“I just need a distraction,” she said.
Iris’s eyebrows popped up. “What kind of distraction?” Her voice was teasing, and Claire knew exactly what direction her friend was headed. Iris was always reading one romance novel or another, and was famous for constantly trying to cultivate happily ever afters for her friends, even if just for one night. “Like . . .” Iris rolled her hand over and over, prodding Claire to go on.
Claire rolled her eyes but smiled. “Okay, yes, fine. That kind of distraction.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Iris clapped her hands once, then rubbed her palms like some wicked villain. “Yes! It’s been forever since we got you laid.”
Claire shushed her and leaned forward. “Keep it down, will you?”
“Keeping it down isn’t going to land you in the sack with someone.”
“Oh my god, will you—”
“Hey, Bright Falls!” Iris called, cupping her hands around her mouth as she stood up. Heads swiveled toward her, mouths already smiling like they did anytime Iris Kelly spoke up. “Who wants a chance with this fine-looking lady next to me! She’s in desperate need of a good fu—”
“Iris, oh my god.” Claire tugged on her best friend’s gauzy tank top, half hoping she ripped the hem in the process. Iris plunked down into her chair while Claire’s face burned like the center of the sun. Everyone stared, and more than a few lifted a brow in her direction. Matthew Tilden, who used to make extremely inappropriate comments about Claire’s ass back in middle school, turned around on his barstool and tipped his beer toward her, while Hannah Li, a kindergarten teacher, for god’s sake, smiled so prettily before lowering her long lashes to her cheek, Claire’s stomach flipped.
“What the hell, Ris?” Claire asked.
“I thought you wanted to meet someone?” Iris said, her smile dropping away as she leaned across the table, her fiery red hair falling into her face. Iris did everything at one thousand percent, while Claire simmered at around ten.
“I did. I do. It’s just . . .” Claire sighed. She wasn’t great at this. Dating. Romance. Sex. She’d never had a one-night stand, never had a fuck buddy. She’d had a kid at nineteen; she didn’t have time for fuck buddies. But lately, she’d been thinking about trying to date again. Thinking. She hadn’t acted on anything. She hadn’t had the time. Between running the bookstore and parenting a preteen, she collapsed into bed every night around ten, as soon as Ruby was asleep.
“How long has it been?” Iris asked.
Claire’s mouth opened, then snapped shut quickly. It had been a while. No, longer than a while.
“Uh-huh,” Iris said. “A long-ass time. Who was it?”
“What?”
“The last person you slept with. Hell, the last person you went on a date with.”
Claire took another swig of wine, knowing the answer would scandalize Iris’s romantic heart. “Nathan.”
Iris nearly choked on her liquor. “Nathan? My assistant Nathan? The Nathan I set you up with because you’re both ridiculously detail oriented and thought maybe you could bond over your filing system or something like that, whom you took to dinner at a lobster roll food truck in Astoria and never called again, making it incredibly awkward for me at the shop the next week? That Nathan?”
Claire sat back in her chair, slipping off her dark purple–framed glasses and polishing them on her shirt while she said nothing.
“That was six months ago, Claire. Six. I had no idea it was this bad.”
The timing had been off with Nathan, that was all. He was a perfectly nice man—gorgeous, that’s for sure, and Claire had definitely been attracted to him—but Ruby had just had her first major blowup with her best friend that week, catapulting Claire into uselessly trying to figure out how to help her daughter navigate the particular kind of hell that was fifth-grade friendships. And she’d been finishing up a small remodel in the bookstore, which had been her biggest project since taking over the business from her mom. It was important, a lot at stake.
“And I know you didn’t sleep with him,” Iris said.
Claire lifted a brow. “Is he a kiss-and-tell kind of guy?”
“No. He’s classy as shit. However, I distinctly remember you being wound just as tight as you always are the next day.”
Claire presented her middle finger to her friend.
Iris took a sip of her cocktail and then leaned forward. “Just please—please—tell me that the last time you had sex was not with the father of your adorable, precious, star-of-my-heart daughter. Tell me that wasn’t the last time.”