Page 36 of Manhattan Kiss

“There was no way I was going to message him.” Definitely not when I had a much better evening because he never showed up.

“I would have told him I was going to hunt him down and kill him,” Avril says.

“And that’s why there are five different guys with five different restraining orders against you,” Poppy replies.

“Really?” I ask.

Avril laughs. “No, no restraining orders, but I don’t hold back. I probably should, but I’m just sick of these guys being pathetic and getting away with it.”

“I dated a guy last year for three months and it turned out he was married,” Poppy says.

“You didn’t know before you went out with him?”

Poppy shakes her head. “He told me he was divorced. And then I ran into him and his not-so-ex-wife at a restaurant in Tribeca.”

“Thank god you didn’t tell Worth until we’d left,” Avril says. “Our brother would have gotten arrested.”

“How did you know it was his wife and he wasn’t just cheating on you?” I ask.

“Because I went up to the table on my way out and introduced myself.”

Avril starts to laugh. The kind of uncontrollable giggles I haven’t had in years.

“I marched up to the table and said, ‘Hi, Brad, good to see you.’ Then I turned and offered my hand to the woman and asked her name. Then I asked her if she was Brad’s wife, and she said she was, so I said that her husband had told me that he was divorced, and that we’d been dating for the past three months.”

I wince. “Then what happened?”

“Then I left. I hope he ended up wearing his entrée and losing a lot of money in the divorce.”

“When our brother found out, he said we weren’t allowed to date anyone again until he’d done a full background check on them.”

I laugh. “I like that idea. So, is that what you do now?”

Poppy sighs. “Honestly, it’s made me a little gun-shy. I’ve only gone on a few dates since and my heart hasn’t been in it.”

“I get that,” I reply.

“You do?” she asks. “Were you seeing someone back in the UK?”

“No one serious. And I think when enough things don’t work out, you start to wonder what you’re doing wrong.”

“Nothing I can see,” Poppy says. “You’re gorgeous and so fun.”

I smile. “Same with you girls. I guess we just haven’t found the right guys.”

“Yet,” Avril says. “I have to believe it’s going to happen.”

I pull in a breath. “You know, part of the reason I came here was because I thought my life would turn out differently. I thought I’d be married and have a family by now, and it hasn’t happened, so I decided I couldn’t stand around waiting for it to happen. Something had to change.”

“And so you came to New York,” Poppy says.

“Right. Not to find my person, but to be proactive. Instead of letting life happen to me, I wanted to make a choice.”

Poppy nods enthusiastically. “We know how that feels. You make a plan and then you’re on the road to that plan, and you don’t think about it too much. That was like you as well, wasn’t it?” She nods at Avril.

“Yeah, I was studying economics, can you believe it? Hotel on Ninth Street wasn’t even a dream. And now, here we are.”

“It’s so nice that you get to work together.”