“Still nothing?”

I shake my head and pass Cohen another beer. Juliet’s dropping their daughter off with her sister, then they’re jetting off for their honeymoon in Orlando. We’ve spent the afternoon nursing our wedding hangovers on my deck, watching golfers on the course behind the house.

“I’ve gotten a few responses,” I tell him, “but two guys never showed for the interview, and four have been...less than ideal.”

“Not that it’s any of my business, but can you afford to wait for the ‘ideal’ roommate? Whatever that means.” He flicks his cap into the empty flowerpot by the railing.

“By ‘less than ideal,’ I mean jobless and/or carless. One suggested a schedule so we could share my truck. He was completely baffled when I didn’t jump all over that plan.”

Cohen snorts. “Okay, I’ll give you those.” He pauses. “I’m just saying…business hasn’t exactly been booming lately.”

“Don’t remind me.” Fairfield Party Suppliers, once my pride and joy, lumbers along from month to month now like a reanimated corpse. It’s entirely my fault; ever since the divorce finalized, I haven’t given the business one tenth of the attention I used to.

“If you need to cut my hours or something, I understand.” He scratches his head and studies a guy’s backswing in the distance. “Until you get things rolling again.”

“No way. When a business succeeds, the owner gets most of the profits—so why would it be any different for losses? It should be me who feels the hit, not you guys.” I swig my beer. “And it’s my fault, anyway. I’ve slacked off so much since that shit with Lindsay started.”

“Maybe this is a good thing, though.” Cohen props his feet on an overturned bucket. “Scaling the business back down. You were working twenty-four seven for years. Isn’t it kind of nice, having days off again?”

“Not if I lose my house,” I quip, but it falls flat. I’m not even sure why I fought Lindsay in court for this place. It’s too big, more her style than mine, and too expensive, even when money was pouring in. The only thing I like about it, in fact, is this: sitting on my deck and watching golf, the smell of grass in the air and the taste of beer on my tongue.

“I’d better get going,” he says, standing as he drains his beer. We slap hands, then pull each other in for a quick hug. “Glad I found you, man.”

I nod, but don’t say anything. No one has any idea where I was last night, or with whom. Cohen assumes I got too drunk and stumbled upstairs after the cake-cutting. When he knocked on my door this morning so we could pack up our supplies from the reception, he stepped back and pulled his shirt over his face, bitching that I smelled like booze and B.O. I wondered if that was why Mara took off without saying goodbye—then quickly realized that was just her style. After all, she’d told me from the start it was only for one night.

I walk Cohen to his truck and watch him back out with painstaking care. Used to be he’d whip out of driveways and parking lots like a bat out of hell. A lot’s changed in two years.

“Hope the honeymoon’s fun,” I call. “Try not to knock her up again.”

He laughs and gives me the finger through his open window. “No promises.”

My house is even quieter than before he arrived. I fall onto the couch and turn up the television. The cat wanders past; I call him to me, but he decides the square of sunlight in front of the window is more appealing. Either that, or my twenty-minute shower this morning wasn’t adequate.

I’m not sure when I fall asleep, but it’s dusk when I wake. A migraine commercial blasts through the speakers, which seems eerily targeted to me. Not to mention ironically cruel.

Then I notice the sound that actually woke me: my doorbell.

“Hang on a sec.” I pause in the front hall. My reflection’s a sorry sight: circles under my eyes, hair flattened on one side, and shirt wrinkled from four days in the dryer.

Fuck it. Nothing I can do to improve the image in less than two seconds. And I doubt whoever’s on my porch would mind seeing me like this, if they’re rolling in at dinnertime. I open the door.

It’s Mara. Like another missile-targeted ad campaign, delivered right to my doorstep.

“Hi.” I look behind her. She’s alone, not even a car in sight. “Um....”

“What am I doing here?” she asks, giving this laugh I somehow know isn’t real. She’s in stiff-looking jeans, spotless white sneakers, and a T-shirt that still has the size sticker running down the side. In her hands are her pocketbook from last night, a shopping bag stuffed with clothes, and a piece of paper. It’s this she gives me, instead of an answer.

It’s a copy of my roommate ad, printed in streaked blue ink.