Page 4 of The Love Losers

Joy and I have Anthony to thank for the business boom, in a way. Maybe that’s why I’ve thought of him so much over the past couple of months. That and the fact that I watched that cold-hearted woman walk out on him. I keep remembering the look in his eyes—as if he were being torn in two and didn’t know which way was upward.

Or maybe it’s because I went up to him after the door closed behind the woman he was supposed to marry, and when I touched his shoulder, he looked up at me and said, “Angel.”

No one’s ever accused me of being one of those before. But I’ve felt broken before, the way he did. Felt it more than once, to be honest, because even though I’m lucky when it comes to finding deals, I amnotlucky in love. Never have been.

Anthony has grown a beard since I last saw him. It’s a good look for him, and he is, objectively, attractive—tall and broad-shouldered, with slate-gray eyes and thick chestnut-brown hair. Tonight, he has on jeans and a black sweater that make him look like he’s cos-playing as a beat poet. He fills it out more than a man who spends all day sitting at a desk, ordering other people around, has any right to.

He’s staring at me intensely, as if he’s still on that mini-mushroom trip Joy sent him on. My throat tightens, probably a reflex from remembering that afternoon.

“Rosie, right?” he asks, his eyes soaking me in.

“Rosie James,” I agree, the name coming out fluidly after all these years.

He glances around, taking in the mostly empty bar, with its graveyard of peanut shells, a couple of disinterested drunk dudes staring into their drinks or their phones, the bartender openly watching a gameshow on the TV anchored to the wall. Then his eyes make their way back to me and stick. “Are you here with friends or something?”

A laugh bursts out of me, because I doubt I could get anyone to meet me here for a hang. “No, I’m here for a peanut hookup.”

The confusion in Anthony’s eyes makes me laugh again, because I’m guessing he’s envisioning me fucking a guy on a pile of peanuts. I sit down across from him without being invited. “I’ve been helping Joy with her tea catering,” I say. “Youremember Joy. She’s the one who dosed you all with her magic mushroom tea.”

His lips twitch at the corners. “Not the kind of thing a man forgets.”

“No, I guess not. Sorry about that. She should definitely have asked you first. She’s learned her lesson, though, and it turns out that there are a lot of people who actually want her special tea.”

“Huh,” he says, lifting his eyebrows.

“Why are you here?” I ask before I can help myself. “This doesn’t seem like your kind of hangout if you don’t mind me saying so.”

He leans back in his side of the booth. “What if I do mind you saying so?”

Another laugh escapes me. “Then you’re probably out of luck. I’m not very good at keeping things to myself.”

That’s both true and untrue. I can keep secrets, if I need to. I can clutch them close and hold on until my dying breath. But it’s like my mouth takes offense to all this gatekeeping and wants to hold nothing else back to make up for it.

“I was meeting Jake,” he says.

Jake and Lainey are my close, personal friends. They run The Love Fixers together, along with Nicole and Damien, a husband-and-wife private investigator team, and I help them out whenever I feel like having a laugh or getting a little rush of sweet adrenaline. I’ve delivered penis balloon bouquets, cookies inscribed with cutting messages, and on one very memorable occasion, I pretended to be someone’s secret lover.

I happen to know that my friends are helping Anthony. Something to do with finding him a substitute wife since his ex-fiancée dropped him like a hot potato. From my limited understanding of the situation, he has to marry someone on New Year’s Eve, or soon thereafter, to claim his trust fund.

“How’d it go?” I ask, grabbing one of the peanuts from the bowl on the table and cracking it open. Might as well get a feel for the merchandise if I’m going to be negotiating with the bartender. I pop the peanut and drop the shell, all while Anthony stares at me like I’m some mythical creature come to life.

The peanut’s not bad.

It’s pretty obvious I’m imposing on Anthony, but for some reason, I can’t get myself to up and leave. My brothers would probably say it’s because I’m stubborn. And Iamstubborn, but it’s not just that. It’s the look I saw on his face the day of the mushroom tea. It’s the emptiness I see behind his eyes now.

This man needs help, and even though I know next to nothing about him other than that he dislikes being drugged and has an obscenely rich mother and a very large trust fund, I want to help him. If I told my brother Seamus that, he’d sigh and say,How positively Rosie of you, because I’m known for my interfering ways. What can I say? I like helping people fill their cups. This man’s cup is empty, and maybe it has been for some time.

Sighing, he stares off into the distance, like the answer to life might be written in the snow clouds hanging in the sky outside of theverydirty windows. “It’s not going well.”

“Really, what happened?” I ask, not expecting him to tell me but still not ready to give up the ghost and leave.

He shoots me another disbelieving look, and when I don’t apologize or flinch, he shrugs. “She sucked on my ring finger within five minutes of meeting me.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Rookie mistake. She should have waited ten.”

He laughs then, a real laugh that lights him up from within, and I can’t look away—it’s like he’s gifted himself with a new face, one that hasdimplesbeneath that very fine beard.

I clear my throat. “Was she hot?”

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