“Me? Why?”
“If you’re seeing anyone yet.”
“I just broke up with Alicia.”
“I know. She knows that, too. She just has this idea that you’re always in a relationship.”
“I’m not.”
“I know that.”
“Doyou?” she asked, suddenly very concerned.
“Harlow, yes, I know you’re not always in a relationship. There’s nothing wrong with that even if you were.”
“But I’m not. I get that Aggie might think that, but I’m single, and I plan to stay that way for a while.”
“You do? Why? You’re that hurt about Alicia? I thought you seemed fine with the breakup. Then again, you’re usually fine to me after breakups, though.”
“Iamfine,” Harlow replied and set the now-empty bag of cookies down on the table. “I think I want to figure some things out. That’s all.”
“Anything I should be worried about?”
“No, just me doing some soul-searching.”
“Okay. Well, I hope that works out for you.”
The door opened then, and two women walked in. Harlow knew their conversation was over, at least for now, so she smiled up at them and tried to remember their names.
CHAPTER 11
“So, can you walk us through how you met? Be as specific as possible,” Larissa said as she pressed the record button on her phone. “What I’m looking for here is the story of how you fell in love and the factors that might have influenced it, kept you apart, or helped you get together.”
“You want to know how we met or how we fell in love? Those are two different things,” Maia said.
“It would be great if you could start from the beginning, including the period of time when you met but you weren’t yet in love. As much as you’re willing to share. And if there’s something you don’t want to tell me, just let me know.”
“Okay,” Maia said with a nod.
Larissa hadn’t remembered their application at first. In the end, she had gotten more than sixty and, technically, she was still accepting more of them because she hadn’t turned off the form people could submit and didn’t plan on doing so until she had a good idea what this book would be about and how she’d tell these stories. She knew Harlow was interested in the stories and supposedshewas, too, but she had started this looking for a way to bring sometimes complicated science to the masses to help them find love themselves or maybe recognize it when they saw it and take action instead of letting obstacles get in their way. She’d pictured couples coming up to her at some imaginarybook tour where people would want her to sign a book, and then, they’d tell her how they either found one another or got together because they read it.
She knew that was far-fetched, but it had been her hope when she had first started. Now, they were doing their third interview, and Maia and Winter hadn’t initially been on her list of couples to talk to. She squinted, which she did when she was deep in thought, because she actually had several couples she wanted to talk to that she would’ve prioritized over these two, but Harlow had seen their questionnaire and had insisted she send them an email to see if they were able to come in person. There would be some video interviews, too, and she thought about making the form go wide, posting it on more boards and maybe throughout the university’s network as well to get as many responses as possible, but for now, she just wanted to sit in this room with her best friend, who was very much into this whole thing, and the two women who were about to tell them their love story.
“So, Winter is a year older than me, and she was in the same grade throughout school as my brother, Mike. We’ve known each other for a long time.” Maia laughed a little.
“Not that long. I’m twenty-eight.”
“She has a thing about turning thirty,” Maia shared and shook her head. “As if that’s a big deal. And she knows I’m only a year behind her anyway.”
“You dated Maia’s brother first, didn’t you?” Harlow asked Winter.
“Mike and I were friends at first, but yeah, we went on a few dates.”
“A few dates, she says.” Maia laughed and wrapped her arm around the back of Winter’s chair. “They dated for six months.”
“Barely,” Winter argued. “He only got to second base.”
“And I got to slide into home? Is that what you’re going for there?”
