Page 72 of From Fling to Ring

“Come on in, I’ll be ready in five,” Lucy says, greeting me at the door with a kiss on the cheek.

Her hair is dripping wet and she’s wearing a towel, so it’s clear my wait is not going to be only five minutes. But that’s okay. She’s worth the wait.

To hell with my stupid bet with Rake and Jonas. It’s time to step things up with this woman. If she’s game. Which I sure as hell hope she is.

“Hey, how’s Ruby feeling?” she shouts from the bathroom.

I walk around her little apartment, picking up her trinkets, wondering what the story is behind each. Girls always have a story behind their trinkets.

“She’s good, thanks for asking. I haven’t spoken to her in a few days, but she hasn’t had any of those episodes that end her up in the hospital.”

“Okay, good to hear.”

“She’s usually really good with monitoring everything, but I guess when she changes meds all bets are off.”

Diabetes sucks. That’s all there is to it. And Ruby is such a sweet kid, I’d always wished it had been me who came down with it, rather than her. It might have made my career as a pro athlete a little more challenging, but it would all be manageable. There are other pros out there living with Type 1.

Lucy’s bookshelves are littered with photos of her with her friends, the unframed ones propped up against the framed ones, all curly at the edges. I pick up one of her in a white graduation cap and gown, and while it’s a few years old, the girls she’s flanked by are clearly Petal and Gilly. They have their arms around each other and are grinning wildly.

Next to that is a picture of a woman holding a baby, probably Lucy and her mother. The woman looks surprisingly like my mom, not so much in features, but with similar hair and clothes, since they must have been taken around the same time frame. And like my mother, this woman is smiling down at her baby like she’s the most precious thing in the world.

While I don’t have a lot of memories of my mother, I have seen photos of her holding me and looking at me in the same way.

Ruby got cheated of that, she was so young when my mother died.

I wander over to Lucy’s desk and now understand her enthusiasm for my view. The window next to her chair looks right at the exterior wall of the building across the way. It’s not an eyesore, but not inspiring, either.

Her desk is littered with books and notebooks like I imagine any writer’s would be. I pick up a tattered copy of a French textbook and when I page through it, find it full of yellow highlights and inky comments in the margins.

“I didn’t know you were learning French,” I call.

“Huh? I’ll be out in a sec, I can’t hear you over the hairdryer,” she yells back.

Under the French textbook is a spiral-bound notebook, open and turned to a page crowded with notes, circles, arrows, and exclamation notes.

I pick it up for a closer look and I’ll be damned. It’s for her book. She starts with some possible titles:

1. Charm school dropouts: A sassy guide to outsmarting womanizers

2. Take a hike, Romeo: Escaping the charms of the eternal bachelor

3. Tired of kissing frogs: Drain the pond

4. Pretty little lies: Unraveling the player’s playbook

Holy shit, these are amazing. I mean, I knew Lucy was smart and all, but this biting sense of humor is vicious. And I love it.

Next, she has a bunch of things written under what you’ll get out of this book:

1. DIY: Build a better you without a man’s help

2. Playboy spotting: Avoid his charms

3. Heartbreak-proofing: Develop a backbone of steel

4. Ex-files: Turn disaster dates into lessons learned

5. Future-proofing your heart: Upgrade your taste in men

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