“Playmaker at a Mexican all-inclusive. Molly Ringwald body double. Georgia homecoming queen who runs an Etsy earring business. It doesn’t matter, Hazel—I don’t want a date.”
She gives me the death glare. “You do.”
I steal the champagne from her. Pretty much everyone who has ever worked with Hazel recognizes the mulish expression she gets and can tell a Hazel story. The tenacity that makes her such a brilliant investor and business coach sometimes backfires when she leaves the office. She’s argued more than once that those backfires are an important contribution to the world because she shouldn’t be right all the time (and Hazel absolutely believes she is), and this is just the universe’s way of making sure things come out a little more even for the rest of us. She’s stormed into court over a speeding ticket and outargued the prosecutor. She’s hauled all her clothes to Goodwill in trash bags and started over because she claimed that was easier than going through them and doing a Marie Kondo.
She shakes the phone at me like it’s a Magic 8-Ball. “Yes or no.”
“No.”
“You don’t like redheads who might or might not be homecoming queens and talented freelance artists? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing, but I don’t want to date her.”
Hazel makes Hazel noises and swipes through a gallery of women. I can’t tell if she’s actually looking at the pictures or doing the adult equivalent of spinning a globe and pretending you’ll travel wherever your finger lands when you’re a grown-up and have money.
She puts down the phone—where I can’t reach it, because Hazel’s smart—and frowns at me. “You’re weird.”
“Pot.” I swirl my finger in the air, turning an imaginary globe. I don’t usually drink too much, but I suspect this evening is going to break any hopes I had of a sober streak. I know I should care, but the champagne wraps my brain in a delicious fog, so I decide to worry about it tomorrow. “Did you ever spin the globe when you were little and pretend that you’d have to go wherever your finger landed?”
“No one does that for real,” Hazel says decisively.
I nod. “People do, too, do that. I was supposed to go to Antarctica because that was where my finger ended up.”
“You fingered Antarctica.” She sniggers.
“Mature.” I tug on her hair as we lie side by side, staring companionably up at my ceiling.
Hazel transitions seamlessly from raunchy jokes back to my life. “You know I’m right. You need to get back out there.”
Despite Hazel’s insistence on always being right, I can’t argue with her this time. I’ve turned into a cave-dwelling hermit.
“Why do you want me to date so badly?”
“You need to get laid. I suppose you could hire someone. Or just go to a bar and hook up. Or just use Max’s app.” She frowns at my ceiling. “What about the whole glory-hole thing? Don’t they do that in San Francisco? Isn’t that just sort of like having sex with a sheet with a hole in it?”
I have no idea how Hazel’s brain works. I choke. “Google that later, okay? But, no. Thanks.”
Maybe she’s just having me on, because she starts laughing. Hazel’s no giggler. She has a full-blown hyena laugh punctuated by weird, random snorts. It’s impossible not to join in, even if I’m not entirely certain what we’re laughing about. I knew, when I met her—when she took issue with every point in my slide deck, and then bought me cake and cackled with glee over the money we’d made—that Hazel did her own thing, but I respected the fact that she did it loud and proud. Hazel doesn’t accept excuses—when she fails, she bounces back up like a punching bag and keeps going. It figures she’d see marriage the same way.
“Let me set you up,” she replies when she’s finally got the hyena snort-laugh under control. “I promise to pick someone you’ll like.”
“What are we? Girlfriends?” I ask. “Are we doing each other’s nails next?”
She flicks my shoulder. “That’s a stereotype—plus, I’m more of a sheet mask girl myself. I just want to know that my best business partner is okay. Happy also works for me.”
She winks at me. Despite her well-earned reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s most sharkish VC backers, Hazel’s one of the most generous people I know. She’s also—in a quiet, not-so-over-the-top way—one of the funniest. I’d lay even money that tomorrow or the day after, a Sephora box full of sheet masks will hit my desk.
“You’re not exactly Ms. Happily-Ever-After.”
“Are you challenging my dating credentials?”
“When was the last time you went on a date?” I turn my head so I can see her face. She’s had the same shoulder-length bob for as long as I’ve known her, and her hair is always a well-trimmed, ruthlessly flat-ironed cap. The only thing more meticulous is her makeup. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Hazel look like a mess. Frat parties, college bars, beach trips, house moves—Hazel’s hair and makeup is always on point.
“Three weeks ago.” She stretches her arms over her head in some kind of yoga pose. I mimic the move. It’s not bad at all for working the kinks out of my shoulder.
“And?”
She flops forward, stretching like a cat. “He wasn’t second date material.”
Her voice is muffled by the duvet.
“Did you introduce him to your family?”
She turns her face to look at me. “Do I look crazy?”
Three years younger than me, Hazel is twenty-nine, staring down the big three-zero. And while she’s made it perfectly clear that she doesn’t care about this milestone date, her mother, her aunties and her three sisters care. She’s their baby, the maverick and the only one who wasn’t either an English major or a liberal-studies
