The Accidental Girlfriend

“Do you dirty?” Madi finished on a whisper.

I stared flatly at her and drained my wine. “The only person who hit on me this week was Mr. Hennington, and that’s because he’s trying to get a free beer out of me.”

“Did it work?” Iz asked brightly.

“No! He’s eighty-five!”

“And proof that drinking every day is good for you. Cheers!” Tina raised her glass and quickly finished it.

I topped up both our glasses and headed to the kitchen for the second bottle. “Look,” I said as I resumed my position on the beanbag, uncapping the bottle to finish pouring my glass. “Kelsey left last week, and I’m picking up her shifts. The only hot dates I’m getting are with Kenny the delivery driver, and he’s as attractive as a pig in shit.”

“Hey, some people like pigs,” Iz said. With pizza sauce smeared all over her chin. Presumably proving her own point.

Madi passed her a napkin and tapped her own jaw.

“Besides, I don’t need to date. I’m happy with my life as it is,” I continued, leaning back in the beanbag. “I don’t have time to date. It’s bad enough with a cat needing my attention, never mind a man wanting me to love him.”

Tina lifted her glass. “I hear that.”

“Speak for yourselves,” Iz added. “I have two humans who need me. I’d love to be single.”

Madi side-eyed her as she poured her second glass. “No, you wouldn’t. If you were single, you’d have to run to the store and buy your own Twinkies.”

Iz sighed. “Do you know how long it takes me to get out the door these days? Going to Target requires packing for a mini vacay twice over, and I’m still going to forget something.”

“Ah,” I said. “But you decided to birth a crotch goblin. You don’t get to complain about needing a suitcase to spend two hundred dollars when you meant to spend twenty.”

“Okay, literally everyone gets to complain about that,” Tina said, dangling her glass between her fingers. “Target is a cesspit of temptation.”

“Like Tinder!” Madi snapped her fingers. “A cesspit of temptation and lies.”

I blinked at my best friends. That had escalated rather quickly. I mean, she wasn’t wrong.

Tinder told me the hot twenty-eight-year-old had muscles on his muscles and a great job, but he was actually fifty-two with a beer belly and was a trash guy.

Target told me I only needed Post-It notes and Cheetos, but I left with Post-It notes, Cheetos, socks, three tank tops, two bags of Hershey’s kisses, hand soap, dishcloths, and toilet cleaner. Plus a twenty-eight pack of toilet tissue and eighty-nine sanitary towels.

Iz snapped her fingers. “I know. We should get Lauren a date.”

“Yes!” Madi punched the air. “Let’s get Lauren a date!”

“Let’s not,” I said quickly. “Lauren’s fine. Lauren doesn’t need a date. Lauren has a vibrator.”

Tina grinned. “When you use a vibrator as an excuse, you need a date.”

“On the contrary,” I replied. “A vibrator is the perfect excuse not to date. It doesn’t argue with me. It doesn’t expect anything from me. It doesn’t have dirty clothes. It doesn’t talk to me during my favorite TV shows. And, when I’m done with it, I can put it in a drawer until I need it again. Do you know what happens if you stuff a man in a drawer? You get put in prison. So until a time that the vibrators rise up and start marching for rights for sex toys while wearing slogan t-shirts, I’m all good.”

“Why would vibrators start marching for sex toy rights?” Madi asked. “They don’t have legs. They can’t march.”

“Turn them on and they can move.” Tina nodded. “They can buzz along.”

“Still preferable to men,” Iz said. “They won’t argue, even when they’re marching. Not to mention that it’d take them a while to get to where they needed to go. Men? Nope. They come like Usain Bolt looking at a world record.”

This was going downhill. Fast.

“Look, the point is, nobody needs to stage a protest for sex toys to have rights.” I raised my hands. “I’m good with Jerry. Jerry’s good with me. We’re both satisfied. I do not need any of you guys to find me a date.”

CHAPTER TWO – LAUREN

You know how people say, ‘famous last words?’

Yeah. I was now the lucky duck on the receiving end of what, exactly, that phrase meant.

Apparently, nobody cared if I wanted a date or not. The wine had put a hive of bees in their bonnets, and now, my two best friends and my too-sober-for-this-shit sister were trawling dating websites.

It was the stupidest thing I’d ever been privy to. They’d been through at least twenty-five profiles and discarded every single one of them. It was a waste of time because I didn’t even need to look at the profiles to tell them that they were all not my type.