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One
I might be single and alone on New Year’s Eve. But I’m not woe as me. No, ma’am. I’m looking at this moment as an opportunity to cherish my solitude.
With a sigh, I set down my pen and picked up my water glass. I should be drinking alcohol at least. Maybe I still would. I wasn’t much of a wine fan, but I could use tonight to broaden my horizons. A cocktail sounded nice. Very adult.
A drink I could enjoy happily on my own.
Okay, cut the crap. In my diary, I should be honest. The diary I was writing in while I ate my dinner of consommé—fancy soup essentially—and garlic breadsticks, because who was I going to kiss at midnight? No one.
Joyfully solo, that was me.
In reality, I was fresh off another broken Tinder date. Broken by me, no less. I could never quite close the deal. Probably because a date with me held more weight than the usual hookup.
I’d been adult about that too. Virginity was a burden, so I’d just rid myself of it quickly and quietly. No fuss. Until the time came to actually meet Joe Blow in the flesh—yes, that was his name on the site—and I’d balked. I’d made up an excuse about getting together with an ex and that had been that.
As if I had any exes. Just a few high school boyfriends who hadn’t amounted to much.
Since then, I’d stuck close to home, the dutiful older sister who raised her younger siblings after our parents had died in a plane crash. Now that the twins, Emma and Rachel, had turned nineteen and gone off to college, that left me at loose ends.
Alone for real.
“Can I get you anything else? Maybe you’d like a look-see at the dessert menu? The lemon bars are my favorite. They’re my mama’s recipe.”
I blinked up at the grinning blond waitress. At least I thought she was a waitress, though she had a more commanding air about her despite her small town friendliness. “Your mama works here too?”
“Not anymore. She used to own the joint. Then she retired and sold it out from under me with no warning, but I got it back because of my lovable pain-in-the-ass baby daddy. Well, husband too. So, lemon bars?”
I rubbed my temple. Whoa, information overload. “You have a husband? You look…youthful.”
Luckily, I’d managed not to say she looked twelve, which was a misstatement in any case. She looked at least sixteen. But not old enough to be married, at least in New York.
She laughed and sat down opposite me at the table. “Sure do.”
“And a baby.”
“Yeah, she’s not even a year old yet. Star’s the light of my life. Want to see?” She was already tugging a folding wallet of pictures—many, many pictures—out of her apron pocket.
“Um, sure?”
She showed me an array of photos of a chubby baby with bright green eyes and a drooly smile.
“She’s beautiful. Her hair is so dark.”
“Like Oliver’s. Unless it changes. I hope it doesn’t. It’s my ace in the hole I wasn’t impregnated by the milkman.”
Unsure if she was serious, I smiled faintly. “I think I’ll try those lemon bars, please.”
She nodded enthusiastically and bustled off to the kitchen. She seemed sweet.
