Free Catching You by Jessie Evans Page B

date. So this time I decided…” 
    “Ah, I see,” John said, as understanding dawned. “So this time you decided to be the breaker-upper.” 
    Kitty nodded, her shame clear on her face. “I’m sorry. It was a lousy thing to do to you, especially after we’d been having such a great time hanging out.”
    “It was lousy,” John said. “But I can understand. Dating sucks.” 
    “It does suck,” she agreed. “But being lonely sucks more.” 
    John grunted and crossed his arms, thinking about what she’d said. He’d never considered himself a lonely guy—he had lots of friends, and whenever he wanted a female companion, he was sufficiently charming that he had no trouble securing one for the night—but now that he really considered the idea of loneliness…
    Well, maybe he was lonely. Maybe what he’d assumed was “getting resettled in his hometown” blues was really a longing for a connection with someone special, someone who would be down with his John-ness in every way.
    Maybe someone like Kitty…
    He already knew they had lots in common—they shared a love of adult cartoons, micro-brews, old cars, and never ran out of things to talk about—and the attraction was definitely there. He’d never kissed a girl who brought out his aggressive, hungry side the way Kitty did. She kissed like she did everything else, with total confidence and an air of “if you don’t like how I roll, you can kiss my ass,” that John found incredibly appealing.
    For the first time since he’d figured out the secret to bringing home a different girl every weekend, John felt like maybe he didn’t want to be that guy anymore.
    “So…you want to start over?” he asked, wishing he had on real clothes and was looking less rolled-out-of-bed-ish, but figuring he should strike while the iron was hot and the girl feeling guilty. “I could get dressed and we could go grab dinner or something.” 
    Kitty shook her head. “No dinner. I have something better in mind.” She took a deep breath and let it out with an audibly nervous huff. “I’m going to give you a test.”
    “A test,” John repeated, skeptically. “I hope there won’t be math involved. Nick does the books for our shop; I’m just in charge of looking cute and being artistic. Occasionally I also restock the fridge with half-and-half and soda.” 
    Kitty smiled. “No math. It’s more of a…compatibility test. For us.”
    John pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. Sounds cool. What do I have to do?”
    “First, you have to let me look at your bedroom. Right now, without altering it from its present condition in any way.” 
    John blinked. “Are you sure about that?”
    “Absolutely.” 
    John felt a pained expression tighten his face. “Can I at least shove the laundry piles under the bed? A man’s lair can be a scary place in its natural state.”
    “I can handle it.” Kitty smirked as she walked past him, teetering a bit on her heels. Clearly, she didn’t wear this outfit very often.  
    John wondered what the special occasion was. No matter how much he wanted to believe he was the inspiration for her extra care getting dressed, John had a feeling there was another reason for the outfit.
    But before he could ask—and hopefully distract her from her mission—she opened the door to his room and disappeared. A few minutes later, John heard the toilet seat clank. He winced, praying the bowl wasn’t too disgusting. Had he cleaned it recently? He thought so, but he wasn’t positive.  He wasn’t a dirty person—more messy, with a tendency to let laundry settle into piles according to level of cleanliness on the floor—but he knew girls were weird about toilets. Girls liked sparkling clean toilets with fuzzy covers and a scented candle on the back, not naked toilets of questionable cleanliness that boasted a haphazard pile of Nylon magazines as a toilet paper holder.
    Just as John was about to burst into his room and beg forgiveness for his