Well, maybe more than friendly. Their DMs often bordered on flirty or were just straight-up innuendo. Which Dash didn’t mind at all, seeing as he had no other sexual outlet to speak of.
@tokcrafty2me I showed you mine, show me yours? he typed back.
Dash exited out of the app and went to his texts. Can you talk? he texted Chris, the man he’d met at an AA meeting and was now his sponsor and best (and maybe only) friend.
To his surprise, his phone buzzed, and Chris was FaceTime calling. Dash took in a big breath as he tapped Accept. “You know, most people consider phone calls to be rude these days.”
“Most people don’t have a four-month-old asleep on their chest.” Chris’s eyes were puffy, and even his hair seemed to flop into his face from exhaustion. He panned the phone so Dash could see a sleeping Luna and the back of her dark curls.
“Are we going to wake her up?” Dash asked.
“Nah,” Chris responded. “This one sleeps like she got hit by a two-by-four. I’ve been rewatching The Takeover and not even the title sequence wakes her—Mira made those drumbeats loud.”
Mira, Chris’s wife, was a composer, and her latest theme music for an HBO family drama had earned her an Emmy nomination.
“How is Mira?” Dash poked. “She doing okay?”
“She’s exhausted.” Chris wiped a hand down his face. “We’re both barely sleeping.”
“I’ll come by this week.” He reached for the remote on the coffee table. Maybe he could try watching The Takeover instead of Dating Roulette...though, probably not. “You and Mira can sleep. Luna and I will hang. I’ll take a day off,” Dash said as a joke.
Every day was his day off, really. Plus he liked kids. He’d always wanted a big family of his own, but he knew that would never happen—he couldn’t put a child through the possibility of him relapsing. But if he was lucky, he’d have the kind of marriage Chris and Mira had someday, when he was solid in his sobriety. Just not now, while he was still learning who his sober self was.
“Okay, I’ll take you up on that, but only because I can’t remember my own name anymore.” Chris blinked hard. “What did you want to talk about anyway?”
“I was feeling a little...” Dash did not finish the sentence with the words that immediately rang true: anxious, wound-up, restless. Instead, he cut to the chase. “Long story, but my hungover tenant needed help.”
“Right.” Chris scratched at his beard. “Do you need a meeting?”
“Maybe.” Dash pursed his lips.
“Make time for one.” Luna fussed slightly on Chris’s arm. Chris eyed her, then looked back at the phone. “I better go.”
“See ya,” Dash said, then hung up.
He stared at the blank screen for a beat, then pocketed his phone. He got off the couch and went to the window that looked out at the lawn and Sophie’s bungalow. Her door was closed. He didn’t see her outside. She was likely fine. Still, his gaze lingered on the arched window next to her door—identical to his own—and he wondered what she was doing.
SOPHIE’S TIKTOK
Name: Sophie Lyon
Occupation: Writer (???)
Weeks until next book is due: 6
“I’ve never been in love, okay?! Love isn’t real!” Sophie had queued up the clip from her unintentionally viral video, then it cut to her in the living room, where she sat on the couch. A response video, just as Dash had suggested.
She fixed the curtain bangs around her face and took a deep breath in. “Well, that was me, and it’s pretty embarrassing. But yeah, I’ve never been in love. Which is maybe a little weird, considering I’m a romance author. And as you can see, I’m not afraid to spill my emotions after a few drinks, but I’ve never experienced the feeling of actually falling for someone so...”
Sophie cleared her throat. “Anyway, a friend of mine told me I should explain my side of the story. And I think he’s right.”
She leaned closer to the camera. “We’ve all had a bad day. And that—that video—was one of my very worst days. I’m going to be totally honest with you: I am on the verge of losing just about everything I’ve worked for. I have writer’s block, and my next book is due in six weeks. It’s been two long years, and I can’t figure out the ending. I’m a total fraud, and once my contract is up I will have to accept the fact that maybe I’m not a writer, after all.”
Her lower lip wobbled at the sad realization that she’d been so close to achieving her dreams but hadn’t been able to keep the momentum of being a full-time writer going. She eyed the ceiling, blinked away the impending tears, then looked back to camera. “But I’m still a hopeless romantic. Like, I believe there’s someone out there for me. And there have been relationships in my life where I really, really thought I was going to fall in love. But something keeps me from saying the words. So what’s my problem? I don’t know. But I want to find my person, and maybe the answer is that I’m the problem, not my exes.”
Her knee started to nervously bounce, and she placed a hand on top to still it. “Would it be weird to go back and ask my exes what went wrong? I mean, there could be something they noticed that I never did. And maybe if I figure out why I can’t say those three magical words, I’ll find a way back to writing a happily-ever-after for my characters.” Sophie’s tone lifted as the words began to feel true. Maybe this whole thing could work. Perhaps all she needed was a little self-exploration to get to the root of her issue. “Tell me what you think in the Comments.”
She stopped the recording, then hit Next, chose a thumbnail, wrote a caption—I’m the romance author who’s never been in love ??—added some writerly hashtags, per Dash’s suggestion, and hit Publish. The video had an option to post to her Instagram page, and if she was going to put herself out there, she might as well go all in—so she published it there, too.
She fell back into the plush couch cushions, tapped her phone against her thigh, and wondered, not for the first time, if she was doing the right thing.
3
SOPHIE
“Hey, you okay?”
Sophie almost didn’t register her sister’s concerned voice over the loud hum of paparazzi shouting at them, but she still managed to mouth a yes.
“Nina, one more photo!”
“Nina, where’s Leo? Trouble in paradise?”
“Nina, any details on the final episode of Second Chance Kitchen?”
Sophie kept her eyes trained on the entrance to Craig’s as they walked. She was keenly aware that the photographers didn’t want a photo of her, and after her brush with TikTok fame, she’d had her fill of being a news item. But Nina stopped and gave a quick smile for the cameras. Her sister had, of course, planned this breakfast excursion. Craig’s was strategically frequented by celebs who wanted to have a photo opportunity with the line of paparazzi who waited outside and then enjoy a meal at the discreet and private restaurant. Nina was a celebrity chef, and the season-two finale of her latest cooking show, Second Chance Kitchen, was about to air. As Nina liked to say, the more press the better.