Page 1 of A Game Plan for Love

CHAPTER 1

No Scrubs – TLC

Addie

“Iwouldhavegoneproif I hadn’t busted my knee.”

The skin beneath my eye twitches.

This is my fault.

I opened this can of worms when Dave, my date, asked what I do for work. I responded honestly—poor choice on my part—and told him I work for the Seattle Mavericks, a professional football team, as a nutritionist. You would think I learned my lesson after my last date asked me to help him with his fantasy football team, but here I am, making the same mistake and having to deal with the consequences in the form of listening to Dave relive his glory days.

I hum noncommittally before sipping on my water.

We sat down at the table ten minutes ago, and the date has gone downhill at a rapid pace. As soon as I can escape this hell, I am deleting the dating app from my phone. I’d rather be celibate than suffer through another date with a different version of Dave.

The planning required to schedule a date—making sure Nora’s babysitter is free and spending time getting ready—is not worth my suffering. Maybe I’ll find love in the next lifetime. Perhaps there will be better fish in the proverbial sea.

I glance around the exposed brick walls and Edison lights of the upscale restaurant. On any other occasion, I might enjoy the upscale, industrial restaurant with its menu full of unique burgers, but the vibe has been murdered.

“What do you do for work?”

Do I want to know anything about him? No. Do I want to give him additional time to talk about himself? Not particularly, but it’s either ask him questions to keep him talking or sit in uncomfortable silence until it’s socially appropriate to end the date.

“I’m an investment banker. Have you heard of stocks?”

Where’s the ‘date from hell’ bingo card? Because I’m only a few boxes away from leaping out of my seat and yelling ‘Bingo!’

The waitress stops at our table with a basket of steaming bread before I can answer Dave’s question about stocks, and my jaw nearly hits the floor when his eyes roam along her skin, hungrily checking her out when I’m sitting right across from him.

Is it possible to convey ‘please save me’ through a blink? Because I’m willing to give it a shot, especially if the waitress can make something up. Maybe there’s a kitchen fire or a celebrity that demands to sit at our table and we have to leave the restaurant immediately.

Instead, she asks for our order and misses my plea for help.

“I’ll take the steak. Medium rare. Baked potato.” Dave orders and I take his pause as my cue, gearing up to order the largest cheeseburger on the menu, but instead, he continues, “She’ll have the Caesar salad, hold the cheese and croutons, and put the dressing on the side.”

My tongue bleeds from the brute force required to say nothing. He ordered me lettuce. I only want lettuce when it’s on top of a juicy burger with all the fixings.

When the waitress leaves, Dave’s gaze drops to my chest, like he has X-ray vision and can see what’s beneath my jumpsuit if he stares long enough.

What a douche.

“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”

With as much composure as I can manage—which is very little considering he ordered me a plate of lettuce—I disappear into the ornate bathroom, complete with a sitting room and complimentary mints. If only it also had a time machine, and I could go back in time and warn past Addie to say no when Dave asked her out on a date.

He didn’t seemtoo badwhen we chatted on the app, though I should have seen his common spelling errors for what they were: a massive red flag.

This is only the second date I’ve been on since I moved to Seattle and it’s no better than the first. It took me four months before the guilt of moving Nora across the country settled enough for me to allow myself time alone, and it consisted of grocery trips while Marlene, the elderly woman down the hall, watched movies with Nora.

It took another month to find a babysitter I trusted enough to take care of Nora alone and then another to convince myself to download a dating app. Marlene is great, and I appreciate her help immensely, but I’m uncomfortable asking her to watch Nora while I go out at night to date. I can’t help but feel she would judge me for it, so I had to find someone young, but trustworthy, which was damn near impossible since I moved to this city with Nora and everything I could fit into my car.

Outside of my coworkers, I don’t know many people in Seattle. Well, I guess that’s not true. I know Dave, but I would rather not, so I’m at an impasse.

The marble countertop is cool beneath my palm and I lean up to the mirror, swiping at the concealer beneath my eyes. I’ll never get back the time I spent putting makeup on, and I don’t know why, but it makes me hate Dave for taking the time from me.

“Survive another hour,” I whisper to myself in the mirror, straightening my spine and fixing my hair. “Politely eat the lettuce and then you can get food on the way home.”

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