by Leah Holden
Ten Dates
and Counting
LEAH HOLDEN
Copyright © 2018 by Leah Holden
ISBN: 978-0-9940934-3-1 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-9940934-2-4 (print book)
Ten Dates and Counting
Hathersage Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, duplicated, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or locales, are used fictionally. All other characters, names, places and incidents are purely fictional and are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any events, locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.
CHAPTER ONE
It was time.
It was perhaps way overdue.
So far, I’d managed to resist the whole concept of online dating. However, drastic measures were needed to deal with my now drastic situation. More specifically, my latest encounter with my soon to be ex-boyfriend, Todd, was making the prospect of online dating quite tempting.
It was time to enter the twenty-first century.
I was annoyed with myself for putting up with Todd’s crap for so long. Currently, our relationship was more off than on. Not that I really needed an excuse, but suffice it to say that Todd and I were not exactly making music in the bedroom department. His inability to man up and at least try to meet me half-way in our ‘oh so amazing relationship’ was the catalyst I needed.
Of course, it meant that I would have to step out of my comfort zone. So, at the grand age of thirty-two, I was ready to shake things up a bit—I needed new blood. I needed a real man who wanted to worship the female form. Oh, and I needed to find this new man before I was too old to figure out what to do with him.
My new resolve to try online dating meant that I had to swallow my pride and quiz my sister, Ria, about her online adventures. I even asked my best friend, Shellie, for input.
I figured that I only needed one good dating site that wasn’t too far ‘out there’. I didn’t exactly want to be landed with a bunch of psychos. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask? Surely it couldn’t take more than a few dates to find a guy that wasn’t a complete nut case? In any event, I had no intention of going on more than say, about ten dates at most. To be honest, even that number seemed kind of high, but hey, I figured I would give myself the best chance of success.
Ria and Shellie were amazed that I was finally relenting, admitting defeat and backing down from my stance of ‘no online dating’. I had to listen to a lot of unhelpful comments from both of them. I put up with the sarcasm because I guess I was more desperate than I’d thought.
In the end, I picked a site that Ria recommended as she appeared to have had a degree of dating success in the recent past.
The site promised hundreds of local singles looking to date. I figured that at least one of them had to be free from disease and would have some clue about sex!
I created an online profile even though I was fully aware that I was at least fifteen years behind my peers in this regard. I shaved five years off my age, found a three-year-old photo from an event I’d attended, did a bit of cropping and I was good to go.
I posted my profile and prayed that Todd was not in the habit of frequenting online dating sites. My justification was that I was planning on breaking up with him anyway. I was just doing the ‘manly’ thing by taking a leaf out of the book of some of my previous boyfriends. No way was I going to get rid of the old until I’d feathered my nest and lined up his replacement.
I sat in front of the laptop and stared at the screen as the aroma of my freshly brewed coffee drifted to my nose. I reached out for the brew and sipped while I waited.
I nearly died of excitement when my profile went live. I couldn’t believe that I’d never tried this before. Where had I been hiding? The excitement, the possibilities and then…the success!
My first ‘flirt’ took about twenty-five minutes to arrive. As twenty of those minutes involved waiting for the site to verify my account, I figured I wasn’t doing too badly.
Okay—so that first flirt was from an eighty-three-year-old man who said he didn’t feel a day over sixty. Frankly, I was just amazed he could still feel anything at all! Nevertheless, I ‘flirted’ back. Who knew I had latent gerontophilia!
My flirt got excited and sent me a text. I worried that he wouldn’t be able to cope with the rejection if I just ignored him. I didn’t want anyone to have a heart attack because of my lack of compassion, so I responded to the text.
After that, however, I had a hard job getting rid of him. I mean, what did he expect? I was over forty years his junior and he wasn’t exactly telling me that he was rolling in money. I tried to let him down gently, but he sent me a rather terse reply that he was disappointed in me as I’d looked like such a nice girl.
Yeah—welcome to reality Mr. Octogenarian—life’s a bitch!
Over the next couple of hours, I was lost in the whole exciting online world of potential men. I guess I was the new kid on the block. All the ‘potentials’ who’d been lurking on the site receiving very little female attention, descended en masse. I was new blood.
I liked the profile of one guy that said ‘Naughty in Toronto’. Only he had spelt it ‘notty’. I hoped that he was a literary genius, maybe even a potential poet laureate who was confidently playing with word spelling. I truly hoped that he wasn’t merely a total semi-literate.
I winked at him boldly. Nine minutes later he winked back. That was my only communication with ‘Notty in Toronto’. I guess he was busy being notty with other more desirable profiles. Nevertheless, I was encouraged. At least he hadn’t completely ignored me. I was on my way.
Over the next week or so, I became totally caught up in the world of online dating. I winked, I flirted, I sent messages and I received messages. I even went on quite a few coffee dates. They were one-offs—never to be repeated.
The main lesson I was learning was that people didn’t always look like their picture. They forgot to tell you that they rarely brushed their teeth, or that their youthful appearance was due, in part, to a liberal amount of hair dye. Mostly though, they just blatantly lied by claiming they were thirty-something when, in fact, they could easily have been staring sixty in the face. Eventually, I started to feel glad that I too had been a little less than honest about my age. That seemed to even the terrain somewhat and made me feel less like such a naive newbie.
After three weeks, I was somewhat disillusioned. I was disappointed and maybe even a bit alarmed that I’d almost reached my quota of no more than ten dates. In reality, I had made very little progress. Sure, some of those dates were okay but I already had ‘okay’. I needed more.
I began to suspect that some of those success stories I’d read about on the site’s marketing page might have been fake. Did people really hook up for real on these sites? Maybe I’d been right to have avoided online dating all these years.
Ria, however, stepped up her ‘supporting-sister’ game and championed my cause. She worked hard at convincing me to stay online; maybe the right one was just a message away.
Well, it was going to take a lot of work to convince me to hang in there because I was becoming despondent. I couldn’t believe that this was all that life really had to offer—a collection of guys who weren’t worthy of a second glance! I had anticipated at least one dinner date and I hadn’t thought that was too much to expect. Instead, I was awash with coffee from just about every coffee shop in my ten mile se
arch zone.
And then, just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t handle the very thought of yet another date and yet more coffee, the Dateless in Toronto profile flashed up on my screen.
My initial thought was that this new dateless guy looked kind of promising—definitely better than okay. It was hard to tell completely because the profile picture was a bit on the blurry side. That did make me hesitate initially. I mean, in this day and age with Smartphones and selfies, couldn’t he have produced something a bit better than that?
Anyway, it was always hard to tell with these situations. You just never knew what anyone would be like until you actually met face to face. So, I decided to take a chance. I replied to his message.
He was a lot wittier than I had expected even though his messages continued to be rather brief. But that was okay; he was a guy; perhaps he wasn’t used to writing, perhaps he just plain didn’t like writing or perhaps he needed to get in touch with his feminine side. After Todd, nothing would have surprised me, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. After a couple of days of swapping messages, we swapped numbers.
The first time we spoke, his voice sounded like music to the parts of my body that hadn’t seen any real action in the sex department for a while. I wasn’t counting any Todd experience because anything that bad automatically canceled itself out, surely?
The Dateless guy’s name was Jared Turner and I thought that was a good a name as any. Truthfully, I was more concerned about what he’d be like in person than with his name.
I liked the way his voice made me feel.
Okay, let’s just get to the point; Jared Turner sounded like he’d make for some real good loving! He really did sound like he’d be able to deliver the goods—like he’d make a good Todd replacement.
After the second conversation, I knew he was the one. I had enough +information. He’d do just fine. So, like all serious gals who’d made up their minds to cut out all the crap and just go get her man and take care of business, I committed. I giggled in the right places, put on my sexiest voice, responded to Mr. Dateless in Toronto’s questions in a way that wouldn’t scare him off and finally, it was time to meet.
Despite all the coffee I’d been drinking lately, we arranged to do a coffee meet-up. That way, if he turned out to be a dud, I could escape after a reasonable length of time—like say five minutes.
Ria was happy enough to help out by offering to babysit my eight-year-old son, Josh.
Josh was looking far from happy as he blinked up at me from behind his glasses, “But why do you have to go out, Mom?”
“I need a break, darling. I’m just going to meet a friend for a quick drink. You and Auntie Ria can have lots of fun while I have to sit through boring old coffee.”
Josh wasn’t fooled, “I wanna come with you.”
Okay, so now he was just beginning to stress me out.
“I’ll be back before you know it, sweetheart. Come on, I only go out once in a blue moon.”
“The moon isn’t even blue,” he said petulantly.
So, we had now entered the ‘do as I say coz I’m your mother’, zone. I definitely wasn’t in the mood for lengthy explanations.
“It is tonight. Come on, grab your backpack, I’m dropping you off at Auntie Ria’s on my way.”
Ria lived on the other side of the city in one of those newly built split-level condominiums she’d had the forethought to buy before property prices had sky-rocketed. I made the short journey without too much trouble from Josh.
Ria surveyed my appearance and nodded in approval, “You look good enough to eat,” she said, “Where’s he taking you?”
“Oh, it’s just a coffee meet and greet. Maybe if we hit it off, we’ll do something else like grab a bite to eat.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t have a life at the moment, so at least Josh can spend the night,” Ria said.
I glanced at her quickly. I didn’t have time to ask about her latest internet romance or why she suddenly had so much time on her hands.
“Don’t wait up,” I said. “And don’t let Josh stay up too late. I’ll come by first thing in the morning to pick him up.”
“Don’t rush—he’ll be okay. You’d better get going, and don’t forget to have some fun.”
“Oh, well, if you insist,” I said with a grin before giving her a tight hug.
When Josh had been hugged and kissed and settled in front of the TV, I did a final check of my appearance in the hallway mirror.
My long dark hair was pinned back in a semi-formal style that might have been slightly at odds with the casual look I’d been striving for. Nevertheless, as the front door closed firmly behind me, I stepped out into my future confident in the knowledge that, if nothing else, I was looking pretty hot.
CHAPTER TWO
I entered the coffee shop in a state of heightened awareness. My date’s picture had not been clear enough for me to have total confidence that he would be pleasing to the eye. Nevertheless, that fact didn’t dampen my enthusiasm because he’d sounded amazing on the phone. I could still remember the rich, deep voice that had thrilled me so.
I looked around praying that he hadn’t stood me up.
And then I saw him.
I tried not to stare.
Ah, Jeez-Lord. Thank you! Thank you! That’s definitely what I’ve been hoping for!
My next thought was that this guy probably didn’t need to use an online dating service. He merely had to stand at the entrance of any given coffee shop and watch the females drop at his feet.
Yup! It sure was hot in the coffee shop and Mr. Jared Turner was stoking up that heat!
Jared seemed to also recognize me instantly. He got up to walk the short distance to where I was standing.
Close your mouth, Shaniah; you’re too young to be drooling!
I closed my mouth and reminded myself to smile. I tried to keep cool; He might look like a god, but he was just a guy. He was only human.
But was I ever glad I’d made the effort with my appearance! I was even more grateful for my heels that raised me up from my five foot three height so that, as he approached, I was able to look with relative ease into the most intense grey eyes I’d ever seen.
I smiled broadly.
I guessed that Jared stood a little over six-feet and even in his casual t-shirt and jeans, he looked as if he’d just stepped off the page of a magazine. He had a kind of raw sexuality that I could only have dreamt of meeting on any online dating platform. This guy was ruggedly handsome and his well chiseled face bore the hint of a five o’clock shadow.
He flashed a smile to reveal even white teeth.
I swallowed as he took my outstretched hand into his. Suddenly, I was an unsuspecting rabbit finding itself in the jungle and coming upon a tiger. This man was oozing a sense of restrained power that pulled me into his domain.
I wasn’t even sure that shaking hands was appropriate. I reminded myself that he was a stranger so I resisted the urge to lean forward for the peck on the cheek that I usually expected from friends.
“Hi, nice to meet you, I’m glad you could make it.”
The voice sounded just as rich and as sexy as it had over the phone.
“Nice to meet you too,” was all I could manage. I allowed myself the luxury of continuing to look deeply into the steely greys.
Then he leaned forward and brushed a slight kiss on my cheek. The scent of an expensive male cologne drifted tantalizingly past my nostrils. I tried not to inhale too noticeably because I didn’t want him to think I was weird.
My smile grew wider. It was way more than just nice to meet this guy.
I moved towards our table and steadied myself by holding on to the chair that he’d moved gently for me and I sat gratefully.
“What can I order for you?” Jared asked.
I stared back into those mesmerizing eyes and it was then that I had the strangest feeling that something wasn’t right. I wasn’t exactly feeling uncomfortable; it was more like I was
missing something important.
“I’ll have a black coffee,” I said before I could stop myself.
He stood up, “I’ll be right back,” he said.
Now, why had I ordered that? I hated black coffee but, in the confusion of the moment, I had apparently morphed into the village idiot and now it was too late.
Should I change my order? I didn’t want to appear too schizophrenic, so maybe not.
I watched him go. He stood at the counter and placed the order with the barista. I wondered if I should have gone with him, perhaps offered to help him carry the drinks back or maybe I should even have offered to pay.
I continued to watch him carefully as I tried to grapple with my feeling of unease. He turned and smiled at me and I smiled back, a little self-consciously, because I’d been caught staring.
I couldn’t help it though because, despite the dodgy picture, he looked pretty amazing compared to the other guys I’d been meeting. But, you know, he also seemed different than I remembered from his profile picture—and I’d studied it enough, trust me.
For starters, his hair was a lot less curly—but hey, maybe he’d had a haircut.
But surely, even in a picture, I’d have noticed those piercing steel-grey eyes?
I didn’t want to be caught staring again, so I glanced around the small coffee shop and pretended to ‘people watch’. The shop was discreet and in a nice enough part of town to draw a good crowd. Maybe they were office people, or maybe the office people had long gone and these were friends meeting socially. Of course, they might even have been people meeting up from online dating platforms!
Jared returned with the coffee and I positioned my cup in front of me, grateful for the prop.
“How much do I owe you for the coffee?”
His eyes narrowed for a minute before he smiled, “My treat,” he said smoothly, but he’d been surprised at my offer to pay.
“Thank you.” I hugged the cup of coffee and tried to relax, trying not to get too excited about dishy Jared.
As I struggled for a conversation starter, I was also thinking that, despite the unease, there was also an odd sense of familiarity with Jared; maybe that was the mystery.