Tomboy

Had he fallen into a parallel universe where it was the total opposite of reality? His mom was in charge of his love life? “That’s not wholesome. It’s creepy and wrong.”

“Well unless you have a better plan to fix this disaster,” Peppers said from his spot across the room. “Then you’re stuck with it.”

Having his balls dipped in battery acid sounded like a better idea to him at the moment, but he had no real alternative plan to offer. This parental guidance–type date looked like the best option.

His toes itched as bad as that time when he’d skipped using his shower shoes at training camp, and his headache went from rumba throb to death-metal hammering.

He turned to Coach and Lucy. “And you guys are behind this plan? Really?”

“Seeing you dating a woman your mom picked out is a story that will grab the media’s attention away from that video,” Lucy said.

Okay, surely the one other man in the room would see the implausibility of all of this. “Coach?”

The older man shook his head and gave him a pitying look. “You got yourself into this pickle. You gotta get yourself out of it.”

Translation: You are so screwed…so very screwed.

He couldn’t agree more.

…

Zara Ambrose was no longer on a first-name basis with tequila, and the damn worm could call her Ms. Ambrose, too. It should have been calling her Mrs. Gatsley, but then that turd Kevin had jilted her six months before the wedding. She’d made the mistake of a three-day girls’ weekend where she and her besties had fallen in with a wild crowd with names like Patrón, Jose Cuervo, and Cabo Wabo. She wasn’t sure which tequila shot had landed her at the Hummingbird Bistro a week after that bender, but she cursed it all the same.

Her gaze went between her closest friends, Gemma McNamara and Roxy Hamilton, as the three of them sat at a corner table with a view of the hostess stand, and she let out an annoyed huff. “I can’t believe you guys made me fill out that stupid dating app questionnaire.”

“Made you?” Gemma snort-laughed. “Oh, honey, you practically tackled me before tearing the phone from my grasp and filling it out yourself.”

Okay, that part might be true. She remembered Gemma mentioning that a friend of a friend was looking for beta testers for the app’s soft launch. After that it was fuzzy, but she could still remember locking her arms around Gemma’s waist—which was as high as she could comfortably get, since at five-ten her best friend loomed over her by almost a foot.

Still, Zara wasn’t ready to go down alone on this one. “One of you should have stopped me from being so pathetic.”

“You mean honest about your five-foot-nothing-self’s needs—someone to reach the stuff on the top shelf at the grocery store and dust the cobwebs from your vagina?” Roxy asked at her normal not-even-kinda-quiet volume.

Zara sank down in her chair. “Don’t say that so loud.”

“Girl,” she said, raising an eyebrow and her glass of red wine. “You’re the one that typed it and sent it out for God and every horny fuck-boy on that app to see.”

She covered her face with her hands and sent out one more prayer for a fire-breathing dragon to incinerate her on the spot, because that’s exactly what she had done. She’d read it so many times—her horror growing each time—that she had the damn thing memorized.

Assholes Need Not Apply

I don’t expect fairy tales, but are a few not-self-made orgasms with a guy who makes my heart flutter really just a pipe dream??? My shithead of a fiancé dumped me after I supported him (including rent) while he went through medical school and finished his residency. My life was on hold for him, and now I’m ready for a little—really, a lot—of fun with the kind of guy who isn’t a total asshole. Too honest? Too bad. Life is too short for jerks with combovers and dudes who don’t know their way around a lady garden.

“It was the tequila,” she mumbled through her fingers.

“Nice try.” Gemma laughed and peeled Zara’s hands away from her face. “It was your secret desire bubbling to the surface because of the perfect storm of that shithead Kevin using you like the parasite he is and God’s gift to the lime.”

Roxy handed Zara a glass of wine—white because she was the queen of nervous jitters. “And the fact that you were with Mr. Inch Dick since college and somewhere deep inside you, oh Miss Grudge Holder Extraordinaire, you knew he wasn’t the man you wanted. More like he was the guy Daddy said you shouldn’t want.”

That was true, but she didn’t feel like having that thrown at her—or thinking about the dad she’d pretty much cut out of her life years ago—so she grabbed on to the one thing that she could argue. “I don’t hold a grudge.”

Gemma and Roxy just laughed. Right in her face. Without hesitation.

She glared at them over the top of her wineglass as she took a drink. “Maybe I should rethink the plan I made in fourth grade to be best friends with you two forever.”

“Nice try, but who else would put on Spanx for you when there are neither pictures being taken nor any chance of getting the magic peen, if not us?” Gemma asked.

“Speak for yourself.” Roxy shook her head at their born-to-wear-pink, be-queen-of-the-Junior-League, and have monogramed everything best friend. “Spanx are the devil, and I’m not wearing them.”