Fucking hope.What a horrid cunt.
When she met Darren in the wild at her favorite coffee shop, he’d seemed sonormal.He was employed.Owned his own home and car.Was attractive, but not so attractive that she’d always be wondering what he saw in her.Like,vanillaattractive, which was nice.She liked vanilla.
And best of all, he seemedwaymore interested in her than she was in him.On paper, he was perfect.
Sure, the bar of her standards was in hell.And on fire.But Darren had cleared it with ease.They’d been on four perfectly nice dates.
And yet…
Deep in her gut, she’d always felt something wasoffabout him.Everything he did and said felt calculated somehow.It was like he’d taken a “how to woo a woman” course and was implementing tactics instead of genuinely getting to know her.
But it wasn’t until tonight, when he’d acted like sex was a given because this was their fourth date and tried to invite himself into her house, that his nice-guy mask truly slipped.And when she told him she thought they weren’t a good fit and it was time to go their separate ways?
The mask disappeared altogether.
The man she was looking at right now wasnotthe man she’d been dating for the past month.His normally warm brown eyes had instantly frosted over when she said she wouldn’t be inviting him to “make love”, as he put it.She cringed at the thought (and at his choice of words).Like she owed him entrance into her body because he’d paid for a couple dinners, a bad rom com movie, and tickets to the art museum’s Impressionists experience.
Seriously, what had she done to deserve this?Her one and only dating rule wasn’tthatstrict.Why wasn’t she married with 2.5 kids and a couple of matching chocolate Labradors by now?
But despite her best efforts, here she sat, not a single husband, kid, or chocolate lab in sight.Just an asshole who thought he was entitled to her body after a handful of aggressively average dates.
Darren shoved a hand through his hair.“I don’t understand.What do you mean we’renot a good fit?We’ve been out four times.Four!I did everything right!”
The way he said that reinforced her feeling that he’d only been cosplaying a good boyfriend.He truly didn’t understand how she’d seen through his act.It set her teeth on edge.
But she couldn’t tellhimthat.Not when he looked like he was hanging on to sanity by the thinnest of fraying threads.
“I never said you did anything wrong,” she said carefully.“You didn’t.This is about me.I just don’t feel a spark.”
Unlike the flaming, white-hot, blinding spark she felt when she stared through her bird watching binoculars at her new neighbor.
She’d been so excited when he moved in.Living on a tiny country road in the middle of nowhere had its perks, but it occasionally got a little lonely.And the only other house on the street, the one directly across from hers, had been up for sale for years with no interest.She’d started thinking she’d never have a real neighbor, which was a shame, because she was pretty sure she’d begreatat it.
Then she sawhim.
Her neighbor showed up out of the blue one day, stripped the sale sign off the front lawn, and moved in with absolutely no fanfare.No moving truck, no friends helping him heft boxes into the house, no housewarming party or anything.He hauled his own boxes out of his big F-350 and had a minimal amount of furniture delivered.
She wasn’t good at guessing ages, but she figured he was in his late thirties, probably only a few years older than her.He never had visitors, kept to himself, mowed his lawn every week without fail, and putzeroeffort into getting to know her (or even making eye contact with her at the mailbox, for that matter).
And he was stunningly, shockingly, painfully hot.Muscly, dark-haired, ruggedly handsome features, looked like he could bench press an SUV…yep.He wasbeyondimpressive.
He was so hot, in fact, that even after a month with him living right across the street, she still hadn’t worked up the nerve to go over and introduce herself.Especially when he seemed so supremely uninterested in being neighborly with her.
So, she periodically watched him through her binoculars (God bless the man for never closing his curtains) like a lame-ass loser and wished he’d just come over and ask to borrow some flour or something so she’d have an excuse to talk to him.After all, how the hell was he supposed to fall in love with her if they never even officially got around tomeeting?
Which, now that she thought about, made her empathize a little with Darren.Being on the losing end of a one-way spark suckedass.
Not relevant at the moment.Get your shit together, woman!
His eyes narrowed on her.“A spark?What does that even mean?”
Her heart rate kicked up a little.How was he going to sit there and pretend he had no idea what asparkwas?She cleared her throat.“I mean aromanticconnection.We could still be friends, of course.”
She didn’t mean it.After tonight, she was going to block his ass oneveryplatform.But again, tellinghimthat didn’t seem prudent while she was trapped in a car with him.With the child locks on, apparently, she thought as she gave the handle at her back a little tug.
He rolled his eyes.“Oh, come on.The whole idea of asparkwas just something women made up to reject nice guys who aren’t over six feet and working in finance.”
As someone who was only 5’5”, she could say with all honesty that she couldn’t possibly care any less that Darren was 5’9”.To her, that was tall.And finance dudes bored the fuck out of her.Darren being a corporate IT guy had never concerned her.But he didn’t seem like he was in the state of mind to accept those particular truths.So, she decided to try another tactic.
