Page 1 of Love or Leave

one

Thirty-six hours had passed since Cara Keller officially dumped the only boyfriend she'd ever had.

She had severely underestimated the time needed to recover. In fact, she'd only set twenty-four hours aside to move through the stages of grief and get back to her normal life.

But she hadn't accounted for the verbal abuse Cooper had slung at her.

He hadn't wanted to continue their relationship. It had basically been dead on arrival, anyway. But the words he'd used had been… harsh.

He'd said she was annoying. And too dorky for him.

And unlovable.

Then he asked her to email him the concert tickets she'd bought him for his birthday.

She'd given herself an additional twenty-four hours after that last insult triggered some deep-seated trauma from her formative years.

The worst part was that she agreed with him, even if his delivery had been unnecessarily mean. Not about her being unlovable—though the insult stung—but dorky? Oh yes. And annoying? Most likely.

Which was why she'd spent the final twenty-four hours of her post-breakup wallowing period reassessing her life.

She'd always been unapologetically herself. And it had got her exactly where one would expect—thriving career-wise but failing miserably in her personal life. She'd tried to shed her previous nerdy self by getting a glow up with a new hairstyle and wardrobe, and she'd thought it worked when Cooper had asked her out.

But it turned out she'd just slapped some lipstick on a pig.

If she was ever going to really connect with others, she'd have to leave the comfort zone she'd built around herself, and that was going to take some real outside-the-box thinking. Which, unfortunately, happened at four-thirty in the morning, and Cara wasnota morning person.

Now, almost a full twelve hours later, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Cara found herself squinting her eyes at the bright glare coming off the three computer screens on her desk. The screens had fried her overtired eyes and brain. Normally, she'd push through the fatigue with a double macchiato and go home well after dinner, but not tonight.

Tonight, she had plans.

She glanced over her shoulder at her professor, whose desk ran along the opposite wall in their cramped, windowless office, and saw that Dr. Tanaka was still working away on her own three screens. Cara had put off telling her about needing to leave early, not because Dr. Tanaka wouldn't let her go, but because she would pry into Cara's decision, and then spew every unsolicited thought from her brain without thinking.

Cara powered down her computer and stood from her ancient desk chair. It let out a loud mechanical creak. "I have to leave early today," she said.

Dr. Tanaka stopped typing and popped her head up from her own computer screens, then twisted, causing her own chair to let out a matching mechanical creak. She pushed her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose with her middle finger. "You don't leave early."

"Normally, no."

Dr. Tanaka narrowed her eyes. "Why is today an anomaly?"

"Actually," Cara said, packing her laptop into her bag. "Every Monday is going to be an anomaly for the next six weeks."

"You need to check your definition of anomaly," Dr. Tanaka said in her sarcastic tone. "Which you can do after you tell me where you're going."

Cara tucked in her chair as she said under her breath, "Golf."

Dr. Tanaka leaned forward, her mouth slackening, before she scoffed and shook her head. "I thought you said golf," she said with a laugh.

Cara took a deep breath, then exhaled. "I did. I'm a golfer now."

Dr. Tanaka's eyes bulged out of their sockets. "That's a sport."

Cara shrugged. "More of a hobby."

"But why?"

Cara really didn't want to go into what brought her to the conclusion that golf was the answer to her problems. It had all made perfect sense at four in the morning. Taking up a sport would accomplish her two primary objectives. One, she'd be trying something new, which would be a good first step to reinventing herself. And, two, she would meet men.

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