Faking Ms. Right (Dirty Martini Running Club, #1)

by Claire Kingsley

Running wasn’t my favorite activity—I’d never been what you’d call an athlete—but something happens when you turn thirty. You just can’t recover the same way.

Martini Mondays. Taco Tuesdays. Wine Wednesdays. Thirsty Thursdays. Fast-food Fridays (don’t judge). Not from binging on cheap pizza and chocolate ice cream because one of us had an epic breakup. And let’s be honest, best friends cannot shirk their gorge-on-crap-food-and-get-drunk duties just because said breakup occurred after the age of twenty-nine.

“Luck has no basis in reality,” Hazel said. “You can’t predict or prove its existence.”

After the champagne and the Manhattan, I was in danger of bypassing a little tipsy and heading straight for telling inappropriate stories and asking strangers for hugs. Not that I’d ever done that before. Okay, yes I had.

Nora had been wrong about catching feelings. There was no catching involved. They smashed into me, shattering into my soul with a million tiny sparks, filling me with a warm tingly sensation. He turned back, meeting my gaze, a disarming openness in his eyes. Right there, in that exact moment, I did a terrible, terrible thing. I fell in love with my boss.

“Oh, son.” He tossed back the rest of his whiskey. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, you will soon.” “Figured what out?” “You’re in love with that girl.”

“That’s the thing about love, though. If you never open yourself up to the risk of being hurt, you’ll never give someone the chance to get close enough to love you back.

The I love you had been important, but only half of what I’d needed to hear. The second half, please come home, had meant just as much.