When the Sidewalk Ends

Chapter 2

"You look familiar," he said a few minutes after we'd taken our seats.

"We're already on a date, Hubert. No need for another cliché."

I laughed out loud. "Another cliché." I was becoming increasingly less and less interested in him by the second. We'd been sitting across from each other for the last five minutes, both of us picking at our food and not saying much. This date had gone straight to the awkward zone and I was ready to go home. I glanced at my watch.

"So what do you do?" Hubert asked.

"I'm a...I'm a billing clerk." I lied. I'd decided early on in this dating game that I wouldn't tell another man that I was an illustrator. That I had a syndicated cartoon in major newspapers across the country.

"Oh," he rubbed the salt and pepper hair on his chin. "I could have sworn that Dana told me that you work from home."

"I do." I hated lying. But technically I wasn't. I sent out monthly invoices—therefore I did my own billing. I was my own receptionist. The president and CEO of me. But all Hubert needed to know was that I was a biller. Period. Men always treated me differently once they found out what I really did for a living. What I was very successful at doing for a living because men either got resentful of the money I made or thought I was drawing cold hard wads of cash instead of cartoons.

"So," I changed the subject back to him, "what do you do?" I lifted my glass of iced tea to my lips and took a long gulp.

Hubert fidgeted in his chair before answering. "Oh, I'm retired."

"Retired?" I gawked.

I was going to kill Dana for setting me up with a gold-card-carrying-AARP member. Like, seriously—how old was this dude? He looked every bit of fifty, give or take a year or two. But, sixty-five? That was it. There was no way in hell...

To be continued