Page 5 of My Heart to Find

“Okay, I’m Donnie,” he says. He’s sweating a lot, clutching his hands together in his lap. Looks nervous. Poor bloke. Got to be the oldest here too. In his sixties, I’d say. “Donnie Hamilton. And I’m an accountant.”

As he talks about his accountancy and his business and his children and his ex-wife and how he left her for a man, who then left him, I’m counting round the circle until I get to the young women. Six people to go before I find out the name of the brunette woman.

“You’re aromantic?” David, one of the men I spoke to earlier, says with a frown, jolting me back to the conversation.

“Yeah, I’m aromantic and graysexual.” The fourth man is introducing himself. One of them whom I’m going to play table tennis with later. Ray, I think his name is.

“Why are you on a dating retreat then?” David asks. “If you’re aromantic?”

“Aromantic people can have partners too,” Mrs. Mitchell says. “Many do.”

David grunts, looking bewildered. “I’m all so new to this.”

“Yes, why don’t you introduce yourself then?”

David does—he’s a forty-one-year-old car mechanic who’s never been married, never had kids, never learned the skillful art of tact, and is absolutely sure that he’s going to find ‘the one’ on this retreat—and then at last it’s the brunette woman’s turn.

“I’m Cara,” she says. “I’m... I’ve just left uni. I want to go into illustration. Haven’t got a job yet though. And I’m ace and romantic. And a boring fact about me... I hate the texture of carpet. Can’t walk barefoot on it.”

“So, you’ll always want to be wearing shoes then,” Mrs. Mitchell says with a laugh. “Better make sure they haven’t got holes in like Damien’s.”

I feel my face heat up. God, why did I talk about my broken shoes? But Cara is smiling at me, and her smile lights up her whole face.

I smile back.

“And your turn?” Mrs. Mitchell says, nodding her head toward Cara’s friend.

The two of them arrived together at the hotel, last night. I was in my room, unpacking, when I saw them through the window. And I assumed then that they wouldn’t be part of the ace retreat, because the hotel is huge, but then they turned up here.

“Jana,” the friend says, and I wonder if they are together. Cara and Jana. Cara said she was ace and romantic but not who she’s attracted to. Then again, I didn’t specify I’m heterodemisexual either.

Jana continues her introduction, but I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying. I just want to talk to Cara.

CHAPTER THREE

Jana

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