Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
A woman having the worst second date ever.
And maybe…her last second date ever?
Eighteen months earlier…
I’m freaking out over nothing.
I’ve listened to too many true crime podcasts at work while chopping vegetables.
That’s all this is—my morbid imagination running away with me.
Carl isn’t a bad guy! He’s an accountant and accountants are never bad. People who get turned on by spreadsheets and tax codes aren’t built for murder and mayhem. That would be way too much excitement for such an orderly brain.
To be frank, Carl is, well…
Carl is boring.
Dull as rocks. About as much fun as watching paint dry. If televised golf and the line at the DMV had a baby, it would still be more exciting than Carl.
But Carl is also a forty-year-old man looking for a woman close to his own age—a rare creature in my current dating ecosystem. He’s in great shape, owns his own home a few towns over, and thinks it’s “cute” that I’ve skipped Botox and let the smile lines around my eyes run wild. He doesn’t mind that I’m fifteen pounds overweight, even though I jog four days a week after work, and best of all?
He loves hiking as much as I do.
That’s how we came to be here, nearly eight miles into a national forest on a lovely, crisp fall afternoon, all alone, without another soul in sight. The trails closer to the parking area are always busy, but out here, in the backwoods, the vibe is different. The words I would usually use to describe it are “peaceful” and “uplifting.”
There’s nothing I love more than being on a trail with the breeze in my hair and the sun on my face. Out in nature, all my problems feel smaller. I feel small, but in the best way.
But the usual peace isn’t with me today. There’s been something…off with Carl since we reached the ridge overlooking the valley. His tepid attempts at conversation have grown stone cold, he’s stopped looking over his shoulder to nod or smile, and when I asked him if he thought we’d taken a wrong turn, he ignored me completely.
Even though I repeated myself.
Twice.
Run, the inner voice hisses between my ears. Turn around and run and don’t look back until you reach the ranger’s station.
I chew my bottom lip, pulse thready as I glance down at the map again. But the slick brochure from the trail entrance hasn’t magically rearranged itself in the past five minutes. It still says we should have turned left, not right, at Walrus Rock, a hunk of granite that looks just like a Walrus, right down to the spiky “teeth” formations on its front.
When we stopped to take in the view by the landmark, I caught Carl running his fingers over the sharp, stone “tusks” in a way that set my stomach to churning. And that was before he insisted the smaller trail was a shortcut that would lead us back to the parking lot before it gets dark and took off into the woods, refusing to stop and look at the map.
Run! The inner voice screeches again.
But I can’t run.
That would be bizarre! Carl would think I was insane. He hasn’t done anything to threaten me. He’s been perfectly polite, if a bit…mute.
But maybe he’s practicing for ghosting me as soon as we’re off the trail. Men on dating apps love to ghost people. It’s probably one of the top three things they enjoy after cradling fish for pictures and talking about how ready they are to start a family now that they’re forty-two.
And that will be fine! I don’t care if Carl ghosts me.
I’ve been ghosted by far superior men, including Nate, my stone-cold fox of an ex, who slept in my bed for the better part of six months before abruptly ending things after I dared to ask where the relationship was headed. Now, he pretends his eyes no longer function when fixed in my direction. When our paths cross downtown near his bar, he breezes past me with no sign of recognition, ignoring my friendly “hello, Nathaniel,” every damned time.
Ditto with my texts asking for a reason for the break-up and my email offering to let bygones be bygones if we can just be civil in public.
If I didn’t have friends and family members who acknowledge my existence on a regular basis, I might think I really was a ghost. Just a specter haunting the Bad Dog dating scene, only visible a few days a month, when the moon is full.
It’s going to be full tonight.
I mentioned that to Carl when we started our hike, joking that if we got lost, at least we’d be able to see the trail after sundown.
He’d huffed in response—the closest I’ve gotten to a laugh from the man—and replied, “Don’t worry. I don’t get lost. You can leave that map for someone else.”