Operation Date Escape

asshole?” And that was being charitable as far as her ex was concerned. Kyle was a self-absorbed, skirt chasing...
    “He is that,” Nanci agreed. “So I’m dying to hear what happened with Gym-Boy last night? You didn’t leave any details on my answering machine, just that you’d ditched him. I take it that means there were no sparks between the two of you.”
    “ Oh, there were sparks all right. But they weren’t coming from me.” She reached into her purse for her lip-gloss.
    “What do you mean?”
    “It seems that weight-lifting isn’t his only passion.”
    “Oooh, ” her friend said, leaning closer. “Do tell.”
    “It’s not anywhere near what you’re thinking.”
    “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
    “Because sex is all you ever think about. Anyway, it seems Gym-Boy has a thing for souped-up cars. Only this one wasn’t up, it was down, dragging its ass end everywhere we went. We must have looked like a giant sparkler on wheels.”
    Nanci laughed. “Poor you.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    Her friend glanced around the bar in an appraising manner. “Nice place.”
    She nodded in agreement. “I pass by it on my way to work everyday, so I thought we’d give it a try.”
    Her friend motioned the bartender over.
    He flashed a charming grin as he leaned over the bar. “What can I get for you?”
    “I’ll have whatever you ’ve got on tap as long as it’s light,” Nanci replied with her usual flirty smile. “A girl’s got to watch her figure, you know.”
    As if every man in the room wasn’t already watching it for her , Kelsie thought with a grin.
    “Looks well-kept to me,” he replied with a once-over that had her friend beaming. “One light draft coming up.” He turned to leave, but Nanci stopped him.
    “Another wild berry for my friend here, too, please ,” she added with a flutter of her long, mascara-coated lashes.
    “But I haven’t finished this one yet,” Kelsie pointed out, holding up her more than half-full bottle.
    “You will.” She waved him on. “She’ll take another.” When he walked away to get their drinks, Nanci turned in her chair to face her. “Okay, I’m dying to know. How did you escape your date last night?”
    She smiled. “I made my move when we stopped for gas. When he went inside to pay and pick up a six pack, I put on a ton of my tinted lip gloss and then leaned over to the driver side to press my lips to his window.”
    Nanci looked at her questioningly. “You kissed his window?”
    She nodded, her grin widening. “Multiple times.”
    “Strange behavior, ” her friend said. “Even for you. But I’ll bite. How does kissing a window get you out of a bad date?”
    “The second he saw my lip prints smudged all over his precious car’s window he f lipped out. When I informed him that I intended to leave ‘love kisses’ all over his car, he made a spark-trailing bee-line straight back to my apartment, ending our date with some excuse about having to go check in on his ailing grandmother, which, by the way, I’ve added to my list of date-ending excuses.”
    Nanci burst into a fit of laughter. “You are, without a doubt, the queen of creative date escapes. I just hope you realize that we’re running out of places in this town to hang out where your dumpees won’t be.”
    “I haven’t dumped that many men,” she protested, even though she knew Nanci was only giving her a hard time, something her best friend loved to do. When Kelsie had first started working on her bad date survival guide, they both agreed to steer clear of the places the men that she dumped hung out. That meant trying out new bars and dance clubs all the time, which had actually worked out great for Nanci who not only like to collect shoes, but men as well.
    The bartender returned with their drinks , placing them on the bar counter in front of them.
    Nanci dug in her purse for her wallet and then handed him a crisp ten dollar bill. “Keep the change. Oh, and my email addy’s on the back of it just in case.”
    “Thanks.” After a memorizing perusal of the email address she’d written across the bill’s border, he walked away grinning.
    “I n case of what?” she asked Nanci. “In case he’s looking for a horny woman?”
    Her friend turned to her, but only after she’d treated herself to a visual tour of the bartender’s jean-clad butt as he stood with his back to them at the cash register. “You are so bad,” she muttered distractedly.
    Kelsie