High Heels & Pink Glitter (the heavily edited version)

The recovering attractive man-aholic

"Sweetpea! Long time no talk. How was your date with Mark? I want a debrief that is as detailed as it is thorough!" Leon tapped the table, and Kelly sat down opposite him in the booth, sliding a flute of Prosecco over to him and trying not to wince when the movement jarred her wrist, which still hurt from her brush with Ryan in Boots the other week.

As it was a Friday evening, McPhabbs on Sauchiehall Street was rammed. Leon was lucky to have found somewhere to sit. As she'd expected, he'd phoned her on the Sunday evening following the date-that-never-happened with Mark, wanting to know more.

She'd let the phone go straight to voicemail to avoid the taunts of "I told you so!" and kept schtum about subsequent events. Nobody wanted to seem that tragic.

But at the very least, what had transpired in Boots had finally convinced her that she would never have anything to do with Mark again. Men who abdicated all paternal responsibility were the absolute pits. If she ever weakened in the future, she only had to remember Ryan's face—the hurt and abject misery on it as his father denied all knowledge of him and walked away.

"Not great," she muttered, unwilling to admit to the entire disastrous Saturday scenario, let alone what transpired the following week when Mark showed up at her house as Grant was leaving. Unsurprisingly, the latter had not contacted her, and even though she'd ruled him out—he was too much like Mark—it still stung.

Nate's no-show, even if he did explain himself in a phone call the next day and no-one could quibble with a kid in hospital, had punctured her ego balloon even more, especially when he made no attempt to suggest they meet up again.

"Not great?" Leon slumped against the red-padded booth. He regarded her seriously. "What does that mean? He took you out on a date and insisted on you going Dutch? Even though he ordered the steak and a bottle of red wine so pricey it came with bodyguards, he still insisted on splitting the bill exactly down the middle. Or did he ogle every other woman in the place while ostensibly with you? He chatted up the waitress with the big boobs and the Kim Kardashian arse? Suggested you three having a threesome?"

When none of his suggestions elicited a reaction, his mouth rounded into another o. "Oh, no, did he get so drunk that he couldn't get it up afterwards? Poor Mark. Erectile disfunction is so hard to understand..."

He chortled; thrilled with the silly wordplay. Kelly blinked. The recollection of that night was far too close to the surface for her to find anything remotely amusing about it. The time she'd spent getting ready, the humiliation in the restaurant, the depressing taxi ride home were all in stark contrast to the hours she'd counted down to being on a date with Mark in Number 16, full of excitement and anticipation.

"Leon," she said now, "can we please not talk about it?"

Her friend, she could sense, wanted to argue. It was there in the drumming of his fingers on the table, but courtesy kicked in and he nodded acquiescence, plucking out the book sticking out the top.

"What have you been buying?" he asked, poking his nose inside. As he brought out one of her book purchases— How to Love Like a Grown-up; turning your back on bad boys and finding lasting love—he glanced up, grinning at her, mirthful victory lighting up his eyes.

"Leon!"

He leafed through the book, which had been written by an earnest, honey-blonde haired woman whose picture and credentials on the back cover made her appear to be the least likely person to counsel women about bad boys. Any bad boys she encountered would run screaming in the opposite direction.

"Ooh! Here we go... 'The relationship triangle has three sides. Respect, friendship and desire. Most people over-estimate the importance of the last.' Kelly, are you guilty of that?"