What the Heck, Dec?! by Elizabeth Dudak

Author:Elizabeth Dudak [Dudak, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Orange Hat Publishing
Published: 2012-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

I didn’t tell anyone that I was meeting Josh. Esther would have had a fit, as she didn’t forget the Christmas party, even though I took responsibility for my part. And Helen would have told me I was settling. She would have been right too, but it was only a date, not a lifelong commitment. I loved them for their loyalty and their undying concern for me, but sometimes they had a hard time letting go of things and were too much in my business. Wait, who was I kidding? I loved them the most for those very reasons.

“So this is nice.” I sipped my cup of joe and broke off a piece of the chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie. “How do you know about this place?”

“My brother Jason told me about it. He lives not too far from here.”

“Yeah? You two close?”

“We’re ten months apart, so yeah.” He drank some of his coffee down and smacked his lips. “They do make a great cup of coffee.”

“Do you have any other siblings?”

“Two other brothers. They’re both younger.”

“Close to them?” My conversation with him was becoming like a lesson in dentistry – how to extract teeth. I chalked it up to the first date syndrome. First dates aren’t always fun.

“I guess.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m closest to my boys.”

“Your boys?”

“Yeah, the guys in my college fraternity. Man, we had some wild times.” He let out a laugh and I saw the pure joy on his face. “Sometimes, we would get so messed up—you know, drunk or something—and we wouldn’t know what we did the night before or how we got home. A few times, we’d have these bruises and scrapes all over us. And then we’d get phone calls about how we kicked this someone’s ass or smashed up a bar, shit like that. We were wild.”

“Sounds like it.” I popped a piece of cookie in my mouth. He didn’t note the sarcasm in my voice.

“I don’t how I ever graduated.”

“Well, you did say it took you five years.”

“Yeah, I know.” And then he let out a laugh like I told the best joke in the world. I mean, tears streamed down his face. “You were probably all studious.”

“I had fun in college. I wasn’t in any sorority or anything.”

“You missed out, Marti.” He took another long sip. “I don’t know what I would do without my boys.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty close to my sister. My niece and I are—”

“How’s your coffee?”

“Um, fine.” I know, I know. He didn’t ask me about myself, and when I did speak, he interrupted. Not a good way to start off a date. Hey, he was nervous. I was nervous.

After we settled in, I found out Josh and I actually had a lot in common. He adored a nephew of his. Well, actually, it was a son of one of his “boys” who he called a nephew, but he did adore him. Although, once in our conversation he called his nephew a pansy. The boy was only five and I have a hard time with derogatory names.

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