This Is Why I Don’t Volunteer

Megan Walsh does not volunteer.

She has rules about these things. Rules created through experience. Because one small favor becomes a second meeting, a second meeting becomes a committee, and eventually someone hands you a clipboard and starts texting before breakfast.

So when Megan agrees to cover one school fundraiser meeting for her sister, she has absolutely no intention of getting involved.

Then she meets Zoe Patel.

Zoe is the relentlessly capable PTA volunteer coordinator with spreadsheets, walkie-talkies, a suspicious amount of organizational competence, and far too many responsibilities. Megan only offers to fix one objectively terrible carnival flyer.

One flyer becomes signs.

Signs become raffle baskets.

Raffle baskets somehow involve six jars of Dijon mustard.

And before Megan knows it, she has a walkie-talkie with her name on it and a growing suspicion that Zoe might be the most attractive organizational hazard she has ever encountered.

The problem isn’t that Megan hates helping. It’s that being good at something has always meant people expect her to keep doing more.

And Zoe has the opposite problem: she’s spent years believing that if she doesn’t do everything herself, nothing will get done at all.

Somewhere between carnival disasters, late-night takeout, aggressively competent spreadsheets, and one very inconvenient almost-kiss, Megan begins to wonder whether choosing to show up for someone is entirely different from being unable to say no.

Especially when that someone is Zoe.

This Is Why I Don’t Volunteer is a warm, witty LGBTQ+ romantic comedy about competence, boundaries, school-fundraiser chaos, and discovering that sometimes the best things in life are the ones you never intended to sign up for.