The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            It—he—meowed, and that tiny little squeak made the cat seem even smaller and more helpless than he actually was. Jack rolled his eyes, shook his head, and set the glass of milk on the floor.

            “Here, you little beggar,” he said, crouching down to pet the irritating fluffball as he started drinking his milk. “But this is the last time.”

            Meowgi started purring, as if to say, Sure it is.





Chapter

FOUR



Hallie


            “What do you think?”

            “I love it.” Hallie looked in the mirror and smiled. She’d had the stylist take off four inches and give her some color, so now she had a shoulder-length bob with some subtle highlights, and she’d also gotten her brows done. Between that and the clothes she’d bought online the day before, she really did feel like some sort of “new” Hallie Piper.

            She was making it happen, dammit.

            She’d taken the day off to fix her life, and she was so glad she had.

            First, she’d put in her notice at both of her part-time jobs. It was mind-boggling, all the time she was going to have for . . . well, pretty much anything, now that she would only be working from nine to five.

            After that, she’d spent the morning looking at apartments, and an hour ago, she’d put down a security deposit on a new place. She hadn’t meant to—she hadn’t even told Ruthie she was moving yet, and it was only the first day of the hunt—but the last building she’d visited had been too perfect to pass up. It was downtown, a former-hospital-turned-modern-apartment-complex, and it was amazing. City views, rooftop patio, indoor pool, sports bar in the lobby; she was obsessed. It was a little north of her price point, and waaaaay smaller than the others she’d looked at, but she liked it enough to make it work.

            It was just so grown-up.

            And as she walked to her car after leaving the salon, she found that she couldn’t stop smiling. Everything was falling into place, and it made her feel good. She wasn’t a hot mess shit show any longer.

            She even had a date that night.

            She’d been messaging Kyle through the app for a couple of days, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about their impending evening. He had a job and seemed like a nice person, so that was good. But their exchanges were pretty . . . matter-of-fact. Yes, he could be amusing, but they didn’t have the kind of banter that made Hal want to lock herself in her bedroom and chat all night, either.

            Yet.

            She kept reminding herself of that fact—they didn’t have it yet. Hopefully they would meet up for dinner, share a few laughs, have a great time, and proceed to banter the hell out of each other from that night forward.

            A girl could dream, right?

            When Hallie got home, she was relieved that Ruthie was out. Her roommate had left a note on the door—WENT FLISPING IN GD. BE BACK TOMORROW—so she was alone for the entire night.

            Hallie rarely understood Ruthie’s notes. She had no idea what flisping was, but it probably involved being upside down with strangers or something. And GD—that was anybody’s guess.

            She turned on some music, opened a bottle of Lucky Bucket, and started putting on makeup. She had two hours before she was meeting Kyle, which she considered to be the perfect amount of time to pick an outfit, do her makeup, and maybe catch a tiny buzz to ward off those first-date-in-eighty-five-years nerves.

            She was in her closet, rummaging for the black pants that made her butt look amazing, when her phone buzzed. She looked down at it and saw she had a notification from Looking4TheReal. She clicked on the app and realized she was actually hoping that it was Kyle canceling.

            The notification stamp (a heart, of course) was on her inbox. Hallie clicked on it and immediately felt disappointment when she didn’t see Kyle’s name.

            The message was from Jack, the wedding guy.

            Jack: Hey, Tiny Bartender. How’s the hunt going?

            Hallie sat down on her shoe shelf. You sure know how to make it sound romantic.

            Jack: Sorry. Let me start over. AHEM. Have you found a man via your Soulmate-Home-Shopping-Network app?

            Hallie: It is exactly like that, isn’t it?