“Here’s to freedom!” Amy sings out. The champagne cork pops, thick foam spilling over the bottle’s lip.

I snatch a dish towel from the kitchen counter and press it to the bottle. “Don’t let it spill.”

Amy ignores the dish towel and quickly takes a long drink straight from the bottle. “Problem solved.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. “You’re not going to feel that later at all.”

“Relax!” She grins, handing me the bottle. “We don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow.”

I raise my brows at that, but accept the champagne.

“Oh. That’s right.” She runs her fingers through her short brown hair. “The interview. Are you nervous?”

My exhale is shaky. “No.”

“You are such a bad liar.”

“I know.” I grimace. “But I still can’t believe they even agreed to interview me. This agency is the best in San Bravado. Just take a look at all their reviews online. And, my God, the prices they charge.” I roll my eyes.

“That just means they pay well. Hopefully.”

Amy opens the fridge and pulls out the sheet cake she picked up on her way home. She gently eases the dessert onto the counter and looks around with a frown.

“Where did I put that, um, what’s-it-called thing?”

“Knife?”

“The special one. For cakes and pies.”

“Dish drainer,” I point.

“Ah.” She pulls it from the drainer and pops the plastic top off the cake. “I should have gotten candles.”

“It’s not my birthday,” I laugh, leaning against the counter and watching her slice the cake.

“No, but it’s the start of a new beginning. You’re twenty-six, okay? You’ve spent your entire adult life thus far in the military.”

“I know.” I gnaw on my bottom lip, wondering for only the millionth time if I’m doing the right thing by coming home.

“So, what were you saying about this babysitting place?”

“Nannying agency.”

“Is there a difference?”

“To some people there is.”

Amy attempts to put a slice of cake on a plate, but it flips over and lands icing side down on the counter. “Shit. This is why we need a dog. So it can eat all the dropped food.”

“I don’t think cake is good for dogs.”

“And it’s good for us?”

“True. I want a corner slice. That one.” I nod at the piece of cake with a blue swirly flower on it. Go big or go home, right?

Amy hands the cake slice over, and I pull two forks from the silverware drawer.

“What I was saying,” I continue, “Is that this is the nicest, most exclusive nanny agency in the area. I didn’t even expect to get an interview. I haven’t babysat since high school.”

“The rest of your resume must have impressed them.” Amy takes a slow bite of cake, taking her time licking all the icing from the fork. “Ex-military isn’t exactly chopped liver.”

I try not to laugh at the term that I would expect to hear from my grandma’s mouth before I heard it from a twenty-eight-year old’s. “Okay, so I can perform CPR.”

“And put anyone who pushes your kid down the slide into a sleeper hold.”

“Ha, got that right.” I grin, taking a sip of champagne. It’s been a while since I’ve had booze, and it makes my head spin slightly.

“You don’t have to work, you know. Come to school with me.” Amy’s eyes light up. “Maybe it’s not too late for you to start next semester. We could take all the same classes.”

She’s kidding…though it is a cute idea.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t want to study business.”

I shrug and stare at the dark window. Amy’s one-bedroom apartment looks out at the back of another building. There’s no elevator, and it constantly smells like oil from the Chinese restaurant next door. It also costs an arm and a leg in rent.

So, all in all, it’s a deal for San Bravado.

My parents offered to have me move back in with them when I left the service a month ago, but I declined. I could also get my own place, I suppose. One on the peripheral of the city, where I can afford to live alone and still eat.

But I don’t want to do that, either. Leaving the army feels like starting all over again. I may be a few years from thirty in body, but at heart, I’m a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old. I want to share a cramped space with my best friend, eat takeout straight from the boxes, sleep in, work a part-time job while I figure out what I want to do next. For me, right now, that’s my idea of heaven.

“School is cool, man,” Amy says around a bite of cake. I’d almost forgotten we were talking about college.

“So is taking care of kids.” Leaving my champagne on the counter, I take my cake to the table and plop down in a chair. One of the benefits of not working is having lots of extra time to spend at the gym. Those treadmills at the twenty-four-hour place down the street have seen a lot of love from me this month.

“I know what you want to do.” Amy smiles knowingly. “You want to be a stay-at-home mom.”

“Kinda hard to do that when I don’t have any kids of my own. Plus, you’re the wife in this relationship, aren’t you?”

She snaps her fingers. “Hello, welcome to this century, Jayne. Husbands can stay home and raise the kids too.”

“I know that,” I start, but then realize we’re arguing about an imaginary circumstance and shut my mouth.

“This is what you need.” Amy sets her cake down and scurries from the kitchen. Twenty seconds later and she’s back, laptop in hand. She takes a seat across from me, grinning wickedly.

“No,” I immediately say.

I’ve known Amy for six years and two months now, and I can read the girl like a book. She makes it pretty easy, on account of never hiding her emotions well. But aside from that, I swear there’s also some kind of intuitive, psychic link between us. She doesn’t even need to open her mouth for me to know what’s going on in that head of hers.

“Don’t you dare sign me up for online dating.”

Amy’s shoulders slump. “You don’t know that I was going to do that.”

“Yeah? What were you going to do?”

“Um…show you some cool…porn?”

“Cool porn. Huh. Right.”

“Jayne,” she groans. “You just said that all you want to do is be with kids. How about we get you a husband as a nice precursor to that?”

I can only shake my head. “Where in those things that I said did you hear ‘I want a husband’?”

“Good friends read between the lines.”

“Too much. They read between the lines too much.”

Amy slowly opens her computer, eyeing me as she does so, waiting for me to tell her to close it. “Let’s just make you a profile so we can look at guys.”

“We can use yours to do that,” I counter.

She scrunches up her face. “I’m taking a break. I was spending too much time on the sites.”

“Really?” I dryly ask. “You don’t say?”

“Ha, ha,” she just as dryly responds. “Have all the laughs you need.” She types away quickly, the screen’s glow illuminating her excited eyes. “We’ll just have one look, okay? That won’t be so bad.”

“Is there a support group for people who are addicted to dating sites? I’ll drive you to meetings if you need it. I’m here for you, no matter what.”

The crazy lady in front of me doesn’t seem to hear my words. Amy’s eyes rake across the computer screen, and she hunches forward, trying to get closer to whatever she’s looking at.

“What about this guy?”

She turns the laptop around, showing me a picture of a smiling guy with dimples. His jaw is chiseled, his teeth white. Blond hair sticks up in that carefully styled way. There’s nothing wrong with him; he’s just not for me, and I know it.

“I want to focus on myself first,” I quietly say.

Amy gets the seriousness in my tone and puts the computer down. “Okay. Say no more.”

My eyes drift down to my cake, and I cut another piece off with the side of my fork but don’t eat it. Suddenly, my appetite is nowhere to be found.

“Oh, hey,” Amy says. “Those nice comforters we looked at the other day are on sale. They’re, like, twenty percent off. Maybe I’ll get one. Or two. You can use one. The one on the pull-out isn’t really big enough.”

“That sounds nice,” I murmur, not thinking about comforters or the pull-out couch that’s my current home. Instead, my thoughts are drifting to men—precisely the place I insisted they’re not at.

Truth be told? I would like a husband, a family. Abso-freaking-lutely. But I’m not going to hold my breath and wait for all of that to come to me. And it’s not like that’s all I want.

I need meaning in my life. Purpose. To feel like I’m doing some good for others. That’s something I have to find before I move on to whatever the next step in life will be.

I’m hoping that a job as a nanny will provide that. Just to wake up every morning and feel confident in what I’m doing. That’s all I’m asking for.

“But a little action wouldn’t hurt,” I sigh, thinking out loud before it’s too late to stop myself.

“Hah!” Amy points an accusing finger at me. “I knew it!”

“Damn,” I mutter.

“You can’t lie, and you have a really bad habit of talking out loud. Thank God you were never taken hostage.”