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have a cold pitcher and a hot pizza waiting for you. Come meet us, okay?”
    Delete .
    8:32 p.m. “Are you alive? It’s Andie. We’re heading to the Blue Light for drinks. Call us.”
    Delete .
    10:35 p.m. “C’mon, Waverly, we miss you. Come have drinks with us, please? There are lots of cute guys here.”
    Delete .
    11:15 p.m. “Hello?? Where are you? Waverly, you can’t spend the rest of your life in hiding.”
    Delete .
    11:47 p.m. “C’mon, babe, get out of those pajamas and join the living again.”
    Delete .
    Delete . Delete . Delete.

Three Months Later

CHAPTER TWO
    Beer goggles are the lonely girl’s Cupid.
    Or at least that had been Andie’s advice since Aaron had dumped me. Not that I’d actually acted on it yet. But there I was, finally out of social hibernation and on my first real date since the breakup.
    Okay, it was a setup, but it still counted, right?
    I looked across the table at him and his familiar brown eyes. He was a nice guy … but …
    No, an entire case of Corona couldn’t help me with this one.
    I looked around the festive Mexican restaurant and searched for something, anything, to fill the silence. The place was packed, everyone immersed in loud, lively conversation and clearly having more fun than I was. Words and laughter bounced off the walls. It was like the entire place was having a ball watching me flounder through my first attempt at dating again.
    I held up my beer and took a sip. “So, Rick, how long have you lived in San Francisco?”
    “About two years,” he said. “You?”
    “Since I finished college, so I guess that’s about eight years,” I said.
    “Wow, a long time.”
    “Yeah, a long time.”
    More awkward silence. Why couldn’t I think of anything to say? Pre-Aaron I couldn’t shut up. Now I sounded so lame and boring. Was I really that lame and boring?
    I looked back at Rick and wondered why I wasn’t attracted to him. He was cute, and he met my height requirement, which was shrinking with each Friday night I spent watching TV. But those eyes … and that chin … there was just something familiar about him that wasn’t doing it for me. What was it?
    “So you work in sports PR?” he finally said. “That must be fun. Are you big into sports?”
    I shook my head. “Not really. I’m not very athletic, actually. Jogging in a straight line for thirty minutes is about all I can handle. If I’m feeling adventurous, I jog for thirty-five minutes, maybe even thirty-six.”
    “But no real sports?” he said.
    “Um, does beginner’s yoga count as a sport if you go once a month?” I laughed weakly and took a huge sip of my beer.
    “What about watching sports? Football? Baseball?” He was obviously grasping for straws. We both were.
    I shook my head again and tried to laugh. “Not really my thing,” I said.
    He wasn’t laughing back. “So why did you get into the field?”
    I picked at the paint on my beer bottle. “Um, my dad used to play professional baseball, so I sort of grew up around sports.”
    He finally seemed interested. “Really? For what team?”
    “Oh, uh, he played AAA for the San Jose Giants.”
    “No way. What position did he play?”
    “Pitcher.”
    Rick was clearly more impressed by this new information than he was by me. “That’s so cool. Did he ever get called up to the big leagues?”
    I bit my lip. “That was the plan, but he had to retire early, right when he was about to get his big break, unfortunately.”
    “Injury?”
    “Something like that,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
    The look in his eyes changed to one I’d seen many times before. He wanted to know more but was too polite to ask.
    He took a sip of his beer. “Does he still work in sports?”
    “Not quite,” I said, shaking my head.
    “Oh. Well, it’s cool that you do. It sounds pretty glamorous.”
    I picked some more paint off my beer bottle and gave my standard response to that comment. “Yeah, it’s a great job,” I said. If he had only