men until I’ve had at least three cocktails.”
“Can’t we just skip the whole subject of men?” Yasmine asked as she eyed the grocery bag Cass had brought over.
She followed her friend as Cass carried the bag to the kitchen.
“Don’t tell me Alex is the one who shot you.”
“God, no! Of course not. If you must know, I broke it off permanently with him, and it wasn’t pretty. End of subject.”
“No fair. You can’t drop a little bomb like that without telling more.”
Yasmine ignored her, putting the margarita mix in the fridge and opening the bags of jalapeño chips and chocolate chip cookies to dump in bowls.
“Okay fine. You want to know what happened with Drew? He told me he wants us to date exclusively. After less than a week!”
“That’s great.”
“No, it’s crazy. I froze, and then he felt stupid, and then I said I thought we were just having fun, and he said he didn’t think we should see each other anymore.”
“Cass!”
“I know. I feel really bad for hurting him.”
“You could still call and apologize, maybe explain that you don’t have the emotional wiring of a normal human being.”
“I already used that explanation. He wasn’t buying it.”
“He must have been really into you.”
“After a week? That’s crazy.”
“Don’t you believe in whirlwind romance and love at first sight?”
“Hell, no. I mean, I loved David Lee Roth at first sight, and look how that turned out.”
“Falling for rock stars on MTV doesn’t count.”
“All that whirlwind romance stuff, it’s just kind of a convenient notion, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” But she did. She wasn’t even sure why she was arguing this point when she’d never experienced the mythical concept herself.
“It’s the kind of thing romance novelists probably made up to suit their plots. Dashing hero falls in love at first sight with spitfire heroine, but spitfire heroine is too busy saving her daddy’s ranch to be bothered with love—that is, until the evil cattle-rustling villain comes along and shows her that having a dashing hero around the ranch wouldn’t be such a bad idea. And it all happens within the space of two weeks.”
“You’re sounding more jaded than usual, you know.”
And yet Yasmine was feeling just as jaded as Cass sounded, just as beaten down by her love life and confused and not sure what the hell she wanted anymore.
“You’re the one who can’t bear to watch a romantic comedy.”
Yasmine eased down onto the couch, doing her best not to strain the bullet wound, and stared at the decorating show that was nearing its big room-makeover climax. It was a rerun, one she’d seen and therefore knew ended with the homeowners ecstatic with their mod-style living room. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten so excited over something as this couple was about to be over their new lime-green lamps.
“How did our lives get so dismal?” she said.
Cass finished chewing the cookie she’d shoved into her mouth whole before she answered. “It’s called self-pity. We don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves if we’re not happy.”
“But we should be happy. I mean, we’re young. We have good jobs, we’re healthy, blah blah blah…”
“Aside from the fact that you were just shot and kidnapped, you’re life’s pretty much perfect.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“And do you really love that dull-as-hell job of yours?”
Yasmine ignored the question and turned her attention to the jalapeño chips, which were a far easier subject than her career aspirations or lack thereof.
“Do you? I mean, look at you. You’ve got enough brains for two people, but instead of using what you’ve got, you settle for a job that has absolutely no chance of ever taking advantage of all your talent.”
“I’ve got a great job.”
“You work for a company that makes games with titles like Bodice Ripper. You’ve got a decent job for a new college grad, but given your talent, you should have been thinking of moving up and out by now.”
Yasmine shoved chips into her mouth and pretended to watch the closing credits of the decorating show. She couldn’t deal with her wrecked love life, her kidnapping trauma and her apparent lack of ambition all in one conversation.
“Bodice Ripper is actually a pretty funny game, you know. Did you try out that copy I gave you?”
“No.”
“It’s just like the old-school romance novels we were talking about. Hot hero, busty heroine, kinky bad guy…And you get points every time your hero needs to rip his own shirt off, and double points if he rips the heroine’s dress off and