Page 1 of Last Night Was Fun

Chapter1

Emmy Jameson once heard a statistic that someone, somewhere gave out a fake phone number every twenty minutes. At the time she’d heard it, she’d found it both sad and a useful addition to her list of reasons for not dating because surely and statistically, she would end up on the receiving or giving end of one of those fake numbers eventually. And that was simply too tragic to aspire to. But as she sat tangled in a blanket on her couch spooning cereal one Saturday morning, she received a text that made her wonder if her time had finally come despite abstaining from the dating race.

Hey. Last night was fun?

She squinted at the message from an unknown number. Her first instinct was it was her upstairs neighbor Tom messing with her given the local area code and the fact they’d had a brief andunfuninteraction the night before. How he would have gotten her number, she didn’t know. Nor did she know why she was fated to live below a crotchety old man with a mean cat that had a habit of parkouring down onto her balcony just to lick its butt when every single woman her age in a book or movie by law shared buildings with brooding, interesting men who looked good leaning in doorjambs. Alas, the only brooding person in her Little Italy complex was the teenaged daughter in apartment 108 Emmy sometimes passed in the lobby, who she feared might melt her with all the angst shooting from her coal-rimmed eyes like lasers.

The chance Tom had texted her was slim, but so too was the chance he’d ever call maintenance and get his leaking sink fixed and stop her ceiling from dripping—the very thing they’d argued about the night before—so she figured responding to the text with a reminder in the event it was him wouldn’t hurt.

Listen, Tom. I don’t know what passes for fun up there on the third floor, but those of us on 2 don’t consider skating around the kitchen with bath towels for shoes a great way to spend a Friday night. PLEASE call maintenance about the sink.

She hit send and dropped her phone on the cushion beside her. If Tom had the nerve to respond at all, he’d write back a treatise on all her shortcomings as a neighbor. As such, she had time to wait for a response and returned her attention to theBake Offmarathon she was watching in light of her terrible cramps.

Her uterus was a real cranky bitch sometimes, and Emmy didn’t feel the behavior should be rewarded with a morning at the farmers’ market tasting cheeses and picking out flowers. She wasn’t even feeling up for getting ahead on work as she was wont to do on Saturday mornings. So instead, she was on the couch under a pile of blankets watching mild-mannered contestants do their best with soufflé.

Her phone pinged from beside her, and she saw another message from the same number.

Umm... Who’s Tom?

Emmy frowned and lifted it to tap out a response with one thumb. She had to hit delete several times and watch the blinking cursor eat her errors before she revised and hit send.

Is this not Tom from 304?

No.

A pause long enough to pique her curiosity passed before the typing dots reappeared.

This is the guy from the bar last night.

With a hot flash of embarrassment for them both, but mostly for him, she saw the situation for what it was. She had not been at a bar last night; she’d been where she was now, working late on her laptop with one eye on aReal Housewivesmarathon—that was, until she’d had to mop up the mess in the kitchen from Tom’s sink. This guy obviously had the wrong girl. She didn’t have any enemies who’d give out her number instead of their own just to spite her—except maybe Gabe Olson, her archnemesis at work, the bane of her professional existence, and thelastperson she wouldeverwillingly giveher number to, so there was no chance he had it and could stage a prank—so she had to assume the man texting her was the victim of being given a fake number that just so happened to be hers.

What were the odds?

She reconsidered his original message, the innocent greeting and the perky smiley face when he could have sent a dick pic (she’d heard horror stories from her single friends on the front lines), and decided to go easy on him. If he was texting his hookup smiley faces at 9a.m. on a Saturday, he was probably a decent guy. Maybe a young San Diego professional like her given the crowd that went out on Friday nights and woke before noon on Saturdays.

I think someone gave you the wrong number last night.

The dots disappeared for long enough that Emmy assumed he’d left the chat to hurl his phone into the ocean in humiliation.Until there was another ping.

Well, this is embarrassing. Are you sure?

Emmy couldn’t help the quiet laugh that escaped her mouth. She wasn’t sure if it was pity or some inexplicable charm pulling it from her, but it came out, nonetheless.

What did she look like? Your girl from the bar.

If he came back and said anything about her boobs or body shape or what she’d been wearing, Emmy was going to lose her faith in men completely. Not that she had much to begin with.

Umm, about 5’8”, brunette, green eyes. Said her name was Lacey, which I’m guessing wasn’t true either.

Emmy tucked a rebellious blond curl back into place and looked down at her sweatpants as if to check if she’d grown two inches while sitting on her couch.

Yeah, definitely not Lacey. Sorry.

Well I am mortified.

Don’t be. Happens every twenty minutes, so I’ve heard.

What does?