Single Dad Seeks Juliet

“Hey there,” she greets with a scrunchy smile. “Am I in the right place? I’m Lydia.”

Part of me wants to tell her to get lost, that she took a wrong turn somewhere and she needs to head back up her own ass and to the left, but that part of me is clearly crazy.

I put a muzzle on insane me and a smile on normal me’s face. Insane me suggests I reenact Dwight’s real-life fire drill scene from The Office, just to ensure this date never gets off the ground, but real me, thankfully, realizes how costly that kind of sabotage would be.

“Hey, Lydia. You’re definitely in the right place.” I gesture with a hand toward Jake, whose eyes are weirdly still glued to me, and introduce them. “This is the Bachelor…” I laugh, shaking my head side to side. “Jake. This is Jake.”

She holds out a hand for him to take, and he finally peels his eyes away from me to look at her. She looks good. I’m not a guy, but I can see her appeal—frankly, a blind wombat could probably see Lydia’s appeal—but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch as Jake takes in her looks for the first time.

His eyes widen slightly, and I have to look away as he makes small talk. “Hi, Lydia. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she purrs, obvious predator meets prey in her voice. If I allowed myself the opportunity to look, I’m sure I’d find her nipples poking through the thin fabric of her top like spears.

“So,” Jake starts in, hammering away at the ice that always accompanies blind dates. “What do you do for work?”

Lydia’s confident as she responds. “I work for the Charger Girls, the dancers for the Chargers. I used to dance with the team, but I’m a head choreographer now.”

Ha. Ha-ha-ha.

Am I crying? It feels like I’m crying.

On that note, I decide it’s best if I dismiss myself and let them have their time together. You know, for health reasons. I wave a hand to get their attention, but Jake is the only one of the two of them to look up at me.

“All righty, then. I’ll, uh, talk to you cool kids later,” I say dumbly, wanting so badly to stick my foot in my mouth. Hell, right now, if it ensured that nothing else stupid would come out of my mouth, I’d do it after putting on one of those germ-infested communal skates.

Jake smiles at me supportively, but I don’t stick around to prolong the pain. With a weird wave and a kind of jump-skip, I turn around and move to a table on the other side of the rink.

It smells a little like children’s feet over here, but it’s certainly a better location for my emotional stability.

Though, it’s a damn shame that relief is so short-lived. Before I know it, Jake and Lydia have entered the rink, its loop shape design mocking my attempt at emotional fêng shui.It’s official: time is a vacuum. And I have no idea how much of it has passed while I sit inside this god-awful skating rink watching Jake date another woman.

Thirty minutes? Eighteen hours? The time it takes for a dentist to perform a root canal?

It’s all the same. All I know is that if it doesn’t end soon, I might just have to end it myself.

By the way, I realize how ominous that sounds, but you shouldn’t worry too much. I have absolutely no plan, and my track record with follow-through is marginal at best. It just makes me feel better to imagine lighting this place on fire like Adele is always singing. Set Fire to the Rink. I laugh to myself, but it’s admittedly a half laugh, half cry. I’m losing it. That’s not even that good of a joke.

I don’t completely eliminate the possibility of arson from my mind, however. I mean, maybe Garrett would come to put it out and I could meet him—two birds, one stone.

I shake my head almost violently to clear it. Jesus, Holley. Get it together.

Jake and Lydia skate by, laughing with each other as Lydia fakes losing her balance and falls bodily into the strength of Jake’s hard muscle.

What a fucking cliché move.

I try not to grind my teeth as I make note of it on my pad and turn back to watch them as they round the corner on the other side of the room.

Thankfully, in the name of a perfect distraction from the roller-rink-flirt-fest, my phone chimes with an email notification. I open it quicker than I’ve ever opened an email in my life.From:

To:

Subject: Bachelor Anonymous Reveal PartyHi Holley,

I hope all is well in the land of Bachelor-ville!

I have some unfortunate news about the upcoming BA Event, and Gloria wanted me to make you aware ASAP.