The phone kept buzzing. Diane kept scrolling. The matches kept coming—sixty-three, seventy-one, eighty-four—men from every decade of her romantic history and quite a few she’d never met, all suddenly very interested in Diane Martinez and her accidentally enchanted dating profile.
“I can fix this,” Cassie said. “Probably. Margaret can help. We’ll figure out how to un-enchant your phone and everything will go back to?—”
“Back to what? Normal?” Diane laughed, slightly hysterically. “Cassie, I have a match with a guy whose profile says he’s looking for ‘a groovy chick who digs disco.’ DISCO. The app is pulling men from the SEVENTIES.”
“That does seem excessive.”
“You THINK?”
Liam appeared in the doorway, dish towel over his shoulder, looking like a man who had learned not to be surprised by anything that happened in this house.
“Problem?”
“Cassie hexed my love life.”
“I didn’thexit. I just… accidentally supercharged it. With magic. Across multiple timelines, apparently.”
He blinked. “Right. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Luna stretched luxuriously, hopping down from the couch to wind between Diane’s ankles. “Look on the bright side. You wanted excitement. You wanted sparks. You wanted men to notice you.”
“I wanted ONE man. A NORMAL man. From THIS DECADE.”
“Details.” The cat’s eyes gleamed. “This is going to besomuch more interesting.”
Diane’s phone hit one hundred matches and showed no signs of slowing down. Somewhere in the app’s depths, algorithms were breaking. Rules were bending. Men from her past, her present, and possibly her future were all suddenly, inexplicably, magnetically drawn to her profile.
She looked at Cassie with the expression of a woman who had just realized her life was about to become very, very complicated.
“You’re helping me fix this.”
“Of course.”
“And you’re buying all the wine.”
“Obviously.”
“And if a single man from my romantic history shows up at my door in person, I’m moving in here and you’re dealing with it.”
The phone buzzed. One hundred and seventeen matches.
A new message appeared:
Greg, 51 (but looking suspiciously 25 in his photo): Hey beautiful. Remember me? Junior year. The parking lot behind the gym. ;)
Diane screamed.
Luna purred.
And somewhere in the cosmic machinery of love and magic and accidentally enchanted technology, something that had been dormant for a very long time began to wake up.
Diane Martinez was about to have averyinteresting few weeks.
1
THIS IS NOT MY STORY
THE MORNING AFTER EVERYTHING WENT SIDEWAYS
