Page 10 of Love Thy Neighbor

I do it again just to spite him.

The episode continues, but by the third time I’ve rewound a scene, I realize my mind is about a million miles away.

Instead of focusing on the fictional love story playing out before me, all I can think about is my sad excuse for a love life.

And that’s just what it is—sad.

I can’t remember the last time I went out on a date. Or even had a guy ask me out. Hell, I can’t remember the last time a guy was eveninterestedin me for anything other than sex.

Cooper’s right. The dating apps I’m willing to sign up on—AKA the free ones—are full of dudes just trying tohump and dump, as he so elegantly put it. It’s not really my style. I’ve always been a relationship kind of gal, but if relationships aren’t working, maybe I should give something else a shot? Coop has no problem doing the one-night-stand thing. Perhaps I need to take a page out of his book, get him to teach me how to do a one-night stand.

Is that even how you say it?Doa one-night stand?

See?That’show out of the loop I am on dating. I don’t even know the proper terminology.

It’s been one craptastic experience after the other. I blame my underwhelming dating life on Tommy Wilson, my first boyfriend from the ninth grade who kissed me so aggressively he chipped my front tooth with his braces. I won’t even mention all the saliva involved.

Apart from my second kiss, which came from Cooper and was completely accidental (but still counts), my dating experience has been lackluster at best.

I’ve had a few boyfriends here and there, but nobody who has come close to beingthe one.

I’m sure being painfully shy doesn’t help my abilities to hook a guy one bit, but it’s just who I am.

My mother used to tell her friends it was just a phase, and every time she’d say it, I’d swallow those words down, praying they’d sprout trees inside of me and help me bloom into someone who didn’t want to puke at the thought of social interaction.

They never grew.

Here I am, a twenty-five-year-old who’d much rather spend my Friday nights curled up on the couch watching perpetually teenage vampires fall in love with silly humans than go out and interact with actual real people.

People disappoint. Vampires are forever.

I should make a shirt for that.

Just the thought of designing has my fingers itching to pick up my sketchbook, and without any care for how much I’ll regret it, I slip out of my warm cocoon. I grab my pencils and old, torn, beat-up pad from the bar, then sprint back to my blanket before I lose my limbs to frostbite.

Back under the covers with my book in my lap, I flip open my most treasured possession, grab a pencil, and let my mind take over as my hand begins to fly over the page.

Designing has been my outlet for stress since I picked up the habit of reading. I always had a tough time imagining how the characters looked in certain scenes. As most preteen girls understand, my mind would always get stuck on what the character was wearing. Is she wearing a cute summer dress or sweatpants when talking to her crush? What exactly does a pair offuck meheels look like? Ineededto know to build the world inside my mind.

After years of burning through notebooks and ideas, Cooper’s moms taught me how to sew, and I soon started making my own stuff, starting with my prom dress in my junior year of high school. I was dead set on art school for college.

My dreams were stomped on before they even got off the ground.

My dad called it a pipe dream. He refused to pay for something so “impractical” and wouldn’t allow me to apply to any design schools.

So, I put my sewing machine away and earned a bachelor’s degree in education.

It took all of one year after I graduated to know I wasnotcut out to be a teacher. I was miserable, and there was no way I was going to be able to make a career out of it if I wanted to keep my sanity.

Much to my father’s dismay, I called it quits. Two weeks later, I stumbled into Making Waves, the unique, fashion-driven boutique I’ve worked at for the last few years.

Though my boss, River, would love it and weekly tries to get me to agree, I can’t seem to muster the courage to sell my designs at Making Waves.

I’m terrified I’ll fail and be left at square one.

If my own father couldn’t believe in me, why should anyone else? His lack of faith in my ability to pursue my dream of becoming a designer killed my spark so much that I put my sketchpads away throughout college, focusing on something practical and attainable.

Not until Cooper encouraged me to quit my teaching job and I was hired at the boutique did I start designing again.

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