“Who are we talking about?” asked Serafine St. Romain, or Fin for short, as she sauntered in from Tyler’s kitchen. Fin was a singular presence. She was tall, spooky-eyed and blazingly beautiful. Plenty of people doubted Fin’s skills as a psychic and energy reader, but Mary wasn’t one of them. She fully believed in Fin’s clairvoyance.

Fin plunked down on the floor next to Tyler, curling up like a clumsy kitten next to him. He hummed in pleasure, eyes still closed, and absently played with Fin’s long dark braid.

Mary smiled at the sight the two of them made together. Preppy Tyler and hippie Fin. Such a strange pair, made all the more interesting by how blisteringly in love they were with one another. Mary envied them in a good-natured way. Though it might have bothered some people that her entire group of close friends had paired off together, first Sebastian and Via and now Tyler and Fin, Mary was just happy for everyone.

Mostly.

She’d originally been friends with Sebastian and Tyler. If it was unusual to have two male best friends, Mary had never thought much about it. They were good friends, caring, funny, kind. Sebastian had fallen in love with Via, a counselor at his son’s elementary school, and Fin had come along into their group as Via’s best friend and foster sister. Tyler and Fin had had a long road toward finally being together, but when it had happened a few months ago, Mary had breathed a big sigh of relief. She’d suspected all along that the gorgeous and enigmatic Serafine St. Romain had the power to truly wound her goofy, preppy, crude, generous best friend. She was glad it had worked out the way it was supposed to.

It didn’t pass her notice, however, that both of her fortysomething-year-old best friends had ended up with women a decade-plus younger than they were. It wasn’t until she’d learned that Fin and Tyler were truly together did it really hit her. She might be on the losing end of a certain social equation. Because it seemed to her that once over thirty, men rarely dated women their own age. And even less dated older women.

She’d just started toying with the idea of starting to date older men, much older men, when Estrella had come along and proposed her thirty-one-year-old son.

Mary frowned. Her thirty-one-year-old son who found her age so repellant it was literally the first thing he’d commented on. And now Mary was on this strange waterslide, where around every bend, there was Estrella shoving some young thirtysomething guy in her path. She wasn’t going to complain, but maybe she should hedge her bets a little bit and date some older guys on the side as well.

“Hmm?” Mary pulled herself from her thoughts to answer Fin. “Oh. Estrella.”

“I love that woman,” Fin said emphatically.