How to End a Love Story(28)

“Hot, clothes-on, self-loathing bathroom sex,” Eve nods.

“I should call my ex,” Nicole says.

“Is this hot to women?” Tom asks.

“Yes!” Helen, Nicole, Eve, and Saskia shout at him.

“In fiction, babe,” Eve says, patting his arm. “In real life, I much prefer a nice boy who can cook a mean lasagna.”

“Be . . . meaner . . . to . . . women. . . .” Grant says, and feigns typing into his notes app.

“Like he needs the help,” Owen says, and snickers.

“I haven’t gone on a second date since Labor Day,” Grant objects. “And Helen would agree: it’s the second one that makes it significant.”

“Only if you’re looking for something deep,” Helen says.

“I always go deep,” Grant winks at her.

“Oh my god, unless you’re gonna fuck one of us on this table while the rest of us get to watch, please shut up,” Nicole says.

Helen laughs. She realizes she must be acclimating to the rhythms of the room, because she would have been shocked into silence by Nicole’s outburst a month ago.

Instead, she says, “Nicole volunteers as tribute.”

“Please, he’s too wholesome for me,” Nicole says. “Besides, we all know Helen has a homecoming king kink.”

Grant lifts his brows, then turns over his shoulder and bites the marker “sexily.” “What do you say, Helen, do I have your vote?”

Helen snorts and dissolves into laughter with the rest of the room.



Tom and Eve invite everyone to their annual Christmas potluck right before the room shuts down for the holiday season. Helen makes sure to attend, after a somewhat sad Thanksgiving spent marathoning Gilmore Girls and watching everyone else go to their individual Friendsgivings on Instagram. She had thought maybe someone would invite her along, but no one in her cell phone contacts seemed to be hosting a dinner of their own. Suraya went out of town to her in-laws’ home (“pray for me, I’ve been assigned green beans”) and Grant had been in Vegas with his visiting father (not that she’d been expecting any kind of invitation from him). She’d ended up FaceTiming her parents and telling them she was going to meet up with some friends later, and then hung up to watch Lorelai and Rory road-trip to Harvard.

Helen drives along the Silver Lake Reservoir now, looking for parking. She loves driving, but she hates parking. Her first week with the rental car, she tried to parallel park on Ocean Avenue and ended up scraping the entire right side of her vehicle in the process. She left a hasty note on the windshield of the other car and drove home directly, then ghosted the guy from Hinge she had been supposed to meet.

She’s made only the barest of attempts at dating in LA—frankly she finds the game of swiping and messaging and flirting to be somehow both tedious and embarrassing. There shouldn’t be a written record of her rough-draft attempts at dating.

She finally finds a single spot that she’s pretty sure she’ll fit her hatchback Prius into and pulls up alongside the front car. As soon as she reverses, she realizes she’s misjudged—there’s no way the front of her car will make it. She tries to pull out, but it’s already too late—she’s somehow trapped herself.

She whines and allows herself a moment of self-pity before she opens the door and walks to the front to inspect the damage. There’s at least an inch of space there. Maybe she can maneuver her way out, centimeter by centimeter?

“Need some help?”

Helen looks up to see Grant standing across the street, on the sidewalk. He’s holding something wrapped in tinfoil (crap, she forgot the cookies she bought) and wearing a dark coat that looks like it’d be more at home on the East Coast.

“I can’t get out,” she says.

“You’re leaving the party this early?”

“No, I mean, of this spot. I won’t fit.”

He tilts his head and inspects the space. “Sure you will.”

She exhales shortly. Hangs her head. An admission—“I can’t parallel park.”

Grant lifts a brow. “Didn’t you pass driver’s ed with the rest of us?”

“Are you going to help me or just stand there and heckle?”

Grant grins as if that sounds like exactly what he wants to do. Instead, he jogs across the street and stops directly in front of her, a hand on the frame of her car. He peers behind her at the driver’s seat. “Do you want me to do it for you, or do you want me to tell you what to do?”

He’s suddenly very close for comfort—close enough for her to smell his aftershave (cedar + bourbon) and see the shadow of stubble on his jawline. Do you want me to do it for you, or do you want me to tell you what to do?

She swallows hard. “Um, you can do it.”

She moves out of the way and he hops into the driver’s seat. He adjusts the chair, checks the mirrors, and deliberately navigates her car into the parking space. He parks, exits, and drops the keys into her palm.

“Thanks,” she says.

“I remember now,” he says. “You failed the driver’s ed test.”

“I didn’t fail, I just had to take it more than once. It wasn’t a priority,” she huffs. “I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be.”

Grant laughs. “How many times?”