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Besides having Carmen here, the only other perk to my current job was carpool, and my carpool group was dead.
Well, maybe notdeaddead, but mostly dead. And not mostly dead in a hot-farm-boy, happily-ever-after, Princess-Bride kind of way. Mostly dead, as in, we occasionally drove in together for the fun of it, trying to prove it wasn’t dead.
My brother was always working overtime now, and Jenny and Noah were disgustingly happy engaged people who needed time together more than they needed to save on gas money. Not that I resented that. It was just, their happily-ever-after often left me with no one to talk to at the end of the day except a parrot. And even the parrot would be leaving soon. I was only pet-sitting him.
Everyone seemed to be moving on with their lives. Carmen had already put in her two-weeks-notice, something she reminded me of daily. I hated how much I’d miss her. Needing people wasn’t something I liked to admit. People were supposed to needme.
Yep, it was official. I was an egomaniac.
I pulled up the latest inventory spreadsheet and got to work, but my thoughts kept circling back to GoWithFriends.
Online dating wasn’t for me, but I would be blind not to see the company’s appeal for everyone else. GoWithFriends arranged group dates so meeting for the first time could be fun, rather than awkward and intimidating. And it was working.
Their explosive growth was making all the other online dating companies in the country fall all over themselves to imitate them. And yet GoWithFriends was still mowing them down.
It was probably just a trend. They’d be Blockbuster Video in no time. The Macarena. Rainbow Loom bracelets. The Selfie Stick. Except that last one had sort of revived itself thanks to TikTok… Whatever.
I didn’t do trends. But I did like trend money. Okay, so I’d scoped out what positions GoWithFriends was hiring for after Carmen told me they hired her, and I’d glanced at the salaries offered. Outrageous! Unsustainable. I’d be almost doubling my income. But then when the bust was over and they went belly up, I’d be back to looking for work… while I sobbed into the fistfuls of cash I’d earned. Was it really such a bad idea?
I pulled my cell phone out of the top drawer of my desk and quickly texted my roommate and mostly-dead carpool partner. Jenny was the only one who knew I was considering quitting my job.
Sadie: I’m doing it this time.
Jenny: What are you doing? Is this about Denver?
Ugh. No. Not everything had to be about him. Speaking of egomaniacs.
Sadie: No, I’m not talking about Denver and his flavor-of-the-month.
Jenny: You’ve got to get over the Makayla thing.
Sadie: But like two seconds after he confessed his love for you and got rejected, he was filling out his profile for Rent-A-Chick. That doesn’t bother you?
Jenny: First of all, he was not confessing his love for me. He said he was interested. And no, I don’t care that he found Makayla right after. She’s nice. He’s nice. And he doesn’t like being alone.
That last part felt like a dig. I knew it wasn’t, but why did everyone assume I liked being alone? Just because I’d put out those vibes for years and only recently relaxed them? I chuckled to myself and realized we’d taken quite the detour from what I originally texted her about. And also, how ironic was it that a loner like me wanted to work for a company that sent you on group dates?
Sadie: I’m applying at GoWithFriends.
Jenny sent me a hallelujah choir gif, and one of Michael fromThe Officeraising the roof.
Whatever. I’d only told her I was sending in my application so I’d actually do it and not chicken out this time. My resume was all prepped. Somehow, I’d been able to update it with everything I thought they’d like about me while still being in denial about ever sending it in.
I double-checked the already prepared email, and with one click of a button, I’d done it.
I wasn’t bilingual and effervescent like Carmen, but I had other skills they might like. And if not, at least I could stop dreaming about it and just deal with the fact that my career was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Chapter 2 – Denver
I never thought I’d hate blueberry muffins. Or pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Or raspberry scones. Seriously scones, where have you been all my life? But Makayla keeps making too many. She just happens to accidentally double the recipe. Every time. On every recipe. An oops, except totally on purpose. A sus oops, as my younger cousins would call it. And this sus oops was all part of Makayla’s attempt to win over her unwinnable neighbors.
Unfortunately, food bribes work better with dudes. I’ve told her that. I’ve explained all the reasons why these particular neighbors didn’t want her over there with cookie handouts even if they said otherwise out of politeness. I’ll give Makayla this. She’s a great listener. With those big, brown doe-eyes she looked very seriously at me and nodded in all the right places.
And then she ignored me and did the exact opposite. Which was why we were standing outside her apartment neighbors’ door holding baked goods. Again. For some reason, she wanted to be besties with Jenny and Sadie. Desperately.
“If you really want this to work, you should dump me and join their little hate club. Then you guys would have something in common,andendless conversation starters. Like this: Remember that guy you dated? Denver? Man, he was a total loser.” I clutched my chest. “Oh, you hate him too? That’s amazing. You’re amazing. No, you’re amazing.”
“Stop. That’s not even a thing. Girls don’t talk like that.” Makayla’s lips twitched. She was trying not to laugh and failing miserably. Making her laugh was my favorite game. I never lost.
