Page 14 of The Comeback Summer

“Hey,” Hannah says, flopping onto the couch near my feet. Mr.Darcy hisses and scampers away—there’s no love lost between those two. “Feeling any better?”

“No,” I say, stabbing the ice cream with my spoon for emphasis.

“Me either. Is this even legal? Forcing someone to go on dates?” Hannah asks.

“No one is forcing you—and all you have to do is let a guy buy you dinner. Easy-peasy!”

“There’s so much more to it than that,” Hannah says, sinking back into the couch.

“The kissing?” I tease, poking her thigh with my toe.

“Stop,” she says, grabbing my foot. “I’m serious.”

“Hi, Serious—I’m Libby,” I tease, pulling out one of our favorite bad dad jokes.

I expect Hannah to laugh, too, but her face closes up like a flower blooming in reverse and I realize I’m going to have to use a different tactic.

“Look at you,” I say. “You’re even pretty when you’re sweaty. I promise, once you put yourself out there, men will start lining up outside your door.”

“This isn’t some romance novel, Libs,” Hannah says, her voice wavering. “I can’t just snap my fingers and get a date—I have to pick the right app, weed out the weirdos, and after I find one thatmightbe normal, I’ll have to message him and do all that stupid get-to-know-you stuff.Then,” she says, drawing out the word for emphasis, “I’ll have to figure out what to wear, meet him at some crowded bar or restaurant, and make small talk. It’ll be torture for me, you know that.”

I do know that. Since we were little kids, I’ve been my sister’s voice in social situations. Not because she doesn’t have a lot to say—she does, but it takes time for her to warm up and trust people enough to be herself.

“I wish I could go on the dates for you,” I tell her. “And you could work out and run the race for me.”

Hannah sits up straight and looks at me, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind. She stands and starts to pace in front of the couch—the woman is even active when she thinks.

“It’s not a bad idea,” she says.

“Han,” I say, backtracking, “there’s no way. We have to document the whole thing in those journals for Lou, and...” I hesitate, trying to find a way to explain that girls like me who have “such a pretty face” have a different dating experience than girls who look like Hannah.

“Not the actual dates,” Hannah says. She takes the pint of ice cream from my hands, helping herself to a bite. “But we could help each other—do the parts of the challenge that come naturally to each of us.”

“Explain.”

“You download the app with my picture and profile; you do the swiping and chatting and date planning.”

“You’d let me pick the guys you go out with?” I ask, starting to get excited.

“I trust you,” Hannah says around a mouthful of Chunky Monkey. “You’ll just have to get me up to speed on anything that we—well, that you and the guy—talked about before the date.”

“And what will you do for me?”

“I’ll set up a training schedule,” Hannah says. “And we’ll do it together. It’ll be fun!”

“You have a warped sense of what that word means,” I say, grabbing my ice cream back.

Hannah slides over until she’s practically sitting on me. “Picture it. You and me, jogging the lake path, doing burpees—”

“No burpees,” I say.

“Okay, no burpees,” Hannah says. “Pleeeeeease, seester.”

I think back to a quote I saw scribbled in GiGi’s notebook the other day:The idea is not to live forever, but to create something that will.

We already lost her. We can’t lose the company she spent her whole life creating. The company she trusted us with.

“It’ll have to be NTNT,” I tell Hannah, harkening back to our childhood code for “no tell, no tell”—referring to the sisterly secrets we promised never to tell anyone in authority. Usually benign things like someone (usually me) sneakingsomething we weren’t supposed to (usually treats). “We can’t tell Lou that I’m doing all the swiping for you—I don’t think she’ll like that.”

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