Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“But what if the ones I’m interested in aren’t interested in me?”
“Then they aren’t the one for you.”
“But what if that means no one shows up and wants to date me?”
“There will still be people.”
“But—”
“Holly!” he cut in, clapping his hands. He grimaced and leaned in toward me. “There will still be people.”
I sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Trust me, you want quality over quantity. This brings me to the next ‘don’t’. Don’t belittle yourself. Don’t think you’re not worthy or capable of quality men. You are what you feed yourself, and your current diet is shit.”
“Are you talking about the pizza I ate last night?”
“I’m talking about the toxic self-talk you feed yourself.”
Oh.
That.
“Which brings me to the final ‘do’ for you. Do like yourself.”
“I like myself,” I countered.
“No, you don’t. I watch people daily for a living, and I can easily tell who likes themselves and who doesn’t. You don’t like yourself. Or, worse, you like others more than yourself, which is its own issue. You should never care for another more than you care for yourself.”
“When do I send you my therapy check?” I chuckled.
He didn’t laugh. I wasn’t certain his vocal cords knew how to form laughter. He looked like he learned how to smile from Ebenezer Scrooge himself. He slid me the piece of paper. “Try this for the next week, two weeks, and watch how you land more second dates.”
“Okay, deal. If it doesn’t work, you have to be my date for the holidays,” I semi-joked.
“There’s no way in hell I’d ever do that.”
“Noted.” I lowered my eyebrows. “Unless you’re joking, and you really would be my date?”
“I’m not one for jokes.”
“Knock, knock?”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Who’s there?”
“Not your sense of humor, that’s for sure.”
He gave me a blank stare.
I smiled.
His annoyance somehow made the dorky side of me that much more pleased.
“To ensure you’re dating correctly, you’ll have to bring your dates here for the first dates so that I can observe. Otherwise, it’s not a fair test of the system.”
“I’ve been doing that, anyway. It’s the perfect location. It’s close, it’s easy, and I’m lazy.” I held my hand out toward him. “It was good doing business with you, Kai. I’ll be back soon with my next date.”
“Not too soon,” he warned, shaking my hand. “Quality over quantity.”
“Yeah, yeah, yada, yada.” As I folded up the list of dos and don’ts that he had created, the door to the restaurant swung open, and a boy walked in. He looked like a younger carbon copy of Kai with a backpack strapped to his back and bright yellow sneakers. He sighed, collapsed a few seats down the bar from me, and snapped his fingers toward Kai.
“Football practice was torture. Give me a double, stat,” the boy ordered.
Kai rolled his eyes, poured a large glass of Coca-Cola, and placed it in front of the kid.
“What the heck, Kai? I want the strong stuff! The whiskey!”
“Try again in five years,” Kai remarked.
The boy released the most dramatic sigh of despair. “You know, if we reversed the roles and I was the older brother, I’d let you drink at my bar.”
“If we reversed the roles, you’d probably be in prison by now,” Kai replied.
“Touché, but we would’ve had a good story to tell,” the boy joked with a refreshing smirk against his lips. So that was what Kai would’ve looked like if he knew how to smile.
I snickered a little at the boy’s comment, which was enough to make him look my way.
“Whoa, who’s the babe?!” he asked.
“No one. She was leaving,” Kai said, eyeing me for a second before turning back to his brother.
“If you want to leave with my number, that’s fine. I’m seventeen in a few months, which is almost eighteen.”
Kai turned toward me with his manly, stern, grumpy stare. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” I answered.
“Another ‘don’t’ for the list—don’t date anyone four years older or younger than you.”
“Four years? Not even five? That’s limiting the pool of men to a new extreme,” I argued.
“We want a limited pool. Less piss in the water,” Kai replied.
The boy arched an eyebrow. “Are you hitting on her?” he asked his brother.
“No, Mano, I’m not hitting on her. I’m her dating coach.”
“You are?” Mano and I asked in sync.
Mano burst out laughing. “What the hell do you know about dating? You haven’t been on a date in the longest time. All you do is work and go home to read books.”
Oh great, I was taking dating advice from a hermit crab.
“I know enough about dating,” Kai countered. “And I have enough knowledge to know that she doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Hey!” I went to argue. Kai arched an eyebrow, and I shut my lips. He wasn’t exactly wrong on the subject. I was officially the worst dater on the market.