Page 4 of Single Dad's Christmas Cookie

I nodded. Sweet and fruity weren’t my typical drink of choice, but she looked like she was enjoying the cocktail.

“Sure thing,” he said as he accepted the credit card back to pay for the drinks.

“Not to sound like a cliché,” I started, “But…”

“What’s a girl like me doing in a place like this?” she responded tartly.

“I guess you could say that,” I said. She inspired corny pick-up lines. She deserved suave confidence. Unfortunately, around her, my ability to be smooth got twisted up in the drool pooling in my mouth. She was so damned sexy. And the dark velvet dress she wore teased with glimpses of cleavage that promised to make the tightening in my pants turn into a full erection.

“That’s why I said it. Too predictable. What were you going to say?” she asked.

“I was going to ask something equally contrite. Haven’t seen you around here before?”

“No, you have not.”

“Will I be seeing you around here again?”

She lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow and puckered her beautiful lips. “That all depends.”

“Depends, huh? Will you give me your number?”

She scoffed. “Why? So you can pretend you really aren’t interested in a day or two, and I’ll be sitting all alone wondering if you’re ever going to call? I didn’t think that was the game we were playing. You’re supposed to ask if I’m waiting on anyone or if anyone is waiting at home for me.”

I leaned in a little closer than necessary. She did not ease away or flinch at my proximity.

“Since you’re prompting me with conversation cues, I’ll bite. What brings you into the bar tonight? Waiting for your dinner date?”

She laughed. It was a magical sound. Did I still have condoms in my wallet?

“I needed a stiff drink after the company Christmas dinner,” she admitted.

“That bad? Will you be safe to drive after these?”

“So much worse, and I’m not driving. I’ll call an Uber.”

“What time are you expected home?”

She shrugged. “Whenever I get there. No one is going to care or notice unless I don’t show up for work on Monday morning.”

3

NOVA

My flirt game was strong, stronger than I’d actually realized. David always made me feel awkward and like I didn’t know how to talk to men because I didn’t know how to talk to him.

But this wasn’t David.

This man’s name was Bryan, and it rolled off my tongue in a delightful way that could have been the drinks that I desperately needed after receiving my Christmas bonus from Wentworth Academy.

I honestly didn’t know what the other teachers were so excited about, but my bonus wasn’t going to cover anything. I had rent to pay. I had bills to pay, and well, I didn’t have to buy groceries because my Christmas bonus was a grocery voucher that would cover the cost for about one and a half big trips to the grocery store. If I were frugal and I planned my menu carefully, the voucher would cover my grocery expenses through the end of the month. That would mean I was eating plain oatmeal and ramen noodles on Christmas day.

They couldn’t even have been bothered enough to give me a discount coupon for pizza delivery? At least that would have felt, I don’t know, more like a gift. There was no Christmas bonus. There was no money to buy a ticket home. There was no reimbursement for the rent I had to pay.

There was this beautiful man sitting in front of me, so I really needed to stop thinking about all the useless crap that David and Wentworth Academy had put me through.

I needed to compartmentalize and in a hurry or I might miss out on something good with this man. Mentally, I took all of the bullshit from the dinner party and the past semester, wadded it up into a ball of crumpled paper, and threw it away into an imaginary dumpster that was on fire. Let it all burn.

I didn’t care.

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