No More Terrible Dates

by Kate O'Keeffe

  “I guess kissing you does confirm something for me.”

  “Confirm what, exactly?”

  I think I know what he’s going to say, and I don’t want him to say it. He’s the first guy I’ve felt excited about in forever, and I’ve pinned my hopes on him. Making my sisters jealous, getting Mom off my back about being married? Yup, those hopes. And another hope, a hope that he’s a good guy, the kind of guy I want to be with. The kind of guy who could make me happy. Because you know what? I deserve this. I’ve been on too many bad dates. It’s got to be my time.

  “It’s just…”

  “It’s just what?” I hold my breath.

  He twists his mouth, lets out a puff of air, and says, “I’m definitely gay.”

  Wait, what?

  “I’m sorry?” I’m not sure I heard him right.

  Did he really just say he’s definitely gay? As in not maybe gay, not a little bit gay, but definitely gay?

  He shakes his head at me. “There’s no need to be sorry, Darcy. You’re a gorgeous girl. You’re just not, you know.” He gestures at me with both hands.

  “A guy?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Yeah. Exactly. A guy.”

  Flipping freaking what?!

  He reaches out and pats me on my upper arm like I’ve been a good doggie and fetched the chew toy he threw. “Look, thanks for helping me work that out. I figured if anyone could show me my true feelings, it would be someone like you. The guys in the office said you were hot when they saw your photo, so I figured, why not give it a shot? One last-ditch attempt.”

  One last-ditch attempt? What am I? A battlefield? Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

  I press my lips together, my hopes well and truly shriveled up into a hard little raisin that Devan’s casually flicked away without a second thought. “Let me get this straight,” I say, “no pun intended.”

  He laughs. “That’s a good one because I’m not straight.”

  I grind my teeth. “Yeah. I got that. What I want to know is, did you only go out with me to confirm to yourself that you’re gay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m so glad I could help.” I raise my arm and pretend to glance at my nonexistent watch. “Is that the time? I need to get back to Larissa. Busy, busy day today.”

  “Sure. Well, thanks again.”

  As I turn to leave, I feel his hand on my arm. “Darcy, can I ask you something?”

  I lower my eyes to his hand and say, “I think you’re going to anyway.”

  “I get it if you don’t want to, but I kinda need a date to my brother’s wedding in a couple weeks. Having you there would really put my mom off the gay scent.”

  I blink at him in disbelief. The gay scent? Is that even a thing? “You want me to be your date?”

  His eyes light up. “Would you?”

  I let out a puff of air. When I woke up this morning, I did not think I would go out with a guy who works out he’s gay in the middle of kissing me, let alone that he would then ask me to be his date to keep his sexuality from his mother.

  Not happening.

  “No, I . . . Just no.”

  He shrugs. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

  As I shake my head in exasperation—how do I find these guys?—I notice Devan looking through the window into the café. I follow his line of sight and spot Alex chatting to a customer as he delivers their coffee.

  “Hey, do you think that hot barista is straight?”

  Seriously?

  I lock my jaw. There’s only so much a girl can take, and I reached that point a long time ago now. It’s time to exit stage right, pronto.

  “Goodbye, Devan,” I say as I turn on my heel and plod down the street away from him.

  And that is how my terrible Initial Meeting with Devan ends. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ego-smashing, hope-dashing, not-quite-date of the century. Darcy Evans, the confirmer of gayness, the single and alone.

  Forget the No More Bad Dates Pact. After this disaster, I’m a fully-carded member of the No More Terrible Dates Pact. And I am determined that the next guy I date is going to be one of the good guys.

  Chapter 2

  By the time I reach the office, I’ve completely resolved that the only thing to do about the whole Devan thing is to put it behind me, pretend it never happened, and move on to the next guy. I’m telling absolutely no one. It’s far too humiliating.

  As I plunk my butt down on my desk chair, I pull up the dating app on my phone and begin to flick through my options. I wonder what the odds are that I’ll meet another guy who’ll kiss me to confirm he’s gay. Oh, and then ask me to go to his brother’s wedding and ask if the barista is straight. My guess is the odds are stacked against it, but with my luck, I simply can’t rule it out.

  I surreptitiously peruse the frankly depressing guy options in the app before I give up and place my phone on my desk. I look up at the blue wall and let out a puff of air. Everything in the office is blue, from the walls to the chairs to the floors. I’m “encouraged” to wear blue to the office, too, which really means if I turn up in any other color, my boss, Larissa, may blow a brain valve. And believe me, no one wants that. Larissa needs to keep all the brain valves she’s got.

  You see, in the world according to Larissa Monroe, as the color of the sea and sky, blue is the most spiritual, calming, and healing of all the colors in the rainbow. Apparently, if everyone wore the right shade of princess blue, we’d live in a perfectly balanced, harmonious world with no war and no conflict. Nothing but perfect blue happiness.

  Do you think she needs some binoculars to see those (blue) flying pigs?

  I know, I know. I’m being cynical. Erin, one of my BFFs and fellow No More Bad Dates Pact member keeps telling me to have an open mind when it comes to Larissa’s ideas. Granted, she agrees that many of them are off the charts, bat-crap crazy, but she’s always encouraging me to at least consider the less insane ones.

  My attitude is that just because I work for Kool-Aid, doesn’t mean I’ve got to drink the stuff.

  Larissa comes breezing into the room. As always, she’s dressed in the same blue of the walls and furniture. With her diminutive frame, you could easily lose her in here but for the fact she has long blonde hair.

  I stand up and smooth out my skirt, knowing full well my entire wardrobe probably cost less than the dress she’s wearing today. “Good morning, Larissa.”

  “Darcy, darling. How are you?” she asks without pausing for a response as she continues her breezy path into her office.

  I collect my tablet, my trusty notebook with the cute Labrador puppy on the cover, and the opened mail from my desk and follow her. Larissa’s office is stunning. A spacious, open-plan room with (blue) balance balls in one corner where she holds her meetings, and a large glass desk where she works, seated on her (blue) chair. We’re twenty-three stories up in downtown Auckland, and her office has the most gorgeous view of the harbor and the volcanic island of Rangitoto beyond.

  She drops her (blue) purse, a couple of shopping bags, and her (you guessed it: blue) jacket onto the table and sits down on her chair. No need to tell you what color that is. (Okay, it’s blue in case you weren’t following). I trail behind her like the minion I am, collecting up her items and putting them away as I go.

  “Tell me about my morning,” she says as she looks out at the harbor littered with white yachts. Auckland isn’t called the “City of Sails” for nothing.

  I press on my tablet and the screen lights up. “Well, first up, you’ve got Therese Saldon from Usu coming in to show you some new stock she’s recently acquired. She mentioned you’d already spoken and that you would be really excited by what she’s got.”

  “Oh, that’s the Guatemalan fertility charms.” She claps her hands together like an over-excited seal. “I’m super excited about those. I’ve heard they’re, like, amazing, and anyone who wants to have a baby has got to get one.”

  I’m a little more dubious about these ty
pes of things.

  “Therese will be here in twenty-five minutes. Then you’ve got Jonathan Strangefellow, who needs to talk to you about—”

  I stop when I see her waving her hand dismissively in the air. “Cancel him. I don’t like his energy. Or his name. Strangefellow.” She shivers. “Ugh.”

  “But, he’s been in the calendar for weeks, Larissa. You’ve already canceled on him three times in the last month.”

  She presses her lips into a thin line and crosses her arms defensively, usually my signal to don the parent cap. Which is precisely what I do.

  “Larissa, Jonathan is your accountant. You need to talk with him. It’s important for the business.”

  This is what happens when you work as a personal assistant to a celebrity. You’ve got to be so many things. Parent, minion, counsellor, friend, punching bag. I do it all. They say Auckland has four seasons in a day, which is nothing compared to how many different people I need to be for Larissa, sometimes within a ten-minute conversation.

  Really, I should get paid a lot more than I do.

  “Why can’t I have an accountant with a spiritually compelling name? Like Bliss? Or Flower?”

  Because accountants are people, not brands of soap?

  “Granted, Strangefellow does bring up a certain image of an unusual looking man, but Jonathan is a nice, sensible, traditional name.” Unlike Bliss or Flower.

  “I would meet with an accountant called Serenity every day of the week,” she says.

  “Jonathan comes highly recommended by Aroha Jones’s people,” I say, naming a well-known local entrepreneur I know Larissa is impressed with.

  “He’s Aroha’s accountant?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  She pouts, her already plumped-up lips looking like they could be used as flotation devices. Larissa Monroe would have come in very handy on the Titanic. “If I’ve got to,” she grumps. “But you’ve got to be there, too. Promise?”

  “I promise. Now,” I pull out the pile of mail, “you’ve got some invitations here to events you may want to attend. I’m thinking it’s a ‘no’ to the opening of the library’s new wing?”

  She pulls a face and nods. Reading isn’t one of Larissa’s things.

  “And it’s a ‘yes’ to an interview on Good Morning New Zealand? They want you to speak about how you transitioned from internationally successful actress to online health guru.” I’m quoting them directly here.

  She nods enthusiastically. Larissa loves to talk about herself. It’s no secret how she managed the transition. She was a successful, well-loved actress here in New Zealand, starring in everything from the local soap opera to small budget movies before she took on Hollywood in a highly publicized move. Well, highly-publicized here in our little country at the end of the world. I can’t imagine anyone in Hollywood knew who she was before she got there. But that all changed when she landed a role alongside heartthrob Todd Milson in the surprise rom com hit He’s So Not My Type. They fell in love and married, had a genetically blessed daughter they called Monday for reasons unknown (she was born on a Tuesday), and then promptly divorced before the baby even uttered her first word. All very Hollywood.

  With the notoriety gained from her and Todd’s hit reality TV show, Mr. & Mrs. Milson, she came back to New Zealand and decided to switch up her life running her online business—with me as her long-suffering P.A.

  Actually, to be fair to Larissa, I’m only “long-suffering” about twenty percent of the time. Although she works me hard, calling me at all times of the day and night to do things for her, I really do love my job. I mean, how many other jobs out there that allow you to be everything from a personal shopper to an events manager to a counselor, all while hobnobbing with the country’s elite?

  “I’m happy to give the interview, Darcy. People love to hear my story. They find what I’ve achieved so inspirational. Small-town girl with big dreams. And look at me now.”

  “That’s true,” I reply. “Now, before I go, is there anything you need?”

  “My green juice and acai berry granola. Oh, and get Todd on the phone. Monday is being photographed by a magazine this week and I need to get his permission.” She puts her hand in the air. “Don’t get me started. If there were some way to get rid of exes permanently, to never have to see them again, I would take it in a heartbeat. Believe me.”

  There is, it’s called murder, and I’ve heard that does the trick nicely. But I won’t suggest that to Larissa.

  “Do you want your green juice and acai berry granola first, or to speak with Todd?”

  “Are you crazy? Definitely the juice and granola first. I can’t deal with that man without a good dose of phytonutrients.”

  I stifle a giggle. Larissa needs phytonutrients while the rest of us crave caffeine. She lives on an entirely different planet to us mere mortals. Celebrity world and the real world have very little overlap.

  “I’m on it.” I turn to leave.

  “Oh. Darcy? I almost forgot. Can you believe it?”

  I turn back. “What is it?”

  “It’s big news. And I’m super, super excited. You know how I’m always talking about synergies between the creative self and the healthful core that we all need to tap into?”

  I nod dumbly. Usually, I daydream about what I’m going to sing at karaoke with my friends on Saturday night when she’s prattling on about such things.

  “Well, I’ve found the perfect thing.”

  “What is it?” Finger painting with beet juice? Dresses made from cabbage leaves? Neither of these is beyond the realm of possibility here.

  “I’m getting into the art space.”

  “The art space?”

  Her face is aglow as she nods rapidly. “I’m buying this fabulous new space. It’s going to be a gallery. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  I blink at her a few times as I process her news. “Totally wonderful,” I enthuse while inside I’m wondering why the heck a former actress turned online self-professed wellness guru is buying a space to make into a gallery. Oh, and how nice it would be to have that kind of money just lying around so you can buy something as expensive as a gallery on a whim.

  “Darcy, it’s going to be incredible. We’ll hold exhibitions there, obviously, but also symposiums and workshops. We’ll feed people’s minds with art as well as providing them with spiritual and intellectual sustenance. It will be the trifecta. So, so amazing.”

  I give her an indulgent smile. “I’m really excited for you, Larissa.”

  “Actually, I’m shocked that I’ve never thought of this before.” Her eyes are wide as she contemplates this. “Of course, I’ll need you to organize absolutely everything.”

  Of course she will. That’s what I do, after all. And I should be grateful for small mercies here. I mean, it could be a lot worse. She could have bought a giraffe and asked me to care for it at my apartment. And if she did, I would not be surprised in the least.

  “What do you plan on exhibiting?” I ask.

  “It can be anything we want it to be. Anything! Isn’t that exciting?” She pauses, her features becoming more pensive. “So long as it’s black and white photography. For some reason, I’m really feeling black and white photography these days. I want to make the whole place into a space dedicated to the art of taking a really, really good photo.”

  “Black and white photographs. Okay, I’ll get onto it. Can you give me the gallery details?”

  “Oh, it’s right next to this gorgeous little high tea place. Cozy something. It makes me feel warm and happy just thinking of it.”

  “Cozy Cottage High Tea? Next to a café of the same name?”

  “Yes! That’s it.”

  “My friend Sophie manages High Tea. It’s such a wonderful place.”

  “Hey, maybe I should buy the café and the high tea place, too? I could own all of them in a row.” She gives an excited yelp.

  Before she embarks on her Monopoly board approach to property ownership and decides to knock all th
ree buildings down and build a hotel, I jam the brakes on. “Great idea, Larissa, but I know for a fact they’re not for sale.”

  She pouts. “What a shame.”

  “That said, this gallery sure does sound amazing. Black and white photography is . . . the new black, right?”

  “Right!” She leans back in her chair. “You see, Darcy? This is why we’re such a great team, you and me. You think what I think. We’re in sync.”

  I smile back at her, the band of the same name springing to mind. “Exactly.” Only if I thought the way she did and went off buying galleries on a whim, I’d be swimming so deep in debt, not even Aquaman would be able to save me.

  “Clear my afternoon,” she announces. “I’m taking you to see our new project.”

  “Awesome. I’ll go get your smoothie and granola.”

  For the rest of the morning, we meet with Therese and hear all about how apparently women can get pregnant by simply looking at the Guatemalan fertility charms (despite the fact they look an awful lot like river stones to me); Jonathan Strangefellow and I manage to get Larissa to sign off on the company’s annual tax return without her pouting once; and I manage to wrangle with not one but two celebrities who are surrounded by people who never say no to them, and consequently have no clue about the real world. As a result, Todd agrees to have Monday photographed by the magazine, and both parents are happy. Monday? Maybe not so much, but as every celebrity worth their Beverley Hills mansion will tell you, a beautiful child is the very best accessory.

  Cynical much?

  In the early afternoon, Larissa’s driver pulls the car up outside her newest purchase, the black and white photography gallery, and we climb out into the warm afternoon sun.

  “Isn’t this place darling?” she says, pointing at Cozy Cottage High Tea with its red and white striped awnings and large glass windows. “Are you sure I shouldn’t buy it? Because I would love to own this.”