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Well, shit.

“And this was going so well,” she says, pain in her voice and when I meet her eyes, she blinks away tears. I drop my head as my stomach tightens and my limbs feel heavy. “I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

Without another word, she grabs her bag and stands up, not even sparing me a glance as she marches toward the front door with determination in every step. I shake my head and scrub my hand over my face before grabbing my bottle of beer and chugging half of it.

“Oh,” someone says and I glance up. The waitress stands next to our table with a tray in her hand.

“Could you just throw those in boxes and I’ll take it to go?”

She flashes me a sympathetic look. “Sure, sweetie.”

While she hurries off to fulfill my request, I lean back in my seat and finish off my beer before gazing out at the rest of the dining room. The couple at the table across from me keep looking over at me with sympathy on their faces but I ignore them as I start picking at the label on my beer bottle.

God, this is so fucking stupid.

My mind goes back to earlier when I promised myself if this date didn’t work out, I would delete my account and I pull my phone out of my pocket to do just that when I see the message from a woman named Eden.

Jesus Christ.

Apparently I’m a complete idiot because as I read her cute little introductory message, I can’t help but wonder if I should keep trying. I mean, yeah, dates one and two didn’t end well but I was really starting to like Violet and I think there could have been something there if the whole kids thing hadn’t gotten in the way.

Shit…

Am I really going to keep doing this?

Isn’t this the goddamn definition of insanity?

Staring at her message, I shake my head and click reply as every cell in my body screams that it’s a bad idea but I can’t stop now. Not when it feels like maybe I was finally getting somewhere.

Besides, third time’s the charm, right?