Chapter Two—Delani
Icould not believe it. He cheated!
That dirty, lying liar!
“Ugh!” I grumbled as I fought with the lock to the front door of my chocolaterie.
I’d stuck with Pete, my disingenuous ex for the last eighteen months, even though I knew there was something missing.
That zing! You know, the one. It was that electric buzz of attraction you felt creep up your spine when you found someone you just clicked with.
Yeah, that. We didn’t have that. It just wasn’t there. And yet, I stayed.
More fool me.
Being a curvy girl I was used to having some not so wonderful choices in the dating world, but I never thought I’d be taken in by a two-timing jerk.
Why was I even upset?
I mean, I knew why I was upset. Seeing Pete with little Peter—yes, the loser named his tiny prick—inside the waitress from the coffee shop next to his apartment was quite the shocker.
I suppose I had a right to be angry. After all, Pete had pursued me.
No, I didn’t find him particularly attractive, but he was attentive and sweet. At least, he was at first.
He said all the right things, took me out, brought me presents. Then, about six months into our relationship, came the not-so-subtle hints to lose weight.
The oh-so-polite comments that I should join a gym, avoid fried food, skip desserts, and my favorite, the I’m only saying that because I love you babe suggestions about what I should wear and eat.
“Hello? Delani? Are you listening to me?”
My best friend, Jan, yelled through the receiver on my cell phone, and I sighed.
“Sorry, Jan. It’s just it will be another Valentine’s Day alone. Again! I am fucking cursed.I can’t believe he cheated on me!”
“That jerk. Did you ditch him?”
“Of course I dumped his stupid ass,” I snarled.
I actually forgot I had her on the line for a minute, and I felt slightly guilty, but I needed to put her on speaker.
Jan could be a bit much and was better in small doses. Especially when I hadn’t had any coffee yet.
But the idea of another dateless Valentine’s Day made me cringe.
What a cliché!
The chubby chick stays alone while everyone else goes out and gets lucky every February the fourteenth.
Ugh.
“I told you Pete was a complete loser before you guys got to date three, remember?” Jan said.
Her voice sounded scratchy through my cell phone’s tiny speaker, but I’d live.
“The infamous date three, of course, I remember,” I told her.
We had this thing where we gave a man three dates to fall into one of our acceptable boyfriend categories.
If he passed, the relationship could progress from there, but if he failed to meet some pretty important standards, we moved on to greener grass.
My favorite dates with the potential to turn into real boyfriends typically fell into one of the following three categories:
The alpha male who treated me like a princess but knew when to let me fend for myself.
The cinnamon roll who was all things sweet and charming but knew when to pull this girl’s hair in the bedroom.
Thank you, Daddy.
And the tall, dark, mystery man who swooped in and made my wildest fantasies come true.
Of course, there weren’t many of those on the ground, which was how and why I settled on Pete the Cheat.
Sigh.
Jan pretty much agreed with my list, and we were always on the lookout for potential boyfriends. And yet, even with several categories of male all picked out—with a Google doc for cross-referencing purposes shared between us—we were both still single.
Jan and I, along with a few select women from our friend group, used the doc to list pros and cons of our dates, and to see where they fell in our possible boyfriend category profiles.
It worked. Mostly.
Just recently, one of our own had actually just found her HEA ending.
Rena and I were old college pals. And she’d just announced her marriage to her old high school flame. She’d added men seeking redemption, worthy of second chances, to our category of our list of acceptable partners.
I couldn’t blame her. After all, Rena had her happy ever after now.
We all added when we felt like it, and yes, we rated them, too. I admit, I had a sort of obsession with fictional men as our unofficial Book Boyfriends I’d loved to Fuck Club, or BBILF, as we called it, could attest too.
What could I say?
No one did it for me the way those unhinged fictional SOBs did between the pages. And that was probably because it was mostly women writing them.
Go figure.
The point was everyone had their own thing that drove them wild.
Whether it was tattoos, an accent, age gap, roleplaying, or, well, whatever, and that was all fine and good.
We gave our prospects three chances to prove their potential and then went from there.
We couldn’t dismiss a man after one date because there simply wasn’t enough information to do so unless he was completely gross. And I didn’t mean looks, I wasn’t that shallow. I meant behavior wise.
Men who were constantly late without explanation or who stood their women up. Men who didn’t know a compliment from their assholes. And men who, God forbid, thought the female orgasm was a myth.
Those dudes could fuck right off.
As long as we avoided any men who were emotionally unavailable, already involved with another woman, or unhealthily attached to his mother. And liars. We all wanted to avoid liars.
“You’re better off, sweetie. What do you say? Wanna come for a visit?” Jan was still talking, and I felt guilty for not really listening.
“No thanks, Jan. It’ll be Valentine’s Day in a few and you know it’s my busiest time of year after the holidays. Besides, there’s this new health inspector who keeps showing up for surprise inspections. He is driving me bonkers,” I told her.
“Fine. But call me later. And report that inspector. Clearly, he is being stalkery,” she said tartly.
“Oh my God, stop. He’s just doing his job.”
“Uh huh. You are too nice, Del. Oh! I have an idea, maybe you should go next door and shoot some whiskey with that sexy guy who owns the bar? He’d put you in a better mood for sure,” Jan said, only half joking.
“I am hanging up now,” I told her before clicking end call on my phone.
I made the mistake of telling Jan about my handsome, yet taciturn neighbor, and now she managed to bring him up in almost every conversation.
Sonny Delgado was fire.
I meant that in every sense of the word. The man was hotter than Hades himself. Just thinking of his name sent tendrils of awareness coursing through my blood.
And that right there was why me and Pete were never going to work.