Page 2 of Time Bomb

Laken: I saw your lights turn on. He was a dud wasn’t he?

I forgot to mention that my best friend lives across the street.

Laken: They can’t all be 10s!

Laken: Was the restaurant at least nice? Food good?

Laken: I know you’re reading these.

Laken: ANSWER ME dammit or I’m coming over.

She’s so impatient.

Ophelia: Food was great, I paid the bill tho.

Laken: Cheapskate. Crossing him off the list.

Ophelia: You should cross them all off. This one was a bust, I don’t have high hopes for any others.

Laken: PUH-LEASE! You promised me 4.

Ophelia: Where are you even finding these guys? Are the rest boring bankers too?

There’s a pause as she types, and the bubbles hang in limbo. I’m betting Hale is doing something to distract her to save me from any more dates. It won’t work, though. Laken is nothing if not persistent. She’ll continue to set me up until I find the perfect guy.

Ophelia: I’m showering and going to bed. C U in the morn.

Placing the device on my dresser, I hop in the shower and let the hot water relax my tired muscles so I can sleep for more than a couple of hours tonight. Maybe they’ll even all be consecutive.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. For the last few months, I’ve had such terrible insomnia, and nothing has helped me sleep for any decent length of time.

Hale and Laken say it’s my lack of a sex life, that my body is protesting the five-year dry spell it’s gone through. Truthfully, at twenty-five, I’ve had one sexual partner, and he was never any good, or maybe we just weren’t any good. But I haven’t been intimate with a man since Sean. I’ve spent the past few years focused on my inherited coffee shop and not much else.

Sure, I’m lonely. I’d be thrilled to have someone to come home to and love. If he could give me orgasms, even better, but the women in my family have never been all that lucky in love, so I don’t have high hopes.

Dropping into bed, I ignore the vibration of my phone and turn on the white noise machine, hoping the calming sounds of a Brazilian rainforest settle my mind enough to sleep.

It works.

For a while.

Blind Date #2 – There’s something about him…

Baxter Cunningham is movie-star handsome. All the women who aren’t otherwise occupied by someone else have spent a considerable amount of time staring at him. He’s a perfect mix of Ryan Reynolds and Vin Diesel.

Tall, hot, buff, and has a killer smile.

But it’s his eyes that get me.

Something is missing in them.

“You like serving coffee?” Let’s not forget the condescending attitude that comes with his looks.

“I do. I get to meet tourists, people from town, hear about their adventures; it’s fulfilling.” And far more complicated than he makes it sound.

“Interesting. What else do you like doing?” A smirk crosses his lips as his eyebrows wiggle, and while I understand it’s a sexual innuendo, I don’t appreciate it.

“I surf, bake. I’m remodeling my house.” I’m pretty proud of that, too.

---