Fairy Tale: The PIck Your HEA Dating App Disaster

Chapter Another Bad Date

Another Bad Date

“Already?” Mona Zimmerman’s voice shrieks through the phone against my ear as she laughs.

Cackles, really.

“Ugh!” I groan and lean against the outside of my apartment building.

Well, my brother’s apartment building. He’s off in Australia doing something for school—or work.

I really should learn to pay more attention when he tells me things, but I didn’t hear much after he offered to let me sublet his apartment.

It’s one of those perfect location buildings that are extremely hard to rent and requires a recommendation and probably some type of blood oath.

“How bad was it?” she asks with a sigh.

Even over the phone, I can hear her smile. She finds my painful dating life entertaining.

I sit on the stairs and look up at the evening sky. It’s not even dusk yet—which should tell anyone who knows me that the date went horribly.

“He kept comparing himself to Christian Grey. You know, from Fifty Shades of Grey? How he doesn’t like to be touched outside of approved areas, and how he needs to be obeyed.”

Mona hasn’t read the books, but she dragged me to watch all three movies—each one worse than the one before—so she knows the basics even though the movies left out some of the better parts of the stories.

“Was he abused as a child?”

“No! He just thinks this is the character most women have read about and that he should emulate. But then he asked me to go Dutch.”

I groan as she laughs again. “So…” She tries to compose herself. “He didn’t read the book? He just heard about it? Or does he just really want to hang onto those billions?”

“Oh, he barely has two nickels to rub together,” I say.

“Did you pay for your own meal?”

“No, and it wasn’t technically Dutch because I paid for mine and part of his.

He wanted to split the bill fifty-fifty, saying I could Venmo him.

Even though he ordered steak and lobster, and I had the chicken.

And when I pointed out that we should just pay for our own meals, he said I may need to be punished in the blue room. ”

She pauses, and I know she’s thinking about the story. “It’s the red room, right?”

“Yep. But he hates red—it’s offensive. He likes a more serene color when he punishes his women, so he has a blue room.”

“Oh my God.” Her laugh is loud enough to make me pull the phone from my ear.

This isn’t the first call she’s gotten about a bad first date in the past month. It’s the seventh. Out of seven. They’ve all gone terribly, and I swear, each one gets worse than the last.

“Why can’t I find a decent guy, Mona?”

“Holly, we’ve been over this. Multiple times.”

We have. I know we have, but she just doesn’t understand. She isn’t the type to get lost in a good book like I am.

“Why can’t fiction be reality?”

“Uh, because it’s fiction, dummy.”

“Is it really such a bad thing to want a romance like I read in my books? I mean, realistic ones, at least? I have no delusions that I’m secretly a shapeshifter who will meet my fated mate, the alpha wolf of a pack. I mean… I’m not crazy.”

“Well, at least we cleared that up…” I know she’s rolling her eyes.

I can’t see her, but I know. I can feel it.

“Holly, you are not going to find a fairy tale. It’s not real.

We would all love to have a Prince Charming sweep us off our feet, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after in his castle.

But life doesn’t work that way. And the books you read aren’t that realistic.

If you dive into them, you’ll find all the issues and red flags disguised as romance. ”

Mona’s my best friend in the entire world, but I just can’t agree with her here. Why can’t I find my Prince Charming? And who’s to say I can’t? Stranger things have happened.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my tone warning her not to ruin my fantasy world.

“Well, Prince Charming was really just a foot fetish freak in Cinderella. I mean, how is that the only way he could identify her? Her face didn’t change.

And Beauty and the Beast is a romantasy that romanticizes Stockholm Syndrome.

You don’t even want me to get started on Sleeping Beauty.

And these are just the fairy tales we’re all read as little girls. ”

Here we go. “Mona—”

“Do you believe in mermaids, Holly? Because if you do, we really have a much bigger problem to discuss.”

“No, I don’t, smartass. And I’m not exactly thinking about fairy tales.

Is it really that bad to hold out hope that I’ll find a guy who sweeps me off my feet?

A man I can reform because he wants me badly enough to change his fuck-boy ways?

And who doesn’t want a bad boy who’s only good for them? It’s not really that outrageous.”

This triggers the typical Mona rant about how I have no business being in the business of changing people, and I tune her out as I walk up the three flights of stairs to the apartment. My roommate—sorry, my brother’s roommate—left before me for a date of his own.

“Oh, yes, Decker, right there! Don’t… don’t stooooop!” a woman screams from behind his closed door.

“What the fuck was that?” Mona’s voice cuts into my thoughts as I imagine what Decker Thomas is doing in his room. “Are you watching porn? Are you really that horny?”

Closing my eyes, I clench my thighs together. There was hope—a small one, but one nonetheless—that I might be the one crying out in pleasure if one of my dates had gone well. But I’m clearly not the one getting laid tonight.

“Nope, Decker beat me home,” I say and head to my room.

The headboard bangs against the wall with a rhythm that almost makes me moan in pure jealousy.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to roll up the poster my brother had of Wade Boggs after it fell on me during a particularly aggressive sex session on Decker’s side of the wall.

Yet another reminder that I’m not getting laid, and I’m living in my brother’s room.

“Decker, yes!!!”

And the way his date praises him as she comes again only makes me hate her. I don’t even know what she looks like, but I hate her.

“That sexy roommate of yours gets more ass than a porta potty at the county fair,” Mona says, giggling.

“You should really take your turn. It’s been too damn long since you got any.

Besides, it could be counted as research.

Is he really as good as he sounds? I mean, he fits into the fuck-boy category you were just talking about. ”

“I have no doubt he’s as good as he sounds. Look, I gotta go. This could go on for a while, and I want to put on my headphones to drown it out since I’m obviously not getting pounded tonight.”

“See you at work.”

I hang up and reach for my headphones but stop midair as another cry of pure bliss cuts through the air. Why does he seem to always find the screamers?

It doesn’t help I’ve had a crush on Decker since I met him when I was twelve. He was sixteen, and I swore he was the hottest guy I’d ever met. Not that I’ll admit this to anyone, but I still feel that way.

If I thought he was good looking back then, I had no idea what I was in for when he grew up. Because he is gorgeous now.

Big muscles covered in tattoos, black hair that hangs just a bit too long, and bright green eyes. He has just the right amount of stubble on his chiseled jaw that I imagine would tickle—but he doesn’t look grungy or homeless.

There’s no modesty when it comes to Decker. I have to remind myself not to pant when he walks out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. To not say out loud that I hope the washing machine breaks so I can do laundry on his abs. Damn, he’s hot.

Stripping out of my dress—which I should have known was too sexy for a man named Bill—I pull on an oversized shirt and slip into my bed. Decker’s still at it with his lady, who’s had at least three orgasms since I’ve been home, and I can’t take it.

“At least they can’t hear me,” I mumble as I reach into the bedside drawer and find my vibrator. The only action I’ve seen in months. Too many months. I’m in one hell of a dry spell, that’s for sure.

I close my eyes and imagine it’s me crying out as Decker takes me on his bed. The headboard banging against the wall brings me into the scene, and I visualize his hands on me. What they would feel like tugging on my sensitive nipples.

From what I hear most nights, Decker knows what to do with all parts of his body, and I’d give just about anything to experience it firsthand.

I place the vibrator between my legs, ready and in the scene, and I turn it on.

Nothing.

I push the button again.

Nothing.

Damn it. The batteries must be dead. That’s just my luck, but I have no one to blame but myself. I haven’t done the logical thing and buy a toy that recharges with a cord, and I’m not sure I can risk seeing the woman getting the sex I crave by going to get fresh batteries from the hall closet.

Groaning, I consider using my fingers, but it just isn’t the same. Instead, I grab my headphones, put them on, and scroll on my phone before turning in for the evening.

At least Decker’s considerate enough to end his dates before midnight. I don’t know if I could handle it if I was kept awake into the early hours by his conquests.

I scroll through my various reading apps—yes, I have multiple—and try to get into a story. But all I hear when I read something juicy is Mona’s voice nagging in the back of my head. RED FLAG! RED FLAG! RED FLAG!

Frustrated, I stare up at the ceiling. Damn you, Mona.