Jessa gave her the Cliffs Notes version of her most recent dating disaster.
Ali made a hissing noise. “Sorry, Charlie.”
“It’s okay, bae.” Ali might be an engaged woman, but she would always be Jess’s before-anyone-else.
“Aunt Ali!”
Jess heard one of the twins call out from another room.
“Hang on, KJ!” Ali responded before returning to their call. “I gotta go. Oh, wait! I was calling to see if you’re free for dinner?”
“Are you cooking?” Ali had many amazing gifts but cooking was not one of them. Since her friend took over parental duties after her brother passed, Jess had choked down more than her fair share of dinners that barely passed as food. Luckily, Ali was well aware of her shortcomings.
“No. You’re safe.” Ali assured her.
“Then yes, I’m free.”
“Dumbass! No!”
“I hope you’re talking to the dog,” Jess teased.
Dumbass was the name bestowed on Kade and Ali’s dog by its former owner, Kade’s late father. Ali had done her best to change the name, but Dumbass refused to answer to anything else, so it stuck.
“I am,” Ali assured her and, in the background, Jess heard one of the boys telling the dog no. “Does Lanterns at seven work?”
“Yep. See ya then.”
Just before the line disconnected, she heard her friend squeal in delight and giggle again.
Jess set her phone down and a melancholy cloud settled around her. As happy as she was that Ali and Kade were going to live happily ever after, it was hard not to wish she had someone making her giggle as she got off the phone.
She’d been trying to be positive and simply look at this time in her life as an adventure. It was proving to be much more difficult than it should be. No one online was who they said they were and people in real life only seemed to be interested in being online. Her last three dates had crashed and burned all in their own unique ways.
Date number one had shown up thirty minutes late, claiming to have been tied up at work. Which, in his defense, might’ve been true, it’s just that Jess didn’t wait around to find out after she spotted the ring on his left finger. He turned white as a ghost when she pointed it out to him.
Date number two was fortunately both on time and ringless, but his breath was so bad she’d barely made it past introductions.
But the worst by far had been last night’s date. Date number three. He wasn’t married or suffering from halitosis. His only crime was that he gave her hope only to squash that hope like a bug beneath a steel-toed boot.
Holden was employed, attractive, funny, and smart. And fifteen minutes into their date she discovered he was also a chain smoker. Jess had been born with a congenital heart condition and breathing was far too precious to her to sacrifice for anyone; even someone as hot as Holden.
Her hand drifted over the large scar that she wore proudly on her breastplate. Without this scar, she wouldn’t be here. But because of this scar, someone else wasn’t here. Someone else had had to die so she could live. That was a sobering reality to be faced with.
She’d met the family of her donor. Alice Tapper was a grad student who was engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart when she was killed in a car accident. By all accounts she was kind, generous, and loved by all that knew her. Family was everything to her and she was so excited to be starting her own.
Maybe it was silly, but Jess felt a responsibility to Alice who would never get to fulfill the dreams she’d had. She wanted an HEA for the both of them. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t turning out to be all that easy. Nothing she was doing was working.
It wasn’t a complete shock that she was clueless in all things love. Up to this point, all of her romantic milestones had asterisks beside them.
First kiss, she’d been nine years old and overheard her parents talking after her mom got a call from the doctor who’d told them that the last stint hadn’t done what they’d hoped and without a miracle, Jess’s outlook was grave. Even at nine, she’d known what that meant. So she snuck out of her house and went down to the pier to think.
She hadn’t planned it, but she’d ended up kissing a poor, unsuspecting tourist boy that had come to check on her when he saw her crying. It had been a good kiss, a great kiss even, but she’d got embarrassed when she pulled back so she’d made some sarcastic comment about it not being that great.
She thought about that kid a lot.
Did he remember the girl that told him in one breath she was dying and in the next, leaned over and planted a big one on him?
Her first boyfriend had been born out of convenience and pity when she was fifteen. There was a boy at the children’s hospital that was even sicker than she was and he’d asked her to be his girlfriend. She’d agreed because how could she say no to a boy that she knew most likely wouldn’t leave the hospital alive. And she was glad she had because he hadn’t, and she didn’t have to live with the guilt of blowing off the dying kid. She’d spent six weeks as Tommy Clark’s “girlfriend” before he passed away. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as the movie The Fault in our Stars was, but sometimes she liked to pretend it was.