Page 5 of What Happened Last Night

“Believe me, I know. I’m not a swoony virgin over here. I’ve dated actual, real-life boyfriends. I’ve smelled their pits and seen their awful bathrooms. I’ve been on dating apps. Isn’t there a point where you don’t turn to goo anymore? I can barely talk around him, Katie. It’s just embarrassing.”

“I told you, Mother Nature is trying to knock you up. She sees a good candidate and releases the hormones. But this is your job, and your symptoms aren’t going away.” She sounded as clinical as a doctor. “I’ve been thinking about your problem, and you’re going to have to take some steps to get rid of this crush. Otherwise, you’ll have to quit.”

“I’m not quitting. This is the best job I’ve ever had. And I haven’t even met the rock stars yet.”

“True. The first thing you should do is meet the Road Kings as soon as you can. They’re rock stars, Lune. They’re going to be so incredibly hot that your boss will look like nothing in comparison. That might have the effect of neutralizing your lust for him. Bonus points if you sleep with one of them.”

“What?” I rotated to sit up on the sofa and put my feet on the floor. “I’m not sleeping with a rock star. Besides, it’s unprofessional. I’d get fired.”

“Fair point,” Katie mused. “Next option. Can you get Aunt Reggie to meet him somehow? Bring her to the office. Or get Mr. Bossman to drop you off after work one day.”

Aunt Reggie—one of my mom’s four sisters—owned the duplex I lived in. She lived in the downstairs unit, and I lived in the upstairs one. She gave me discounted rent, which was the only way I could afford to live alone.

In exchange for the rent discount, my mother did some kind of favor for her sister—or possibly had done a favor for her in the past. The bartering system between my mom and her sisters was so complex it could never be untangled by a mere onlooker. I didn’t even try. I paid my discounted rent and asked no questions.

“What will Aunt Reggie do?” I asked. Reggie lived below me with husband number two.

“She’ll make you hate him,” Katie said. “If he has any flaws at all, she’ll figure them out in the first sixty seconds, and then she’ll spend the next lifetime talking about them. I’ve never seen a woman who can fixate on a boyfriend’s flaws like Reggie can. She doesn’t approve of anyone. Last Christmas, she reminded me that my high school boyfriend farted once when she could hear it. We broke up thirteen years ago.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to use Reggie on Will. It’s too cruel, and he doesn’t deserve it. All he’s done is be nice to me and give me a great job. I’m trying to get rid of a crush here, not obliterate the man.”

“Well then,” Katie said, “there’s no help for it, babe. To fix this problem, you’re going to have to get a boyfriend.”

There was a long moment of silence between us on the line.

“Katie,” I said. “I can’t just get a boyfriend. You know that. It’s—”

“Complicated,” Katie finished for me. “Believe me, I know.”

“Boyfriends don’t just grow on trees. Otherwise, I’d have one. And he’d have to be acceptable.”

This made me sound egotistical, but I wasn’t. I was pretty, nice, reasonably fun to be around, and I liked men in general. I was happy being single, but if I was going to date, all I wanted in a boyfriend was a man who would treat me kindly, do something fun with me on weekends, and give me semi-regular and semi-satisfying sex.

If I tried hard, I could probably find a guy like that. But I had three older brothers and two parents, all of whom would insist on deciding whether any man I brought home was “acceptable.” When you added in the aunts, uncles, and cousins—including the aunt who lived downstairs—I had a dozen family members nosing in my business, enough to send any normal guy running. I was thirty now, and my mother was making more frequent noises about how I should “stop fooling around,” find someone serious, and settle down.

It was infuriating enough for me to deal with that alone anytime after the nineteenth century. It was way too much pressure to put on any guy I decided to date seriously enough to meet my family.

“Okay,” Katie said. She knew my situation, because she was pretty much in the same one. “No boyfriend unless you find the right guy. Find someone to date, then. Get laid.”

Sure, I could do that. Not every man had to be brought home to my family. Hookup apps existed. But—yuck. Also, any guy I brought back here would be immediately detected by Aunt Reggie, which meant my mother would learn about it in less than sixty seconds. The only way for me to hook up with a man would be to go to his place, which was a recipe for ending up on Dateline.

This was what I meant by complicated.

I looked down at my pajama-clad knees, trying to picture myself going to a bar, picking up a man, and going home with him to have sex. I needed to be realistic here. “That isn’t going to happen,” I told Katie. If it was a choice between hooking up with a strange man or spending an evening with my feet up eating popcorn, mainlining Taylor Swift, and watching people clean carpets on TikTok, I knew which one I’d pick.

“I feel you,” Katie said, because she really did. We were basically twins, except that she had a slightly better sex life because her aunt didn’t live right below her. “You have no choice, then. Get out your vibrator and give it a workout.”

“Katie. That’s…personal.”

“It’s necessary,” she asserted. “Keep it next to your bed and use it every night until Mr. Bossman doesn’t look hot to you anymore. Your horniness is clouding your vision. That’s Dr. Katie’s diagnosis.”

I laughed. Then I told her I loved her, which I did. We talked a little more, and then we hung up to go to bed.

But as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I didn’t get out my vibrator. Because I knew that if I used it, I wouldn’t picture any of my current celebrity crushes. I’d picture my boss. And I had to work with him tomorrow.

He was probably asleep right now, oblivious. Or he was with some woman. She was probably gorgeous, and rich, too. I hated her.

Oh, lord, I needed to stop thinking about it.

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