A Slice of Orange

By Leslie Kay Ashe

1. Don’t call it a date. I mean, if you’re “just friends,” then it’s not really a date, even though after nearly a year of this whole going-out-after-work-with-the-crew thing, you didn’t feel like inviting anyone else to come along this time, and even though you’re seated in a dark, secluded corner of an upscale restaurant. But that’s definitely NOT a date.
2. Choose the garlic-chicken-alfredo pizza. Because it’s not date, so who cares if you have garlic cheese breath.
3. Cross your legs in the middle of dinner and whack him with the heel of your shoe right in the shins, which causes him to spill his beer all over his food and his lap (and leaves him with a bruise that will last for more than two weeks).
4. When dinner ends, decide that you’ll both swing by the bar to see if anyone else is around. But since this isn’t a date or anything, decide to drive there in separate cars. (But since it’s snowing out, he suggests that just to be safe, you should follow him pretty closely.)
5. Pretend not to pay any attention to each other at the bar and instead laugh it up with your girlfriends while sneaking nonchalant glances out of the corner of your eye.
6. Make an unintentionally loud announcement that it’s getting late and you should really be heading home, but purposely avoid saying “good-bye” to him on the way out, and then pretend you’re not disappointed when he doesn’t follow.
7. Get a flat tire half-way home. Sit in your car for ten minutes with your cell phone in your lap wondering if it would be just too obvious to call him.
8. When he shows up to help and he admits that he doesn’t know how to change a tire, laugh and say, “That’s OK. I do.” And when he says, “Then why did you call me to help?” Just shrug and say, “Why not?”
9. Have him keep track of the lug nuts as you put on the spare and try not to notice how good he smells sitting so close to you. And when you turn to say something to him and suddenly he kisses you, say to yourself, “So, yeah, OK. Maybe not just friends.”
10. On the way home, finally admit to yourself that you’re madly in love and you’re going to marry this man.

Leslie Kay Ashe is the pen name of an unpublished Orange County author who would rather die than put something so personal in her own name.

Imet my husband at the dog pound. I was working there in dog licensing, and he came in to do an audit. Since I was eighteen years old, and he was twenty six, professional and handsome, I really didn’t think he’d be interested.

But consider my competition—they were all dogs!

Finally, Dan asked me to lunch one day. My excitement may have dimmed a bit when we ended up at Burger King (don’t think I’ve let him forget that), but I didn’t eat much anyway (and don’t think he’s let me forget that). All these years later, I don’t remember what we talked about, except that he asked me out on another date.

Eventually those dates turned into two decades of marriage. On our twentieth anniversary, we were sitting around the dinner table with our three sons. We had finished dinner and were just chatting. My husband asked me to get out the Halloween candy.

“Stay out of the kids’ candy,” I told him.

The boys laughed, and said, “Dad can have some candy.”

I sighed. This is the last of the Halloween candy dumped all into one bowl. I got up, pulled the bowl of candy out of the cupboard and handed it to my husband.

Dan handed the bowl back to me. “Pick what you want first.”

Okay, so yeah, I might have a little problem with chocolate. I had been avoiding looking in the candy bowl to resist temptation. Dan and the boys know this, and of course, they are Chocolate Enablers. I gave in, looked in the bowl and blinked in surprise. A small square wrapped box sat on top of the candy. Suspicious, I looked up at Dan. “We said no gifts! We went to dinner and the comedy club to celebrate our anniversary! No gifts!”

By this time, the boys are squirming all over. “Open it Mom!”

I pulled out the box and opened it. My husband got me a beautiful anniversary ring inlaid with diamonds. I was shocked, overwhelmed and I loved the ring. I put it on and it fit perfectly.

When we married, we were buying a house at the same time and so we skipped the diamond engagement ring to get matching gold bands. I tried to tell Dan how much I loved him and the ring.

“I wanted you to have a diamond ring,” Dan said simply.

The boys were so excited. They had been in on this all along. They knew their dad was buying me the diamond ring that we hadn’t been able get when we got married. We sat there at the table that evening and told the kids the story of the dog pound and our first date at Burger King. They’d heard it before, but it still cracked them up. As for me…

I may have met my husband at the dog pound, but I got a real gem of a man.

Jennifer Apodaca is the author of The Sex on the Beach Book Club and the Samanta Shaw mystery series. You can find her at www.jenniferapodaca.com.

Oh, my goodness. It truly was one of those “across the crowded room” moments that singers sing about. But the truth of it was…Tim had been High School Football Team Captain and Boyfriend of the Head Cheeleader/Homecoming Queen, and I had been an honor-roll dork who edited the yearbook. True, four years had passed since graduation. College had been good to me, but the dork-factor is a hard one to lose. And Tim was already one smokin‘ fireman…

It was a mini-reunion Christmas party when our eyes met across the pool table. Actually, I was semi-comotose on a couch. Not alcohol; I was recovering from a cute little bout of pneumonia. Right then he came over to sit beside me. Fate. Karma. Serendipity. God’s will. What ever you call it, and I knew I needed to see him again. And again. Since these were the days when dinosaurs walked the earth and “nice girls” didn’t ask guys out other than to be your plus-one at your cousin’s wedding, I had to quickly concoct something to ensure future contact. And so I did. I announced to everybody present that the next bash was to be on New Years Eve at my apartment. Tim agreed to be there. With a sigh of relief, I contented myself that I’d see him again in just ten days.

But he woke me up the next morning, asking me out on a date. A date! I’d probably been on a hundred such things, but this one, with somebody I’d known for years but didn’t know at all, was the most unnerving. I knew it had to be one special event, so I picked a sure thing for a first date, a Burt Reynolds movie. He was popular at the time, a man’s sort of man as well as eye candy for me. The perfect combo.

Deliverance!

I sat through the harrowing adventures of four hapless canoers, kind of regretting I hadn’t picked a comedy, when we came to the Main Event featuring poor Ned Beatty. Dork Alert: at that moment, I realized that either Tim would never speak to me again…or he’d love me forever.

Fortunately, he selected the last choice. If you haven’t seen the classic movie, rent it and remind yourself that this was some fool’s first date choice. But it must have spun some kind of magic. We never dated anybody else after seeing it, and it’s now thirty-three years, two kids and one grandson later.

A Southern California native, Tanya Hanson honed her writing skills during the fifteen years she taught high school English. She’s published in Western Romance but the sophomore slump has been a long one, yet she (and her amazing critique partner, multi-pubbed and best selling author Charlene Sands) refuse to give up!