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“Me what?” he asked innocently.
Lord grant me the serenity to… she began to say in her head trying hard to hold the smile she wore like a default façade. She glanced at her watch and saw they had been at this for almost thirty minutes and the only thing stopping her from leaving was the fact that she was actually hungry and these appetizers were a promise to a more orgasmic entrée to come, unlike her present company.
“Tell me about yourself, Jake.” She plucked a buttered calamari from the shared placed and placed it in her mouth.
“I am a computer engineer, specializing in...”
No, she just couldn’t. Ashley focused on the wine bottle in front of her and blocked his voice out. He was reciting the same thing she had seen on his online profile when she had Googled him and the company he worked for. What did he think this was? An interview for a job?
Well, to be fair it was but not that kind of job. She looked around the restaurant searching for the closest exits so she could get the heck out of dodge. She was saved the need to bolt when her cell phone pinged.
“Do you mind?” she asked him waving the phone.
“No of course not,” he said and continued reciting the lines he had written about himself that stroked his ego and inflated his sense of self-importance but bored her to the depths of a kind of hell she needed out from:
How is it going?
The message was from Laura and she jumped on the means to escape, her mind screaming freedom.
“I am so sorry Jake, but I have to go. There is an emergency at home.” He looked at her like a wounded puppy and she still the urge to roll her eyes.
“Sure, I understand,” he said and she jumped up from her chair without so much as a second thought. She didn’t want to give him any time to ask her what was wrong then volunteer to escort her home. No, she wanted out and now.
He stood as she left the table and they said quick goodbyes at the door with a promise to link up a bit later. It was a promise she had no intentions of keeping. She lightly jogged down the stairs and called a cab, lucky enough to get one almost immediately and as she hopped in she breathed a sigh of relief. This single thing had its perks but she moments like this made her want to just buy a couple cats and call that life.
Kicking off her shoes at the front door and peeling her clothes off down to her underwear, she sat with a flop in her worn out couch and called Laura.
“Hey!” her best friend of almost seventeen years said with enthusiasm. It was the kind of hey that aid she wanted to know all that happened.
“Dating is evil,” Ashy said rubbing her eyes in frustration. Laura laughed on the other end of the phone, no doubt amused by the fact that just recently Ashley had recently bragged about all the perks of her single and sexy life.
“Was he that awful?”
Ashley sighed. “I don’t know if awful is the word to describe him, maybe stoic and boring are far better.”
“But he was so hot,” Laura moaned. “I hate when that happens.”
“He was definitely hot, but the only way I was going to get any action there was if I ripped his voice box out and prevented him from speaking. There are men who speak you right out of your underwear, and there are those who speak you right into a chastity belt.”
Laura howled with laughter in her ear. “I think it’s time you got those cats.”
Groaning Ashley flopped onto her back and thought of the time when her love life was the envy of althea women around her. She had the curvaceous body to die for, the ability to wield prose like an awesome seductress and the brains to go along with the package. She was every man’s dream and she occasionally played the field, it had even been more fun since she had hooked up with Ava and Laura her two best friends. Together they had been dabbed The Dallas Heartbreakers because they had their fun and then broke hearts, but this date made her feel like all she needed to be breaking were cats.
“Not all that glitters is gold, right?” Laura pointed out the obvious and they said their goodbyes shortly after that and Ashley looked forward to Monday when she would be too busy to care how her weekend went.
Chapter 2
Monday morning broke with the chirping of the birds outside her window like a prelude to one of Bob Marley's greatest songs. Sad thing was if she wasn't out of her little cooped up apartment in the next half an hour she was going to be late.
It was what they called the Monday curse, once you were late on a Monday you were doomed to be late for the rest of the week. And seeing as she had just managed to land her dream job at the couture magazine Shimmer, she was not about to screw it up.
In twenty minutes she was out the door and in her car trying her best not to break the speed limits as she made her way to the office. Laura greeted her as per usual with a cup of coffee and a huge grin across her face.
"What are you so please about?" Ashley asked with a raised eyebrow. Laura only ever grinned like that when she was up to no good or had been busy getting it on all night.
"Nothing," she said sipping on her coffee and winking at Ashley over the top of the cup.
Yup, it was the latter. While she had been home thinking about her utter hopelessness and lack of action on the acting front, which will likely result in her becoming the cat lady Laura had been pulling some Marvin Gaye type stunts.
