There was his own cramped chicken scratch writing: How am I doing?

And then there was a drawing that she’d done, this Miss DeRosa. It was of a stick figure hitting a ball out of a baseball park. The stick figure was labeled you and the ball was labeled life.

Sebastian’s face pulled into a surprised laugh.

He was knocking life out of the park. Well. Imagine that.

Without thinking too much on it, he went ahead and taped that up on the fridge, too.

CHAPTER TWO

Two years later

SEBASTIAN COULD NOT believe he was scrolling through a dating app. What the hell was his life? He tossed the phone to the side and tipped his head back on one armrest of his new couch.

“Come on, you can’t give up that easily,” Tyler said as he sauntered back into the room. He handed Sebastian a beer and tossed his feet up on the coffee table as he plunked into the recliner.

Sebastian recalled the horrifying last hour of his life. Choosing a profile picture. Distilling his life into a handful of words and a—sweet Jesus—smattering of emojis.

You call that easy?

Tyler and Sebastian had met in kindergarten and hadn’t questioned a good thing. They still didn’t. They disagreed more often than they agreed, but they’d drink poison for each other if it came to it. Hell, Tyler had even moved back to Brooklyn after Cora had died. He’d claimed that he was just done with LA, but Sebastian knew that his friend had come home for him and Matty.

That was the majority of the reason Sebastian had even downloaded the damn dating app in the first place. Tyler had insisted it was a good idea.

“Hand it over,” Tyler demanded, holding his hand out for the phone.

Sebastian complied and chuckled as Crabby, their two-year-old poodle mix, immediately bolted over the second he saw Sebastian’s hand moving. Crabby blinked up at his owner, poofy tail wagging furiously, like, got any ear scratches you might wanna distribute?

Sebastian obliged and scratched behind the dog’s one white ear. “I really don’t think this is the way I find somebody.” He nodded toward the phone.

Tyler scoffed. “Seb, this is how everybody finds somebody. Here, what about her?” He flipped the phone around and showed a picture of a very pretty girl on a beach.

Sebastian lifted a dark eyebrow. “Tyler, I’m forty-two. With a kid. And enough gray hairs to prove both. I’m not dating some twenty-five-year-old cupcake in a thong bikini.”

“You don’t have to make a life with this woman. Just take her to some bar, buy her a drink and then let her remind you why God gave us opposable thumbs.”

“You’re a moron.”

“Actually, I’m a genius. You’re just too pedestrian to recognize my brilliance. How about her?”

He tossed the phone over and Sebastian flipped through the profile of a professional-looking woman with chin-length blond hair and a very white smile. Apparently, she was a wine connoisseur. Sebastian clicked the phone off and needled one corner of it into his brow.