Rhymes With Cupid by Anna Humphrey

was appropriately sympathetic. I was just about to tell her the stuff I’d found out about him moving here to take care of his grandfather (which I knew she’d go gaga over), but Dina’s back pocket started buzzing. “It’s Damien,” she said. She slid out her phone, flipped it open, and read the text message.
    “Everything okay?”
    “Yeah.” She scrolled through his message a second time. “That’s a relief,” she added, but she sounded disappointed. “He was at a keg party with some friends, got drunk, crashed there, and just woke up. He forgot I called.”
    She started pressing buttons.
    “Please tell me you’re not texting him back this second.” She looked up. “The guy didn’t even apologize for taking sixteen hours to get back to you. It didn’t even cross his mind that you might have been upset or worried.”
    She paused, lowering the phone. “You think I should wait?”
    “Yes!” I said. “And, anyway, you just answered your phone while I was talking to you and rudely interrupted my story about pen-buying guy—I mean, Patrick.” She looked up. “I was going to tell you how he was asking about you in the car.” It wasn’t that I was intending to be dishonest with her . . . but the lie just kind of slipped out.
    “No way,” she said. “He wasn’t! What did he want to know?”
    “Well . . .” I stalled for time while I tried to think up something that sounded vague enough not to get me busted, but specific enough to seem true. “He wanted to know how long you’d been working here and, um—what your hobbies were.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I told him you’d been working for Mr. Goodman since the summer, and that you were really into supporting important causes in your spare time. And it turns out he’s all about helping people and putting others first, too.” I soothed my conscience by adding that last part, because he’d definitely said something about helping his grandfather out around the house, anyway. She flipped the phone shut. “I also mentioned the panda party,” I went on, improvising.
    “What did he say?”
    “Not much, but I think it’s just because he’s too nice to ask for an invitation. I’m pretty sure he’d say yes if you asked him yourself.”
    “Really? Is he single?”
    “I don’t know.” He hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend but, then again, we’d only spent an hour together, and in the last twenty minutes, I’d been too mad to talk to him. It was possible he had a girlfriend, either here or else back in Toronto.
    “Can you find out?”
    “We have another lesson this afternoon. I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Oh my God,” Dina said. “Maybe this is, like, fate. I mean, he walks into the store and we meet, and then he ends up being your neighbor and your driving instructor, so I’ve totally got an in.” She slid her phone into her back pocket.
    Mission accomplished. “So you’re not texting Damien back now?”
    “No.” She smiled, then added defiantly, “I’m busy at work. He can wait a while, right?”
    I stepped out from behind the cash so she could take over. “Dina, as far as I’m concerned, that jerkwad can wait forever.”
    “Elyse!” she said, covering Cupid’s ears with her hands. “Watch your language in front of the baby!” But she was smiling, so there was no question in my mind that I’d done the right thing. Even if I’d had to tell a few small, white lies, the ends totally justified the means.
    Or, at least, that’s what I thought until three thirty, when Patrick walked into the store. I was stuck with a customer who wanted to know every little difference between the four brands of white copier paper we carried, but Dina waved him over. By the time I managed to get my butt over to the cash, they were already talking pandas. Things were about to get kind of complicated.
    “So I think it’s important,” Dina was saying. “If we can raise just five hundred dollars we’ll make a small but real