‘Sure, I’ll share.’ I put my arm along the back of her, so the brim of my hat covered her. She rolled her eyes but leaned into my shoulder for a cuddle.
‘What have you been up to anyway, Noelle?’ Tim asked. ‘You look all in. Everything going okay with the book?’
‘Sure. Living the dream as always. Must just be the heat. So hard to sleep when it’s this hot.’ I plastered a grin on my face and fanned myself with the programme. My parents – my whole family really, now most of us were adults – worried about my career. I’d given up being a midwife four years ago to write full time when my first two novels sold well, and I was offered the six-book contract.
If I ever gave them any indication that things were not peachy, wonderful and amazing, they instantly started checking up on me, trying to find out if my medical insurance had lapsed and reassuring me that there was always a bed for me at home. I was so lucky to have them all – but also, having a minimum of nine immediate family members trying to look after me because they were worried I was going to starve, alone in my apartment, for the sake of my art, didn’t bolster my confidence. I wished they had a little more faith in me and my chosen career. Particularly when my faith in myself was wobbly.
My series was all about this private detective who travelled around solving mysteries in cosy, small-town communities – and, of course, there was a love interest, who’d been dangling in one of those yummy will-they-won’t-they relationships. Only now, at the end of the series, I had to say whether theywould,or theywouldn’t… As well as come up with a satisfying mystery that was not completely separate from the character development.
I’d managed to write myself into a romantic subplot corner and I had no clue how to get out of it.
My heroine, Charmaine, was capable and self-sufficient, smart and able to make friends (and a few enemies) everywhere she went. Kit – her love interest – had been there, helping out, basically being endlessly competent and making heart eyes at her because she was amazing. What possible reason could there be for her to give in and settle down with him when she was so cynical about love after her parents’ bitter divorce? I’d written her strong and independent and I’d be damned if I was going to change that, so…I was stuck.
My cell phone pinged in my bag and my sister nudged me. ‘Someone’s messaged you.’
‘Yeah, I got it.’ I pulled it out and saw a text message from my friend Kaylee.
When I sent out the SOS to my core team of writing buddies, Kaylee immediately told me not to worry about trying to plan the changes yet. That I should just let my editor’s comments percolate in my brain for a day and go out with her this evening for drinks. It was amazing how often a writer’s solution to something involved alcohol, cake, caffeine or all three. But I knew that it was sensible advice (the space, rather than the drinking). I’d said the same thing to other writers myself more than once. It was June 14th and my editor was due on vacation in three weeks. Ideally, I needed to get the revised manuscript to her by then, so she could read it while she was supposed to be relaxing.
Three weeks was such a short amount of time for such a massive overhaul. I had to use every minute I could spare, and I knew Kaylee’d understand that…
‘Well, aren’t you gonna answer it?’ Daisy nudged me again. Teenagers are so twitchy about technology. She was thirteen and had only just been allowed social media, but when she wasn’t running around a track or hitting softballs, she was fielding hundreds of notifications on her cell.
‘Not yet.’
‘Oh, I get it.’ She nodded knowingly. ‘Who are you ghosting? Did you go on a date with a creep and now you have to shake him off?’
Mom’s head swivelled in my direction like a hawk sighting a mouse at a hundred yards, her blue eyes wide. ‘Do I need to speak to your father? He can send someone around if you’re being harassed.’
‘No.’ I leaned forward to look down the row, knowing Dad would already be listening in, picking up the tone of Mom’s voice. ‘No. I’m not being harassed, no police presence required,’ I told him and his raised eyebrows.
‘Why have you turned your ringer off now if you’re not trying to ignore someone?’ Daisy asked after watching me switch my cell to silent and put it away again.
‘We’re about to watch a play; that’s just good theatre etiquette.’
‘Yeah, yeah, what did the guy do this time, Noelle?’ Tim chipped in, with a teasing grin. ‘Order your dinner for you? Put the jelly on before the peanut butter? Which interview question did he fail?’
‘I wish I’d never told you about that.’ I scowled at him. After the first couple of months of internet dating, I’d devised a list of questions I needed guys to answerbeforeI even agreed to going on a date with them. Pretty obvious stuff. What was the point of meeting up if I knew our politics were completely incompatible or they never wanted kids, or they thought that writing wasn’t a real job? Made sense to me but Tim had taken every opportunity to wind me up about being picky and high maintenance, ever since.
What was worse, the list of questions didn’t even help. Sure, I went on fewer dates, but they were equally pointless because the men Ididmeet up with had either lied their socks off, been strategically dishonest or I had zero chemistry with them.
I was sick of it. And sick of being the butt of my family’s dating jokes. Lucy had found her soulmate, Quinn, in high school; Tim and Delia had been together since college and for some (sexist) reason, my brothers’ love lives were never of much interest; and Daisy was too young, so I got the full brunt of it. They even had labels for the types of men I apparently went for, with equally disastrous results. Was it a Type A failure or a Type B?
Mom shook her head a little and relaxed again, now she was convinced there was no threat to one of her children to worry about. ‘I don’t understand online dating. Whatever happened to just letting fate take a hand? What’s the rush?’
I made a vague sound. In principle I agreed with Mom. I knew I wasn’t old. I knew that even if I didn’t meet someone for another decade it needn’t mean my hopes of starting a family of my own were scuppered. Mom had fallen pregnant with Daisy when she was thirty-seven and I’d delivered many a baby to healthy, happy new mothers in their forties.
But.
My record for meeting good people through a dating app was so dire, I’d chosen to delete them all. My prospects of finding that needle-in-a-haystack person the old-fashioned way was even harder. I hadn’t been on a date in months.
‘You know what you should try,’ Tim announced, no doubt about to lay some classic mansplaining on me. I loved him but as the eldest brother he had this way of thinking he knew best, even though Lucy and I were older than him. ‘Blind dating.’
‘I know a guy. Is he allowed to bring his guide dog?’ Uncle Joe joked, always eager to wind someone up. He meant no harm, it was just his way, but I was feeling too crabby from my bad editing news, and bad dating memories, and the heat, so I didn’t even bother to retort. Choosing to put this show on in a parking lot was a nice, gritty touch but my God it was baking hot. I’d arrived at around 5.30pm and now I had to be about seventy years older.
‘All right, Joe, enough. Noelle will find her guy soon enough,’ Mom said. ‘Now, sweetheart, have you got Brigid’s christening in your diary?’
‘Of course. August 18th.’ I’d had it in the diary since she was two weeks old. I was going to be godmother, but I appreciated that Mom’s change of subject was to help me out.
