Free The Good Neighbor by Amy Sue Nathan Page B

people want to know? What would I want if I were at home reading Philly over Forty, looking for the perfect date night, funny story, or bit of advice?
    God help me. I was them. I was the single mom who wanted to go out, do things, find someone, start over—even if my online persona said I’d already done it all. In real life I’d like a place to share my own stories—the crazy ones, the mundane ones, the ones no one wanted to listen to. The ones I didn’t want to tell, but needed to tell. Then I realized what I had at my fingertips. It was more than storytelling. It was a place for single parents to share their tales of woe. And whoa. I had a place where they could share ideas that perhaps their friends and family didn’t need or couldn’t relate to. I’d still have to come up with something. I’d still have to make it seem real. I’d write about Mac. But only to set the stage to feature the readers, not me.
    Where do you go when you’re on your own for a weekend?
    Best cheap restaurants for single parents and kids?
    What was your worst date ever?
    Tell us about your next first love.
    How did you tell your kids about your divorce?
    Do you go to restaurants by yourself? Which ones?
    The questions flowed onto three pages.
    I was going to get much more out of this gig than a paycheck.
    And then—I knew. I knew even more about Mac and me. I knew all about our weekend. I closed my eyes and saw sails from visiting tall ships waving against an indigo sky, all in the foreground of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The scent of a pretzel cart, with the tang of Gulden’s as the finish. Unlikely snapshots appropriate for fiction. Yet it seemed so real, as if I’d been there before or could be there again.
    Reel it in, Izzy Rowling.
    Then, a visceral memory—the pressure and warmth of holding a hand bigger than mine. It spread from my wrist to my fingertips, squeezing my hand closed, then my throat.
    I wiped it from both, and typed.

 
    Chapter 9
    Double Dutch
    M Y EYES FLUTTERED OPEN as if I’d had enough sleep, but my head faced away from my clock. What a treat to wake up on my own with unintended time to spare. I stretched and groaned the way I couldn’t when I was busy slapping the top of the alarm clock to get nine more minutes.
    It must have been about five forty-five. I’d savor those fifteen minutes. I rolled my neck and glanced at the clock. Maybe I even had twenty.
    Damn.
    It was six-thirty. Six-thirty! How could it be six-thirty? I didn’t need to touch the clock to know. The clock didn’t fail me, I had failed myself. The alarm button was set to OFF . I had never forgotten to set the alarm after a weekend. Until today.
    Up and out of bed, I turned on the water for my shower, ran downstairs, plugged in the electric teakettle, and headed back upstairs. I’d lost a half hour. Up at six meant shower, Earl Grey, and the Inquirer (still the paper version), before I dressed and woke my boy at seven. Up at six meant time to myself to fill my lungs with the oxygen that would carry me through the day. Up at six meant I hadn’t been up until two-thirty writing a blog post about my imaginary boyfriend and reading a thousand welcome messages to the imaginary me.
    The same me who had to pack real lunches.
    I had stayed up too late writing about Mac, deleting, and then writing again. I had more ideas and kept going. I wrote about Date Outfits: Cover Up, Buttercup. I wrote the interminable Should a Woman Split the Check on Date Number One: No, Hon, the Time to Pay Is Not Today. I wrote about Meeting a Date’s Children Too Soon: I Kid You Not, Don’t Do It. Then there was the Three-Date Rule: Rules Are Meant to Be Broken (However You See Fit). My words knocked into each other like dominoes. I hadn’t stopped until I couldn’t see the screen.
    I’d woven intricate stories mixed with solid truths from my life that, in my mind, neutralized the