“Ooh la la,” Jen says. “That’s a lot of detail for a first encounter.”
I inch my chair closer to the table. “Yeah, well, he’s Jason’s friend so we talked for a while.”
“Are you going to see him again?” My mom is trying to sound disinterested while verbally circling me like a shark.
“As a matter of fact, we’re meeting up tonight.”
“Wonderful! I want to hear all about it tomorrow. Now, you girls head into the dining room and I’ll grab the dinner.” Mom gets up and Jen and I leave the table, walking into the dining room side by side.
“You know, horrible as it is being pregnant, it really is an incredible experience. You need to get moving if you’re going to have babies someday.”
“I have time,” I say, stretching my shoulders. “I was a late bloomer so my egg quality is way younger than it should be.”
“You can’t actually know that that’s true.”
“I absolutely can. I didn’t get my period until I was sixteen so when I’m thirty-four, my eggs are still going to be in their late twenties.”
“Did you really get it that late?”
“Yeah, I did. So even if you think I’m a spinster, my eggs are still sparkling young debutantes.”
“Fine,” Jen chuckles, “but even with your younger-than-average eggs, you still have to keep it rolling in the love department. At least you met a new guy.”
I fail to mention just how not new Ryan is as we sit down at the dining room table.
“I sure did,” I say instead. “Wish me luck.”
8
Things to do before Ryan gets here:
Tidy everything.
Dust everything.
Vacuum everything.
Buy healthy food to strategically place in the front of the refrigerator.
Move romance novels with mega-dirty titles out of the living room bookcase and into the bedroom bookcase.
Turn around romance novels on bookcases that have groping illustrations on the spine.
Put my published books on display.
Do laundry.
Hide granny panties (aka hide ninety-eight percent of all my panties).
Having managed to check off every item on the list I wrote out after the mad dash back to my apartment, I toss the piece of paper into the waste bin beside my desk. Ryan is officially in the building, on his way up at this very moment. All that’s left to do is get this freak show of an experience on the road.
As if on cue, there’s a loud knock on my door.
Here goes nothing.
I take a deep breath as I cross the room. Another echoing knock sounds out before I clutch the doorknob and swing the door open.
Ryan is standing there in jeans and a gray T-shirt, a travel bag on one shoulder and holding Duke’s leash in his right hand. Duke looks up at me like he’s moving in permanently. All that’s missing is a vintage, dog-sized luggage set.
