33

HEIDI

“Have you swiped right on literally one single person?” Amara asks as she looks over my shoulder.

I show her my matches, which in fact, are zero. “There was one guy, but I don’t think we matched.” I sigh, inspecting my bracelet. “But truthfully I only did it because his cat was cute.”

Amara snorts. “I’m sure he’s swiping for the promise of cat too, it’s okay.”

“Amara!”

“What? I’m telling the truth. Men just want sex. It’s just a fact of life.”

I get why she thinks so, but it’s not every man. Some men are too fucking hard headed to let a single person in.

But I also feel terrible for thinking it. The man lost his wife. There’s trauma that comes with that. I get it. I understand it to an extent.

Healing isn’t linear and there’s no real timeframe. But I was really hopeful that night on the beach, and even after being ghosted, I thought that him hiring me and wanting to spend even a little time with me was a good sign.

We haven’t gone for a run in months. It was a short lived activity, but I loved it while it happened.

“Can I have it?” Amara asks, her hand grabbing for my phone.

I hand it over to her but stay close. She’s known for swiping on just anyone.

“Have you seen anyone you know?” she peeks at me from the corner of her eye.

“I saw Cooper.” Her scroll pauses, her finger hovering just over the screen.

“That’s interesting,” she says through nearly gritted teeth, continuing her scroll.

“What’s with you two anyway?” I readjust myself on the couch, tucking my legs underneath me.

She waves me off, instead placing her head in my lap. I run my fingers through her thick hair, zoning out. She swipes right on a couple of people, and when there’s finally a match, she holds up the phone to show me.

“He’s not that bad,” I say quietly, taking it from her. I swipe through his profile.

He likes pizza. Okay, well that’s not really anything unique. I feel like eighty percent of the men I’ve seen have something about pizza in their bio, which is a little weird.

He has a cute dog. A small white thing.

The man has a few tattoos on his arms and one of those mustaches that are really in right now. “What should I say to him?”

“Try‘Hi, my name is Heidi and I’m trying to get over emotionally unavailable men by getting under you.’”

“Amara!”

She shrugs, her shoulders shimmying as she gets comfortable against me again. Her eyes shut and she smiles. “I’m just telling the truth. You need to get over him.”

I’ve been over him…

Is what I tell myself.

“What did the cards tell you?”

I grunt, wanting to talk about anything other than the cards.

Amara looks like she’s about to argue when the door opens and Mila walks through, her arms weighed down by bags. “M, what did her cards say?”