Page 1 of Ditching the Dragon (Fated Dates)

Chapter One

Annie

“You don’t get to pick the guy you’re going home with,” Violet says with a cackle. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Just give me back my phone please.”

When we first got to Stan’s on Fifth, a dive-y bar popular with the office-professional crowd, it set off every fight or flight response in me. The raucous, packed space capsized the daring confidence I’d strolled in with, even buoyed by the 80-proof in my bloodstream.

But I was already dressed up, already committed to the night’s plan, and there was no way I could convince Vi to turn back. I just want to go home and weep my makeup off in the shower like a normal person.

“Absolutely not, Annie,” my best friend says with a laugh. “Your taste in men is shit.”

Considering Vi has happily kept a girlfriend for several months now, I should probably listen to her. She and Brynn are downright lovebirds.

My phone in her hand chimes for the millionth time, and she punches in my PIN to unlock the screen.

She skims past two pages of meticulously organized apps to the one housing a chaotic mishmash of icons she downloaded over dinner.

My supposed best friend pops her head up and scans the room.

Violet’s subjected me to blind-date roulette all night. As I’d told her my sordid sob story over tacos, she’d held her hand out and insisted I surrender my phone because she didn’t trust me to block my cheating ex’s number.

She then confiscated it, installed half a dozen dating apps under the table, added my profiles without letting me approve them, and has forced me to meet the matches she deems appropriate.

It sounded like a good idea at the time.

I may have had one too many margaritas and went along with it.

I debate whether I actually agreed or the tequila did.

At least she used a fake name.Annie Laneis common enough that I’d be hard to find in a city this size. Still, I should probably appreciate the anonymity that comes with hiding as “Grace K.”

Here’s hoping the namesake finds me a prince this time and not another fucking frog.

Across the bar, a guy with scraggly, ash blonde hair is also searching the crowd.

“Him, over there,” she tells me. “Daniel S. Twenty-eight.”

“Which app is this?”

“Mix and Mingle.”

I grunt and screw up my face, but she already established dominance, so I know there’s no escape.

“Alright, convince me,” I say.

She skims the screen. “Three profile pictures. None are shirtless, but there’s a dog in one and no fishing photos. No hints if he’s human or otherwise. It says he’s a software engineer, whatever that means.”

“I think it means he does coding.”

“Hopefully that means he’s got stellar finger dexterity.”

The sigh I release makes the bachelorette party to our right look over, despite the noisy chatter of the overcrowded bar. Where’s the fire marshal when you need them?

The place is so packed wall-to-wall with bodies that we’ve been shoved several times despite staunchly claiming our seats at this high top. We’re nowhere near the over-lacquered bar stretching the length of the rectangular room, and yet the floors are sticky.

With so many people, it feels like the whole room both sees me and doesn’t.

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