@HZRedhead: Love is beautiful and true. Like you.

@TheThird: No, like you. <3

I yank on boxer briefs one-handed while scrolling, slack-jawed, through my phone.

“The internet must end,” I say.

“Like my dreams are ending. This is terrible,” she says, hunting around for clothes in a hurry, finding her purse where she stashed her sundress from the thrift shop. She tugs it over her head, then borrows some boxer briefs from me and retrieves her wet dress and underthings from the bathroom. The briefs on under her dress are kind of an odd look, but, hey, desperate times.

And they’re definitely desperate when I see there’s a message from my newest client on my phone. It’s three words long.

Is this true?

And another from Helen Williams Designs asking me to call her.

Then Summer wags her phone. “Look at this.” Her breath catches, and her face twists in a wince as she shoves the screen at me.

It’s a message from The Dating Pool.

The note is terse, to the point.

This email is to inform you that both the Best Dates piece and your winnings from the essay contest have been canceled, your entries disqualified.

And one from her mother too. She thrusts that at me next.

Honey, are you all right? My book club is forwarding me a lot of strange tweets. I told them that I would know if you were engaged or if you were faking it. So let me know which it is. Love you, Mom.

“I need to go.” Her voice cracks, and she covers her mouth with her hand.

“Yeah, I need to deal with this too.” I scramble to get dressed, cursing as I tug on jeans then a shirt. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Not a single bit of it.”

She freezes. “What?”

“The whole thing. It’s a fucking shitshow.”

She swallows roughly then nods. “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen either. None of it.” She grabs her purse and says, “I’ll talk to you later.”

Then she marches out, stopping at the door to turn and offer a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

“It’s my fault,” I argue, but the door’s falling shut behind her.

Out in the hall, her phone rings, and I hear her ask, “What’s going on, Roxanne?”

36SUMMER

“You’re stuck on a stripper pole?”

I rub my ear in case I’m hearing things. Because that just can’t be. How can Roxanne be stuck on a stripper pole? How can anyone be stuck on a stripper pole?

“I’m not stuck,” she says diplomatically.

“Who is, then?” I ask, swiping at the tears pricking my eyes, zeroing in on the Mayday call instead.

“It’s more like the pole is stuck.”

“In your apartment?”

“In the activity room,” she confesses in a hushed voice.

“How is there a stripper pole in the activity room?”

“I had it installed. As part of the bingo revolt.”

“Oh my God,” I groan, rushing to the stairwell and racing downstairs so I can get across town. “I’ll be there in five.”

Once outside, I call a Lyft, which speeds me through the park to Sunshine Living.

I run to the second-floor activity room, blinking when I find Roxanne, a seventyish man named Michael, and a woman Roxanne’s age, tugging at a silver pole.

“Ah, Summer!” Roxanne rises, a little wobbly, setting her puma head cane down. “Be a dear. You’re so strong and young. Can you help us move this?”

I shake my head in disbelief. This is my life? I’m carrying a plastic bag with a sopping wet bridesmaid’s dress inside, and now I have to uninstall a stripper pole, plus the internet hates me, my dreams have been crushed, and the man I love thinks we are a mistake. He didn’t mean for any of it to happen. He didn’t mean for us to happen.

But first things first. Dropping the bag, I rush to the crew who are pulling—to no avail—at a stripper pole installed in a silver base. After a quick assessment, I figure out they were unscrewing it the wrong way. Grabbing the screwdriver, I slide the tool into the base and detach the pole from it, holding tightly so it doesn’t fall. Once it’s detached, the pole comes apart in two pieces.

Roxanne guards the entrance to the activity room, then mouths, Coast is clear. Let’s take it to my place.

I hand her and her friends the pole pieces. “Maybe that’s where it should have been installed in the first place.”

“Live and learn,” she says, then stomps off with her friends.

I sink down on the couch, grab my phone, and stare at my messages, trying to decide what to tackle next.

But really, there’s nothing to tackle.

I can’t undo The Dating Pool’s decision.

I can’t convince them to requalify me.

And I can’t prove we didn’t lie. We did lie. We were fake, and we won’t ever be real.

But I can at least return my mother’s call.

“Sweetheart. I’m at Mags’s place. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way,” I say, crying for real, and there is nothing fake about these tears.

37OLIVER