In A Holidaze - Christina Lauren Page 0,94

you are. We all just want you to be happy.”

Jess knew they did. That was why she’d agreed to test the Tinder waters in the first place. “Okay, let me humor you,” she said. “Let’s say I meet someone amazing. Where am I going to hook up with him? It was different when Juno was two. Now I have a light-sleeper seven-year-old with perfect hearing, and the last time I went to a guy’s place it was so messy, a pair of his boxers stuck to my back when I got up to use the bathroom.”

“Gross.”

“Agreed.”

“Still.” Fizzy rubbed a thoughtful finger beneath her lip. “Single parents make it work all the time, Jess. Look at the Brady Bunch.”

“Your best example is a fifty-year-old sitcom?” The harder Fizzy tried to convince her, the less Jess actually wanted to get back out there.

“Mrs. Brady didn’t give up. All I’m saying.”

“In 1969 only thirteen percent of parents were single. Carol Brady was a trailblazer. I am not.”

“Vanilla latte!” the barista, Daniel, shouted over the din of the coffee shop.

Fizzy motioned that she wasn’t done being a pain in Jess’s ass before standing and making her way to the counter.

Jess had been coming to Twiggs coffee shop every day for almost as long as she’d been freelancing. Her life, which essentially existed in a four-block radius, was exceedingly manageable as it was. She walked Juno to school just down the street from their apartment complex while Fizzy grabbed the best table—in the back, away from the glare of the window but near the outlet that hadn’t yet gone wobbly—at seven thirty every morning. Jess crunched numbers while Fizzy wrote novels, and in an effort to not be leeches, they ordered something every ninety minutes; the treats had the added benefit of incentivizing them to work more, gossip less.

Except today. She could already tell Fizzy was going to be unrelenting.

“Okay.” Her friend returned with her drink and a blueberry muffin and took a moment to get situated. “Where was I?”

Jess kept her eyes on the email in front of her, pretending to read. “I think you were about to say that it’s my life and that I should do what I think is best.”

“We both know that’s not something I would say.”

“Why am I your friend?”

“Because I immortalized you as the villain in Crimson Lace, and you became a fan favorite so I can’t kill you off.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re answering my questions or just continuing an ongoing conversation in your head.”

Fizzy began peeling the paper off her muffin. “What I was going to say is that you can’t throw in the towel because of one bad date.”

“It’s not just the one bad date,” Jess said. “It’s the exhausting and alien process of trying to be appealing to men. I freelance dataset algorithms and consider my sexiest outfit to be my old Buffy shirt and a pair of cutoffs. My favorite pajamas are a threadbare tank top and some maternity yoga pants.”

Fizzy whimpered out a plaintive “No.”

“Yes,” Jess said, emphatically. “On top of that, I had a kid when most people our age were still lying about enjoying Jägermeister. It’s hard to polish myself for a dating profile.”

Fizzy laughed.

“Plus, I hate taking time away from Juno for some guy I’m probably never going to see again.”

Fizzy let that sink in for a beat. “So, you’re . . . done? Jessica, you went on two dates with two hot, if dull, men.”

“Until Juno is older, yeah.”

She regarded Jess with suspicion. “How much older?”

“I don’t know.” Jess picked up her coffee, but her attention was snagged when the man they referred to as “Americano” stepped into Twiggs, striding to the front precisely on cue—8:24 in the morning—all long legs and dark hair and surly, glowering vibes, not making eye contact with a single person. “Maybe when she’s in college?”

When Jess’s eyes left Americano, horror was rippling through Fizzy’s expression. “College?” She lowered her voice when practically every head in the coffee shop swiveled. “You’re telling me that if I sat down to write the novel of your future love life, I’d be writing a heroine who is happily showing her body to a dude for the first time in eighteen years? Honey, no. Not even your perfectly preserved vagina can pull that off.”

“Felicity.”

“Like an Egyptian tomb in there. Practically mummified,” Fizzy mumbled into a sip.

Up front, Americano paid for his drink and then stepped to the side, absorbed in typing something on his phone. “What is