Free The Quest by Olivia Gracey Page A

him.
                  I sighed as I pulled back onto the street. Maybe the whispers were right. Maybe I wasn’t worthy of all of I dreamt about. Maybe all I was worth was another disappointment. “Just another,” I agreed. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been down this path of disappoints before but I needed to escape the madness of dating and have someone solid in my life for a while. I needed someone that would make me feel secure enough to take them back home to meet momma, you know.
                  I am no good for anyone when I’m down on myself. I’m a sappy tearful cry-me-a-river-put-a-sad-song-on-the-record-player kind of woman that has to deal with her pain all alone. Today called for one of those days and I just wasn’t prepared for it. I tried to ignore it at first by eating a bowl of ice cream which was a sweet treat but that caused me to want something salty so I grabbed a bag of chips. The chips made me hungry for something spicy which led me to call in an order of hot wings. I trotted down the stairs and across the street still half made up from the date I had earlier with makeup smudges under my eyes now and streaks of tears upon my cheeks. But I didn’t care. I was on a mission to eat my woes away. I was so eager to get back home I almost snatched my to-go order right out of the waitresses hands. I walked hurriedly back to my apartment pulling fries out of the bag two by two licking the salt off my fingers. I couldn’t shuffle them in my mouth fast enough. When I arrived home I dumped what was left of the fries onto a plate and added the boneless hot wings to the pile. I squeezed the blue cheese packet over them and made some comment to my empty apartment about how it makes no sense to serve such good wings without some homemade blue cheese dressing, not packet dressing. “They should be ashamed!” The boneless wings disappeared as if they cared. The fries were gone too and I searched the bag for any that were left behind. Amazingly I was still hungry with my lips on fire from the hot sauce and a salty tongue. 
                  I opened the fridge to look for another unsuspecting thing I could devour. There sitting on a shelf was a half-eaten pie leftover from the coffee date. “That’s right! I forgot I brought that home with me.” I was reminded that it wasn’t even mine it was Mr. Diarrhea Mouth’s chocolate cream pie that he had packaged up to go. In my midst of scurrying out of there, I had picked it up by mistake. I smiled a wicked smile as I licked the spoon. Then for good measure, I licked the remnants off the packaging. “Whose crying now huh?”
                  It seemed I stayed disappointed and longing for something in my life for hours, days, maybe weeks, months more than likely. I was afraid to keep track of the timeline in fear I’d go crazy or desperate. I knew I wanted a man, but not just any man. I wasn’t willing to settle. I knew my worth, I knew what I wanted, and surely he was out there somewhere wanting the same things too. But where? Huntsville was getting scarce. I had already been through all the dating databases many times over, with men within one hundred miles. And on every site, it’s the same ole men. So I decided to try something different. I decided to take off my picture and see if the guys would read my profile. Up the ante they say. Surely if I made it a little more difficult, the ones without pics might come forward too. Not that I hadn’t reached out to a few of those, but they seemed to be writers which in return would naturally be readers. But when I did, my profile became almost desolate. No action. None. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Just as I had thought. These guys that corresponded before were just scoping for some action. A hookup no doubt. Most all of them sent me messages that were just one liners no real dialog. How can you have one line conversations? It was ridiculous. For example, it would sound something