“Good morning, Dawn. What can I do for you?”
“Candace dear, I was just calling to see how the edits were going. I emailed you last night and hadn’t heard back from you yet so I thought I would give you a ring,” she says in her most annoying high pitched voice. This woman seriously drives me crazy but I put up with her because she’s one of my longest standing clients and she writes like a freight train. Last year alone she wrote seven full-length novels. Dawn pays the bills, so I put up with her constant badgering.
“Yes, Dawn I have your manuscript. I will start on it tonight. I should have it to you within the next seven to ten days if that works for you.”
“Hmmmmm, over a week. I was hoping for sooner, but it is longer than usual so I suppose I can wait it out.”
I grit my teeth incessantly and wish I could ask her if she has any idea how hard it is to edit a one hundred thousand plus words manuscript in under a week. It’s nearly impossible unless she wants a shoddy job done.
“Okay, I’m glad you’re flexible. I should probably get to it though.”
“All right, dear. I’ll give you a ring in a week. Ciao.”
I hang up the phone and open my laptop. Over a hundred new emails pop up and I scan through them, trying to decide what’s priority and what isn’t. Skimming through, I see an email from MatchYouUp.com and I almost want to laugh out loud. Do they know it’s my divorce anniversary or something? The subject line is ‘Are you ready to make that leap of faith again?’. I hover over the email with my cursor, ready to press delete, and then, for some reason, I open it.
What the hell? It’s not like I’m actually going to make a profile or anything. I’m just curious.
I’m instantly taken to the main website and smacked in the face with singles galore. Everyone seems to be looking for love, marriage and babies. Babies … now there is a subject I hate to even think about. The day I told James the doctor said children weren’t possible for me was the day I witnessed his love for me beginning to drain. Slowly but surely a wedge was formed between us and I was never able to fix it. He wanted children so badly and my body had let him down. Shaking the thought away, I bring my attention back to the screen. There are so many little icons of faces and names.
Meeting Mr. Right on a site like this seems silly and inconceivable to me. Not that I’m looking for that, because I’m not. It’s been a year since I felt the touch of a man or the embrace of strong arms, but a relationship is just not something I want at this juncture in my life. I’m thirty-six years old and I’m set in my ways. I like my life of solitude. Only thing is, I do think about sex. A lot. I’ve always been a very sexual woman, and I’ve always loved sex. James and I had a fantastic love life. Sex between us was never one of our problems. We did it well and we did it often.
I miss the sensation of a physical connection. Being touched, desired and having my body brought to heights of soaking wet lust. Almost instantaneously with my dirty thoughts, a pop-up ad comes across my screen. SexUnlimited.com My brows shoot up and my curiosity peeks. The tag line reads, Have unlimited sex on your terms, no strings attached. Now that sounds like a deal I could agree to—no drama, no expectations, just fun.
Or would that make me a slut?
Good grief, what am I thinking? I’m officially losing my mind today. The divorce memories have me really jacked up, that has to be it. The ad continues to flash as if taunting me.
Blink
Blink
Blink
I click it.
Damn, I’m a sucker.
I’M ON MY THIRD GLASS of red wine.
Staring at my SexUnlimited.com profile, I shake my head. Yeah, I did it. I created a stupid profile on this ridiculous matching site and now I’m deliberating over which photos to upload. Scrolling through a few pictures, I decide on a simple headshot to showcase my green eyes and long dark brown hair. Let’s see how many of these jerks care about a woman’s face. I seriously doubt I’ll get any interested parties without sexy photos.
This has to be rock bottom for me. Really. But something in the back of my mind says to hell with it. I’m a close to middle aged woman who lives alone and hasn’t had sex in a year. I’m a grown adult. Why is it that men can go screw the world without repercussions, yet I’m sitting here, shaming myself internally because I’m horny and acting on it? That’s bullshit.
I click upload and submit my profile for review. Now I guess I wait.
Deciding to knock out some work on Dawn’s manuscript, I open the file and get ready to plow through some edits. My initial scan through of the story and my attention is already piqued. Her manuscript is titled, True Loss Story.