She nods, intense as a soldier. “Those seem an allowable standard.”

I tip my chin to the screen and inch closer to her. “What else have we got?”

Grabbing a cranberry red pillow between us, she tosses it on the back of the couch. Interesting. She’s made more room. She pats the vacated spot, so I move closer as she clicks on a new message. The profile pic is a too-suave image of a dark-haired man in a sharp suit. “That screams I-got-my-profile-pic-from-a-stock-photo-site.”

“Probably. Let’s see what he says.”

The message fills the screen as she reads, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Here’s the first. Would you ever date a guy who likes to wear your panties?”

I snap my gaze to her. “Is this shit for real?”

She laughs. “Yes. Sadly, it is.”

“This is ridiculous,” I sneer. I’m this close to swiping when an evil idea lands in my brain. “Can I reply?”

“What are you going to say?”

“Do you trust me?”

The look in her eyes says duh. “Yes. But . . .”

I crack my knuckles. “Allow me to take the wheel.”

She grabs my arm. “You’re not going to write anything crazy, are you?”

“Nothing that won’t amuse you.” I hover my fingers above the keys then type, speaking the words out loud: “Sure, but only if he wears my panties on his head. To work.”

She clasps her hand over her mouth, laughing. I take that as a sign to keep this shit up.

The next question from Captain Suave is: “What is the most exciting type of intimate video for you to watch?”

Hell if I’m not eager to know what gets her off, but that’s not the point. I write back to the suit dude: “The kind your mother stars in.”

Josie laughs loudly, then I read his next question. “How often do you come every week?”

I turn to her, and even though I’m dying for her weekly orgasm count more than Suave in a Suit can know, now isn’t the time. I reply with, “Great question. I’d love to answer it, but maybe we could start the interview with some simpler questions. The last book you read, what kind of cereal you like, do you wear socks?”

The guy must have just come online and seen her newest message first, because his reply to that one is swift.

“Catcher in the Rye. I don’t like cereal. Tube socks.”

I slam the machine closed and give her a pointed look. “Catcher in the Rye is high school required reading, and if that’s the last book he read, God help us. Plus, tube socks are a deal breaker. And you can’t date someone who doesn’t like cereal. There’s no excuse for that.”

She crosses her heart. “I solemnly swear to uphold the love of cereal.” She sets the laptop on the table. “Okay, so we’ve clearly established tonight that there are lots of fish to wade through, that the love of certain breakfast foods is inviolate, and that a woman needs to allow for a teeny amount of douchery in her men. Correct?”

I nod sharply. “You are correct.”

“I’m learning,” she says, then tucks a strand of pink-streaked hair behind her ear, her silver bracelet sliding down her arm. “But what about you?”

I frown in confusion. “What about me?”

“Why are you so against online dating? Is it because of Adele? What happened with her, exactly? I’ve never known why it ended.”

I sigh. Adele. Things with her ended two years ago. Before Africa.

With her sharp wit and brilliant mind, Adele and I hit it off instantly as residents together, becoming fast friends. Then we became more. She was smart, outgoing, and had the best bedside manner. And by bedside manner, I do mean bedside manner.

Redheaded and leggy and wildly sexual, Adele had seemed like the perfect woman for me. She also liked to experiment.

“Let’s just say the leasing agent wasn’t the first woman to invite me to a threesome,” I tell Josie.

She stares at me expectantly and makes a quick, rolling gesture with her hand as if to say tell me, tell me.

“She thought one of the nurses, a brunette named Simone, was quite hot, and she asked me if I’d consider a threesome. Honestly, that wasn’t my thing. I’m a one-woman kind of guy.”

“No interest in a threesome at all?”

I shake my head. “Nope. Don’t want it. Don’t need it. Not my cup of tea or brandy or Jack Daniels. But she wanted to. It was her fantasy, and I was crazy about her. I wanted to give it to her because it was what she wanted.”

Josie leans closer. “Was that hard, servicing two women at the same time?”

I scoff. “Nope. Because I didn’t.”

“Didn’t do it?”

“Didn’t take care of them both. They took care of each other. I was kind of the third wheel.”

She furrows her brow. “That’s . . . weird?”

I shrug. “A little, maybe.”

“So you split up because of a weird threesome?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t care about one weird sexual encounter. I mean, we’re all bound to have that, right?”

“Sure.”

“What bothered me was that Adele, my best friend at the time, went on to spend the next several months having an emotional affair with Simone.”

Josie’s jaw drops.

“I don’t know if it was more or less devastating than if she’d been physically cheating, too. All I know is when she broke up with me, she told me she was in love with Simone and had been emotionally involved with her since the threesome.”