She also found a chance to concentrate on something else. One morning CJ let slip that he’d met someone online through the dating profile she’d helped him set up. They were due to go out together the following Thursday and she did her best to encourage him. For one thing it took her mind off things, but for another he seemed genuinely lonely sometimes and she thought he deserved more.
“I don’t know,” he said as they discussed it, “She seems lovely from what I can tell, but I must confess to being ever so petrified.”
“You need to start believing in yourself Mister,” she said in a stern, but jokey manner.
“That’s easy for you to say,” he replied, “I have been through rather a long period of solitude.”
“It can’t be that bad,” she said, “How long?”
“I…um, promise not to laugh?”
“Pinky swear.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I hold up my little finger and…it means I promise.”
“Not to laugh?”
“I won’t laugh CJ,” she said.
“I’ve not been out with a woman for nine and a half years.”
“Okay, that is a long time I grant you. But…”
“And that was with my ex-wife. It was an attempt to rejuvenate our marriage and it didn’t go well.”
“Ah. Yeah I can see how that might not be the best,” she said, feeling slightly embarrassed.
He nodded and for a moment looked so crestfallen that her heart leapt into her throat.
“CJ, you know that ‘practice date’ you mentioned?”
“Yes?”
She paused for a moment, was she really going to offer this? What the hell, she owed him one for keeping quiet about the Hen Party.
“Are you free Tuesday night?”
****
And so the practice date rolled around. CJ offered to take Cat to a particularly exclusive restaurant and when she looked up the menu online, she couldn’t believe how expensive it was. He had offered to pay and she could only dream of eating at a place like that normally so even before the day came around she felt like he was spoiling her.
He wasn’t really though. It was the same place he was planning to take his real date a few nights later. Everything needed to be identical or else it might not work. She wasn’t sure if there was a science behind this but keeping things on a similar level seemed a sensible idea. He wasn’t spoiling her, he was spoiling the woman he was taking out later in the week.
That being said, the restaurant’s website made it look so nice she figured she’d best get doled up, it was a significant step up from Pizza Express after all. After returning home from work she began to get ready immediately. She sat in front of her bedroom mirror in her underwear putting on make-up and as she had done many times before in her life, thanked the heavens she didn’t have to use much on. With her sparkling blue eyes, shoulder length brown hair and her wide smile, she was naturally pretty and didn’t need much to bring out her best features at all.
Then she moved to her wardrobe and selected her dress. There was only one she could wear to a place like this, a stylish black evening dress that she’d bought for her university graduation. It had cost her a fortune but been worth every penny. It was glamorous and looked so good on her she figured it must have played a major part in making Graham notice her the first time they met. It was also stylishly sexy and she was glad to see it hugged her curves just as well as when she first bought it.
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