Chapter 1

As always, I’d flown home to Scottdale, Georgia for Thanksgiving; as usual, my mom and dad had been on my case again. I was 32, the fortunate possessor of a great job in Los Angeles, my own place, and a dog. They (Mom, naturally, was the more persistent of the two) thought that by now I should also have a wife, and, much more importantly, they should have some more grandchildren to spoil before they got very much older.

My younger sister Katelyn and her husband James had grinned in sympathy as Mom lectured and hounded me the whole week I was there. They already had their two kids, and were now smugly off the hook for producing more. Not that they weren’t keeping in practice; that holiday week they had used and abused my presence in town to dump my niece and nephew on me while they had a rare evening out together. I wasn’t sure exactly how much time they’d actually spent ‘out’. The happy and healthy glow on both their faces when they came over at midnight to pick up their sleeping kids told me that they’d just refreshed their intimacy. I winked at Katelyn to show her I’d noticed; she’d mentioned to me several times that although they wouldn’t be without their kids, sometimes a break from their continuous presence would be welcome. Their daughter, Abby, was now sufficiently vocal, mobile and curious to be a real threat to parental bedroom privacy.

I wasn’t completely antsy with Mom wanting me to settle down. I did envy Katelyn and James their closeness and companionship, and the fun they were having with their kids. Question was, how best to achieve that for myself? Apart from my dog Max, I didn’t have anyone special in my life. Hadn’t had for a few years.

Okay, I’d made a few good friends over my time in LA; the married or settled ones were still trying to match me up with a lady. Quite often there would be a single woman along when I went over to their places for a meal, just to ‘even up the numbers’. Most of the ladies I met through friends were attractive enough, but I never got introduced to one I wanted to keep dating beyond four or five times, though I had developed a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with a couple of them; we’d mutually quickly decided there wasn’t the spark for anything more permanent, but we got along just fine, and were up for a few booty calls or meeting up to see a movie or try out a new restaurant together. When everybody else is having fun as a couple, life as a singleton sometimes sucks.

I blame my parents for my being so choosy about a life partner; they’ve been married for nearly thirty-five years, and I guess I’ve always been looking for the same level of togetherness that they share. Spouses, parents, lovers, best friends, life companions. They have a partnership and an easy loving way with each other that I envy. I’d never managed to find a girl with that kind of open attitude of making a pairing work and become closer every day. Other than more grandchildren and continued good health, my folks dearest wish is to die together so one won’t have to mourn the other. It’s not being selfish; both of them worry way more about how the other will cope with getting old without them. That’s what I call closeness.

Katelyn’s also seriously lucked in on the romance side after some real heartache at high school and college. She, uh, made some poor decisions and picked more than a few ... losers ... before eventually striking gold, much to Mom and Dad’s – and my – relief and delight. It’s part of the big brother code to be worried about your little sister, to try to protect her until she finds the man who’s gonna look after her for the rest of their lives. James is a really great guy. He’s a year older than her, they met through work, and from what they’ve told me, it was pretty much love at first sight. He slotted into our family from the start, their third date was Sunday lunch at our place – that must have taken some courage – and we were all thrilled when James earned a big promotion so they could afford for Katelyn not to work and for them to start a family. Like I said, Mom was in grandchildren mode.

I work as assistant chief administrator at a big LA hospital in the north of the City. There are plenty of lovely ladies all around me, but no way am I ever going to fish off the company pier. I’m too high up the chain; a lawsuit for coercive fraternization would be just too easy if I ever dated anyone from work. Ask my predecessor. He’d found out the hard way, been fired for cause, and his wife had finished the job of demolishing him, even under our California ‘no fault’ divorce rules.

After several years of having had no serious relationship, I knew I’d have to be more proactive in seeking a wife. It’s too easy to drift when you have friends with benefits, and I received a much-needed kick up the ass when one of them told me she’d recently met a guy she liked a lot, they were going steady, and this call was to say goodbye. Having automatically ruled out dating any woman I met through work, I felt that I’d probably cut down the pool of eligible ladies way too far. Was I going to meet my soulmate at the deli counter in our local grocery? At a bar? In the line at the coffee shop? Unlikely (except on the Hallmark Channel). Hadn’t happened to me in the last five years, and, let’s be honest about this, the fairy tale love-struck meeting wasn’t going to suddenly come true just because I was wanting it. Cupid can’t shoot off his arrows unless there’s another heart nearby for him to aim at. I didn’t even have the old fall-back of the gym to meet single ladies; I used the hospital Fitness Center, and all the women there were either colleagues or clients, in other words, very strictly off limits.

You know they say that walking your dog gives you a better chance of meeting someone you’d hit it off with? Might work in Central Park New York. Hasn’t done anything for me here in Los Angeles. 101 Dalmatians is just Disney dreaming up another new soppy money-making romance. Okay, maybe my dog Max is so NOT a pedigree pooch, but he’s utterly loyal and mostly well-behaved, like me. Whatever the reason, some gorgeous young thing has never ‘accidentally’ wrapped her dog’s leash around mine and come home with us. Only happens in the movies.

My friends had introduced me to most of their single female friends at various social events over the years; I’d dated a few, but there was never that sudden spark, the immediate feeling that this girl was ‘the one’, that Dad and James had both described to me one night over too many beers. That ‘friend of a friend’ pool was pretty much fished out; there hadn’t been anyone ‘new’ for a while. I’d also been too tied up with my work.

The old-fashioned or traditional ways of meeting my life partner weren’t producing the required results. Reluctantly, I decided that I’d need to massively widen the pool of potential dates. That meant... marketing myself.

I’d studied the dating ads in the LA papers and found them woefully insufficient, not even worth gambling the price of a postage stamp to the reply box. I idly wasted a couple more evenings looking at various dating apps on my phone; some of the video clips I watched just made me feel sick to my stomach. Jeez, were these people REALLY so deluded that they didn’t realize how badly they came across? I wasn’t sure which turned me off more, arrogance, sluttishness, entitlement, or desperation. Some of them came very close to whores advertising for johns. Maybe they were.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude. Haven’t been since tenth grade, when I first discovered the delights of a hot wet pussy. But there’s a difference between having fun – and I’d been with more than a few party girls at college and had certainly appreciated their generosity in sharing their delights – and what I call dating. Those apps were all about hooking up, and dating is where you try to see if you have something in common more than a mutual desire to get laid. I wanted to settle down; that meant my hooking up days were gone. It was just a ... shock ... to see how much more direct things had gotten since I was attending the wild parties myself.