“They were embarrassed for both of us!”
“The grammar in your apartment is appalling,” Derek announced, holding up one of my books. “Split infinitives everywhere. Did no one teach you about parallel structure?”
“Did no one teach YOU about breaking and entering?”
“The door was open.” He made a note in red pen. In MY book. “Cosmically speaking.”
“The door was LOCKED. Physically speaking.”
“Far out,” Greg said through a mouthful of Lucky Charms. “You’re even groovier when you’re angry.”
I pressed my palms against my eyes and counted to ten. Then twenty. Then gave up because counting wasn’t going to fix this.
My phone buzzed. A new notification:Your romantic destiny awaits! Three matches are nearby!
“THEY’RE ALREADY HERE,” I told the phone. “I KNOW THEY’RE NEARBY. THEY’RE IN MY LIVING ROOM.”
The phone buzzed again.Four matches are nearby!
“I’M GOING TO THROW YOU IN THE RIVER.”
A knock at the door.
“Don’t,” I said to the room at large. “Nobody answer that. We’re at capacity. We have reached maximum occupancy for confused men from my romantic history.”
Another knock. More insistent.
“Maybe it’s pizza,” Greg offered hopefully. “I could groove on some pizza.”
“It’s not pizza. It’s never pizza.”
The knock became a pounding.
And then a voice I recognized—calm, steady, no-nonsense: “Diane? It’s Margaret. Let me in before your neighbors call the HOA.”
I practically sprinted to the door.
Margaret stood in the hallway holding a large carpet bag that looked like it belonged to Mary Poppins and smelled like sage and something earthier. She took one look past me into my apartment, surveyed the assembled chaos, and sighed.
“Worse than I thought.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You have a man in a leisure suit eating Lucky Charms in your armchair and two others arguing about whether ‘Bye Bye Bye’ was cultural appropriation of breakup terminology. Yes, it’s obvious.” She pushed past me into the apartment. “Everyone who doesn’t live here, go sit in the corner and be quiet. I need to work.”
To my amazement, they listened. Even Greg, who shuffled to the corner with his cereal bowl, looking chastened.
“How did you do that?”
“Sixty years of practice and a complete lack of patience for nonsense.” Margaret set her bag on my coffee table and began pulling out items—candles, salt, something that looked like dried herbs tied with red thread. “Cassie called. Said you had an escalation.”
“An escalation. Yes. That’s one word for it.” I gestured at the corner where my past romantic mistakes were clustered like sad, confused houseplants. “I woke up this morning with TWO uninvited ex-boyfriends. Plus Greg, who isn’t technically an ex because we never dated—the app just decided we had potential in 1978.”
“Far out,” Greg added helpfully from the corner.
“It’s getting worse,” Margaret said, not a question. “Because you’re getting closer.”
“Closer to WHAT?”
