13. The Secret Sauce

Juliet

As I lie awake in bed alone on Tuesday morning, I don't even bother tuning in to one of my dating or self-improvement podcasts to learn more about this so-called role-play dating. That can't possibly be a thing, can it? It's not fake-dating, or plus-one-ing. It's a whole new dating frontier. Maybe it's reserved for the worst cases?

Ugh. This has got to be one of thoselast-ditch, we've-tried-everything-already options. I bet there's a school of dating coaches somewhere who say things like and the last resort for the truly hapless is role-play.

Monroe's gone. He took off early, judging from the ungodly time stamp on his out for a bittext. He's probably off running, or biking, or working on his new course in a coffee shop after having already biked and ran.

I grab my phone and google dating coaches.

Huh.

That's interesting. There are a ton of dating coaches in San Francisco alone, promising to help you write a great bio, give you pointers on what to talk about, analyze your dates, and improve your conversational skills.

Okay, their services aren't too weird or pathetic. Those offerings don't scream, You suck at love. Dating coaches just give you some truth and a little boost.

Monroe's role-play offer is basically to just help me analyze my dates. This would be a live, real-time dating analysis, which could be super helpful.

But we do work together. Is it dicey to mix business with pleasure like this?

I flick through my text messages, finding the group chat with my girlfriends. A modern woman can't survive without her besties. I click open my near-daily communiqué with my friend Hazel, a romance writer who lives in New York; my sister, Rachel; and our friends Elodie and Fable, who live in San Francisco. Elodie's a chocolatier who recently married a single dad bartender. And Fable's happily single and working as a merch designer for the city's football team.

Juliet: You know how happily married and coupled-up friends love hearing the antics of the single?

Hazel: Ooh, I'll bite. Tell me!

Elodie: Watch out, J. That means Hazel's in full thief mode.

Fable: She sure is. She's going to steal anything good you share for her next book.

Hazel: Of course I am.

Rachel: So shameless.

Hazel: Exactly. So don't make me wait. Tell us everything, J.

I draw a deep breath, then open my optimistic heart that's, admittedly, a little beaten down.

Juliet: To make a long story short, Monroe offered to be my dating coach while we're here in Darling Springs. I'll start fresh and pick a few potential guys to date. But I won't really date them. Instead, he'll help me spot the signs of trouble in the men I choose…by, well, pretending to be the different guys on a series of dates. And I'm considering saying yes to his outrageous proposal even though, as I re-read this note, it sure sounds like the sign of a woman who's hit dating rock bottom. I guess you'll find me on the bottom of the dating pool, sinking in a pair of concrete Louboutins.

Before I lose my nerve, I hit send, wincing as I wait for the bubbles to appear.

They don't. At all. Not for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Not for a whole minute. Oh god. My friends think I've lost my mind. They're staging an intervention. They're?—

Oh! FaceTime is calling. And it's the girlies. All four of them.

I answer, but I fling my hand over my eyes, groaning in embarrassment. "Yes, you can come pick me up and whisk me away for a spa weekend to deprogram me after I've fallen this far."

Hazel laughs, a bright sound with a touch of sarcasm. But that's her natural tone. "Actually, we think it's a good idea?—"

"—Potentially," Rachel cuts in as she swipes on powder in front of her mirror while getting ready for work.

"As long as you keep a few things in mind," Elodie adds.

I perk up. I sit up. I stare at them. "You think I should do it?"

Elodie flips the closed sign to open in her chocolate shop in the city, the display shelves a gleaming white and the chocolates making me hungry for treats already. She furrows her brow and peers at the phone screen. "Is that a mirror above you?"

How can they see it? Oh, shit. My camera was flipped. I flip it back. "Yeah. It is. This house has mirrored bunk beds," I say. "Pretty wild."

Fable smirks. "So, is it wild, Juliet?" She asks as she walks along the street near the stadium.

Elodie clears her throat. "Exactly. Since that's sort of the issue."

"Mirrored bunk beds?" I ask, confused.

"No," Hazel says dryly from the red couch in her apartment in Manhattan. It's covered in books, papers, and planning notebooks, and her red hair is twisted in a messy bun. "The issue is your latent, simmering, long-standing attraction to Monroe."

"What?" I ask, flinching in shock.

My sister cracks up. "Don't act surprised."

"That was real surprise," I insist.

Rachel scoffs. "That seemed like Who, me? surprise."

"I'm going to have to agree with Rachel," Fable puts in.

I sigh. "It was real."

Hazel's bossy mode must be on high today. "Be that as it may," she says, "you're hot for him, and everyone knows it. Just be aware that any form of play dating might lead to temptation."

I roll my eyes like that's so ridiculous. But then my dirty brain pictures Monroe's arms. His heated eyes. His stern attitude. And my skin heats up. "So, I should say no?"

Rachel jumps on the question. "Like Hazel said, we actually think it's a good idea. Just that you should be cautious."

Hold the hell on. "You four decided it was a good idea in the one minute before you called me?"

Fable nods firmly. "Of course we did. We look out for you."

Elodie smiles sagely. "And we don't fuck around with decisions for our girls."

"Okay. Why is it a good idea?" I ask, a little giddy they're truly on board, but I still want to hear their reasons. Validation of the purchase and all.

Rachel brushes on some eyeshadow as she answers. "He's very savvy about relationships, thanks to his job. And I honestly think the guy's viewpoint could be helpful. Like a secret sauce in a recipe."

"Just don't let him give you the secret sauce," Elodie says with a naughty grin as she organizes some boxes of chocolates.

"It's not going to happen," I say, rolling my eyes just to prove how much I believe that. "We've been working together for a while, and if it were going to happen again, it would have. I've moved on. He's moved on."

"And that's why we want you to be careful as you do this," Rachel says. She's evidently the voice of reason on this call. "You two work together, and I know the podcast is important to you."

"And it's not easy to fall for a guy you work with," Hazel says with a knowing look because she would know. It happened to her. She's now married to her writing partner, but it was a long and complicated road to her happily ever after.

"I'll be careful, then," I say, tugging the blanket closer, already picturing how this role-play dating scenario might work.

"Then use that man," Elodie says, like she's calling out ride 'em, cowboy at a rodeo. "Pick his big therapist brain. Ask him a bajillion questions."

"And get all the insider tips you can get. It's rare when we can ask a man what he thinks and know he's telling the truth," Fable adds as she turns into the stadium.

"But don't go all bang me on the bunk bed because that could lead to getting your heart hurt," Hazel warns, wagging a finger. "And this time, it might hurt for real."

Last time it hurt, too, but I barely let on. To anyone.

Now though? Monroe's even less available than he was that summer. Back then, I'd dated the man for seven days and had been about to tell my brother I'd fallen for his friend. I'd planned to tell Monroe, too, of course. I'd wanted to tell Monroe I'd wait for him, I'd do long distance, I'd try to make it work. Then he'd said, "This was always supposed to be a summer fling. Like we'd talked about. Right?"

And I'd shut my squishy heart, putting on a cheery face as I'd lied, "Yes, absolutely. Just like we'd talked about."

In the end, it really wasn't. You can't truly fall for someone in a week. The past is the past, and now it's the present.

"I'm honestly not worried," I say to Hazel.

An hour later, I'm dressed and searching for Monroe. You'd think finding someone in a two-bedroom, two-story home would be easy.

You'd be wrong.

He's not in the work shed. Or the kitchen, or even the mirror room. I keep calling his name, my stomach churning each time. "Monroe? Mister Handy? Love Doctor?"

But there's no answer.

I'm sure he's on the premises, though, since I found a text after I got out of the shower saying simply, back.

The man is nothing if not concise.

I fluff out my hair, draw a deep breath, and head down to the garden level of the home where I turn into the poker room, with its late-night vibes even in the morning. The dark wood, the green felt, the wet bar, and the…

I stop in my tracks, adding a new item to the sexy vibes list: the man standing on a ladder screwing in a smoke detector with his back to me, giving me a perfect view of a round ass.

Has he always had such a great butt? It's Butt Hall of Fame level. It's the kind of firm you could bounce a quarter off. The kind you could grab and hold onto all night long.

A memory flashes—pulling him deeper, moving under him, tangling up with him.

I shake it off. "Monroe!"

Nothing.

He's probably got AirPods in. It is ten in the morning on the dot. Is he listening to the top of the hour at full volume? Yeah, that's so Monroe.

I weave around the ladder, giving him a wide berth since I don't want to startle him while he's up high, working a screwdriver and my fantasies. When he spots me, he reaches for his phone in his pocket and hits a button.

"Blasting NPR? Rocking out to Morning Edition?"

With a smug smile, he climbs down and shows me his phone. Oh. He was listening to…Nirvana. He says nothing, just smiles as if he's delighted at surprising me.

This is more than surprise—I'm officially shocked. "But you said you didn't like music?"

His smile widens victoriously. "I said I don't like keeping up on it," he points out.

I hold up a finger, rewinding to our chat in the car two days ago, then replaying it. Dammit. "That's true," I grumble.

"But see," he adds, coming closer, "I don't mind retro music. I don't really have to keep up with anything when it comes to Nirvana."

Is there no point he can't turn to his advantage? His brain is unfairly big and diabolical. "You win."

He holds my gaze for a few moments, his expression shifting slightly from triumphant to…vulnerable. "Also, you were right. It's kind of sexy."

"Is it?" I don't know what else to say. I'm a little thrown. He's listening to music after I compared it to sex. But is Nirvana sexy? I'm not so sure. "Sexy?" I add with a scratch in my voice.

"Well, the song is ‘Come As You Are,'" he says.

And what the hell did I come downstairs for? My brain has gone blank. My body has turned hot.

"Cool, cool," I finally manage. But I still don't know what I'm doing here other than thinking about sex and music.

After a few more beats of awkward silence, he says, "I've got a list of things we need to work on today," he says, but his eyes look almost sad.

Then, he scratches his jaw—something he usually does when he's thrown off too.

Oh. Wait. I've left him hanging. Maybe he's waiting for my answer. Hoping I'll say yes?

He turns away and crosses the room toward an open toolbox on the poker table. "I want to fix these tables. They're a little loose. The legs are a bit wobbly. But I can add some new screws and tighten them. I think we should leave the tables in though. The game room is sort of fun and could be a selling point, right?"

Is he rambling?

Holy shit. He is.

Monroe is worried. He's uncomfortable. He's wondering. That warms my heart, and I want to hug him. I also deeply understand discomfort, and I don't want him to feel it.

"Yes."

He turns around, arching a brow in question and maybe in hope too. "Yes, what?"

"Yes," I say, and I'm hopeful as well—for better days, better outcomes. "You can be my dating coach."

His smile spreads quickly and genuinely. Like he truly wants this. "Good."

"But I have a few rules," I say.

He looks ready for any and all.