

“I think you’re supposed to call them dating apps,” Leo said.

“I don’t want to date, though.”

“Oh, I’m aware. You should get the phrase ‘post-men’ tattooed on your forehead.”

She winced. Leo had been around when things were really bad, when Vince was moving his stuff out and Dani was fighting back tears. “Right. I’m still post-men. I just want to have sex. Without dating.”

“For real?” He sounded skeptical.

“What do you mean? Of course for real.”

“Last time you expressed interested in hooking up with someone, you only wanted to do it to get even with Vince.”

She laughed. “Right. No, I’m not talking about revenge sex.”

“Did Max do this to you?”

“What? No.”

Yes. It had been almost two weeks since the Central Park hug-with-a-side-order-of-calf-touching, and Dani was pretty sure that was what had started this. Incidental physical contact with an attractive man. But the origin of her newfound horniness was immaterial. Even though Max was apparently a master at the kind of no-strings encounter she was looking for, she wasn’t banging the baron. Heh. Banging the Baron. It sounded like a porno. “Why would you think this had anything to do with Max?”

“He’s here. He’s been here since he got back from New York. He told us you guys went to The Nutcracker.” Left unsaid was that Dani hadn’t told him, and historically, Dani and Leo talked about everything. Though she’d told Leo about Max being her plus-one to the departmental party, she hadn’t told him about their outing the next day. She wasn’t sure why, just that Leo knew about her list, and to be honest, she didn’t like to think of herself as the kind of person who dropped everything when a baron dangled ballet tickets. She steered Leo back to the topic at hand. “Which app do I use? Tinder? Or one of those ones where they only let girls make the first move? Stumble? What is it called?”

“You’re asking me? You were the one who was always telling me to get on an app.”