All in Favor of Greg
A Later-in-Life Romance

Here's what I know about love: it's a scam. It ends in mediation where you lose your mountain cabin to your ex. So when my book club, twelve women who believe a shared love of paperbacks qualifies them as licensed matchmakers, decides to run a dating service with me as patient zero, I have exactly one word. It rhymes with "duck."But they’ve run the diagnosis, and, according to them, I’m the grump. Greg, a man who teaches recorder to nine-year-olds and owns a cardigan in every color of the emotional-support rainbow, is my sunshine. There’s no version of this that works.Except I'm the test case. Match the woman with a personality like a cactus and the whole scheme is legitimate, so I get three dates to prove them wrong. Easy.I don’t care that Greg has a smile that rivals an incandescent bulb or that he patiently listens to my rants without offering a single solution. Outlasting cheerful people may as well be my cardio.It’s my friends or me going down in this wager. And it’s not going to be me.