Page 19 of A Crane Family New Year

Chapter Seven

1½ hours ’til midnight

Chloe, her hand wrapped around Jaylyn’s wrist, felt her jaw drop open. “You lie! Tell me that did not happen.”

“It’s true.” Jaylyn raised her other arm toward the heavens. “Hand to God.”

“That’s a dating nightmare,” Chloe said through laughter. Jaylyn joined her and soon they were both laughing harder than they had before.

Jaylyn’s dating horror story was a doozy, involving goat yoga, too much prosecco, and Jaylyn’s date leaving her in the barn to make out with the instructor. Unbelievable. And yet, Chloe 100 percent believed her.

She wasn’t sure how, but within minutes of Jaylyn trampling over polite boundaries and asking when Chloe had last had sex, she had bonded with the other woman. And, for whatever reason, she had told Jaylyn the truth. Last year, over the summer. With a guy she’d gone out with five or six times.

“Then he stopped calling me. When I finally received a text from him, it was to tell me he’d reconciled with his ex-girlfriend,” Chloe had said with a wan smile.

Jaylyn had responded appropriately. “Noooo!” Then she’d agreed that it was hard to truly connect with any man on this “godforsaken planet.” Chloe had shared her New Year’s resolution for this past year: to have a one-night stand.

“I thought it would be easier to have sex with a virtual stranger, you know?” Chloe had said. “But it turns out it wasn’t easier. Anonymous sex is harder for me for some reason.”

“You’re an old-fashioned girl, Chlo.”

Chloe had been inclined to agree.

From there, they’d shared more dating horror stories, blessedly free of actual atrocities. Sobering from her most recent bout of belly laughter, Chloe dabbed the corners of her lashes. “Is my mascara in place?”

Jaylyn swiped away what Chloe guessed was an incriminating smudge. “You’re good now. Me?”

“Completely unruffled.”

Presumably, Jaylyn Crane’s baseline.

“I’m not telling you that you should have sex with my brother,” Jaylyn said, causing Chloe’s eyes to round. “But he wouldn’t ghost you, either.”

Chloe felt a ping of guilt at the fact that she’d ghosted HopperFan02 a few days ago. If that was any clue as to how inept she was at relationships, then… “The kiss might be a long shot.”

“That’ll happen,” Jaylyn said with certainty. “What happens after—well, that is up to you.”

“You mean there’s still time to keep my resolution?” Chloe said, and then tacked on a deliberate, “Ha-ha.”

“Absolutely.” Jaylyn sounded serious. “The ball doesn’t drop for nearly an hour and a half. That’s plenty of time.”

Not for Chloe. She’d always been more of a slow-go kind of girl. Which was one of the reasons she’d made that resolution. She’d decided it was high time she shook off her old dating habits and did something wild. Only, she hadn’t.

“Plus, time is an agreed-upon human manifestation,” Jaylyn said.

“A what?”

“Time doesn’t exist in a linear way. It’s more like a circle.” Jaylyn drew an invisible circle in the air between them.

“Oh-kay.”

“Point being, don’t give up on your resolution yet. Fate may have more in store for you than you think.”

Chloe let out a weak laugh. Sex with Zander Crane was…well, it was insane was what it was. Certifiable.

Although…

Chloe would die before she admitted it to his sister, but she felt almost as if she knew Zander. Even though they’d just met. Maybe because he’d shared about Emily, or that she already knew three of his cousins. She trusted him already, which made Jaylyn’s suggestion seem that much more probable.

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