Chapter 2
Holly
Am I really about to do this? Shaking my head, I made my way out to my small silver sedan parked in the far-left end of the Grantville Elementary School parking lot.
It was a few minutes after four o’clock and I had stupidly let my best friend Joana Wharton talk me into going out on a blind date. My date, a guy named Martin Langley, was supposed to be meeting me at a lavish restaurant called the Lovehouse—one of the nicest eateries in the area, which was actually the main reason why I’d even agreed to go in the first place. I figured that if the guy could afford to take me to the Lovehouse on our first date, he just might be someone worth getting to know.
Joana had told me that Martin was a friend of her brother’s and that he worked in the financial planning department at a huge corporation on the other side of town. Apparently, she thought that he’d be perfect for me because he seemed to be everything that my ex-fiancé was not.
I had been single now for several months, and ever since the break-up I’d been focusing most of my time and energy on my teaching career. I had finally broken things off with my ex because his work was more important to him than I ever was.
We had been dating for nearly three years when he’d finally gotten around to proposing to me, and the way that it happened was way fucking far from the romantic, dreamy type of marriage proposal that most women fantasize about. To this day, I still wonder why I accepted.
We had just had a big fight, one of the worst fights of our relationship, and I was ready to call it quits for good. I had started packing up all of my things and had just filled my second suitcase when he came back to the condo after having stormed out in a fit of anger less than an hour earlier.
He walked in the front door and his jaw hit the floor when he saw that I was in the middle of packing all of my stuff up. Without saying a word, he rushed down the hall and went into the extra bedroom he often used as his personal office space. Less than a minute later, he came back out to the living room and stood in front of me, looking at me in silence. He no longer appeared to be angry, and he was holding something in his hand.
“Holly,” he’d said softly. “Please don’t go.”
But I was still in tears and my mind was all but made up. “Babe, all we ever do is fight anymore. Your job always comes before me, no matter what, and I just can’t live like this,” I explained through tear-streaked eyes.
“Holly,” he said again, bending down on one knee.
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked down at him. I really did still love him, but our relationship had become so strained and so unhealthy that I was sad, disappointed, and upset much more often than I was ever happy. But when he got down on one knee and held up his hand, it was like some kind of invisible switch in my brain totally turned “off” and my heart just completely took over.
He opened his hand and there was a little gold ring box inside of it. When he opened it, a huge, gorgeous, sparkly diamond was the first thing I saw. It was bigger than any other piece of jewelry he had ever given me before. It was absolutely beautiful. I placed both of my hands on my cheeks and my mouth dropped open.
“Holly, if you stay, I promise I will marry you,” he said softly, removing the ring from the box and taking my left hand into his.
I was so stunned that I couldn’t even speak. I just stood there and let him slide the ring onto my finger. It hadn’t even registered yet that he had not even actually asked me to be his wife. So much for romance, huh?
Completely caught up in the moment, I had simply answered yes. Of course, I had been saying yes to both staying and becoming his wife. Though, to this day, I still have no idea how or why I thought that agreeing to be his wife would somehow make things better between us. He didn’t change at all, and things never got any better—they actually got way fucking worse. He became controlling, manipulative, and emotionally abusive. Six months later, I packed up all of my belongings while he was out of town on a business trip and I moved out.
My friend Joana had been there for me throughout the whole ordeal, and she’d been hounding me relentlessly over the past several months to start “getting back out there” and enjoying the single life. Apparently, to Joana, that consisted of dating multiple men with no commitments or complications.
Personally, I’ve never had a “friend with benefits” kind of thing before, and honestly, I really didn’t see the point of it. I told Joana that when summer finally came, I was already planning to leave the city and go back home to the country where I truly felt I belonged. She told me that she was determined to change my mind. I was guessing the blind date with this “Martin” character must be part of her elaborate plan to try and keep me from leaving the city.
I sighed as I turned into the small parking lot of my apartment building and pulled into my assigned space. Turning the car off, I headed up to my second-floor unit to get ready for my date. When I opened my front door, I almost screamed in surprise when I saw my bestie Joana seated comfortably on my white leather sofa. Her feet were propped on the ottoman and she appeared to be watching something on the screen of her smart phone.
“Joana! Girl, what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
Honestly, I shouldn’t even have been all that shocked. Joana did things like this on a regular basis. One night, she popped up in the backseat of my car and had nearly caused me to run off the road and into a ditch.
“I’m here to help you get ready for your date,” she replied excitedly as she hopped off my sofa and turned around to face me.
“Um, I appreciate the offer, Jo, but I’m quite capable of dressing myself for a date,” I replied with a frown.
“Oh, puh-lease!” she said, rolling her bright blue eyes at me exaggeratedly. “If it wasn’t for me and my A-1 hair and makeup skills, you would never have gotten past your first date with your ex!”
I knew there was no talking Jo out of anything once she had her mind set, so instead of wasting time in an unwinnable argument, I reluctantly agreed to let her play Barbie with me and dress me up for my date.
An hour and about three trial outfits later, she had me all dolled up in an asymmetrical lavender-colored knee-length dress with matching stiletto sandals.
“Jo, it’s April in fucking New York! It’s not warm enough for this outfit yet. I’m going to freeze to death in this!” I complained.
She had my long brown hair done up in a neat little bun with two wavy locks hanging loosely down on each side of my flawlessly made-up face. The lavender eye shadow she’d picked out for me made my brown eyes pop and she’d outlined my lids with a dark eyeliner to accentuate their almond-like shape. My lashes were so caked with mascara that they almost looked fake and she’d covered my lips in a shiny, shimmery lavender gloss that made them appear three times plumper than they actually were.
Even if I’d wanted to complain, I couldn’t have. She had truly dolled me up like a goddamned movie star. I couldn’t deny the fact that I felt sexier and more attractive than I had since I’d broken up with my ex.
“Jo, you’re a fucking miracle-worker!” I exclaimed, as my eyes lit up at my own reflection in the full-length mirror on my bedroom closet door.
“See? You look like a million bucks, Holly! Thanks to me, you just might get lucky and get laid tonight!” she said jokingly.
“Yeah, right, Jo. There’s no way I’m sleeping with some random stranger on our very first blind date.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And I’m taking a sweater just in case the temperature drops tonight while we’re at the restaurant.”
“No, Holly,” she said. “If you cover those great tits of yours with a sweater, how’s he gonna be able to see how hard your nipples get when you’re cold?”
I reached out and slapped her playfully in the arm, and both of us burst out laughing.
“God, Jo, you are such a fucking whore!” I joked.
Looking and feeling sexier than I had in long time, I headed out to the Lovehouse restaurant to meet Mr. Martin Langley for our blind date.