Minnie: Welp.
Claire: Where are you finding these guys?
Minnie: Hey, Scott was Miles’s pick, not mine.
Claire: Miles and I are going to have words.
Minnie: He seemed so great on the app.
Claire: He’s had thirty-two first dates, Minnie. And zero second dates.
Minnie: 32?!!
Claire: He bragged about it like he was proud.
Minnie: You should start a TikTok account to talk about these dates.??
Claire: Oh, I’m not done.
It started raining. And I was wearing a white dress.
A white dress, Amelia.
Minnie:??????
Claire: No, not ??????
Minnie: So... are you going to see him again?
Claire: ???
Chapter 15
Someone, somewhere took two seemingly unrelated words and put them together, creating a craze for middle-aged people across the nation.
Those two words?
Pickleandball.
After another fruitless week of job hunting, I get a call from Lennon with the kind of invite I want to reject.
“Oh, you were serious about the pickleball?” I was hoping she wasn’t.
“Daniel’s mom watches Eve so we can play every Saturday,” she says. “We love it. Remind me... have you played before?”
“Uh, no,” I say, laughing. “I don’t really do sports.”
“Eh,” she says, “neither do I. But it’ssuperfun to get to hit something. And every once in a while we make the guys look stupid, sobonus!”
I chuckle. Lennon is so great.
Still, I don’t tell her that I’ve walked by the empty storefront every day this week, half hoping, half dreading the day the chiropractor—or someone else—moves in.
I need to find a job because if I have something else to focus on, then maybe I’ll stop dwelling on outlandish ideas.
Like opening a small-town-inspired bakery in Chicago.
Named The Porch.
