“Too much on my mind. Weird dreams. I keep waking up after four, five hours of sleep.”
“Sounds like you need to get laid.”
I glance at her sharply. “Lauren. I’ve told you, unless you live through what Alex and I did, you will never understand why it will be a cold day in hell before I ever use a dating app again.”
“There are other ways to get laid.” She lifts her hands. “And Iwon’tbring up the obvious solution of banging Hot Chef. There are lots of scenarios that could lead to hookups for casual sex.”
“Not for me. I’m a homebody bookworm whose social life consists of Banjo Night at the Elks and monthly euchre tournaments with my ladies’ choir.”
“Once again, my deepest grief that you are straight. If you weren’t, that would be incredibly fertile ground for sapphic hookups,” Lauren says.
A sad laugh leaves me. “True.”
“So what’s going on?” she asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m still sitting on the business proposal for Fern. I’m willingly going on vacation with Alex and our exes. I keep having horny sex dreams about Alex, set in the bookstore of my dreams. I don’t think we need Sue to break this one down for me—I am stuck between what I have and what I want, personally and professionally, and I’m miserable.”
Lauren’s quiet for a beat. “And until that changes, you’re probably going to stay miserable.”
I sigh heavily. “Yeah, probably.”
“So…” She glances my way. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” I point at Burgatory across the road. “But I think gulping down a milkshake the size of my head might help me figure it out.”
“Hell, yes.” Lauren says. “I missed the fuck out of those milkshakes.”
Lauren stirs her straw around her strawberry milkshake, watching me closely.
I swallow a cold peanut-butter-chocolate gulp of mine and say to her, “You flew across the country for me.”
She smiles. “Sure did.”
“You didn’t need to do that, Lo.”
“I know I didn’t.” Her smile fades as she stares at me. “But I wanted to. You’ve sounded so stressed lately.”
“I have been,” I admit.
“Talk to me about it,” she says. “Work, Alex. Whatever you need to get off your chest.”
I groan, stabbing my straw into my milkshake. “I’ve been sitting on the business proposal for Fern, because it never feels like the right time to give it to her. Lately, she’s been so scarce, I couldn’t give it to her even if it did feel right.”
“Hmm.” She sips her milkshake. “So she’s the owner and store manager, right?”
“Technically. After she promoted me, we’re comanagers.”
“Except she’s never there to comanage.”
“Not lately, no. It’s been a gradual ghosting, now that I think about it. She’s been showing up less and less.”
Lauren nods. “So is that why you were at work today, when you’d said you were going to take off?”
“I did take off, but then there was a crisis, so I had to go in.”
“What was the crisis?”
I tell her the CliffsNotes version, that this morning, Hailey received a new highly anticipated title releasing next week and put it out on the floor, which, for a lot of books, isn’t a big deal. This title, however, is embargoed, meaning that if it’s put out for sale before its laydown date, the store risks losing future early-receiving privileges, and even being fined.
