The Safe Rejection

My daughter hadn't spoken to me in four days. Turns out there was a boy.

So I made her a deal: she talks to her crush, and I ask a man I find attractive for his number. Simple. Educational. A clean demonstration that rejection doesn't kill you.

I picked Alex Harbaugh because he was safe. Hot (objectively, annoyingly, forearms-in-a-school-parking-lot hot), but a widower, a single dad, complicated enough by reputation that he'd turn me down politely and I'd walk back to my car with the lesson delivered.

He said yes.

I was wearing pajama pants.

Now we're texting every night, talking until his bedtime and past mine, sending each other things we shouldn't, and trying to schedule an actual first date around two kids, two work schedules, and the fact that single parenthood keeps cancelling every plan we make while the tension between us gets worse by the day.

I'm thirty-one. I have an eleven-year-old, a nose ring, nails sharp enough to earn me a nickname, and a body I stopped apologizing for years ago. I've been divorced for eight years, dated when I felt like it, and learned that most men aren't worth giving up an evening on my couch.

I was looking for a no.

I got something much more fun.

Because this is smut.