This was the second worst wedding I'd ever been to, and I'd been to a lot of weddings. Seventeen so far this year, so I considered myself something of an authority.

The bride, who was my date's nineteen-year-old cousin, had just married her thirty-two-year-old former math teacher. Dinner had come from KFC, which was where they'd gone on their first proper date. I say "proper" date because rumour said—rumour being the gossip in the ladies' bathroom—that they'd been caught sneaking out of the stationery cupboard next to his classroom on more than one occasion. Today, she'd squashed her seven-month baby bump into a white spandex minidress and hung onto her Maid of Honour—my date's ex—with a death grip as she said her vows. Oh, and did I mention the ceremony had taken place in a pasture? Not so unusual in today's world of shabby chic, but most people cleared the horse poop off the grass first.

Now we were in a barn, fortunately minus any actual horses, and the DJ was playing the opening bars of "Sweet Home Alabama." With the exception of yours truly, all of the non-pregnant guests were drunk. The happy couple might have skimped on costs almost everywhere, but they sure had been generous with the alcohol budget.

"Would you remove your hand from my ass, please?" I asked Kyle, the man who'd brought me to this literal shitshow.

"Huh?"

"Your hand? No touching below the waist—it's in the contract."

"Yeah, sorry." The drunk idiot moved the offending body part two inches higher, still a little low, but I could live with it. Then his eyes lit up with an idea. "What if I paid extra?"

Urgh. At times like this, I wished I'd taken another job at the mall.

"No."

He looked as if he might complain, but then the music registered.

"Hey, this is your song. We should dance."

Yes, we should. Not because I wanted to be groped on the dance floor but because the MoH was dragging her new beau in that direction, and I had to earn my money. I prided myself on good customer service, and I had the online reviews to prove it.

Ever survived a bad breakup only to cross paths with your ex at an unavoidable event soon afterward? A wedding, a graduation, a family party... Did you wish you'd had an attractive date on your arm to show that your ex wasn't the only one who'd moved on? Well, for fifty bucks an hour plus travel expenses, I'd play that role. I wasn't pageant-pretty, but I was girl-next-door-cute according to my roommate, Cooper. Although Cooper also thought giant African land snails were cute, so perhaps that wasn't the ringing endorsement he thought it was?

"Okay, let's dance. But keep your hands to yourself, hot stuff."

Every client signed a contract, but it was short, just four rules, so even Kyle should be able to remember them.

- No touching below the waist.

- No kissing with tongues.

- No pictures of my face on social media.

- All meetings are to be in public.

But after tonight, I considered adding a fifth: no dancing if a man had two left feet. My toes were black and blue by the time I hobbled to a cab in the early hours of the morning. Did anyone make high-heeled pumps with steel toecaps? Because if they didn't, they were missing a gap in the market. Hmm... I'd have to look into that. In September, I'd start the fourth year of my fashion design degree at the University of Coastal California, and the professors were always encouraging us to explore product innovation.

But first, I needed to survive a summer of disastrous non-dates.

Cooper and I shared a two-bedroom carriage house in the backyard of his Great-Aunt Nora's home in Hermosa Beach, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because I'd never have been able to afford a place like that without the discount she gave us on the rent. Bad because Cooper was studying zoology with a focus on entomology, and he had weird taste in pets. The living room was filled with things that crawled, climbed, and slithered, which was why I spent as little time in there as possible. The snails I could cope with. The spiders? Not so much, especially when he told me just how painful the bite from a brown recluse spider could be.

"How was the date?" he asked when I limped through the front door at two a.m. Of course he was still awake—he'd just acquired a Peruvian giant yellow-leg centipede, and it was nocturnal. And also venomous. "Did you catch the bouquet?"

"The bouquet was made from lollipops, probably because the bride was barely out of high school. The bridesmaids ate it before dinner."

"Yikes."

"Do we have any ice?"

"Why? Do you need a drink?"

"No, Kyle crushed my toe dancing to 'Uptown Funk.'"

"Aunt Nora bought one of those reusable gel packs when she twisted her ankle salsa dancing last year. I'll go borrow it."

Cooper was a good guy, bugs excepted. The best roomie I'd had since the drag queens I used to share an apartment with quit LA in favour of Vegas a year and a half ago. I'd been playing the roommate lottery since I turned eighteen, five long years ago. A week after my birthday, my mom had announced she was moving to Peru to set up a yoga school, and I'd been on my own ever since. Well, not completely on my own. I had Cooper and Paisley, plus my older sister lived in LA. Virginia. She was everything I wasn't. Ambitious, successful, married. Boring. Supercilious. I'd endured a week in her spare room before I moved into my first shared apartment. If I'd stayed, I'd have been rewarded with free room and board for fifteen years to life, which might sound appealing, but prison uniforms were so ugly.

I sank onto the couch and gingerly slipped off my shoes. One of my toenails had turned purple already, and my whole right foot was swollen. At least Kyle had been happy at the end of the night. His ex had puked while doing the conga, and her boyfriend left her propped in the corner while he disappeared with one of the bridesmaids. The event had been a car crash from start to finish—the father of the bride had reversed his pickup into a gate sometime after midnight—but at least it was over now.

So, why did I do this job, you ask? Well, firstly, I was four hundred bucks richer tonight. Until my fledgling online fashion store took off, I needed to pay the rent somehow, and being a fake date paid more than retail. Secondly, the hours were flexible, so I could spend more time making the hand-painted clothing and accessories I sold. And thirdly, if I was going to go on terrible dates, I figured I might as well get paid for doing so.

Although not every client was as tiring as Kyle. Some were even fun. I'd been to a sunset cookout on the beach, a movie premiere, even a party on a yacht. Weddings were by far the most popular, though. They brought out the worst in people. Bitchy bridesmaids, horny groomsmen, mothers who make Satan look delightful in comparison...

Cooper came back with ice, and I groaned in relief as my foot began to numb.

"You're a lifesaver."

"Do you need a drink as well?"

"I can't. I have to meet a new client at eight thirty. Don't you have an early start tomorrow?"

"No, I swapped with Marlon, so I'm covering his Saturday shift."

Cooper was spending the summer as an assistant at the LA zoo, where his enthusiasm for all things furry, prickly, scaly, and slimy made him a natural at leading tours of schoolchildren. I'd tagged along once, and they loved him. He'd already been offered a job there when he graduated, but he thought that maybe he'd like to travel overseas for a year first. There were rainforests to see and bugs to count. But he worried about leaving his creatures behind. If it was just Cookie the cat or even a hamster, I'd have volunteered to petsit, but I wasn't caring for Rosie the tarantula or Rowena the Madagascar hissing cockroach, no matter how docile Cooper assured me they were. I didn't mind dropping food into the tanks on occasion, but no way was I sticking my hand in there.

"I have another wedding on Saturday." Gingerly, I lifted the ice pack and grimaced at the bruises. "I might have to wear tennis shoes."

"If anyone can make tennis shoes work for a wedding, it's you. Is that your only 'date' this week?"

"I'm going to a charity golf tournament with Brooks on Monday."

Brooks was my best client, a wealthy executive who could snap his fingers and have any woman falling at his feet. But he didn't want emotional entanglements right now. Whenever he had a corporate shindig or schmoozy dinner to attend, he took me to make small talk, ward off single women, and interrupt if he looked bored. I'd never played golf before, but there was a buffet dinner afterward—who would turn down free food?—and at least no fancy shoes were required.

"I don't know why you don't just date Brooks for real."

"Have you forgotten why I started The Ex Files in the first place?"

The Ex Files... My little business had started out as a drunken joke, a website set up by Paisley in the aftermath of my breakup with Seb. Not content with stabbing me in the heart when we split, he'd shown up at my sister's anniversary party a month later with his new girlfriend, an immaculately coiffed blonde who dressed in fifty shades of beige and nodded in all the right places. I'd spent most of the evening hiding in the bathroom. Of course, Virginia had the perfect marriage, and she never missed an opportunity to remind everyone of that.

Why had she invited Seb to her party after we'd broken up? Because he worked at the same as her husband. And, "You need to be grown-up about this, Ally. Just because you're not long-term relationship material doesn't mean that Mitchell and Seb can't be friends."

Anyhow, I'd practically forgotten about the website when I sobered up, but then the phone had started ringing. Yes, Paisley had put my freaking number on the internet. I told her to take it down, pronto, but then we'd talked over margaritas, and she'd convinced me that The Ex Files might not be the worst idea she'd ever come up with. If I could help other folks to avoid the awkwardness I'd felt and make a few bucks in the process, then that could only be a good thing, right?

Two years on, and I still hadn't dipped my toe back into the dating pool. The pain from the Seb disaster was still raw, and for the next decade or so, I'd decided to focus on myself. Graduate from school, establish myself in my chosen career, have fun with my friends. The last thing I needed was another dose of emotional trauma along with all the other challenges of living in California, like affording food, for example, or navigating the traffic in downtown LA.

And speaking of toes... I winced as I wiggled mine. Could one of them be broken? There were days when I regretted ever listening to Paisley.

Cooper scooped Ramona out of her tank and held her out. "Okay, forget the boyfriend. What you need is a pet."

"What I need is a new roommate."

And besides, Brooks wasn't looking for a girlfriend, so why waste time discussing something that would never happen?

"Aw, you hurt her feelings."

"Do cockroaches even have feelings?"

"Of course they do. Text me the details of the guy you're meeting in the morning?"

Cooper always had my back. I'd had a lucky break the morning I'd tripped over someone's bag outside the zoology building, apart from the fractured arm, obviously. He'd been my knight in shining armour that day, and he'd looked out for me ever since. Although I signed a non-disclosure agreement whenever a client requested, I always insisted on a clause that meant my staff would be aware of my location at all times, and The Ex Files LLC, paid Paisley and Cooper five bucks each month to act as my research assistant and head of security respectively.

"I promise I'll text you."