The first date prophecy, p.1
The First Date Prophecy, page 1
THE FIRST DATE PROPHECY
KATE AND DANNY TAMBERELLI
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Lucy
Chapter 2 - Rudy
Chapter 3 - Lucy
Chapter 4 - Rudy
Chapter 5 - Lucy
Chapter 6 - Rudy
Chapter 7 - Lucy
Chapter 8 - Rudy
Chapter 9 - Lucy
Chapter 10 - Rudy
Chapter 11 - Lucy
Chapter 12 - Rudy
Chapter 13 - Lucy
Chapter 14 - Rudy
Chapter 15 - Lucy
Chapter 16 - Rudy
Chapter 17 - Lucy
Chapter 18 - Rudy
Chapter 19 - Lucy
Chapter 20 - Rudy
Lucy - *GASP*
Authors’ Note - The (True) Story Behind the Story
Acknowledgments
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2023 by Kate and Danny Tamberelli
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
The K with book logo Reg US Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-4285-5 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-4967-4284-1
To Alfred and Penelope, the happiest twist to our own Tinder fairy tale.
And to all of the hopeless (and hopeful) romantics out there still searching: may your dating (mis)adventures bring you the happiness and love you deserve.
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
—Lucille Ball
Chapter 1
Lucy
A lonely woman with words but not much else.
“I once ate nothing but chocolate candy for an entire week,” I say, smiling in a toothy, bright-eyed, chipper kind of way that I’m hoping just adds to my allure, a heady blend of coquettish oddball charm that whisper-screams Aren’t I so different than every other girl you’ve dated in this city, so refreshing and unexpected and unabashedly original?
I am nothing if not mostly unabashed.
It’s a fairly tricky, razor-thin line, though, between oddball charm and alarmingly oddball, and I’ve found myself squarely on both sides before. It’s a risk I’m willing to take to end up on the right side, the memorable side, the side that means I am not just a throwaway one-off round of overpriced Brooklyn dive bar cocktails.
“Hershey dark chocolate bars for breakfast,” I press forth, raising my highball glass of whiskey in the air, “Butterfingers for lunch, Snickers for dinner, and Ferrero Rocher for dessert the nights I was feeling peckish. And milk. Dear God, so much fucking milk.”
I deliver this particular anecdote while cruising smoothly on automatic, my timing and inflection the same as it always is, quietly marveling at my ability to make it sound shiny and new, like it has just now occurred to me to share this rarely revealed and coveted piece of myself. Chocolate Week, however, is a Lucy Minninger first-date classic. One of a select, carefully curated list of stories that show my Truest Self. Or at least the Truest Self I’m comfortable revealing to a first date. I often intersperse these performances with absurd hypotheticals—what ifs and would you rathers—designed to start colorful, surprising dialogue.
Sometimes Chocolate Week gets a good laugh. Other times—like this slightly unfortunate moment right now—my date stares silently, sipping his drink faster, ice clinking as the glass drains, not sure what is expected of him next in our conversational volley.
Shit.
Next time, I’ll wait until the third round of drinks, minimum. Or maybe I’ll scrap it altogether. Find a new sparkly tidbit for future suitors. My set could do with some stiff housekeeping, considering how few second dates I’ve had in the past year.
Five years, if I’m being honest.
My entire post-college adult life, if I’m being more honest.
I would backtrack, but I’m not sure what we’d been talking about before I decided to hurl myself so wholeheartedly down this particular path. The weather, ten degrees too hot for October? How every drink on this predictable menu is at least five dollars too expensive for any self-proclaimed—per the unmissable neon pink sign in the window—dive? Did I mull over those topics quietly, or say them out loud? I down the precious last droplets of my nine-year-rum-barrel-aged-ginger-and-lavender-infused Brooklyn Rye and push boldly on, because there’s no other way forward but straight through: “You wouldn’t believe how angry my body was by the end. Completely enraged.”
He puts his glass down, eyes roaming above my head, searching out the waitress. For a refill or for a check, it remains to be seen.
I study him while I have the chance. He’s even more handsome than suggested by his profile on HeartThrobs—the online dating app that brought us together, a fateful flip up for yes, please—which is about as rare as a full lunar eclipse on Christmas Eve. He’d only had one picture on his profile, always a risk. But a risk I was willing to take in this case, based on both the exceptional cut of his cheekbones and unparalleled depth of his dimples. His bronze tan that only made him appear more statuesque. I usually set my age parameters at a respectable thirty to forty, but I’d taken a temporary hiatus from my senses after too many pinot noirs while crying my way through my one billionth viewing of You’ve Got Mail.
Twenty-three. He is twenty-three.
I was seven years old when his mother was changing his first soggy yellow diaper.
“I swear, I was backed up for at least a week.”
I gasp. Did I say that? I did. I said that. That detail, while admittedly true, is not an established part of the routine. I’m rarely thrown so easily, at least not after one drink. It must be his age. The unfortunate mental image of those poo-filled diapers.
I was not designed to be a cougar.
He turns his focus back to me, cocks that perfectly coiffed curly head of his as he levels me with dark-lashed minty blue eyes. I’m tempted to ask if he dyes those impossibly black lashes (and if so, would he recommend the salon?), but any thought of comparing lash notes is effectively squashed as he says: “Why would you do that? It sounds . . . disgusting.”
“It started as a friendly competition with a college roommate,” I say enthusiastically, relieved he’s given me the opportunity to elaborate on something other than my bowels. “We’d been drinking chocolate White Russians one Saturday night, watching the new and old Willy Wonka movies back-to-back, and we started debating how long we could survive on chocolate alone. We decided then and there we’d put it to the test. She quit after one day, said her teeth were too sore, but I’d made such a big deal about how easy it would be, I kept at it. Seven days and seventeen hours. Then I caved and started licking the salt from a bag of stale pretzels.”
“Wait. You were in college when you did this? Having Willy Wonka marathons on a Saturday night and living off candy bars?” It’s hard to say if the incredulity in his tone is awe precisely, but at the very least, I have his full attention.
“Senior year,” I confirm.
“I would have assumed you were, I don’t know, seven. My senior year was all about Pabst and parties on a Saturday night. Every night, really. That’s when I started DJing.” His whole demeanor changes with this last word, DJing. He is suddenly a peacock roosting at the rickety bar seat across from me, resplendent and dazzling, so pleased with himself you might mistakenly assume he’s the only peacock in Brooklyn. I won’t be the one to point out that every other man is behind a turntable on HeartThrobs. There are as many peacocks as pigeons in this city of ours. Maybe more.
“Well, D-D-Da—” I stutter and stop, my brain frantically flipping through D names, because that much I’m sure of—Danny, Darren, Derek, Doug, yes, Doug, I’m certain that’s how I entered his contact information into my phone—“Doug, I have to say—”
“Hashtag,” he says, cutting me off. And as if I’m perhaps in an age bracket not familiar with the term hashtag, a Luddite at the elevated age of thirty, he raises both hands and crosses his index and middle fingers to give me a visual aid.
“Hashtag?” I ask, because maybe I do actually need a definition in order to understand why hashtag relates to his name. Or any name. Outside of, you know, a social media post.
He nods, those lashes drooping down as if he might be pitying me for needing to ask such an obvious question. “HeartThrobs wouldn’t let me add a character in my name line. I had it in my bio, though. Didn’t you see that? It was the first sentence. Call me Hashtag Disco Douggy, please and thank you in advance.”
Had I read that? I vaguely recall a string of Greek flag emojis. But I’d remember a detail like this, surely. It’s not every day
“Yes,” I lie. “Of course. I always read the bios,” I lie again. “I just thought it was a . . . joke?” In hindsight, this feels like the wrong thing to say. At least to someone who introduces himself as Hashtag Disco Douggy with a straight face. It’s maybe one of the more sincere moments I’ve had on a date recently. (A low bar. But still.)
“It’s not a joke.” Hashtag shakes his head, lips pursed. Those lips are far too attractive for anyone who insists on being called a pound sign in casual conversation. It’s unfair, really.
The waitress appears in my peripheral, orbiting us slowly, taking our temperature. Is this date over? Just getting started?
I’m more pleased than I’d like to be when he uses those hashtagging fingers to signal two more drinks.
“Hashtag Disco Douggy is my brand,” he continues matter-of-factly, “a lifestyle, an inspiration, a calling. It’s more than just my DJ handle. It’s who I am.”
“Huh,” I say, at a loss for intelligent words.
My phone chooses this prime moment to vibrate in my pocket, and I seize the blessing. “I need to make sure it’s not a work emergency,” I say, hoping he doesn’t ask me to go into more detail about what a work emergency might look like for my particular career path. What does my profile say again? Renaissance Woman and self-made entrepreneur with a specialty in writing and publishing. Translation: professional Craigslister who does odd jobs to get by, with a part-time gig assisting a demanding YA author who’s sold more book copies than Danielle Steel. Perhaps a slight exaggeration. But she’s twenty-five and has written three bestsellers, which seems unfair if you ask me. She’s cornered the market on her own special brand of quirky, spec-fic rom-coms. I’ve only written five rom-com manuscripts that haven’t sold, but who’s counting? (Me. The answer is me. I’m definitely counting.)
The phone vibrates again. I check the screen, and it is, in fact, partly work. There’s one missed call from my mother that I must have missed while en route to the bar, her weekly check-in to make sure I’m surviving and “thriving.” But then there are three new texts from Clementine, my author boss—whose real name is Colleen, though I took an oath my first day never to refer to her as such. An oath I happen to forget on her most demanding days.
I click through to Clementine’s messages:
Did Pinky eat anything weird on your walk this morning?
Pinky is Clementine’s very small, very ugly affenpinscher.
She just puked all over the sofa, and you saw the price tag on that!!! You didn’t let her eat any of your chocolate muffin did you? I saw your wrapper in the trash this morning. (Could you maybe get something besides chocolate next time?)
And lastly:
Can you research a good cleaner for the sofa and pick some up on your way in tomorrow thx
Somehow, the most infuriating bit is the lack of punctuation to go with thx, considering those three bestsellers. There’s also the triplicate exclamation points, as if I need the emphasis to remember exactly how much money she spent on the couch that I not only ordered, but arranged delivery for, spending an hour on the phone with customer service, and then helped move around her obscenely large living room seven times to achieve her “perfect feng shui” (mispronounced, of course), despite it weighing approximately five tons. I absolutely did not give Pinky a crumb of that muffin—for what a muffin costs in Park Slope, I’m eating every last crusty bit.
“So is it?” Doug asks. Hashtag Disco Douggy, I mentally correct myself.
“Is it what?” I ask, looking up from my phone, so angry about Clementine that I’ve forgotten what we were talking about again.
“A work emergency?”
“Oh. Yes. Kind of.”
The way his brow wrinkles—or at least, as wrinkled as anything can be on a pristine twenty-three-year-old face—he almost looks concerned. Or maybe just curious, trying to figure out what it means to be a professional Renaissance Woman, assuming he, unlike me, actually read the profile before flipping up.
“What is it?” he asks. “The emergency?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. It’s a private matter with a client.” That sounds impressively weighty and sophisticated, not at liberty to say, and I’m quite pleased with the overall effect. Only someone dabbling in wildly important things lacks that kind of liberty. And technically, I am not at liberty to reveal my boss’s real name.
The waitress reappears with our drinks, and I stuff my phone in my pocket. Clementine is not the only twenty-something who requires my attention this evening, thank you. Even if my date likes to be called a keyboard character and fancies himself a proper DJ, he does have those delicious dimples. And lips. Etcetera and so forth. And while his black curls are more styled than my hair has ever been outside of senior prom, molded with some kind of shiny product into a perfect tousled sculpture, the overall effect is rather nice in the dim light of the industrial pipe lamp hanging above our heads.
“I didn’t mention it in my profile, but I’m thinking about doing a little acting on the side. Just got my mom to take some headshots last week. We’ll see, could be cool. People say I have the face for it.” He shrugs, smiling in a way that says, I do have the face, don’t I?
“Oh? Is that so?” I take a long swig of my whiskey. Very long.
Maybe his hair is too shiny after all, unnaturally so.
“Yeah,” he continues, not requiring any additional response, thankfully. “She’s not a professional photographer, but I think my pics could make a killer portfolio. She could be going places, thanks to me.”
“Ah.”
I finish my drink as Hashtag Douggy Doodle or Dandy or whatever the hell he likes to be called waxes on about how he’s also been told he has perfect fingers for hand modeling, and did I know there’s huge demand for foot models, too?
Just as I’m debating my exit strategy, he’s flagged the waitress for another round, and even though there’s very little of substance that’s appealing about him on paper or otherwise, I sip my whiskey and laugh and try again with another Lucy Classic: standing in line during a snowstorm for the red-carpeted grand opening of a fancy new Dairy Queen, and lighting a pineapple on fire because the grocer next door happened to have a good sale, and because the glove warmers I’d brought along were doing nothing helpful. I was the most popular girl in the line that day, carrying my pineapple around to spread warmth to my fellow Blizzard lovers. This time, as I’m delivering my lines, there’s actual laughter—because of the whiskey or my charm, it’s impossible to say.
When the waitress comes back again, I have the brilliant idea to request the special they’ve listed at the top of their vintage typewriter-styled (again, not a dive) menu: The Flaming Zombie. I have no idea what it is, or why it’s flaming, but it’s an appropriate follow-up to my story, and it will surely be a memorable bonding activity with this twenty-three-year-old boy-slash-DJ-slash-social-media-character whom I really shouldn’t care about bonding with. Not only because we’ll likely never see each other again, but because I’m thirty and this is not a productive way to find a future partner.
Unfortunately, tragically, I do care.
I care more than I should, and more than I’d ever admit out loud. But I seem to have a chronic, debilitating condition when it comes to romance: I’m most attracted to the people who least deserve it, and am biologically repelled from all the rest. My brain registers nice or easygoing and converts to fake or—perhaps the worst dating sin of all—boring.
Where are the men who are equal parts authentically kind and interesting?
Surely there are at least a few of them in a city of more than eight million.
“Oh, wow,” I say, my mouth dropping open as the waitress makes her way to us with what turns out to be a literally flaming drink, a tall tiki cup topped with a purple haze of fire. “I thought maybe flaming meant heat, like Tabasco sauce. Prairie Fire style.”
