Her Last First Date

Crissy Phillips believed in chocolate as a cure for heartache, exercise as a cure for everything else and second chances...for everyone but herself. Which was why she'd been standing outside the Kumquat Diner for the past fifteen minutes, instead of going inside for her meeting. Going inside was too much like forgiving herself and Crissy wasn't ready to do that just yet. She knew all the arguments. She'd been young. She'd made the best choice she could at the time. If a friend of hers were in the same position, Crissy would cheerfully tell her to get over it and move on. Why was it always so much easier to give advice to other people, than to herself? Why did everyone else's life look so easily fixable, while elements of her own seemed an unfathomable mess? Why was she talking to herself in the middle of a diner parking lot? She took a single step toward the front door of the diner, then stopped. Just do it, she told herself. Do it, do it, do it. When the chanting didn't work, she tossed her head and felt the light brush of her newly clipped hair on the back of her neck. She'd spent over two hundred dollars on red and gold highlights and an impossibly uptotheminute cut that actually suited her face. Didn't she want to flaunt her new and improved self? She hated being indecisive and insecure. She was a successful businesswoman, a takecharge person. She made decisions easily and except for being an absolute failure when it came to her knitting class, she kicked butt wherever she went. Not literally, of course. It was one meeting. How scary could that be? She really needed to The front door of the diner opened and a tall, goodlooking guy stepped out. He had reddishbrown hair, surprisingly close to her own untouched color, and eyes that belonged on a billboard on Sunset Strip, the color of moss after rain, framed by big, thick lashes. Crissy didn't consider herself a very sentimental person, but she was thinking an ode or two to those eyes might very well be in order. "Hi," he said with a smile. "Are you the one I've been waiting for?" It was an opening line that deserved a movie score, she thought as she grinned. "You forgot 'all my life."For that question to really work, you need the tag line." His smile widened, then he glanced at his watch. "More like for the past ten minutes. Are you Crissy?" She hadn't had to meet the devil headon. he'd come to find her. Although Josh Daniels wasn't really the devil. He was a kind man who'd offered to help, at his brother's suggestion. Actually, the word "facilitate" had been tossed around, but Crissy could never use that word in a sentence without fighting a fit of giggling. "Hi, Josh," she said. "Nice to meet you." He raised his eyebrows. "I'm not sure nice covers it. You've been standing out here, trying to decide if you should come in for the past ten minutes. So is it me or the circumstances that have you dancing in the parking lot?" "I wasn't dancing," she said primly, trying to ignore the fact that he'd obviously seen her and guessed she was slightly ambivalent about their meeting. "I was getting in touch with my inner..." "Self?" he offered. While weak, it worked. "Right," she said. "Are you in touch now?" he asked. As much as she was going to be. "I'm fine." "Good." He pulled open the door. "I got us a booth. It has a great view of the parking lot. You'll like it. Come on, this won't be so bad." As she'd requested the meeting, she had little choice except to follow him into the brightly lit interior. He led the way to a booth in the back which, unfortunately, did offer a clear view of the parking lot. "So you witnessed my mental moment," she said as she slid onto the bench seat. "How comforting. Having exposed myself at my worst, I have only one direction to go." He settled across from herMallery, Susan is the author of 'Her Last First Date ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373248315 and ISBN 0373248318.