AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stuck her tongue out at the screen. Qualitative analysis had been her least favorite research study. But for true love and happily-ever-after, she would do it. Sink herself back into her first and only comparative literature class and be prepared to evaluate language.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN THE HURRICANES got a second player in the penalty box, Jason grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. Playing badly was one thing. Fighting with other players because you were playing poorly was another, and the Hurricanes were starting to fight like they might score better if they had only two players left on the ice.
If his cell phone rang and the other line was the Hurricanes’ manager asking for Jason to step in as coach, he might tell them they didn’t deserve his expertise with the way they were playing. A man shouldn’t toss away the chance to step into his dreams, but his favorite hockey team wasn’t the stuff of dreams tonight. They were the stuff of nightmares.
Since there was about as much chance that the Hurricanes would call him as he would actually turn down the coaching gig, Jason grabbed his phone from the mess of newspapers on his coffee table, sat back on the couch and put his feet up. He would’ve gotten another beer to drink, but those were in the kitchen. He was in the living room. Easy choice, even though a beer was almost a necessity for signing into the dating app.
He scanned through the list of suggestions from the site. He’d seen—and been on dates with—most of the women before. They weren’t interesting. Not that he meant that personally. He hadn’t felt the slightest spark with any of them. They were probably sick of seeing his face in their selection of choices, too. The Triangle area of North Carolina had about two million people in it. Not enough of the single women in that group were using online dating.
Out of curiosity, he clicked over the section of the website where he could see who had looked at his profile. Making the first move was hard, so if a woman seemed even remotely interesting, he would email her. He’d been free with his emails before; talking with Marsie had only made him more willing to email.
If anyone shouldn’t think twice about sending a short email saying, “I’d like to get to know you a little better,” it was Marsie. She was smart, interesting, and occasionally she would raise her eyebrow and the corners of her mouth would lift and she went from pretty to as sexy as hell. In fact, if she would listen to him and be more open to who she dated—no more of this algorithm stuff and perfect match—he’d bet she’d never have another free night if she didn’t want one.
If she had even shown up in his suggestions and he didn’t know her, he would have…
Oh. Hey. There, in the list of female faces that had checked him out, was Marsie, looking seriously like she was trying to look like fun. He’d always wondered what she looked like when she was having fun—and he was pretty sure Marsie’s fun didn’t look like it did in this picture.
Marsie enjoyed herself when they got coffee or shared lunch, but that wasn’t the same as fun. He wanted to see something closer to how she was when she’d talked about working on her algorithm. Bright eyes. Flushed skin. Mouth open.
He moved the phone farther from his face. He was imagining what she would look like during sex. Which would be fun, but that hadn’t been where he’d planned to go.
Algorithm. She liked the word and got excited when talking about hers, but he was saying it to stop him from thinking about Marsie and sex. That kind of relationship wasn’t going to happen for them. Even if he thought they had spark, he didn’t fit whatever rules she had come up with for the kind of man she wanted.
And Marsie didn’t veer off course from anything she’d planned. He wasn’t even sure if she knew how.
Though, thinking about her excitement over her algorithm and her requirements, he wondered if the real problem wasn’t her rules, but that she loved the algorithm and wanted it to work. If she met a man who was her perfect match and he didn’t get the right score in her equation, would she consider him?
Ultimately, it wasn’t his problem, other than that she was his friend and so he wanted her to find long-term happiness.
