Cursed Queen of the Kraken King

1. Eve

EVE

This is the worst date I’ve ever been on.

Which is really saying something, because I’ve experienced some truly awful ones. Like the one guy who decided we should meet at a seafood restaurant only to tell me he’s deathly allergic to shellfish.

Or the one who thought a baseball game was the perfect spot for a first meet-up.

It would’ve been cute if he wasn’t already ten beers deep by the time I arrived. Trying, with the other sloshed men around him, to make an obscenely long snake of plastic cups that resulted in lukewarm beer spilling all over my shoes.

There were also the guys who lacked basic hygiene or the ones whose biggest crime was being boring. That was the risk you took dating in the modern era.

A dating profile could be as deceptive as a possum. By the time you got comfortable enough to agree to the date, they’d spring to life, bite your hand, and give you rabies.

Honestly, rabies might improve the man across from me.

God, what was his name? Conner? No—Conner was last week. His name starts with an ‘M ’.

Morgan? No. Maxwell? No, that’s not it either.

“So then my boss said, ‘Miles, no one’s ever done the report this fast. That’s what we like to see from our senior associate’—”

Miles, that’s right. I smile pleasantly at his sprawling tale about the work he does for some hedge fund he’s been name-dropping since I sat down. Downing the rest of my white wine, I glance around the dimly lit bar.

We aren’t the only two on a date. The couples around me seem much happier. Engaging in lively conversation and stealing lingering glances at each other. The only thing Miles has been casting appreciative stares at are my breasts. Gross.

My stomach growls as he prattles on, the conversation growing into a low hum.

Men like Miles all have the same look about them. Dark hair that’s thinning at the temples. Pressed slacks and crisp shirts, the result of a dry cleaner. Or worse, their mothers. The proprietary gleam in his eyes sets my teeth on edge.

It’s hopeless out here.

I’ve been lacking in love for so long I don’t know what I’d do if I actually found it. Miles is one in a series of bad matches. From the moment he opened his mouth, I knew liking him on Heartfinder was a mistake.

Making a profile on the damn app was an even bigger one.

My friend Jen had had success on it, but I think she got the last man in Chicago who was willing to commit.

Not that Harry is a prize, by any means.

They have their disagreements from his refusal to grow up.

Arguments she tends to hide. Harry is just another victim of Peter Pan Syndrome that no amount of joint tax-filing and sworn vows can remedy.

She’s been married for over a year. They had just welcomed their newborn in the suburbs earlier this year. I’ve hardly heard from her since she said ‘I do’.

That’s been the running theme for all of my friends.

As the only single one at twenty-seven, you’d think I’d contracted a disease the way they talk about my relationship status. If one more person looks at me with pity and murmurs, ‘It’ll happen when you least expect it,’ I’ll gouge their eyes out.

Is it so bad to be seen wanting something? Why do I have to pretend to be aloof in order to be worthy of affection? I bring my glass to my lips for the final tart droplets of wine sitting at the bottom.

I’ve come to the realization that the devotion I’m looking for may elude me forever.

The all-consuming love I want is something I’ve never glimpsed among my friends and their partners. Maybe it’s merciful that I have been picky. Better to be alone than shackled to someone in perpetual disappointment.

I believe in soulmates and that your perfect person is out there.

Mine must also be suffering terribly if he’s found himself in a similar situation. I wonder what he’s doing right now—my perfect match. If he even exists.

“What do you do for work again?”

Miles’s question catches me off guard. I have to blink several times to process that he’s actually asked me something. The wine is already making my head spin.

I had spent hours in the studio today and forgotten to eat. By the time I realized how hungry I was, it was time to meet Miles.

I try my best not to search out our waitress, but I’m growing more irritable the longer my stomach rumbles.

“Art,” I say, tapping my empty glass with a nail. “I’m a painter.”

“Really?”

The crinkle in his nose and the cocked brow are typical when I tell people my profession.

It’s the same look I’ve gotten since dedicating myself to fine arts. My father looked at my career path the same way. God rest his soul. He never understood me. He worked too much after my mother passed when I was a baby for us to properly bond.

The only thing I have from them besides a few memories and old photographs is their money. It’s sustained my art, and I don’t have it in me to wonder whether that makes my father roll in his grave. It doesn’t matter. He’s been gone for over six years.

I’ve lived longer than I ever knew my mother. It’ll be the same with my father before long. What he did or didn’t approve of in my life won’t matter.

What would it have been like to have approving parents? Who saw my art exhibits and met them with awe instead of mild annoyance?

I’ll never know the answer. My life has been a series of what-ifs.

What if I had pursued a typical career path and settled down with a stable, albeit boring coworker?

What if I hadn’t broken up with Jake our senior year of college and followed him to New York?

Would it have been us getting married at his family's house in the Hamptons instead of the girl he got with three months after we split?

What if I had eaten before this date and didn’t feel like I was going to pass out? What-if. What-if. What-if.

What-ifs can drive a girl insane. Not insane enough to make me lose sight of myself. A year in the suburbs with Jake, no matter how white the picket fence, would’ve stolen my sparkle.

One thing about me, Eve Quinn, is that I like to shine.

No matter how lonely I feel, giving up on what I love is never an option. The man I’m meant to marry won’t ask me to change. Not as Miles wants to, as he prattles on about another uninteresting work tangent.

I’m never going to see him again. It’s one thing all my dates have in common. I can’t seem to get past the first one.

“Isn’t that ridiculous?” Miles asks, brows high.

I inwardly curse as he looks at me expectantly. I haven’t paid one second of attention to anything he’s said. Staying on this date is unfair to both of us. There’s a woman out there who will hang on his every word, but that woman is most definitely not me.

“Oh, um—”

I’m spared from answering as our waitress reappears. I nearly sag with relief. Her easy smile is sympathetic as she looks between my second empty wine glass and his half-full first beer. My eyes stray to the plate in her hand and the appetizer we had ordered nearly an hour ago.

“Sorry about the wait. The kitchen always gets slammed on game days.”

Apart from the happy couples, the bar is crowded tonight with alumni from schools I’d never heard of. Riotous applause rings out every few minutes as more patrons in baby blue stream in.

Miles had already checked his sports-betting app a couple of times, after explaining to me in great detail his prowess at the art of chance. As if her words reminded him, he did so again as she settled the porcelain plate between us.

The red flags just kept getting more and more crimson.

At least the food was finally here. I could inhale fifty meatballs. Miles had already eaten, so surely he wouldn’t mind if—

It looks like a murder scene. Marinara splatters onto the white plate like blood. At the center, one malformed meatball, oozing white cheese as if it were a head leaking brains. It was small, barely constituting an adult portion.

How had this taken an hour?

Gripping my fork, I hold my breath as Miles slices off over half the meatball. I meet his gaze as a sheepish smile curves his thin lips.

“I know I said I wasn’t hungry, but it smells good. I hope you don’t mind.” He plops three-fourths of the spherical meat monstrosity onto his plate. “And I’m paying so…”

The statement trails off and red settles over my vision.

Stabbing the pathetic sliver of beef, I drop the steaming mass onto my plate. My stomach growls, but my anger suppresses it. Emotions flood me, making my ears ring, and my fingers go numb.

Inherently, I know this isn’t Miles' fault. Bad manners and selfish men are hardly something new. However, this one moment makes every bad date I’ve been on compound into one. They play like a movie in my head.

The handsy dates, the boring ones, the disinterested mansplainers, the shy guys, the mean older men. All of them rotate on a loop, whipping up my anger and anguish into a maelstrom.

It’s not Miles's fault I hadn’t remembered to eat, just like it’s not his fault that I’ve felt alone for so fucking long.

Loneliness made me agree to this date in a noisy bar, when I could’ve been curled up on my couch with takeout in the quiet of my apartment.

If I wasn’t so lonely, I wouldn’t be sitting across from a man with an all-too-familiar look in his eye, thinking that a fraction of one meatball entitled him to sleeping with me.

I can tell he’s itching to ask. They always are.

This was a complete and utter waste of my time. Just like everything else in my life. I had no family, no real friends anymore. My life as an artist was stalling, and I was stuck on this wretched date.

I need to break the cycle. No matter the cost, I can’t keep living like this. Something has to change. I’ve let life happen to me for far too long. I need to take back control while I still can.

I’m done being trapped in this unending nightmare of bad first dates and sticky floors. Of staring at the blank canvas before me and waiting for inspiration to strike. I need to get out of Chicago and out of my own head. At least for a bit, until I remember who I am and discover what I want.