Single Dad Seeks Juliet Page 23

“She comes on the dates with you?”

  “Yeah. In the background kind of thing. So she can take notes for her articles.”

  He nods, and I unexpectedly find myself sharing more. “She was over on Saturday night after the date, and Chloe talked her into giving her some makeup tutorials and shit.” I smirk. “You know how she’s been pushing for lessons and stuff.”

  “So, Chloe likes her?”

  “Oh yeah. They get along really well. Except Holley can’t figure out what Chloe’s talking about any better than you and I can. The slang is almost out of hand at this point. She tried to convince us one night that ‘snatch’ means something other than pussy.”

  A small smile plays at his lips, but he doesn’t say much else. After a seriously compelling moment in which I said both the word snatch and pussy, I’m at a loss for why he’s so quiet.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he deflects, but I push.

  “What?”

  “It’s just…you have a lot to say about Holley, dude. Like, a lot. And I don’t think I’ve even heard you mention any of the other women’s names.”

  I try to decide if that’s true or not. I guess it is, but it’s bound to happen. I see Holley five times more than I see any of the other women.

  “Yeah, I see her a lot. And…well, so far, the women haven’t really been all that exciting.”

  “And Holley is?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  He sighs and lifts up both of his hands defensively before stretching out his shoulders by pulling them across his body and looking me directly in the eye. “Nothing, man. It’s just an observation. Some food for thought, you know.”

  My mind reels with flashbacks of all the tiny moments I’ve had with Holley over the last two weeks or so. The laughs, the smiles, the dancing…the undeniably intimate moment Saturday night.

  Garrett stares at me hard through it all before opening his mouth one more time. “At the end of this thing…maybe just pay attention to whichever woman you think about the most—no matter who she is.”

  I nod numbly, truly considering the way Holley’s been making me feel for the first time.

  Jesus Christ, how could I not have noticed before?

  Seeing the look on my face, Garrett takes pity on me, shaking my shoulder softly and then patting me on the back.

  “Ready to run again?” he asks, knowing me well enough to know I need the outlet.

  I don’t pause long enough to do anything more than nod before taking off back down the beach in the other direction.

  I need to run. Hard and fast and as long as I can.

  The truth is there, waiting for me to find it.

  I just don’t know if I’m running in the right direction.

  Holley

  When Jake walks into the skating rink wearing his signature jeans and T-shirt, he looks even better than ever. I feel like I’m always saying that, but it’s always the truth.

  The fit of his jeans is perfection, and a lavender T-shirt stretches deliciously across the muscles of his chest.

  Thanks to the support from his light-purple apparel, his eyes stand out vibrantly. Hell, even from twenty feet away as he scans the arena looking for me, no one could miss that striking gaze of his.

  When he finally spots me, at a high-top table in the corner, his mouth melts into a smile.

  My God, the things I’d do to have a man that attractive look at me like that for the rest of my life.

  I shake off my thoughts as he approaches, and I return the smile as naturally as I can manage.

  I haven’t seen him since Saturday night when I spent the evening eating brownies and sundaes with him and Chloe while watching the first two episodes of Making a Murderer on Netflix. It’s been out for a while, but I’d never dared to watch it on my own.

  It was interesting as hell, and the three of us—we got invested.

  In fact, it was almost distracting enough to make me forget about the near kiss/grope/reveal of all my ugly feelings in the kitchen that happened just beforehand.

  Almost.

  I’ve spent the last few days tangled in a web of feelings even Rapunzel wouldn’t be able to get me out of.

  When Jake texted Monday night to say he couldn’t make it to our date-planning session, I spiraled even further.

  What does all of it mean? Does any of it mean anything? Am I being ridiculous?

  I don’t want to be the patient who gets inappropriately emotionally attached to her therapist.

  I mean, maybe none of it even means anything and I need to just chill.

  That’s the last thought I have before Jake sets his phone down on the table between us and says hello.

  I swallow the thick knot of saliva in my throat and try to act normal.

  “Hey, Jake,” I say nonchalantly, forcing a smile to my lips that feels embarrassingly similar to Pennywise the Clown.

  He studies me closely—almost as if he’s gathering evidence for a dissertation—before saying anything back. I fidget and blink rapidly under his scrutiny, unnecessarily retucking the hair that’s already behind my ear and licking my lips while trying—under much emotional opposition—to maintain eye contact.

  He smiles then, looking around at the rink as the disco lights come down and a group of teenagers giggle their way out into the middle, and then back at me.

  “I’m sorry you had to plan this date alone, but be honest with me…you chose it as revenge, didn’t you?”

  “Skating is America’s favorite pastime, Jake,” I say smartly.

  He smirks. “That’s baseball.”

  “You’ll skate, and you’ll like it,” I threaten.

  “You’re really cute when you’re vindictive.”

  “Wha…what?” I stutter, my breathing suddenly erratic at the unexpected remark.

  “You’re cute,” he says again, slowly and clearly and enunciating in a way I can’t deny. Not only that, but he doesn’t even add a qualifier this time. I’m just cute. Like, all the time?

  What in the blackberry bush’s root system is going on here?

  He raises an eyebrow in challenge, daring me to ask him what he means by that when a stunning woman with wavy auburn hair and a low-cut blouse I know to be Lydia, Jake’s date number three, sidles up to the table next to us and opens her stupid mouth.

  “Hey there,” she greets with a scrunchy smile. “Am I in the right place? I’m Lydia.”

  Part of me wants to tell her to get lost, that she took a wrong turn somewhere and she needs to head back up her own ass and to the left, but that part of me is clearly crazy.

  I put a muzzle on insane me and a smile on normal me’s face. Insane me suggests I reenact Dwight’s real-life fire drill scene from The Office, just to ensure this date never gets off the ground, but real me, thankfully, realizes how costly that kind of sabotage would be.

  “Hey, Lydia. You’re definitely in the right place.” I gesture with a hand toward Jake, whose eyes are weirdly still glued to me, and introduce them. “This is the Bachelor…” I laugh, shaking my head side to side. “Jake. This is Jake.”

  She holds out a hand for him to take, and he finally peels his eyes away from me to look at her. She looks good. I’m not a guy, but I can see her appeal—frankly, a blind wombat could probably see Lydia’s appeal—but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch as Jake takes in her looks for the first time.

  His eyes widen slightly, and I have to look away as he makes small talk. “Hi, Lydia. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” she purrs, obvious predator meets prey in her voice. If I allowed myself the opportunity to look, I’m sure I’d find her nipples poking through the thin fabric of her top like spears.

  “So,” Jake starts in, hammering away at the ice that always accompanies blind dates. “What do you do for work?”

  Lydia’s confident as she responds. “I work for the Charger Girls, the dancers for the Chargers. I used to dance with the team, but I’m a head choreographer
now.”

  Ha. Ha-ha-ha.

  Am I crying? It feels like I’m crying.

  On that note, I decide it’s best if I dismiss myself and let them have their time together. You know, for health reasons. I wave a hand to get their attention, but Jake is the only one of the two of them to look up at me.

  “All righty, then. I’ll, uh, talk to you cool kids later,” I say dumbly, wanting so badly to stick my foot in my mouth. Hell, right now, if it ensured that nothing else stupid would come out of my mouth, I’d do it after putting on one of those germ-infested communal skates.

  Jake smiles at me supportively, but I don’t stick around to prolong the pain. With a weird wave and a kind of jump-skip, I turn around and move to a table on the other side of the rink.

  It smells a little like children’s feet over here, but it’s certainly a better location for my emotional stability.

  Though, it’s a damn shame that relief is so short-lived. Before I know it, Jake and Lydia have entered the rink, its loop shape design mocking my attempt at emotional fêng shui.

  It’s official: time is a vacuum. And I have no idea how much of it has passed while I sit inside this god-awful skating rink watching Jake date another woman.

  Thirty minutes? Eighteen hours? The time it takes for a dentist to perform a root canal?

  It’s all the same. All I know is that if it doesn’t end soon, I might just have to end it myself.

  By the way, I realize how ominous that sounds, but you shouldn’t worry too much. I have absolutely no plan, and my track record with follow-through is marginal at best. It just makes me feel better to imagine lighting this place on fire like Adele is always singing. Set Fire to the Rink. I laugh to myself, but it’s admittedly a half laugh, half cry. I’m losing it. That’s not even that good of a joke.

  I don’t completely eliminate the possibility of arson from my mind, however. I mean, maybe Garrett would come to put it out and I could meet him—two birds, one stone.

  I shake my head almost violently to clear it. Jesus, Holley. Get it together.

  Jake and Lydia skate by, laughing with each other as Lydia fakes losing her balance and falls bodily into the strength of Jake’s hard muscle.

  What a fucking cliché move.

  I try not to grind my teeth as I make note of it on my pad and turn back to watch them as they round the corner on the other side of the room.

  Thankfully, in the name of a perfect distraction from the roller-rink-flirt-fest, my phone chimes with an email notification. I open it quicker than I’ve ever opened an email in my life.

  From: Phyllis.Carmichael@SoCalTribune.com

  To: Holley.Fields@SoCalTribune.com

  Subject: Bachelor Anonymous Reveal Party

  Hi Holley,

  I hope all is well in the land of Bachelor-ville!

  I have some unfortunate news about the upcoming BA Event, and Gloria wanted me to make you aware ASAP.

  I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere along the line, our wires must have gotten crossed. The BA Reveal Party was scheduled for next Friday, August 28th, not the following Friday, September 4th, like you originally requested.

  I’m sorry…what? I blink seven hundred times, but when I reread it again, it still says the same thing.

  How in the hell did they get the date wrong?

  I keep reading in hopes that Phyllis has decided to become the next Ashton Kutcher and punk my ass. But, deep down, I know better. My fifty-year-old co-worker is too straitlaced to dabble in pranks, and she doesn’t have the bone structure to pull off Ashton’s haircut.

  I am so sorry, Holley.

  I wish I had better news, but the venue, the caterers, the photographer, they refuse to change the date and have made it clear our deposits are nonrefundable.

  I tried to talk Gloria into letting us take a loss on this one and just reschedule, but she was adamant that you’d be able to make Friday, August 28th work for the BA Reveal Party, your article schedule, and the rest of the Bachelor’s dates.

  Which is also why, at Gloria’s insistence, the invites have been sent out and the guest list is nearly set.

  Again, I wish I had better news.

  Please let me know if I can do anything to help you.

  Sincerely,

  Phyllis Carmichael

  Event Coordinator, SoCal Tribune

  Let her know if she can help me?

  Uh…how about you buy a fucking time machine and go back to the day you screwed up the date and fix it, Phyllis!

  Gah. This is a serious snag in my timeline. My article deadlines. Jake’s dates.

  It takes everything inside me not to toss my phone out into the middle of the skating rink so someone can roll the hell over it and crush it to smithereens. Clearly, this wouldn’t be helpful in any way, but damn, the instant gratification of releasing my pent-up anger and frustration would almost be worth it.

  On a sigh, I look up from what must be Satan’s personal inbox that’s somehow found its way on to my phone and catch sight of Jake and Lydia again.

  Suddenly, my brain feels like it might explode. Phyllis’s major fuckup momentarily forgotten, I get lost in watching the two of them glide around the shiny roller rink floor.

  Lydia smiles like the sun as she skates beside him. She reaches out her stupid flirtatious hand and touches him on the arm, and then the shoulder, and then wraps an arm around his hips.

  Goodness, does the woman have some sort of tactile disorder? How much does she need to touch him?

  I turn my back briefly and bend down to fix my shoe—a shoe that doesn’t need fixing. It’s a Vans slide-on, and I’m wearing no-slip socks.

  My brain, though—it needs a reality check. High crime isn’t an option, and more than that, it shouldn’t even be a notion.

  I mean, what am I expecting here? The man is on dates with these women. In fact, physical contact is kind of the point. It should excite me because it means I actually have something to say in my articles. I have words to fill my word count.

  So why in the world am I feeling so dang grouchy about it?

  Am I just jealous of people who actually have prospects? Has my mind somehow latched on to the first decent man I’ve come into contact with since Raleigh and I split up? I mean, it’s not like I’ve known this guy for longer than a hot minute. My hormones need to calm down and get it together. There are lots of fish in the sea, and I just need to get out and swim with some of them.

  I flinch. The idea of getting out and trying to meet men to date makes me want to cry so hard I’d fall face first into a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s.

  My God, I’m going to be alone forever.

  While Jake skates around with the bubbly cheerleader, I make a mental note to research how much responsibility it requires to own a cat. All in the name of my future spinsterdom, of course.

  Jake

  Lydia’s overt clinginess nearly forgotten—thank God—I grab Holley’s hand and drag her out of the front seat of her Infiniti with impatience. The sooner I get her out of the car and down on the beach, the sooner we can get the stupid debriefing out of the way and get on with the fun stuff. Although, I have to admit, with the way Holley is trying not to smile right now, I might just have to pepper in some fun right in the beginning.

  She eyes me with an amused mix of contempt and playfulness, and I waggle my eyebrows.

  “Get a move on, slow poke.”

  Her eyelids flutter as she snorts, but she doesn’t let go of my hand when I shut her door behind her either. I take that as a sign of tacit compliance, so I don’t waste any time pulling her away from the car.

  Her eyes go from bright and beautiful to greatly opposed when I lead her from the parking lot and onto the sand and then take off toward the water, gently dragging her behind me.

  “No!” she yells vehemently, digging in her heels and pulling as hard as she can. It’s not exactly the enthusiasm I’d like to see, but it’s worlds better than the dejected look she had on her face at the skating
rink tonight.

  It’s a look I’m finding I hate witnessing, and I might even go so far as to say I’d do just about anything to change it.

  “Relax, Holley. It’s going to be fun. I promise.”

  “No!” she shouts, pretending to be opposed. “I’m not going back in that water, Jake Brent! It’s nighttime, for God’s sake! It’s dark!”

  I laugh outright before scooping her up in my arms and running toward the water at full speed. She shrieks—and giggles—the whole way, slapping at my shoulders with the strength of a feeble mouse.

  “I thought you were getting back into yoga… You might need to work a little harder,” I tease with a fake wince, and she smacks me again, a little harder this time.

  Still, though, it’s not hard at all.

  “Shut up and put me down!” she exclaims, just as I creep into the edge of the water and pretend to drop her.

  She screams, snorts, then grabs on to my shoulders like a spider monkey, laughing her ass off. “Jake, I swear,” she breathes out between giggles, “if you drop me in this water, I will set you up on another date with Barbie Bianca. But this time, it’ll be a couples trivia night.”

  “That’s fucking dirty, Holley,” I respond, an amused smirk already making its way onto my lips. “Terroristic, even. Normally, I wouldn’t dare negotiate with a hostile, but in the name of saving my eardrums, I’ll concede.” An air of victory engulfs her, and just like that, every negative factor of her energy has been removed. I don’t bother telling her that going in the water was never really in my plans from the start. I carry her back up the beach and set her gently on her feet and then plop down in the sand beside her.

  She looks down at me and then back at the truck, and I know there’s something else on her mind.

  “Yes?” I ask, cutting to the chase. “What is it?”

  She scrunches up her nose in the cutest way. “It really doesn’t bother you to just…sit in the sand without a towel?”

  I lean back my head and groan, but it’s mixed with a laugh. Nobody amuses me like she does. “It’s just sand, Holl. I know it’s a real bitch when it gets inside your complicated-as-hell sandals, but it’s not going to kill you.”