Page 36 of The True Love Experiment

“Can we have ice cream after the game?” Stevie asks.

I bend to kiss the top of her head. “Sure. Can you say hello to Fizzy? She’s starring in the show I’ve been working on.”

I turn her around and Stevie tilts her head back to look up at me. “I already know who Fizzy is,” Stevie says. “She’s walked us home a few times.”

Fizzy reaches over to twirl the end of Stevie’s long hair. “Sometimes we stop for hot chocolates on the way. Sometimes for cocktails. Depends how the day went.”

Both the girls giggle, but then something catches Stevie’s eye—a sticker on the back of Fizzy’s phone—and she steps forward to examine it. “You never said you liked Wonderland!”

“She looooooves them,” Juno says.

“How have we never talked about it?” Fizzy says. “They are my happy place!”

I look closer at the small holographic logo, wondering how I missed it when there’s a similar one attached to fifty percent of Stevie’s belongings. Probably because when I’m with Fizzy, the last thing I’m looking at is her phone.

“Have you seen them in concert?” Fizzy asks.

Stevie shakes her head. “I’ve never been to a concert before.”

“They’re coming in two weeks! You should go!”

“It’s sold out,” I say.

Fizzy swats this detail away. “I could get us tickets. I dated anexecutive over at the stadium, and let me tell you—” She stops, noting my apprehension over what might come out of her mouth, and settles on, “I know a guy.”

“That’s a pretty late night.” I’m already imagining carrying a sleeping Juno and Stevie across a mile-long parking lot. “They’d be exhausted the next day.”

She scoffs. “It’s summer! Besides, being exhausted after a night of screaming your face off is a fangirl rite of passage.” She gives me a silent, pleading look, adding quietly, “Joy, remember?”

I exhale, unable to resist any of these females and their sweet persuasion. “If Fizzy knows a guy…” I hesitate long enough for my common sense to rescue me. It doesn’t. “I guess we’re going to see Wonderland.”

“Weare?” Stevie and Juno scream in unison, already jumping up and down.

“We are!”

“You’re the best dad,” Stevie says, and throws her arms around me.

“Thank Fizzy, not me, love.”

And while I watch Stevie embrace Fizzy next, I can’t help but think this is a terrible idea for at least a hundred reasons. The last thing I need is to spendmoretime with Fizzy. Happy time, joyful, enthusiastic Fizzy time. My guts twist in dread and anticipation.

“It’s going to be great,” she says as the girls sing and dance around us. She gives me her widest smile, the one that makes me think of words like effervescent, sparkling,fizzy.

seventeenFIZZY

Ican’t even complain to Jess that this entire debacle just landed in my lap, since she was there when I very explicitly said I would take two ten-year-olds and a Sexy DILF Coach to a Wonderland concert. But the lines of people waiting to get into this venue are so horrendous I would love to have someone other than myself to blame. I check Instagram while we stand. I reply to reader DMs and dutifully avoid my inbox. But with every passing second the number of bodies around us grows. There are only eight entrances, and thirty thousand people trying to cram through at the same time. With no barricades or even any real signs about where a line begins or ends, the unending strings of people wind and weave, snaking around posts and crisscrossing with each other until we are essentially trusting that the person in front of us believes that the person in front of them is in the right place.

And going off the way his jaw looks tight, Connor is thinking the exact same thing. I’m sure he can see over most of the heads in the crowd, but I definitely cannot, and Stevie and Juno seem tiny in the middle of the giant mass of bodies, their eyes big and round with confusion. As the clock ticks down, there’s a vibratingundercurrent of panic, as if the crowd is sensing that Wonderland is about to take the stage and we are all potentially going to miss it.

I tug Connor’s sleeve, urging him down so I can tell him, “Put me on your shoulders.”

He leans in closer, not understanding. “I’m sorry, what?”

“So I can see where this line goes. I’m worried it’s a giant clump of people up there pushing their way in, and I am not letting our girls miss this.”

He doesn’t hesitate, crouching down into a squat, and with giggling Juno and Stevie steadying me, I climb on those broad, muscular shoulders. Connor stands seemingly without effort, sending me well over six feet into the air.

I let out a terrified squeak, clutching his jaw with both hands. “I take back every wish I ever made to be tall.”

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