The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            That made Hallie set down her fork and take a big ol’ gulp of her chardonnay before saying, “Um, sure . . . ?”

            “I just want to put it out there that I’m divorced.”

            “Oh.” Hallie didn’t really know what to say. She didn’t have a problem with someone being divorced, but she also didn’t want to squeal something inane like I love divorce. The way she saw it, divorce was no different from her breakup except for the fact that he’d had a party with formal wear and she hadn’t.

            “We got married young, I guess, and didn’t realize until it was too late that we didn’t have much in common.”

            Hallie gave a nod and said, “It happens.”

            “The worst part was telling the twins.”

            “Ohmigosh.” Hallie set down her glass and cleared her throat. “I didn’t know you had twins. How old are they?”

            “Four years old,” he said, his smile returning as he talked about the kids he clearly adored. “They’re really incredible.”

            “That’s such a fun age,” she said, her mind a little blown that he hadn’t included that on his profile. She’d never considered the possibility that she might find someone on the dating app who had children. She could potentially become a stepmom? God, she didn’t even want to go there.

            “It is. They’ve finally stopped putting everything in their mouths and falling asleep on top of me.”

            That made Hallie a little gooey inside, picturing this handsome man with sleeping munchkins draped all over him. He really was a hormonal destroyer, wasn’t he?

            “Wow, how do you tell someone so young about divorce?” she asked. Her own parents just lived by the you-irritate-me-but-till-death-do-us-part motto.

            “My ex and I were super emotional when we sat them down,” he said, getting choked up, “but we were just honest. We said, ‘Listen, when we bought you two and brought you home, we had every intention of staying together forever.’ ”

            Hallie narrowed her eyes. Had he just said “bought”?

            “ ‘But sometimes forever isn’t possible, and that’s okay. We love both of you, but we’re going to have to split you up.’ ”

            Hallie still just kept hearing the word bought as he continued speaking. He was blinking back tears, clearly very emotional, but she was having a hard time empathizing, because she couldn’t figure out what he’d said. Bought?!

            “It’s never ideal to split up your kids, to each take one and go your separate ways, but somehow that seems better than a lifetime of forced interactions that would surely end in fights, right?”

            Hallie pursed her lips before saying, “So the twins were adopted . . . ?”

            He smiled guiltily and said, “I wouldn’t say adopted, per se, because we wanted to make sure we got the exact kind we wanted.”

            Hallie just stared at him, the gooey feeling gone. Dried up. Turned to dust.

            “I know, I know—rescue is the thing to do.” He sighed and steepled his fingers under his chin. “But we really wanted Labradoodles from the same mother.”

            Dogs? He was talking about his dogs? Surely he couldn’t have thought that was obvious, could he? Hallie couldn’t stop her eyebrows from bunching together as she said, “So they’re not actually twins.”

            Now his eyebrows went down. “No, they are.”

            “Twin dogs are actually super rare.” Hallie knew it was splitting hairs, but she was suddenly irritated as hell at the dentist. “One pregnancy with just two puppies in the litter.”

            “Oh.” He cleared his throat and looked confused by her words. “Well, they’re identical Labradoodles from the same litter, then.”

            Hallie rubbed her lips together and told herself it was no big deal. So the guy talked about his dogs like they were his children; that wasn’t bad, right? At least he wasn’t a dick who hated animals. She inhaled through her nose—chill, Hal—before saying, “So you each walked away with one of the dogs when you split up . . . ?”