Unlucky In Love by Carmen DeSousa Read Free Book Online Page A

Change
    My eyes darted around the Starbucks, hoping
no one I knew would walk in. I’d purposely chosen a Starbucks that
I rarely went to so that if things went poorly, I’d lessen the
chance of a recurrence.
    I set the bright purple shoulder bag I’d
received as a gift-with-purchase at the end of the tabletop. Other
than the beach, I rarely used the neon-colored monstrosity, but I
hadn’t wanted to do something as cliché as carrying a yellow rose
or setting my tattered paperback version of Pride and
Prejudice beside me.
    Chancing a quick peek at my phone for the
time, I wondered again why I’d allowed my cousin to talk me into
this. Why was she so adamant that I dated someone? At
least Angela hadn’t suggested that I sign up for online
dating; she’d just insisted that I meet the brother of one of her
sorority sisters. It had been a few years since she’d seen him, but
she insisted that he was super sweet, cute, and every time she’d
seen him, he’d had a book in his hands. So worst case, if we had
nothing else in common, at least we could talk
about books. Assuming he didn’t read space operas or horror novels.
Those were the two genres that I couldn’t seem to get interested in
reading.
    And that was what I was starting to realize
… The reason my marriage had failed, the reason that every guy I’d
dated before Dick hadn’t worked out. I hadn’t shared an interest in anything that they enjoyed.
    Sadly, that was partly my fault, because
other than books, movies, and wine, what did I like? My son. But
that conversation would only interest Dick, probably the reason my
marriage had made it to the fifteen-year mark. We’d shared two
loves: talking about our son … and sex.
    “Jana?”
    I bolted upright in the chair, spilling
coffee on the cuff of my white long-sleeved shirt. What was wrong
with me? “Yes … I’m Jana. Sorry.” I motioned my hand for Kyle to
sit, then squirted some spring water from my bottle of Zephyrhills on to my shirt and dabbed at it with a
napkin.
    “No, I’m sorry,” Kyle said as he handed me a
couple more napkins. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
    I wagged my head. “You didn’t. I scare
myself, I think. Sometimes I zone out. I get so deep in thought
that I don’t realize what’s going on around me.” Nice conversation starter, Jana. First, you prove
that you’re a klutz, then you tell him you’re a ditz . If I
didn’t know any better, I’d think that I was purposely trying to
sabotage any chances of starting a relationship with another man.
Maybe I was.
    Kyle laughed. “You too?”
    My lips curved up slightly. I wasn’t sure if
Kyle agreeing with me was a good thing or not. “So, Angela tells me
you’re an exterminator?” When Angela had first mentioned
“exterminator,” I immediately had thought about my request that she
knock off my ex-husband. As much as Angela and I had laughed,
something told me that I didn’t want to bring that up in the first
five minutes either, especially since I’d already proven that I was
jittery and a space cadet.
    “Yeah …” he said. “Not extremely glamorous,
but it pays the bills.”
    Well, at least he
wasn’t high and mighty about it. All jobs were important, but it
always amazed me how some people were pompous about their jobs,
especially given the fact that most people fell into their jobs.
“How did you end up being an exterminator?”
    “I started as an apprentice in high school,
doing the dirty jobs that sales reps didn’t want to do, then …
after a few years of that, I was able to get my license.” He paused
to take a sip of coffee, then started right in, “One of my first
jobs was at a triplex. One of the tenants moved out and then all of
a sudden, the other two became overrun with pests …”
    My mind wandered off as Kyle rambled on and
on about palmetto bugs as large as the palm of his hand, fruit
rats, and a plethora of insects and rodents I didn’t care to hear
about over coffee … or