Chapter Six

Gray burst through the kitchen door, dropping her bag next to a pile of shoes before dramatically collapsing into a chair. Across the table, River banged together a toy boat and his favorite stuffed unicorn.

"That bad?" Cherry said over the sound of running water as she scrubbed dishes.

"Worse," Gray said, sore from hours spent hunched over her computer at her office in the Central Business District, trying to piece together a PR strategy that might win Principal Taylor's favor. "Totally shit day."

"Sit day!" River said with a delighted giggle, narrowly missing the curse word Gray had dropped in front of him. He started singing a made-up tune to his toys with the words: "Sit day, sit day, shhhh…shhhhhhii…"

"Ship!" Gray course corrected. "It's another word for boat."

"Boat!" River said, showing Gray his toy. She nodded encouragingly.

Across the kitchen, Cherry turned off the faucet and pulled her rubber gloves from her hands, then joined Gray and River at the table. "So tell me about your day. Lots of boats?"

"Well, I woke up hungover as…ship," Gray said. "Headache, nauseous, and late to my first meeting with the middle school principal, who turned out to be a total hard-ass and threatened to have me fired."

"Yikes," Cherry said sympathetically.

"Yeah, big-time yikes," Gray said, reaching her hands behind her head to massage her shoulders. Maybe it was time for her to get a standing desk for her office. "My day never really recovered from there, and I still feel like I got run over by a truck."

Cherry leaned in, looking at Gray's neck. "And you've got the bruises to prove it. Are those hickeys?"

Gray swatted her away with one hand, covering her neck with the other. "Geez, does everybody feel like they have to point it out?"

"I'm taking this as a sign your first date went well," Cherry said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Actually, yeah," Gray said, a genuine smile reaching her lips for the first time all day. "It was, uh…spicier than I expected."

Cherry squealed, then hopped out of her seat to grab an iPad and toddler-sized headphones from the living room. Once she'd covered River's ears and turned on a video of dancing robots, she turned back to Gray. "Tell. Me. Everything."

Gray shared a rundown of the date, from the trivia to the sticky-sweet cocktails to the steamy moment in the bathroom. When she finished, Cherry clapped her hands and danced in her seat. "You lesbian Casanova, you! You put yourself out there! Do you think you'll see Carmen again?"

"Isn't that kind of the point of this whole astrology dating project, that I get through all twelve before taking anything further? Wasn't that your rule?" Gray asked.

"Oh yeah, that. You know I suck at following rules," Cherry said. "Well, maybe when you're through with the project, then. It does seem like you're pretty compatible with other Aries. And you can still be friends in the meantime, right?"

"Well, I'm starting to rethink the whole thing, to be honest," Gray said, eliciting an outraged look from Cherry. "I was hungover and pissed off my colleague this morning—hell, I could have even lost my job—because I got so distracted by the date last night. If finishing this challenge means getting fired, it doesn't really seem worth it."

"First off, this isn't just some fun TikTok challenge, it's about finding your life partner and starting a family." Cherry flipped her bright-red hair over her shoulder and leaned in. "Second, they're not mutually exclusive. Of course two Aries got all caught up in their fire sign passion and made some unwise decisions. But they won't all be like that. And you'll be smarter, right? You'll, like, actually check your calendar before you bang some girl in a pub bathroom again."

"I guess that's true." Gray looked over to confirm that River was still thoroughly absorbed in his iPad, then turned sideways in her chair toward Cherry. "Speaking of, you can go ahead and congratulate me now on losing my non-McKenzie virginity."

"Super proud of you, my brave little ho." Cherry leaned in conspiratorially. "And since you got over the sexy-times fear…do you think you'll sleep with every sign now?"

"I mean, it was pretty spontaneous. I still don't think I could pull that off twelve times in a row." Gray stretched her arms upward and clasped her hands behind her head. "But you know? Maybe it will happen again here and there. For compatibility research purposes."

"Of course, for science." Cherry chewed on her lip thoughtfully for a moment, then clapped her hands together in delight. "Oh, I've got an idea! What if you sleep with one of every element? A fire sign, an earth sign, an air sign, a water sign. It's enough to give you a taste of each element, but still some flexibility on who you do and don't feel comfortable getting groovy with."

"Big Avatar energy too." Gray nodded as she considered the concept, feeling an extra dose of confidence from her success on date one. "So if there are four elements, then I choose one of three signs in each element? Is that math?"

"Exactly. Pick one of the three for a sexy rendezvous if you're feeling it," Cherry said. "And you can already mark fire sign off your list."

"You know, I think that could actually work." Gray tapped her fingers against the back of her head in silence for a moment, deciding she had the nerve to go for it at least three more times. "Yeah. Consider it officially part of the challenge."

Cherry grinned. "I'm loving this more every day. Have you found a Taurus yet?"

"Not yet."

"You better get on it," Cherry said. "Tauruses are earth signs. Slow-moving, deliberate. It might take a while to get one to commit to a date. And I've got the perfect icebreaker for this one: favorite national park. They love being one with nature or whatever."

Gray whipped out her phone and pulled up Mercurious. "Okay, I'll get started. But once I find a good prospect, I have to spend some time researching ideas for the middle school fiasco. I'm not letting that principal make me feel like a delinquent twelve-year-old again."

"You got this, G," Cherry said. "Just don't be too flirty with the earth signs. It freaks them out."

"Noted," Gray said, already scrolling through a list of profiles and feeling surprisingly optimistic about her next date.