Two Last First Dates

by Kate O'Keeffe

  We had been on our first date together the day of the run, and many, many more since, virtually living in one another’s pockets. He’d spent time with Dad, discussing his new Paleo lifestyle and giving him exercise tips, and he’d opened up to me about his brother and how horrible it had all been. We’d even visited Dan’s grave together one Sunday afternoon with his mother, Meredith, and Bailey.

  We were in that wonderful first flush of a new relationship, and life could not be better.

  “I would like to make a toast to my new partner,” Bailey said, raising her champagne flute in the air. “Paige, without you, tonight would probably never have happened, so thanks for all your ideas and enthusiasm. I think the Cozy Cottage is a better place with you in it.” She grinned at me and a blush climbed up my cheeks. “To Paige.”

  Cassie, Will, Marissa, and Josh repeated, “To Paige,” and we all clinked glasses and took a sip.

  “Tonight might have been my brainchild, but without you, I would probably be stuck in some job I hated, spending as much time as possible on the other side of the counter here, so here’s to you, Bailey.” I raised my glass, and everyone toasted Bailey. “And it helped the singer was cute.”

  “Oh, my! He was,” Marissa said, fanning her face.

  “Hey!” Josh protested playfully.

  I turned to face him. “Not as cute you as you, of course.”

  He grinned at me before planting a kiss, firmly on my lips. “That’s good to hear.”

  I smiled at him, the butterflies still having a party in my tummy every time our eyes locked. Even though he was the same old Josh with the same old puns on his T-shirts—tonight’s edition reading “Cool Beans” with a coffee bean in shades—he was my Josh. And it had to be just about the best darn feeling in the world.

  I raised my glass. “Here’s to the first of what we hope will be many more successful ‘Cozy Cottage Jams.’ Ooh, there’s an idea. We could do a line of jellies!” I raised my eyebrows at Bailey.

  She shook her head. “Let’s just deal with the Friday night concerts first, shall we? Baby steps, remember?” she laughed.

  Tonight had been our inaugural “Cozy Cottage Jam,” and the café had been packed to the gills, all tickets sold out over a week ago. It could have been because people loved this place almost as much as we did, or because the food here was so good, or it could have been because the acoustic guitar-singer was a fantastic local guy who wrote and played his own songs. The fact he looked a bit like a young Johnny Depp hadn’t hurt, either.

  Whatever it was, tonight had been a smash hit, Bailey’s and my first new venture as Cozy Cottage partners. It was a great start.

  “Now, everyone, eat up. We’ve been slaving away on our new line of pies, and we need you all to be our guinea pigs,” Bailey said, uncovering the four pies on the kitchen table she and I had been devising together over the previous weeks. “This one is pumpkin with a cinnamon twist, this one is deep-pan apple and raisin, this one is rhubarb and strawberry, and this one I bet will be the girls’ favorite: chocolate mud pie.”

  “With pleasure,” Will said, grabbing a fork and plate from the stack.

  “We don’t need to be asked twice,” Josh added, joining him.

  I leaned up against the counter with Bailey as we watched our friends devour the pies, exclaiming each one was better than the last.

  “We’re good at this, you know,” she commented, nudging me in the side.

  “I know,” I replied, nudging her back.

  With only a matter of crumbs left on three of the four pie dishes fifteen minutes later—we may need to revisit the pumpkin pie recipe—Marissa cleared her throat. “I have an announcement to make.” She paused for effect. “I’ve met someone.” Her face was shining. “Well, a few someones, actually.”

  We all laughed, Cassie exclaiming, “What?”

  “Isn’t it meant to be One Last First Date, Marissa? Not Three or Four Last First Dates?” Bailey asked with a chortle.

  “Well, to be fair, we didn’t quite manage to get it right first time, did we?” Cassie said to me.

  “But we did in the end.” I gave Josh a small smile, and he winked back at me.

  “Yeah, but not a whole sports team!” Will chimed.

  Marissa put her hand in the air. “I know, I know. And it’s only three.”

  “Only three?” My eyes were wide.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. You guys are always going on about how fussy I am about men, right?”

  We nodded. “It’s true, she is,” Cassie said.

  “I figured I’d go on Three Last First Dates and pick the best one of the lot. It’s a numbers game, don’t you see? Plus, I want what you two have got,” she said, nodding at Cassie and me. “Well, not Josh and Will, of course. My own guy.”

  “So, you’ve decided to take this seriously, huh?” I asked.

  “I have,” she replied with conviction. “Thing have . . . changed for me, and I want to find him.”

  Cassie shook her head as we all laughed at Marissa’s audacity, admirable as it was. “You know what? I think it’s a great strategy. Just having One Last First Date didn’t work out for us”—she pointed at both me and herself—“so I say why not?”

  “Thank you. I will take that as your blessing.” Marissa beamed.

  “Only you would go on Three Last First Dates, Marissa,” I commented, shaking my head, wondering exactly what it was that had changed for her.

  Before I had the chance to ask, Cassie said, “What about you, Bailey? Are you thinking of looking for your One Last First Date?”

  “Or five,” Will added with a chuckle.

  I glanced at Bailey, hoping the question hadn’t upset her. As far as I was aware, the others didn’t know about her fiancé. But then, she had agreed to the One Last First Date pact on the beach that night, so perhaps she was ready to move on and meet someone new?

  “I might very well be.” She had a quiet air of confidence to her, and when she looked at me, we shared a smile. “But right now, we’ve got a kitchen to clean up and beds to get to. Some of us have work in the morning.”

  We set to it, cleaning and stacking the dishes and straightening the kitchen up. With everyone gone, Bailey wished Josh and me good night and slipped out the front door.

  “You know what?” Josh said, pulling me in for a hug.

  I looked up into his eyes, my heart clenching at the sight of him. “What?”

  “I think my brother would be happy with the way things turned out.” He kissed me on the tip of my nose. “You did good.”

  “I hope so.”

  He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine, kissing me so long and so well, I swear I saw stars by the time we were done.

  “Come on, you. Let’s head home.”

  As I flicked the light switch off and Josh held the door for us to leave, I took a final look around the Cozy Cottage. The chairs were stacked on the tables, the only light coming from the drinks refrigerator behind the counter. I let out a contented sigh. This. This was where I wanted to be. This was my home.

  Out on the street, I locked the door behind us. I slipped my hand into Josh’s. As he squeezed my hand and smiled at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling the way they did, I knew what I’d known since our very first kiss, what others had seen before I had any clue: Josh was my Last First Date, and I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading Two Last First Dates! This is the second book in my Cozy Cottage Café Series.

  The next book in the series is fussy Marissa’s story, entitled Three Last First Dates

  You can get your copy from Amazon here

  But first, here’s a sneak peek . . .

  Sneak Peek at Three Last First Dates

  My name is Marissa Jones, and I’m totally committed to not being committed.

  There, I said it. It was out there.

  In fact, I had a long and impressive history of avoiding commitment. I was the Commitment-P
hobia Queen, if you will. I was good at it, really good. If you looked “commitment-phobe” up in a dictionary, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if you’d have found a photo of me, running away from some bewildered-looking guy as quickly as my feet could carry me.

  That was why, when it came to dating, I was fussier than an OCD patient off their meds. And why not? A girl had to have standards, right? I never expected to “settle” for someone, and nor did I want to. No way. No one but Mr. Absolutely Right would do for me.

  Only problem was, I was having a hard time finding him.

  That’s why I agreed to a pact with my best friends to marry the next guy I dated. Which in hindsight, for a commitment-phobe like me, was an off-the-charts crazy thing to do. Certifiable. I had really only agreed to the pact because I was sick of dating—that and the large amount of chardonnay I had imbibed that evening.

  To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t really taken it all that seriously at the time.

  And then “the thing” happened and I knew I had to find him, I had to find The One. There was simply no more time to waste.

  But, instead of going on a regular old date with some random guy, I decided to go on three dates in one day. I liked the math: one of me, three of them. It more than worked in my favor.

  Not only that, I had thoroughly vetted each of the three guys before I even threw on my outfit for the first date. If this was going to work—and I really, really wanted it to—I needed to go in with my eyes wide open.

  “I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” Paige said, shaking her head and smiling at me over our cups of coffee, what was left of our slices of cake in crumbs on our plates. “Three dates in one day? You’re brave.”

  “Why not? You and Cassie put all your eggs in one basket, and I don’t want to do that. I mean, I know you ended up with the right guys in the end, but they weren’t the men you went on your Last First Dates with, right?” They nodded. “Well, I figured going out with three different guys has to improve the odds.”

  “You’re right about that.” Paige nodded, her eyebrows raised. “Can you give us the lowdown on who these guys are? We need all the details, right, Cassie?”

  “Oh, yes. Especially how good they look with their shirts off,” Cassie added with a wicked grin.

  “Well, I’m hardly going to find that out on a first date, but”—I raised my hand in the Girl Guides’ salute—“I do solemnly swear to report all important details to you as they transpire.”

  My friends were thoroughly invested in me finding The One. They had been in on the pact and were now both coupled off. Cassie had found hers, a guy from our workplace called Will, and was now blissfully happy, and Paige had just started dating hers, a guy called Josh who wore the nerdiest T-shirts I’d ever seen. But they seemed incredibly happy, too, and that was what mattered.

  That was what I wanted.

  Bailey was our other friend in on the pact, but she was currently behind the counter, serving the customers at the Cozy Cottage Café, a place Paige, Cassie, and I hung out at a little too often for our waistlines. Paige had recently become Bailey’s business partner, and we had grabbed a rare chance to sit down together and share a cup of coffee and a slice of Bailey and Paige’s delicious cakes. Personally, I had just cleaned up a slice of orange and almond syrup cake, the one I always had at the Cozy Cottage.

  “So?” Cassie said, looking at me in expectation.

  “Okay.” I laid my hands flat on the table on either side of the empty dishes. “As you know, I’m going on three dates with three different guys all on the same day and they get to choose where we go and what we do.”

  Although I wasn’t running a scientific experiment or anything, I had decided each guy would get to choose where we went and what we did on our dates. That way, I could get a clue as to what kind of people they were pretty quickly—and whether they were right for me. I mean, if one of them had said we were going to go to a chess tournament and then onto a war museum to see an exhibition of nineteenth century medals, I might have had second thoughts about dating him.

  Paige clapped her hands together. “Oh, this is so exciting!”

  I pressed my lips together. Exciting? Maybe. Terrifying? Definitely. I swallowed down a lump in my throat, pushing my bobbed hair behind my ears.

  “Just think, one of those men is The One for you.” Paige’s face shone as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  Paige had always been the romantic one of our group of friends. She was the one who suggested the pact on the beach that night, the one who truly believed we all had a special person out there, just waiting to be found. Although she’d got the love speed wobbles not that long ago, she was now a fully carded member of Happy Coupledom and wanted everyone else to join the club, too.

  “Well, he’d better be,” I said, pushing my anxiety down. “I’ve put a lot of time and effort into vetting these guys.”

  And all I would say about that is social media was a wonderful invention for us would-be stalkers.

  “Tell us about them,” Cassie said.

  “Well, the first guy I’m meeting is probably the wild card of the trio. His name is Coleman, and he’s really smart and creative and interesting. He’s Matt Damon.”

  I always liked to work out which Hollywood star the guys I dated resembled. If I couldn’t find one, or much worse, the guy resembled someone like Danny DeVito, I didn’t take things any further. Call me shallow, but I liked a guy to be easy on the eyes.

  Was that a crime?

  Coleman had Matt Damon’s blue eyes and his hundred-watt smile, and although he was taller than his Hollywood counterpart, he had a similar kind of quiet confidence.

  “Matt Damon, huh?” Paige said.

  “Yup,” I confirmed.

  “So, why’s he the wild card? Smart, funny, looks like Matt Damon. These are all good things, right?” Cassie asked, looking from me to Paige and back to me again.

  “Yeah, it’s his job that’s kind of . . . out there,” I replied.

  “Oh? What does he do?”

  “He’s a . . . mortician.” I held my breath, awaiting their reaction.

  “What?!” Cassie and Paige shrieked in unison. Café patrons at neighboring tables turned to look at us. I shot them a sheepish smile to reassure them I wasn’t currently torturing my friends.

  “Settle down, you two. He’s not all weird and creepy with it. He’s a regular guy. He just does something . . . out of the ordinary, that’s all.”

  “What’s out of the ordinary?”

  I looked up to see Bailey standing beside our table, smiling down at us. She was dressed in her trademark Cozy Cottage Café red apron with white polka dots, matching the one Paige discarded to come sit with us fifteen minutes ago.

  “Want to take a seat for a second? Marissa’s telling us about the dates she’s going on this weekend.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Bailey said, pulling a chair from an empty neighboring table over to ours. “Paige? Is it okay if you keep an eye out for customers?”

  “Of course,” Paige replied.

  Paige had only become joint owner of the Cozy Cottage with Bailey a matter of a few weeks ago, and already they had made a bunch of changes to the place, including opening on a Friday night for musical performances. In my confident moments, I had been toying with asking them if they would allow me to sing one night, but I hadn’t plucked up the courage to do so yet. One day, maybe.

  The Cozy Cottage Café was our favorite hangout. With its welcoming atmosphere, comfortable seating, and large fireplace, it felt more like you were in someone’s living room than a café in busy downtown Auckland. It was the perfect setting for our cozy catch-ups. As Paige had put it, it was our happy place.

  “What is this thing that’s out of the ordinary?” Bailey asked as she flicked her dark curls behind her shoulder.

  “Marissa’s first date is with a mortician!” Paige said, with obvious delight.

  Bailey tilted her head to
the side. “Well, that is out of the ordinary. How exactly did you meet a mortician?”

  “Actually, we met at the supermarket.” I looked at my friends’ open mouths. “Morticians eat too. Geez! Anyway, you know that urban myth about how if you have bananas in your shopping cart on a Tuesday you’re telling others you’re single?”

  “Ah, no?” Cassie replied.

  “Well, it’s a thing. Trust me. So, he and I both had bananas in our baskets and he commented on how I had a larger bunch of bananas than he did and that it wasn’t fair and he was going to call the Banana Police.”

  “Oh, how cute!” Paige said. “He’s a flirt.”

  “He’s a flirtatious mortician. That’s kind of weird, Marissa,” Cassie said.

  I shrugged. “He’s human; we flirted. Big deal. Anyway . . .” I flashed my interrupting friends a look. “We flirted up a storm, right there in fresh produce. As you know, I’m a seasoned veteran when it comes to flirting.” I grinned at my friends. It was true, I could flirt with the best of ’em. Although that’s usually as far as it went, thanks to my commitment-phobia.

  That was all about to change now. It had to.

  “Where are you going on your date with this mortician?” Bailey asked.

  “A flirtatious mortician,” Cassie added.

  I chose to ignore her. “We’re meeting for brunch at Alessandro’s, that swanky café downtown.”

  “So, not a cemetery?” Paige asked, elbowing Cassie.

  “Or a morgue?” Cassie added with a giggle.

  “No,” I said firmly. “Go on, get the jokes out of your system. But remember, this guy could be the one I marry and have children with, and you’ll have to be nice to him then.”

  Of course, I got why they thought Coleman’s job was weird. Heck, I thought it was weird. But really, it’s just a job like any other—only with lots of dead bodies and sad people around you all the time.

  “No more jokes, I promise,” Cassie said as she tried to suppress a grin.

  “Except, if Josh could make a shirt for him, I bet it’d say, ‘Keep embalmed and carry on,’” Paige said, referring to her boyfriend’s penchant for pun T-shirts.