I definitely hadn’t bought more than one.
With the flowers carefully moved to their new homes, I set to finding them places around my little house to live. My house was actually my grandpa’s before he’d moved into his retirement community. He hadn’t wanted to sell it and all my money had gone into the bookstore, so he’d happily agreed to let me pay his miniscule mortgage and do whatever I wanted to the little two-bedroom house that I had so many wonderful memories in.
I was very lucky, very blessed, and very short on windowsill space.
I found places after doing some shifting around in my bedroom and the bathroom. My few windowsills were now much brighter than they had been this morning, and I found myself smiling at the burst of color that now decorated my house.
The balloons were a little jarring, but I’d long accepted that my friends were extra.
Which was ironic since they were all introverts.
Except maybe Saylor. She definitely toed the intro-extro-vert line.
I was most definitely on the introverted side—unless I was really drunk and rapping Kanye West. Despite what my friends would have everyone believe, it really was a rarity.
I put the chocolates in the fridge and turned on the coffee machine. I was awake now and while it was tempting to go and crawl back into bed, there were other things I could be doing with my time.
Like read.
But not the stupid book with the love triangle because I still wasn’t ready to finish it.
Fucking Alexandra and Will.
I added vanilla creamer to my coffee and took it out to the back porch. My yard was small but bright, thanks to my grandpa’s love of gardening that he’d passed down to me. I even had some tomato plants rambling up the fence at the side, and all three of them were now bearing large green fruits that were rapidly ripening. The blueberry bush at the bottom of the yard was also nearly ready, and I couldn’t wait for them to finish so I could take Grandpa a big bag of them.
Even though summer was almost over, color still exploded through the yard, and as the sun crept through the clouds and illuminated the flowers, I smiled.
It was quiet. Peaceful. The perfect place to wake up.
All I needed was a puppy. Or a cat. You had to walk a dog and that meant people would inevitably talk to you.
Hmm.
Maybe a rabbit would be more my speed.
I set my coffee cup on the wrought iron table that had been on the porch for as long as I could remember and pulled my phone from the pocket of my robe. After going to bed last night, I’d set a couple of things that I wanted to achieve this year and written them in my notes app, but the first one was screaming out at me:
Date regularly.
Which meant I needed to figure out exactly how to do that.
The problem was that I wasn’t the most confident person in the world. I’d seen Tori and even Saylor chat up a guy at the bar like they’d known them their entire lives, whereas I tended to screw it up with any guy who even thought to speak to me.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever approached a man in my life.
Maybe dating websites were the answer. The very thought of that made me shiver, but there wasn’t a massive dating pool in White Peak, and most of the eligible guys I already knew and had ruled out for various reasons.
Yes, look, I was a dating snob. I’d come to that conclusion last night while I’d been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to kid myself that I’d fall asleep in the next few minutes.
I was a dating snob.
My standards were high—maybe too high—but I was not going to settle for anything less than what I wanted in a husband.
That’s right. I wasn’t shooting for casual dating. I was shooting for a husband.
Why would I date someone I didn’t think I would marry? That was nothing more than a waste of my time, and I had a lot of other things I could be doing in that time.
Like reading books.
It wasn’t my fault that books were better than boys.
I opened the app store and typed in ‘dating apps.’ I could already feel the regret as it coiled in the pit of my stomach and dug itself a little nest down there.
Really, that should have been enough of a warning sign not to hit the download button on three different apps, but here I was.
Downloading them.
The first one to download, Stupid Cupid, was the first app I opened. A screen appeared that told me how it was founded in New Orleans by Chloe and Dominic Austin and was a sister company to hookup website Pick-A-Dick, run by Peyton Sloane, Dominic’s sister.
Well, if all else failed, at least there was someone out there who could probably get me laid on a regular basis.
After that, it prompted me to sign up and create a username. I went for BookwormKinsley and, after a moment of surprise when it was available, set a password and completed my registration.
I spent the next half an hour setting up my profiles on Stupid Cupid, e-Matched, and Tap That. Thankfully, I got the same username on all three apps, which meant there was less of a chance I’d forget my login details when I switched to my laptop.
The only problem was that I had absolutely no idea what to do now. My profile was pretty bare, and I sipped my coffee as I considered how best to sell myself.
Perpetually awkward bookworm with unlimited access to books and questionable White Peak magnets. Likes coffee, gardening, and judging fictional people for their bad decisions.
I don’t know. I’d totally date me based on that description.
I thought I sounded pretty
