The Holly Dates

by Brittainy C. Cherry

I was choosing the man who chose me.

Loneliness had a way of making one return to the worst situations.

It had been almost a year since a man had intimately touched me.

halfway through the appetizer, you realize he’s not the one for you. Then you must sit through the main entrée and act as if you are interested in the bad date.

lol felt!!!

traveled with novels the same way people traveled with their vape pens—glued in my hands.

Novels saved millions of people from uncomfortable situations.

For some reason, guys always looked better in person than on dating apps.

“You look a bit bigger than you do in your photographs.”

I mostly hated the ones in my age range.

“Let’s just say sometimes books are better than reality.”

Maybe a real man hadn’t gotten me off in a while, but enough fictional men said the right things to make me blush.

Some people didn’t appreciate dialogue the way I did, that was for sure.

He looked like a Kai, too. Smug. Arrogant. Nasty. And not the nasty I was into.

I’d seen her come in and out of that building time and time again nose deep into her books. I’d moved

I was fifteen, and he was born, I held a lot of resentment toward him. As he grew up, I realized it wasn’t his fault that my youth had harsh realities.

She laughed as if she’d been there to witness the interaction.