I told Josh about the whole tasting my drink for drugs bit that Jackson did, though he didn’t think it was quite as funny as I did now looking back.
“What an asshole.”
“I already went over this with Gina.”
“Well, I agree with you both,” he said.
That made me feel somewhat validated. Even as I sat next to the toilet with my hair stuck to my forehead. Validation quicklyreturned to embarrassment as Josh squatted down next to me and—God—flushed the toilet. Again.
I shut my eyes in shame.
“You done?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“You might just have a virus.”
“But that feels so much less fun to say than I was actually poisoned environmentally by another bad date. The readers would get a kick out of it.”
He chuckled. “Readers?”
“Kind of. Online.”
“You’re writing again?”
I wiped beneath my eyes and checked my fingers. Mascara. Of course.
“It’s silly,” I muttered.
“I doubt that,” he said. “Unless you’re writing comedy. Then it’s probably hysterical.”
“Well, I guess it kind of is then. Gina talked me into starting a newsletter, and my life might as well be a joke these days.”
I gave him a half-hearted smile.
“It’s mostly just for me. Misery loves company and all that, so at least it feels like I’m not writing to an empty room.”
“Are all the dates really going that bad?” he asked, settling into the corner cushion, one arm slung lazily over the back.
I huffed. “If I say yes, will it make me sound like I’m the problem?”
“Doubtful.”
“I’ve had six dates,” I said, wincing. “And I think I have another one tonight—which, right now, just makes me want to curl up and die.”
“Oof.”
I exhaled. “And there are still so many more left. I don’t know how I’m supposed to pull off twelve before Christmas.”
“Why do you keep doing it then?”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said with a slight shrug, as if what he was about to say was completely obvious, “you could just … stop going on the blind dates.”
I stared at him. It was such a simple thing to say. So logical. And I had thought about it. But saying no would mean letting someone down. Gina who went to all the trouble along with her friends to set me up. Maybe, even a bit, me.
It would mean stopping the momentum when everything else in my life already felt stalled.
