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Happiest Ever After
CLAIRE WILDER
Happiest Ever After
I’m a romantic. There, I said it. I believe with all my heart in wedding bells and happy ever afters. What can I say? The bar was set way too high by my brother’s best friend. A boy who kissed me under a starry sky when we were teenagers… then disappeared.
But years later, my belief in true love doesn’t sit well with the men I date. They say I come on too fast, too strong. After getting dumped once again, I vow it’ll be the last time. I’m going to learn how to be casual, and I’m going to start by kissing a stranger.
Only what if the handsome dark-haired stranger I choose that night outside the bar isn’t actually a stranger? What if he’s the one who ruined me for good?
CHAPTER1
Cora
I’m going to kiss a stranger tonight. And I’m going to like it.
I hope.
My chest vibrates both with the beat of my heart and the oppressively loud electronic bass coming from the speakers at the Blue Line bar. The sound makes it difficult to focus on honing in on a target.
Or maybe it’s the fact that every guy who’s walked through the door tonight I either went to high school with or looks barely twenty-one. I’m only twenty-eight, but a moment ago I swear I just saw a kid I used to babysit.
That had me nearly walking right out the door.
But I made myself pull out my phone and reread the text Glen sent me this morning.
Sorry babe. You understand, right?
This was why I came up with this kiss-a-stranger plan. Six months we’d been dating, and Glen had dumped me by text message.
The worst part was, I saw it coming.
Just like I always did.
I was following the pattern I’d been stuck in for years: meet a guy; immediately decide he’s The One; plan our future wedding in my mind.
Then, poof.
Get dumped.
It’s too fast, Cora.That was Dave.
I’m just not ready for commitment.Eric.
You understand, right, babe?Glen.
This time, it had happened while I was scrubbing a toilet at my housekeeping job at the Rolling Hills resort.
But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right? So this morning, after reading the text (and promptly throwing the toilet brush across the room… then guiltily cleaning up the disgusting spray of toilet water it made on the bathroom tiles), I called my most hard-partying friend, Mia, and told her to give me her die-hard tips for dating casually.
“I thought you’d never ask!” she’d exclaimed.
Mia’s tip? Kiss a stranger. Any stranger. Then, move along.
So here we are. Except Mia vanished on her way to the bar over ten minutes ago. Though not before trying to pouf up my unpoufable fine blond hair; giving up, and applying a new coat of lipstick to my worrying lips before instructing me to stop trying so hard and act casual.
Remembering her words now, I lean on the high-boy table. But my bare forearms stick to its tacky surface, and I stand up again, grimacing and wiping ineffectually at my skin with a bar napkin. I glance longingly at the bar’s signature big blue door.
