“I’ll go out and meet somebody. Somebody amazing. You know, Lara was always so serious about her nine-to-five. Maybe I need to be with someone more...” He snapped his fingers, searching for the word. “Artsy. Yeah. Someone really creative. You know, like one of those girls who lives in an artists’ loft and wears overalls with paint smeared on them.” Jared was really starting to perk up now that he was a man with a plan.

“Oh. Yeah. One of those girls,” Quentin said drily. Only Jared would actually believe those girls existed outside of rom-coms written by men.

“Yeah,” Jared said, obviously warming to his genius idea. “Gotta get back out there. Can’t keep a good man down. Fish in the sea, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jared was practically inhaling his food now. “This is good,” he decided. “This’ll be a good thing. I’ll do a little mambo Italiano and recalibrate my world view.”

“I...don’t even know what that means,” Quentin said with a laugh.

“Well, that’s your problem, Q. You need to learn how to get messy every once in a while. Life is better when it’s a little bit rocky.” He scraped the last of his pasta sauce off his plate with the side of his fork. “Why do you think I’ve dated Lara for this long?”

Quentin opened his mouth but clapped it closed when he couldn’t think of a response. “Huh.”

“Trust me, man,” Jared said, clearing his plate away. “The smoothest road is the most boring one.”

Chapter Five

CAT TUGGED HER door open with a toothy smile on her face. She’d just checked the peephole and seen Quentin knocking.

“Hi!”

“Wow” was his answer, his eyebrows up in his hairline. “You’re looking very...green.”

“Oh, right. I didn’t think I was going to have any visitors. Come on in while I wash the mask off.”

She waved him into her apartment and scampered into the bathroom to wash the avocado and seaweed mask off her face. She looked down at her yoga pants and T-shirt and considered changing her clothes. But after all, it was just Quentin; she could be comfortable around him.

When she went back into her living room, he was bent down, reading the titles on her bookshelf.

“You really like romance novels,” he observed.

“The finest form of escapism, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like a vacation in book form. And since I’m a public school teacher, those are the only kinds of vacations I can afford.”

“I get that,” he said, straightening up. “The escapism thing, I mean. I’m pretty into fantasy novels for the same reason.” He winced. “Dang. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. Now you’re going to think I’m an even bigger nerd than you already do.”

Cat cocked her head in confusion. “Have I ever called you a nerd?”

He blinked at her for a second. “No, but with the train set and everything... I just assumed.” He cleared his throat. “Anyways, I came over to invite you to watch a movie with me and Jared. You said you wanted help getting to know him. So, yeah. Come on over.”