CHAPTER 1
“Aren’t you supposed to be working on something?” Harlow asked her as she sat down with a bag of Larissa’s chips in her hand.
“Aren’tyousupposed to be looking for an apartment?” she asked back.
Harlow gave her an incredulous look before she opened the small bag and held it out for her to take the first chip. When she didn’t, Harlow shrugged and pulled one out for herself.
“I’ve been here for three days. I just got all my stuff out of her apartment. Give me a minute, at least.”
She ate a chip and winked at Larissa.
“How many times is this now?”
“That I’ve temporarily crashed in your guest bedroom?”
“Yes. Three?”
“Four, if you count the time I was here for a week before I landed that studio. Not all of them for the same reasons, though. Sometimes, a lease can run out before someone finds a new place when that someone puts off looking for said new place, like they should’ve been because their lease was about to expire. But who’s counting?” Harlow said before she stole Larissa’s bottle of sparkling water and took a sip. “So, how’s your dissertation coming, not-yet-doctor?”
“It’s not.”
“I know. That’s why I asked.” Harlow placed the bottle down and added, “And the book thing?”
“It’s not a bookthing,” she said and leaned back in her chair. “It’s a book. Well, itwillbe. Right now, it’s just a rough outline and not much else.”
“I don’t understand why you need to do this while you are trying to finally finish school.”
“Don’t sayfinallylike that. It takes people years to get their Ph.D. I’m on schedule, technically.”
Harlow ate another chip and said, “You’re thirty-five. You’ve been at this since grad school.”
“Ten years is perfectly respectable,” Larissa argued and stole a chip from the bag after all.
“Is it? I wouldn’t know; I dropped out of college.” Harlow leaned back in her chair and pulled out another chip. “I still don’t understand why a book instead of your school stuff. You didn’t go to school to be a writer. You’re trying to get a psych degree.”
“It’s a psych book. Well, sort of.”
“Is it, though? You want to tell people how to find love.”
“Nottellthem; just give them a path to it, or a deeper understanding of how it happens using science from asoon-to-be doctor of psychology.”
“Right. And your school thing is on–”
“Dissertation,” she corrected.
“Yes, I know what it’s called,not-Dr. Hanson.”
“Shut up,” Larissa replied, laughing, and stole the whole bag of chips.
“I’m only saying that you’re supposed to be working on one thing – something to do with cortisol levels or stress, I don’t remember exactly – but you’re working on some self-help book to help people fall in love instead. Correct me if I’m wrong here,but you’ve never really been in love yourself, right? I’ve known you forever, and you’ve only had two very short relationships.”
“Not forever.”
“Since college. And we’re in our thirties now, so close enough.” Harlow stole the chips back and took one out of the bag, chomping down on it. “What’s making you want to do this, Larissa? You’re so close to being done with school. And I know your parents aren’t going to pay for you forever.”
“Hey, they don’t pay for me. I have a job.”
“A part-time job at a bookstore so that you can finish this degree. They did it for your sister, too, because your family is like one of those Norman Rockwell paintings, but she got her Ph.D. in six years. You’re on ten now, and the way I watch you stare at a laptop screen without your dissertation on it tells me that you’re not working on the thing.”
