The Fall Roomie

What if practice makes perfect?

When a fall storm rips open the roof of my tiny converted boat shed, I do what any sensible thirty-six-year-old single mom would do: panic… then hire a contractor.

Except the company takes my money and disappears, and it’s literally raining in my bedroom.

The only man who can fix it in time is the last person I want in my house: Jackson Reddy—my brother’s best friend, town heartbreaker, and the guy who doesn’t even remember making out with me seventeen years ago.

He offers me a deal: he’ll repair the roof for a steal if he can crash on my couch while he renovates the old library down the street. I say yes, because I love my kid, my home, and having a ceiling.

While I’m wrangling the Hideaway Harbor Fall Festival and Jackson is manspreading on my couch, my sixteen-year-old daughter decides she’s ready to date—and apparently I’m not allowed to give advice when I haven’t been “out there” since MySpace was a thing.

So I download the apps, determined to be a good role model… and discover I’m a dinosaur. Jackson watches me flail, then offers “dating lessons” so I can practice before I meet the man who seems perfect on paper: a respectable, widowed professor who is definitely not a player like my temporary roomie.

I’m supposed to be preparing for Mr. Right. But somewhere between the practice dates, pumpkin spice, and falling leaves, I start to wonder if the man I wrote off as Mr. Wrong has been the right choice all along.