Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

more compassionate than snide. “Doing what? Finishing your book?”
    Abby felt her throat begin to close up as it did whenever anyone mentioned her work in progress. Or her work not in progress. “I’ll have you know that I just may be on the verge of my biggest creative breakthrough yet.”
    “On what? The title page? The dedication?”
    “Well, it certainly won’t be dedicated to you this time,” Abby muttered under her breath.
    “Look, sugar,” Margo drawled, making Abby wince. The sweeter and thicker Margo’s Atlanta accent got, the more dangerous she became. She’d been known to make the grown men in her brokerage firm cry simply by sliding a “God love you” or a “bless your little heart” into their annual performance reviews. “I don’t mean to be so hard on you, but I’m afraid you’re only a few takeout orders away from becoming some crazy cat lady who stays triple dead-bolted in her apartment twenty-four hours a day and bakes poisoned cookies for the children in her building.”
    “I believe you have to have more than two cats to qualify as a crazy cat lady,” Abby replied stiffly. “Forty-two is optimal. And you know I’m a rotten cook so the poisoning will probably be ruled accidental. Besides, if I don’t turn something in to my publisher soon, I won’t have an apartment. I’ll be pushing a shopping cart full of all my worldly belongings—and my cats—around the park.”
    Margo snorted. “The mayor won’t even let you get away with that these days. That’s just going to earn you a one-way bus ticket to Boca Raton.”
    “Sadly enough, that’s starting to sound like a perfectly good option. I’ve heard Boca Raton is lovely this time of year.”
    Margo slowed her pace to match Abby’s—a sign that she’d begun her cool down. “So just exactly where did you find this guy— www.EscapedConvicts.com ?”
    “I met him on Twitter,” Abby reluctantly admitted.
    “Well, that bodes well for a long-term relationship. At least if he dumps you he can do it in one hundred forty characters or less, which is so much better than on a Post-it note.”
    “Is this a bad time to remind you that we met while speed dating?” Abby asked, referring to the dreaded urban game of musical chairs that involved answering a matchmaking cattle call, then spending three to eight minutes interviewing a potential lifetime mate before moving on to the next prospect.
    It was only after she and Margo had drawn their numbers and ended up sitting across a table from each other at a crowded bar in Soho that they had realized it was a gay speed dating service. They had sat gazing awkwardly at each other for over a minute before Abby had blurted out, “I’m afraid I’m not gay. But if I was, I’m sure I’d find you very attractive.”
    “I’m not gay, either,” Margo had confessed, dissolving in husky ripples of laughter. “But if I was, you sure as hell wouldn’t be my type. I’d want one of those butch chicks with the tattoos and the mullet.”
    They’d spent the next eight minutes comparing dating horror stories. When the bell rang, signaling that their time was up, they’d ducked out a fire exit and spent half the night at the Back Fence in Greenwich Village listening to jazz and drinking chocolate martinis.
    “Based on how we met,” Abby said, “our relationship should have only lasted for about seven and a half minutes instead of three years.”
    “Just what do you know about this guy?”
    “His name is Mark … I think,” she added under her breath. “He’s on sabbatical from his job as a college professor. His first marriage ended badly, possibly from adultery—hers, not his. He knows a lot about pop culture and classic TV. Oh, and he doesn’t get along with his mom.”
    “Perfect. He’s unemployed, divorced, has mommy issues, and can beat you at Trivial Pursuit because he has nothing better to do all day than sit around and watch TV. I hate to be the one to point this out, but he