Page 17 of Fan Favorite

“Well, then,” he said, clapping his hands together, “why don’t we get started?”

“So, Edie,” Peter said, turning on the camera and joining them at the table. “We’re just going to ask you some questions, get to know you better. Nothing too serious, we just want you toget used to the camera.” Peter opened his laptop so he could take notes on Edie’s pain points. As long as they stuck to the script—scare the shit out of her and then offer her a solution—everything would be fine. “Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself: name, age, hometown.”

“Oh, okay, sure,” Edie said. She made an attempt to fix the messy bun on top of her head and straighten her sweatshirt before looking into the camera. “I’m Edie and I’m from Chicago. And, just so you know, Chicago pizza is not deep dish. Real Chicago pizza’s a thin crust, square cut. Tavern pizza. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.”

Jessa laughed. “L-O-L, girl, you are a delight.” Jessa elbowed Peter in the ribs. “Isn’t she a delight?”

“A delight,” he said mildly. Even he knew that no one said “thanks for coming to my TED Talk” anymore. “And how old are you?” he reminded her.

“Oh! I’m thirty-five.” She looked away from the camera and back at them. “Is that, like, sixty-seven or something inKeyyears?”

“A bit older than our usual demographic, but it’s not a problem,” Peter said. “Remember, don’t look at me. Look at the camera.”

“Oh, sorry.” Edie shifted in her chair.

“And what do you do? Your job?” he asked.

“I’m a content writer and copyeditor for an insurance company. So, I’m the one writing those emails and blog posts you’re probably not reading. You know, about new guidance on colonoscopies, that sort of thing. Really scintillating stuff.”

“Uh huh,” he said, typing “depressing job” into his Word doc. “Hobbies?”

“God, Peter, these are the worst questions,” Jessa finally interrupted. Peter and Jessa had a great success rate with their good cop/bad cop routine. “Let’s talk about fun stuff. Tell meabout your worst date, and I’ll tell you mine. Maybe we’ll let Peter judge whose is worst, even though he’s basically a monk. Oh my god, Peter, you should have your own reality show,The Monk of Malibu. They could film you sitting on your balcony, staring at the ocean. Like an art house picture of privileged melancholy.”

“I don’t stare at the ocean,” Peter said, watching Edie closely. He was definitely interested in hearing who this girl had been dating.

“The worst date I’ve ever been on?” Edie paused to think. “I mean, there’ve been a lot. Once I went out with this guy who said he was allergic to cheese and then he ordered fettucine alfredo and got all sweaty?”

“No!” Jessa exclaimed.

“I just threw my shoe at a guy who said I was too old to get married…” Edie clapped a hand over her mouth and turned to them again. “You don’t think I’m too old to get married, do you?”

“Of course not,” Jessa said immediately. Peter said nothing.

Edie looked at him questioningly. “You know Charlie and I are the same age, right?”

“And welovethat,” Jessa assured her, slapping Peter on the arm. She picked up her phone and shoved the photo of Edie and Bennett in their band uniforms at Peter. “Aren’t they the cutest?”

“The cutest,” Peter agreed in an indifferent tone. Sometimes he worried about how easily being a dick came to him. “Your worst date?” he said again, pointing back at the camera.

“Right,” Edie said, gathering herself. “There is one that sort of sticks out. I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, you know? Like, what went wrong? If I should’ve done something… different?”

“Ooh, do tell,” Jessa said.

“It’s really mortifying.”

“We’ve heard it all,” Peter said, tapping his pen on the table impatiently.

“Don’t judge me, okay?” Edie laughed nervously. “So I hooked up with this guy, and after he came, he had, like, a panic attack? He started hyperventilating. Like a full-on panic attack? And then he had to listen to a guided meditation on his phone to calm down.”

“What?”Peter and Jessa said in unison.

Peter had definitely never heard that before. He tried to think of a scenario where he would need to meditate after coming. Literally the calmest Peter ever felt was during the thirty seconds after he came. In fact, thirty seconds of peace sounded pretty amazing right now, and he made a mental note to text Siobhan and/or Veronica to see about coming tonight. Wait, he was no longer sleeping with Veronica because she’d wanted to be exclusive. Siobhan, then.

“What was wrong with him?” Jessa gasped. Peter rolled his eyes internally at the best-friend-at-the-slumber-party routine.

“I don’t know?” Edie said, biting her lip. “I guess he just got really anxious? He hadn’t been with anyone since his ex-girlfriend.”

“Wow,” Jessa said. “What did you do?”

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