Ten Dates and Counting

by Leah Holden

  I looked around the penthouse apartment. It seemed like a true bachelor pad.

  “Look, Jared, I’m sure that you meant well. I’m not used to all this macho stuff. The truth is, I am off men a bit, primarily because they pull funky stunts like this. No, hear me out,” I said as he made to interrupt me.

  “I am flattered that you went to all this trouble to get together with me, but don’t you see, none of this is real. We met and got physical far too quickly. Then there’s all this skullduggery and all this wheeling and dealing. Basically, I’m a simple girl. I’ve been going through a tough time lately and so have you. I don’t think either of us is making good decisions right now.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m saying that I barely know you and you certainly don’t know me, or else you would never have gone about things in this manner.”

  “Yeah, okay, so I admit it was a bit clichéd, but…”

  “There is no but. I’m sorry, Jared. I think you’re probably a great guy, but I can’t deal with all this at the moment. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Shaniah, I think you’re over-reacting.”

  “Really? Well, once again we differ. But if I’m over-reacting then I won’t stick around to get on your nerves. See you around.”

  “You’re deliberately twisting my words.”

  “Whatever!” I said as I grabbed my purse. I could feel tears prickling the back of my eyelids. I needed to escape because I didn’t need anyone’s sympathy.

  “How do you get out of here?”

  I wasn’t sure if there was some special code for a public elevator that allowed direct access to the penthouse. Now I was really fighting back the tears and I needed to escape before they could break free. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

  “Press the bottom button,” he said softly.

  I glared at him.

  Yeah, just because I’m attracted to you and I’m a weak-willed idiot, doesn’t mean I’m going to be an idiot all my life. I have to show some kind of self-respect at some point!

  The elevator came and I got into it. He watched me with the patience of a tolerant father humoring a belligerent child.

  I escaped before he could stop me. I wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Once I was back on the party level, I made my way through the crowd. Jared and I had clearly been forgotten as no-one seemed to be paying any attention as I headed towards the cloakroom.

  “Shaniah, where have you been?”

  I was so furious that I hadn’t seen Ria approaching me.

  “Penthouse,” I mumbled and if I hadn’t been so pissed, I would probably have burst out laughing as one of her eyebrows shot dramatically upward.

  “Jesus Christ, Shaniah, you’ve been holding out on me big time.”

  “Yeah, well, I have a bone to pick with you too,” I looked at her solemnly, “I can’t believe you’d set me up like that.”

  “Oh God, he told you?”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you Ria? I’m your sister! How could you play with my feelings like this?”

  “I had your best interest at heart, really, Shannie.”

  I ignored the endearment. No way was she getting around me by being cute.

  “You knew I’d been going through a rough time and to sabotage my one and only attempt at online dating for your boss to get a quick bit of fun. Thanks a lot, sister!”

  “Shaniah, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Maybe you could tell me exactly what it was like.”

  “I knew he wanted to meet you, but you didn’t want me to set you up so I just tried to help things along a bit.”

  “By encouraging me to set up a dating profile on some website where he could find me?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Shaniah. I didn’t even know he’d gone ahead with it. Look, this isn’t the ideal place to talk. I don’t want the entire company to hear.”

  Ria was looking a bit unsure of herself and maybe even a bit upset. This was indeed a rare phenomenon but I was past caring about other people’s feelings. My chief concern was to find Shellie because it was high time that I left.

  Shellie had approached us silently and I guess she must have overheard my exchange with Ria because she too was looking somewhat uncomfortable.

  “Are you coming, Shellie? Because if you’re not ready to leave, I’ll take a taxi.”

  She put an arm gently around my shoulders and gave me a comforting hug. I guess it helped me to calm down somewhat as we gathered our belongings and prepared to leave.

  Ria knew better than to try to stop us. I would just have to deal with her when I was in the right frame of mind.

  Shellie’s face was pretty grim as she drove eastwards, out of the city. I was less emotional now. I was feeling more drained than anything and definitely confused.

  “I’m sure your sister had your best interest at heart,” Shellie finally broke the silence.

  “How would you like to be on the receiving end of a scheme by those two control freaks?”

  “I’d probably murder them.”

  “Yeah, well it’s looking like a pretty good prospect right now, so we’d best just change the subject and forget that the last few months actually happened.”

  Shellie glanced at me, “Are you going to be alright?”

  “Yeah, why not? He was just another dumb guy aided and abetted by my equally dumb sister. They should do well together. Look, please just drive the car; I don’t think I can even bear to talk right now.”

  I massaged my temples, trying to relieve the mega stress headache that had been brewing since I’d first clapped eyes on Jared surrounded by his employees—all having a merry old time.

  I looked out the window at the lights of the city shining against the dark background of the night. I supposed that in a few years’ time, none of this would be relevant anyway but right then, I just needed to get home to the security of home and my own bed. I closed my eyes and put my trust in Shellie’s driving.

  By the time the car pulled up outside the house, I’d calmed down a bit. Shellie, bless her, gave me a huge hug, “Get a good night’s sleep. You’ll get a better perspective on things in the morning.

  “Yeah, maybe by then I’ll have come up with a plan on how to get away with a double murder. Thanks for coming along with me tonight and for the support. It was a good thing you came.”

  “No problem. If you don’t have to pick Josh up too early in the morning, you should have a long lie in.”

  “If Mom has one of her church meetings, I’ll probably have to get him early.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow to check that you’re okay,” promised Shellie.

  I could hardly wait to strip off my clothes and step into the showers. I stayed awake long enough for the water to wash away some of the memories of the evening before sliding gratefully between the cool cotton sheets of my bed.

  The following day two bouquets of flowers arrived.

  One was from Jared with a card asking me to call when I’d calm down. Right, that could take a while, so while we were both waiting for that to happen, I put the flowers in the garbage.

  The second bouquet was from Ria which she followed up with a text apologizing for her part in the whole fiasco.

  I dumped Ria’s flowers on top of Jared’s. There was no forgiving her; she was my sister. She should have known better. Obviously, I was going to have to forgive her, at some point in the future, before we hit ninety or whatever. But that was a long way off and I could foresee a few years of loneliness and no sister to comfort me. It sounded perfect.

  Later on, I rescued the flowers because I hated waste. I decided to take them to the local senior’s home. Maybe they would brighten up their foyer. I didn’t have a foyer, large enough to stash those marks of Judas.

  During the next few weeks, I was determined to refocus.

  It was time for me and what I needed—not what other people thought was good f
or me.

  I refused to answer Ria’s calls. Jared’s number was still blocked, so that made things a lot easier. He knew better than to try my landline.

  It was time for business.

  My new interior design business was getting pretty close to its launch date and I was determined that it was going to be a success. I had my first project which was staging four new homes for Darren, my real estate connection. I threw myself into the task as I couldn’t afford to turn down business just because it didn’t fit neatly into my launch date.

  I also had to find an office. It was okay working from my home office, but I needed somewhere with space for a showroom of sorts.

  Scanning the local paper or even online for commercial premises took up a fair amount of my time. It was early Sunday morning and I was looking in the local freebie for suitable space when Josh tapped on my door.

  “Come in, sweetheart.”

  “Hi, Mom,”

  He bounced into the room and rocketed into the bed between the sheets.

  “Josh, honey, I’m busy looking for office space.”

  “But I wanna sleep in your bed.”

  “Okay, but no snoring.”

  He rolled into a tight ball and squeezed himself firmly into my side. I tried to move and he moved with me.

  “Josh, move. You’re hurting me.”

  Josh groaned. “I’m freezing,”

  “You need to eat more. You’re too skinny; you need some body-fat to keep you warm.”

  “That’s why I’m snuggling up to your fat, Mom; you’re nice and soft and warm.

  I often wondered if Josh and my mother were in league with the devil.

  “Horrible child,” I said, “move away from me; fat is very catching; it’s just like a big virus.”

  Josh squealed, “No it isn’t”

  “Mine is,” I said and pushed the newspaper onto the floor so that I could roll over to tickle him. I stopped when his squealing threatened to wake the entire neighborhood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I just can’t understand how you put up with Todd for so long yet you won’t speak to AJ,” Ria said. “It’s not like he did anything really bad.”

  It was one of those rare days in my unmanageable life when I was actually sitting peacefully in my mother’s house talking in an almost polite fashion to Ria. I was sipping a glass of wine which was helping me to deal with our first real face-to-face conversation since the infamous Jared incident. I’d relented and had decided to speak to her but I swear that if it wasn’t for the fact that we shared a parent, I’d have been hard pushed to forgive her.

  Mom was in the kitchen making lunch and Josh was sitting at the island waiting patiently to sample one of the brownies that she was about to take out of the oven.

  Ria was still demonstrating difficulties understanding how the rest of the world operated outside of her tiny little mind and I was no longer in the game of trying to teach anyone, who wasn’t a child of mine, anything about life—let her figure it out for her damn self.

  I was conflicted about how to actually answer her. I’m not saying that she didn’t have a good point about putting up with Todd, because she did. She was right—I’d been in a different state of mind with Todd. He had been a much safer bet. He’d never had that same hold on my heart so he had been the less risky option by far.

  But somehow, I just knew I would be on dangerous ground if I started up with discussing Jared again. I was largely avoiding anything to do with Jared because he was a heart breaker for sure, and so far, since my failed relationship with Josh’s dad, I had survived largely by avoiding the likes of Jared.

  “Don’t you even bring up AJ…Jared to me,” I said. “But if you really want to know, I liked the idea of having someone stable around,” I said at last. “Just look what’s happened with Jared. I just don’t do well with that type. I guess Todd was the exact opposite of my usual type.”

  Maybe it wasn’t fair to compare Jared and Todd because Todd would never measure up in a competition. It really all came down to what was important to me. Great sex with a man I clearly didn’t trust, but one that I clearly had problems resisting, or death by boredom in the bedroom with Todd. I knew which I would choose if Jared wasn’t so full of all that macho crap.

  I shook my head to clear it of such wayward thoughts. Ria was doing a pretty good hatchet job on my emotions without me joining in.

  “Well, you haven’t done too well with Todd either,” she said. “You can’t even tell me that you were fond of him.”

  “Of course I was…still am fond of him, as a person, I could even conceivably have loved him, as a person, but I wasn’t in love with him. You know, he didn’t make my world spin or anything but he was very reliable. When I first met him, it was important to me. It is still very important to me to have someone reliable around.”

  “Did he make you laugh?”

  “Every time we made love.”

  Ria squealed, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Don’t be dumb, Ria. I know you’re not a prude so you surely didn’t think I was still virgo intacta, did you?”

  “I’m not dumb,” she said looking annoyed.

  My moment of peace with Ria was obviously nearing its end.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” I said, wishing I could take back my words.

  It was always the same. I couldn’t be around Ria for long; she really rubbed me up the wrong way. It was best to love and leave where she and Mom were concerned.

  “I think it might just be time for me to grab Josh and leave.”

  “You always run away when you don’t want to answer questions,” Ria said sounding frustrated.

  “It’s as good a strategy as any.”

  “You’ll have to stay and have lunch or mom will be furious. Besides, what are you going to spend the afternoon doing?”

  “I guess I’ll be continuing my search for office space,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re still having no joy with that, eh?”

  “Nope!”

  “That’s probably because you’re looking out there in the boonies. You need to edge closer to the downtown area. It would be better for your business and there are some pretty interesting buildings that I’m sure you’d love. I’ll email you a link.”

  I thanked her for the offer but I really wasn’t sure that I could ever trust Ria again.

  However, I was getting kind of desperate. I’d been approved for a small start-up business loan and it was time-bounded. I needed the space so that I could, at least, put my mark on it and get on with the formal launch.

  “No problem, what are big sisters for?

  Mom chose that moment to pop her head around the door, “Lunch is ready if you guys want to eat early,” she said.

  “We do,” said Ria.

  Surprisingly, Mom had allowed Josh to sample the brownie before his lunch and, in the interest of peace, I didn’t think it was wise to interfere.

  “You’ve barely spoken two sentences since you sat at the table and you’re picking at your food,” Mom said to Ria once we’d all settled down to lunch.

  “Maybe you should ask Shaniah. She seems to have the ability to annoy people.”

  “She was bugging me,” I said evenly but I was thinking that she was a fine one to talk about anyone being annoying.

  “Now you sound like Josh,” said Ria looking at me crossly.

  Josh’s head snapped to attention. “Mom, Auntie Ria said you sound like me; cool.”

  I turned to face Ria, “How else should I sound? He is my son!”

  “He’s eight-years-old; you’re supposed to be an adult.”

  “My mom is an adult,” said Josh, not caring that everyone was ignoring him.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” I mumbled.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Mom gently.

  I made eye contact with her. I knew how much it must have cost her to say that. She rarely gave anything away.

  “Thanks, Mom.�
�� I looked and smiled gratefully at her. It had been a while since I’d felt particularly close to her.

  “Now, you mustn’t annoy Ria,” she said briskly.

  “Could someone pass me the vegetables please,” said Josh as politely as he was able—it was hard to imagine that might have been trying to be diplomatic.

  “You’re going to eat vegetables, Josh?” I was bemused.

  “Don’t you want me to eat them, Mom? They’re good for you, you know.”

  That boy was playing games with me! I had long since given up the fight over vegetables; I watched as he happily gobbled down the soggy looking carrots and peas.

  “Grandma, your cooking’s the best.”

  I felt a twinge of jealousy as Mom preened and tried not to look superior.

  “It’s nearly as good as my mom’s,” Josh said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  So it was back to the same old routine.

  The only good thing about routines, however, was that they grounded you in times of trouble.

  I ran around taking Josh to his various events and appointments.

  I tried to balance my accounts.

  I followed the link that Ria sent me and shopped for office space.

  The first two sites I viewed were too large, but the third was perfect. It even had a small mezzanine and the resulting cathedral effect appealed to my artistic senses. Later on that week, I signed the lease and it was all systems go.

  The whole process and the intensity of getting the business off the ground proved to be a panacea. I knew that I was unhappy, but did not have the time to do anything about it.

  Maybe it was the impact of getting a little older, but I no longer believed that hearts really break from a relationship breakup. They got damaged perhaps, truly dented, but humans had the ability to overcome all kinds of adversity. All you needed was time. Time and a whole lot of activity or alcohol!

  I had no way of knowing if Jared had been trying to contact me because I hadn’t unblocked his number. I’d been tempted. I’d stared at his number on numerous occasions. I thought about him constantly. He’d been right about me being stubborn because I’d walked out of that hotel determined to move on and I had shut out all alternatives.