Sexy and Funny, Hilarious Erotic Romance Bundle (76 page)

“That's so dorky,” I said. “Matchy-matchy!” I turned around to grab her in a fierce hug. “I love it, I love it, oh, yes I do.”

“Good. Come to my place at eight o'clock tonight and play nice with Caleb's friend Matthew.”

I jerked away from her, frowning and pretending to be angry. “Always a catch.”

Back home, I tried on every top I owned along with the bright blue jeans. I was in a good mood, and everything looked okay, but I settled on a yellow peasant-style blouse with butterflies. Some of the butterflies were the same blue as the jeans, and I didn't usually like to be so matchy-matchy, but maybe my style was changing.

I took a quick picture of myself in the outfit, for reference. For a while, I'd had a style blog on Tumblr, where I posted photos of myself in my outfits. As my coaching business picked up, the coaching became my focus, and I stopped posting. I took down the site and photos, but I knew those pictures were still out there.
Not that anyone cared
, but I didn't like my image being out there without me, without boundaries. I think if it were possible, I'd prefer to wipe my entire existence off the internet.

I'm not one of those girls who wouldn't take the guy's last name when she gets married. I relish a brand-new identity. A fresh start.

Before the blind date, I stopped by the postal outlet in the mini-mall near my apartment. I spent a good five minutes looking over all the stamps, settling at last on a stamp with a butterfly, similar to the ones on my yellow blouse.

As I handed the envelope to the woman at the counter, I had an impulse to grab it back from her, but didn't.

In the blue envelope was a check, made out to Devin Nelson. The dollar amount was a full refund of what he'd paid for our coaching sessions. I could have used the cash, but I'd gotten hung up on what Steph had said about
closure
.

Refunding Devin for the coaching seemed like the right thing to do. With the return of the money, I would be absolved for whatever psychological harm I'd done.

I'd debated over what to write in the letter, but in the end, I'd simply stuck a yellow Post-It Note onto the check.

Walking out of the place, I did feel lighter, but not necessarily better.

Caleb's friend was not as cute as I'd hoped, but he was tall, and as the evening progressed, he became funnier.

Matthew had short, sandy brown hair, big eyes, and a near-constant grin. He billed himself as a “nice guy,” but to my relief he wasn't one of those nutty guys who actually thinks women prefer jerks. (For the record, women prefer confident, physically attractive men, even though a percentage of them
might be jerks
. In fact,
jerkitude
naturally occurs at all levels of confidence and attractiveness, just as
bitchitude
strikes with alarming frequency in the female population.) We had dinner and played some games at Steph's place, then Matthew suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the full moon, as it was such a warm summer evening.

As we were out, walking down the pretty residential streets just behind Steph's building, Steph came up with some outrageous lie about needing to get something from the late-night grocery store, and ran off with Caleb.

Alone, Matthew and I walked along under the light of the full moon.

I asked him to tell me more about what he was taking in school, and soon we were walking in easy conversation. I laughed at his jokes, not to make him like me, but because they were funny.

He'd been the class clown when he was in junior high and high school, irritating all his teachers. He thought that his desire to become a teacher
himself
now was some sort of divine, cosmic joke.

“You'll get students just like yourself,” I said. “I wonder if teachers think that stuff is funny. They probably can't laugh, or they'd lose control completely.”

“Some of my teachers laughed,” he said. “I had some good teachers.”

“Me too. I think I appreciate them more now.”

We got to the corner and decided to cross the street and keep going.

He said, “Did you know Jim Carrey used to do a comedy routine when he was in school?”

“You're kidding.”

“No, I saw it in this interview. He had a smart teacher who told him that if he behaved all day, he could do a short routine at the end of the day. So he funneled his energy into planning the routine.”

“That's incredible!”

“I want to be that kind of teacher, you know? I want to spot something in kids and help them shine.”

I stopped on the sidewalk, surprised by how emotional this made me.

“That's the most beautiful thing,” I said.

He got this look in his eyes, and I knew he was going to try to kiss me, right then and there under the streetlamp. I tilted up my chin and waited.

Matthew moved in and touched his lips mine. They tasted like lips. He slipped his tongue into my mouth. It tasted like tongue.

I leaned into him, pushing my body against his, but I didn't feel anything except his body.

We kissed for a while, and then I pulled away and said, “Guess we should head back.”

“Right,” he said.

We walked in silence until we met up again with Steph and Caleb in front of Steph's building.

I didn't want to go back into her place and play another party game.

“It's been really fun,” I said. “My car's right here, though, so I'm going to go home.”

Without looking his way, I sensed Matthew's nervousness, his wanting to ask me out. I could have left, and had him ask Steph for my number, and then all of that nonsense, but I decided the truth would be more kind.

“It's been forty-two days,” I said to Matthew.

All three of them looked at me like I was speaking Alien.

“Since I had my heart broken.”

“Oh,” Matthew said.

“I had a great time tonight, and maybe tomorrow I'll stop counting the days, but as of now, I haven't stopped thinking about this other life I almost had.”

I reached up and played with the pendant on my necklace, the feather and the heart Steph gave me earlier.

Steph said, “I'm glad you came out tonight.”

“We should do this again,” I said.

Everyone knew it was a lie, but they smiled, all the same.

As I walked away and got into my car, I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake.

I drove home, going through a list of Matthew's positive attributes.

Once home, I played on the computer for a bit, and went to bed late. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I remembered something Caleb had said when we first met.

If you're not afraid of kissing someone, they're not worth kissing.

When Matthew had turned to me under the streetlamp, I hadn't been nervous at all.

I lost track of the number of days since I'd last seen Devin, but I didn't stop thinking about him daily.

When I heard a romantic song, I'd think of him, and how his lips had felt on my skin.

When I saw two people hug or kiss in public, I'd wonder if he was kissing anyone.

Dinosaurs made me think of him.

And cookbooks.

I'd taken to hanging out in bookstores, looking at cookbooks to get ideas for layout and formatting. I wondered if Devin and the chef at his hotel's restaurant had moved ahead with their plans.

Mostly, though, I obsessively logged on to my online banking and wondered when he was going to cash the check I'd sent. If he wasn't going to cash it, the least he could do was send a response. Instead, I was left wondering if he'd even received the damn thing.

I considered writing another one and sending it by registered mail, but that seemed too crazy, even for me.

The last Saturday in August, I bumped into someone unexpected at one of those big warehouse office supplies stores. I was taking advantage of the back-to-school sales, experiencing the mixed feelings of being glad I was out of school, yet pining for new pencils and binders, and the exhilaration of reuniting with classmates you haven't seen all summer.

I stood staring at the colored file folders. Why were they so much more pricey than the plain ones? Was I reading the price tags incorrectly? How could file folders cost five times more, just because they were red?

A male voice startled me, saying, “I have to admit something. I followed you in here.”

I froze, going through a quick run-down of who might be stalking me. Was it Caleb's friend? I'd forgotten his name, but had been thinking about him that morning, wondering if I hadn't been too hasty to write him off.

I turned around and was shocked to see Devin Nelson, wearing a sleeveless running shirt, shorts, and running shoes.

I said, “Are you jogging?”

He pumped his arms and started running on the spot. “Yup. That's what I do. I come here and jog up and down the aisles. The scent of printer toner invigorates me.”

“Smartass.”

He stopped jogging. “How about you?”

“Yoga,” I said, pointing to my black stretchy pants. “I'm heading to class after this.”

“That's too bad. You could have gone jogging with me.”

“Up and down the aisles?”

“Just to warm up. Then outside for a bit, just to be different.”

“Jogging outdoors? I think I just read a New York Times trend article about that. It's the next big thing after growing your own coffee beans.”