30 First Dates (5 page)

"Well, I think it
is
brilliant," Sherri said. "A great motivator, if nothing else." Her eyes took on a dreamy cast. "Just think, in a few months, your blog might lead you to your dream guy. You could be shopping for your
own
wedding dress."

Erin gave her a wry smile.

"Nothing like having goals."

*  *  *

Hours later, Erin leaned back into the sofa cushion and rubbed her eyes. If she made one more red
X
on a sheet of paper, she might go mad, she thought. This school year was the worst she'd faced so far in four years of teaching. The school where she taught, Northside High School, was one of Dallas Independent School District's lowest-performing outposts. The student population was largely economically disadvantaged, with a high percentage of minority students and a higher-than-average percentage of non-English-speaking students. Discipline problems were rampant, and keeping the classroom focused on academics was one of the biggest challenges she and her colleagues faced. When she'd finished her degree at UT and left Texas to get her master's in mathematics at the University of Oklahoma, her goal was to teach at the college level. But so far she hadn't felt motivated to move beyond NHS. She liked having the opportunity to reach out to kids whose futures were at risk and helping them turn their chances around. It didn't happen every day. It didn't happen every year, even, and she had this year to prove it.

The challenge of that was what thrilled her—and usually it made her want to work harder. But now, well… She pushed the stack of dismal trig tests she was grading aside and stood up, stretching her arms above her head and doing a little shimmy to loosen up her stiff muscles. She hadn't realized how long she'd been sitting in one position.

She eyed her laptop, which was still open on the kitchen table. Before Sherri had left for her date, Erin had finished inputting the basics of her blog idea into her new template. In lieu of a masthead, she'd typed a simple headline using the title she'd come up with: 30 First Dates. She'd also created a sidebar that contained her entire Thirty by Thirty List.

Now she needed a plan.

She darted back to her room and grabbed her journal. Back in the kitchen, she scavenged in the pantry for dinner, came out with a half-empty bag of Rudy's tortilla chips, and opened the fridge, praying Sherri hadn't finished off the salsa. She hadn't. Erin grabbed it and a Diet Coke, and then she settled herself into a kitchen chair and flipped her journal open to her list. Even though the blog was focused on thirty dates, she still wanted to complete the list before she turned thirty—she thought maybe she could combine the two. If nothing else, the list would give her something to talk about with the thirty strangers she was committing herself to going out with. Thirty dates equaled a whole lot of small talk.

She opened her Outlook calendar and studied it to figure out exactly how much time she had to complete all her goals. It was April 5. Her thirtieth birthday was June 14 of the following year. That didn't leave her much time…fourteen months, nine days, two hours and, oh, about twelve minutes, to be exact.

She examined her work schedule. She had two summer breaks and one winter break before her thirtieth birthday and three items on her list that involved major travel.
That's perfect. Three breaks, three trips.
And she knew she wanted to start with Paris. What better place to kick off a blog about adventures in dating than the epicenter of romance?

She opened her browser and started searching airfare.

Oh, wow.
The cheapest tickets she could find were around $1,100. That'd make a pretty serious dent in her savings—and that didn't even factor in the hotel stay, meals at fabulous Paris restaurants, drinks at chic little wine bars, croissants and espressos at quaint sidewalk cafes, bread and cheese and
chocolat
. She stared at her makeshift dinner in dismay, her mouth suddenly watering.

But Paris was a lifelong dream, so it was worth the money, right? She picked up her phone from the table beside her laptop and called Ben.

He picked up on the first ring. "Hey, Erin."

His voice was barely audible over the din of music and chatter and a sharp clang of glasses clinking in the background. She yelled her response even though her apartment was quiet as a ninth-grade classroom on the first day of school.

"Hey back. I didn't think you'd pick up. I was going to leave a message."

"Yeah, well, you got me. What's up?"

"Aren't you on a date?"

"Um." He paused. "Not exactly." He paused again, and she heard male and female voices yelling and laughing around him. "It ended…early. Now I'm at The Ginger Man with Nate and some people. They're wasted."

Erin's eyebrows rose. He sounded wasted, too, which wasn't like him. She couldn't wait to hear this story.

"Want company?"

"Sure, come on in," he said, the words slurring together a little. "The beer's fine."

*  *  *

Erin set her footed glass on the table and licked the raspberry-flavored foam off her upper lip. She wasn't usually a fruity-drink girl, but the beer float at The Ginger Man, a yummy combination of frambois beer and vanilla ice cream, was pure mixology genius.

The bar was one of Uptown's busiest, most unpretentious hotspots. Inside, dark wood, dim lighting, loud talking, and cramped quarters made for an intimate, almost tavern-like experience. Outside where she was, the mood was festive and rowdy. Rows of picnic tables were bordered by a tall wood fence strung with party lights. A cover band was set up in front of a barn-like façade that formed the patio's back wall. At the front of the patio, the deck was built around a huge tree bordered on all sides by wood benches that provided extra seating. Tonight every seat was full.

Erin was squeezed onto the end of a bench next to a girl named Melody, who worked with Ben at Texas Children's Medical Center. Melody had bulgy blue eyes and straw blonde hair cropped in a sleek bob that swung like linen curtains on either side of her face as she talked. She was engaged to Ryan, a sullen-looking, bulky guy who was as quiet as she was animated. He sat on her right and sipped at a Black & Tan. Opposite the two of them were Ben and his new roommate, Nate, who also worked at the hospital—Nate, Ben, and Melody all worked in genetics research.

All Erin knew about Ben's work was that it was very specialized and had something to do with the Human Genome Project. When he tried to describe it to her or anyone else, his use of phrases like "biomedical genomics" and "molecular mechanisms" and "microbial pathogenesis" quickly made listeners' eyes glaze over.

Across from Erin, Nate kept jumping up every few seconds to emphasize the story he was telling, something to do with a presentation at work. She'd stopped listening to him about two beers ago—his beers, not hers. She'd been here thirty minutes and felt like she'd missed the party; she had the uncomfortable clarity that came with being sober in a drunken crowd. Sometimes she liked that feeling. Tonight, not so much.

When Nate left for the men's room, she reached across the table and poked Ben's arm, trying again to extract from him the reason his date had ended so early. All he'd told her so far was that the woman had left right after they'd finished eating, before the server even brought the bill.

"So finish your story. Why'd Cynthia—was that her name—get up and leave? What'd you say to her?"

"Lydia," he corrected. "I didn't say anything." He paused. "Thanks for that, by the way. Anyway, when I picked her up, she'd been crying. I didn't ask…whatever. Then all night she was texting somebody. I was glad she left."

"Bitch," Nate muttered. Both Erin and Melody gave him dirty looks. "Whaat?" he said, lifting his hands, palms up. "Just callin' it like I see it."

"Well, either way, you're better off," Melody said. "Sounds like she's involved with somebody else."

"Or she's a nutcase," Nate said, and lifted his hands again as Melody glared at him.

Ben drained his beer. "Whatever." He turned to Erin. "So what brought you out tonight? I thought you were working."

"I was. It was depressing me."

"So you thought you'd come hang out with other losers who don't have dates on a Saturday night?"

"Hey," said Nate and Melody simultaneously.

"I have a date," Melody said and kicked Ryan under the table. He had his chin in one hand and was staring in the direction of the band. He looked like he was a centimeter away from passing out on the beer-drizzled tabletop.

"No, I thought I'd come see if you really want to go to Paris with me."

Melody's eyebrows shot up.

"If I
really
want to go?" Ben's eyebrows furrowed.

Erin's eyes were fixed on the unruly curl on his forehead. She just wanted to reach up and… She shook her head and gave him a bright smile. "Yeah. When I told you I wanted to buy a plane ticket and get out of here, you said, 'Maybe I'll come with you.' Don't try to back out of it now."

He took a deep breath. "Hold up now, just hold up. When are you going? I don't have vacation time for another"—he paused, ticking time off on his fingers—"two and a half months."

Erin slumped a little on her bench. Ben had lived the student life so long she'd gotten used to his sporadic schedule and general freedom. She hadn't thought about the fact that now that he worked a 9 to 5, his schedule lacked the flexibility of hers—her summer schedule, at least.

"Oh. Well, shit. I'll ask Sherri then. I'm
not
asking Hilary. She's going to be too busy with the wedding anyway."

Ben, to his credit, looked disappointed. "So you're going that soon? I would've come. But this is the blog thing anyway, right? Wouldn't it cramp your style to have me with you on your bachelorette tour of Europe?"

"Not Europe, just France," Erin mumbled.

"Bachelorette trip?" Melody looked down conspicuously at Erin's left hand, which was resting on the tabletop. "Are you getting married?"

Erin's cheeks colored. "No," she said. "I'm just…conducting a little experiment."

"Erin's creating her own online reality show," Ben said. "Misadventures in dating, or something like that. Hell, with my luck, I should be a contributing editor."

Erin smiled. "That's actually a great idea. You can write guest posts from the male point of view."

Nate, who'd been staring into his pint glass throughout this conversation, looked up. "I could, too," he said. "I have more bad dates than anybody."

Melody rolled her eyes. "That's because you're a Neanderthal. Nobody'll go out with you twice."

"Twice?" Nate shuddered. "Why would I want to go out with the same girl twice? I mean, I guess if I can't get her to Casa de Nathan on the first date, maybe. But that never happens."

Melody shot him a look of disgust. "Pig."

Erin gave him an appraising look. Nate was in his early thirties and somewhat short, with wavy, dark hair. He had crinkles at the corners of his eyes, a perma-smile, and a build that was lanky but athletic, like a soccer player.

He was a player, all right. She'd heard the stories.

Her eyes narrowed as a plan formed in her mind. Knocking Nate off his self-constructed pedestal might be good fun—and more importantly it might make a good Date 1 blog post.

"I have a different idea for you," she said. "You busy next weekend? I need dates. If, that is, you don't mind being my first 'reality show' subject."

Nate's eyes lit up.

"Sure," he said at the same time Ben said, "Hell, no."

Melody stared wide-eyed at Erin, her face flashing through a range of emotions: shock, then incredulity, then a sort of smug awareness Erin didn't understand. Nate stared at Ben, who'd fixed Erin with a disapproving glare.

"What's wrong with you, man?" Nate said. "The girl just asked me out. I can make my own dates."

"And I can take care of myself, if that's what you're worried about," Erin added, galled. That was the whole idea.

Ben's cheeks, already ruddy from his elevated blood alcohol level, turned a deeper shade of fuchsia.

"I want to be your first date," he said. He looked surprised at having said it.

Erin's mouth opened and closed again.
Is he…jealous?
That was new. "Oh…kay," she said, her face impassive. "That could be good. First date with my best friend. Introduce the guy who's going to guest post. I can work with that."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking," Ben said. His color returned to somewhat normal, and Erin decided he was just being protective, as usual. Nate
was
a dog, after all.

Melody, meanwhile, swiveled her head from Erin to Ben to Nate, her blonde eyebrows knitted together and her thin lips forming an
O
. Erin thought she looked like a fish out of water—real, not proverbial. Her fiancé, meanwhile, was actually passed out now, his head resting on his forearm and his eyes closed. The band wound up to a cymbal-crashing crescendo just as a guy at the next table knocked a pilsner glass onto the concrete, but Ryan didn't stir.
How do men do that?
Erin wondered. Every guy she'd ever known could sleep through a volcanic eruption. Her, she'd wake up if a cricket outside her bedroom window chirped too loud.

"What about me?" Nate asked, pulling her attention back to the matter at hand.

Erin smiled widely. "You can be Date 2."

Ben glowered at him, and she felt a little rush. Sure, it was only Ben and his roommate, but she had guys fighting to be on her blog. That was the opposite of what she'd expected and far more than she'd hoped.

She rose from the bench, picked up her purse, and, as an afterthought, grabbed her glass. She closed her eyes as she drained the last creamy swirls of raspberry beer and melted ice cream, her favorite part.

"I'm going to close my tab," she said. "And then I'm going to see if Sherri's home, and
then
I'm booking round-trip tickets to Paris."

She bent down and kissed a perplexed Ben on the cheek. "Don't drive home like this," she admonished, shaking a finger at him. "I'll call you tomorrow, and we can talk about our date."