The Last First Kiss

Maya Rivera’s life fell apart in three perfect steps, like a comedy routine written by a demon with a typewriter. Step one: She was fired from her dream job as an event planner at Lumina Events for “excessive creativity.” Translation: Her boss, a man who wore the same beige suit every day, did not appreciate the live donkey in a tuxedo she’d hired for the “Green Energy Gala.” The donkey had been a hit with everyone except the CEO, whose wife was allergic to hay. The CEO’s wife had sneezed into the vegan caviar. The CEO had sneezed into the microphone. The donkey had panicked and kicked over a seven-foot ice sculpture of a wind turbine. The video had 2.3 million views on t****k by lunch. Step two: Her landlord slipped an eviction notice under her door because she’d been “subletting to a raccoon.” In her defense, she’d named the raccoon Gerald, and he paid in half-eaten berries, which was more than her last roommate had contributed. Step three: She was standing in the rain, wearing her only dry blazer—a teal number she’d thrifted for $8—when a city bus drove through a puddle the size of Lake Michigan and baptized her in gutter water. The blazer was now the color of a sick frog. She stood there, dripping, as the bus’s taillights disappeared into the gray Pacific Northwest afternoon. Moonhaven was supposed to be her fresh start. A small city where “quirky” was a compliment and people still left their doors unlocked. Instead, it felt like the universe had put her in a blender and hit “puree.” Her phone buzzed. A text from her cousin Priya: “Did u die? Need ur half of rent by 5 or I’m selling ur Funko Pops.” Maya typed back: “Currently drowning. Send a boat. Or wine.” Then she saw it. A handwritten sign taped to the window of a sad little building with peeling paint and a flickering neon duck: HELP WANTED The Stubborn Duck – Waitstaff/Bartender No experience necessary. Ask for Gertrude. Bring your own disaster. Maya laughed for the first time in three days. It was a wet, hiccupping sound that scared a pigeon. She pushed open the door. Inside, the pub was exactly what you’d get if a yard sale and a funeral home had a baby. Mismatched chairs—velvet, wood, plastic, one that looked like a church pew—circled wobbly tables. A jukebox in the corner played something that might have been Patsy Cline if Patsy Cline had been run through a garbage disposal. The ceiling had a leak that someone had “fixed” with a garden hose leading into a bucket. Behind the bar, a woman who could only be described as “magnificently old” polished a glass with a rag that looked older than her. She wore a sequined turquoise blouse, enormous glasses on a chain, and lipstick the color of a fire truck. “You look like you just lost a fight with a bus,” Gertrude said without looking up. “I like your spirit. You’re hired.” Maya blinked. “Don’t you want to interview me?” “Are you breathing?” “Yes?” “Then you’re overqualified. Start tonight. Six o’clock. Wear something that hides stains.” Gertrude finally looked up, and her eyes were sharp, kind, and absolutely terrifying. “One rule: no crying in the walk-in cooler. It rusts the shelves.” Maya opened her mouth to say something professional, like “What’s the pay?” or “Is the donkey thing on my record?” Instead, what came out was: “Do you believe in signs?” Gertrude set down the glass. “Honey, I’ve been a sign. Burlesque, 1968. I made men believe in God and then question him in the same ten minutes. What’s your real question?” Maya wrung out her hair onto the floor. A small puddle formed. “Is it stupid to keep hoping things will work out? Even when everything says they won’t?” Gertrude smiled. It was a slow, dangerous smile, like a cat who’d just seen a mouse. “That’s not stupid, child. That’s the whole damn point.” She gestured to the empty pub. “This place has failed three times. Four, if you count the period in the ‘80s when it was a psychic’s parlor. She predicted her own foreclosure. Very dramatic.” Gertrude leaned forward. “But I’m not dead yet, and neither is this building. So here’s the deal: you help me save The Stubborn Duck, and I’ll give you a place to sleep upstairs, three meals a day that won’t kill you, and all the bad decisions you can fit into a shot glass.” Maya should have asked questions. About pay, about hours, about the smell coming from the kitchen (something between burnt cheese and regret). Instead, she heard herself say: “I once planned a wedding where the groom was a mime. He communicated his vows through interpretive dance. The bride’s mother cried because she thought he was having a seizure.” Gertrude’s smile widened. “You’ll fit right in.” Across town, Leo Chen was having a perfectly terrible day, and he preferred it that way. Perfectly terrible meant predictable. Predictable meant safe. Safe meant he didn’t have to feel anything except mild annoyance, which was his emotional baseline. He stood in his brewery’s fermentation room, staring at a tank of his award-winning IPA, and tried not to think about the email sitting in his inbox. The one from his publisher. The one with the subject line: “Ella Grace Thorn – Your readers are begging for a happy ending this time.” Happy endings. Right. Leo had built an entire career—a secret career, one his brewery coworkers could never know about—on writing romance novels where love failed. Not tragically. Realistically. His debut, Forever is a Contract, followed a couple who realized they were better as friends. His breakout hit, The Wedding Crasher’s Regret, ended with the heroine choosing a dog over the hero. His fans called him “brave.” His mother called him “bitter.” His therapist (whom he’d stopped seeing two years ago) would have called him “textbook avoidance.” He preferred “efficient.” The truth was simpler and uglier: Leo didn’t believe in love. Not the big, screen-filling, rain-kissing kind. He’d watched his parents’ marriage dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer tablet—fizz, then nothing. His father had left for a woman named Trixie who sold timeshares. His mother had spent six months crying into bowls of instant ramen. Leo had spent those six months learning how to make his own lunches, do his own laundry, and never, ever rely on another person for happiness. He was twenty-eight now. He had a successful craft brewery (Chen’s Fermented Fantasies—Felix’s idea, the name, not his), a cozy one-bedroom apartment above a used bookstore, and a pseudonym that had sold 400,000 copies. By all external metrics, he was fine. Internally, he was a leaky boat held together by spite and cold brew. “Leo!” Felix’s voice boomed from the front of the brewery. “You have a visitor. She’s old and terrifying and she’s eating our sample pretzels.” Leo sighed and walked out. Gertrude stood at the tasting counter, calmly demolishing a soft pretzel the size of a dinner plate. She wore the same turquoise sequins from that morning, and her glasses caught the light like two tiny suns. “Leonard,” she said. “It’s Leo.” “I know what I said.” She dusted salt from her hands. “Your beer is adequate. The pretzels are dry. We need to talk about the pub.” Leo crossed his arms. “I told you last month. I’m not investing in a dying business. The Stubborn Duck has negative charisma. It’s not a pub, it’s a liability.” Gertrude’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s cute. You think you have a choice.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse—a purse that looked like it could double as a weapon—and slid it across the counter. Leo looked down. It was a printout of his Goodreads author page. For Ella Grace Thorn. With his face next to it. “I’ve been on the internet,” Gertrude said pleasantly. “Turns out, romance novelists make excellent money. And they hate having their secret identities revealed to gossip blogs. Especially the ones who write about love failing. Very bad for the brand, I imagine.” Felix, who had been pretending to polish a glass, dropped it. It didn’t break, but the sound was loud in the sudden silence. “You’re Ella Grace Thorn?” Felix whispered. “You wrote The Breakup Playlist? I cried for three hours.” Leo’s jaw tightened. “Gertrude. What do you want?” “I want you to save my pub. Not with money—I have enough of that. With you. Your miserable, secretly soft, romance-writing heart.” She leaned forward. “I’ve hired a new girl. She’s chaos in human form. You two are going to plan a relaunch event so spectacular that Moonhaven falls in love with The Stubborn Duck. And if you refuse—” she tapped the printout, “—everyone finds out that the man who wrote ‘love is a temporary chemical imbalance’ also owns a weighted blanket shaped like a corgi.” Leo’s eye twitched. “How do you know about the corgi blanket?” “I know everything, Leonard. Now.” She stood, tucked the paper back into her purse, and patted his cheek. “First meeting tomorrow. 8 a.m. Bring your A-game and your emotional unavailability. The new girl’s got enough optimism for both of you.” She walked out, leaving the faint scent of lilac and menace. Felix was still staring. “Dude. You wrote Fifty Reasons to Leave. I read that on a plane and the woman next to me asked if I needed a hug.” “I don’t need a hug,” Leo said. “I need a time machine and a restraining order against an elderly burlesque performer.” But even as he said it, something stirred in his chest. Not hope—he didn’t do hope. More like curiosity. The annoying kind. The kind that had made him start writing in the first place. He pulled out his phone and opened a browser. Search: “how to save a failing pub event planning ideas” The first result was a blog called Disaster to Destiny by someone named Maya Rivera. He clicked. Her most recent post was from three days ago, titled: “I got fired today. Here’s why that’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Leo read the whole thing. Then he read the comments. Then he read her post about the donkey. And for the first time in a very long time, he almost smiled. That night, Maya sat on the floor of the pub’s dusty upstairs apartment, eating cold pizza and staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked exactly like a frown. She’d unpacked her two suitcases. One full of clothes. One full of things that didn’t make sense: a snow globe from a city she’d never visited, a single roller skate, and a framed photo of her abuela laughing so hard her dentures had fallen out. Her phone buzzed. An email notification. Subject: Ask Auntie Heartbreak – Your letter has been matched! Maya had forgotten she’d written to the anonymous advice column last week, at 2 a.m., after her third glass of wine and her fourth rewatch of When Harry Met Sally. Her letter had been embarrassingly earnest: “Dear Auntie Heartbreak – I keep believing in signs. Is that naive? Or is it the only thing keeping me alive? Signed, Hopeful in Moonhaven.” The column had paired her with someone else who’d written in. A cynic. His letter had been published too: “Dear Auntie Heartbreak – Love isn’t real. It’s a transaction. But I can’t stop writing about it. What’s wrong with me? Signed, Skeptic in a Sweater.” Now they were pen pals. Anonymous. The rules: no names, no locations, no identifying details. Just words. Maya’s new match’s username was FermentedFiction. She typed her first message: “Okay, Skeptic. I’ll go first. Today I got hired at a failing pub by a woman in sequins. She said I looked like I lost a fight with a bus. I start tomorrow. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?” She hit send before she could overthink it. Across town, Leo’s phone buzzed. He was in bed, corgi blanket pulled to his chin, pretending he wasn’t going to check the advice column again. But his fingers moved on their own. “Dear Hopeful – I once worked at a haunted Dairy Queen. The ice cream machine was possessed. Also, failing pub sounds like a metaphor. What are you running from?” Maya’s reply came ninety seconds later: “Everything. You?” Leo stared at the screen. Then, for reasons he would never admit out loud, he smiled. “Same.”