The Bookworm's Guide to Dating

reply to text him back.
ME: A lie in and books?
COLTON: I don’t know why I asked
ME: It’s a bit late anyway, don’t you think?
COLTON: I was going to offer to buy u dinner
ME: We buy each other dinner on our birthdays every year, it’s hardly revolutionary
And by ‘buy dinner,’ I meant that I cooked him dinner and dessert from scratch on his birthday, and he gave me a choice of the three takeout places in town.
Such was my life.
COLTON: Fine. What do u want tmrw? Pizza? Indian? Chinese?
ME: I don’t know, it’s not tomorrow yet.
COLTON: I’ll even push the boat out and treat u to a sit down meal in Bronco’s
ME: Oh, so fancy. Careful there, you might break the bank.
COLTON: We’re not all Michelin star chefs, Kinsley
ME: Colt, I made you spaghetti Bolognese last year. I’m not exactly Gordon Ramsay.
COLTON: Mm, that was good spaghetti though
ME: I know.
COLTON: Wanna make that?
ME: Do I want to cook for myself on my birthday? Not really.
COLTON: I know. Why don’t we all go to Bronco’s and I’ll pay for ur dinner
ME: Who is all?
COLTON: Everyone. Josh, Kai, Ivy, Tori, Say, and Holley
ME: No Amber?
His response about his girlfriend took too long to come. And by too long, I meant that it didn’t come at all.
ME: Colton.
COLTON: We’re not talking right now. I want u to have fun, not worry about that
ME: I’m not doing karaoke. No way.
COLTON: Aw, man. I wanted to serenade u with Bohemian Rhapsody
ME: I cannot think of a worse birthday present, honestly.
COLTON: Are u sure? Me and Josh have practiced our parts and I think Kai is on board
ME: I’ve heard Kai sing, I’m still going to pass.
COLTON: Spoilsport
ME: Dinner at Bronco’s it is. Now go away, you’re interrupting my Sookie marathon.
COLTON: Sookie? Isn’t that that dumb vampire show?
ME: I’m sure it is dumb, but I wouldn’t know, I’m reading the books.
COLTON: I have no idea how I got u for a sister
ME: God liked you the day I was born, obviously. I’m a blessing.
COLTON: Blessing to Satan, maybe
ME: Stop talking about yourself, Colt. You’ll hurt your feelings.
COLTON: Oh, go read ur book u brat, ffs
I laughed and put my phone down. It was good to know that even as we got older, our sibling banter didn’t change. There was a weird comfort in that, even if he was a total shit.
I also wasn’t surprised that he and Amber weren’t talking. Their relationship had been on the rocks for a long time, and while I was in no position at all to give any dating advice since I was historically very bad at it, I was firmly in the camp that it was time for them to end it.
Not only was my brother almost thirty, but he just wasn’t happy. As much as I loved Amber, their issues were too big to overcome, and I didn’t get it.
But like I said, I was the worst dater in history, and probably wouldn’t know a successful date if it slapped me in the face.
Not that it bothered me. I was twenty-six tomorrow, not ninety-six. I had plenty of time to dedicate to a relationship. Admittedly, it probably didn’t help that I had a terrible habit of comparing every real man I met to the fictional ones in books to the point that I actually stopped trying to meet real men.
God, they were all so disappointing.
I mean, look at my brother.
It was a miracle he’d ever gotten a girlfriend with his lack of cooking skills.
I sighed and put my book down. Maybe I was too picky. Maybe I’d set my bar too high. That was a thing, and the longer I went without meeting guys I even saw potential in, the more I wondered if I was being a bit of a relationship snob.
Then again, was having standards a bad thing? If I felt I was worthy of a certain type of man, did that really make me a snob? Or did that mean I respected myself enough to hold out for someone who was everything I wanted?
Or did it mean I had way too high of an opinion of myself?
Probably a bit of it all, in all honestly.
It likely didn’t help that the only thing I was ever really comfortable with talking about was books. Any books—romance, non-fiction, sci-fi, mystery, thriller… I could talk books until I turned into one, and the fact that I co-owned a bookstore didn’t even get away from it when I was ultimately asked, “So what do you do?”
I sagged back on the sofa.
That was it.
Twenty-six was going to be the year I put myself out there and got a date at least once a month.
Or maybe once every two months.
Hopefully.

CHAPTER TWO – KINSLEY
rule two: book boyfriends are not real.
sadly.
One good thing about living alone was that nobody woke you up super early on your birthday, and nobody was there to cover your living room in an explosion of balloons that you would be popping for a week.
One bad thing about living alone was that your friends had absolutely no issue sending you a delivery of three large bouquets of flowers, five obnoxious helium-filled balloons, a teddy bear, and a box of chocolates before nine a.m.
Mostly because they didn’t have to wake up to it.
At least they didn’t send a sing-o-gram or whatever they were called. Holley had threatened it at some point, and the last thing I wanted was an acapella band outside my front door.
Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them. Any of them.
It was the kind of shit they’d pull.
Luckily for them, the only florist in town didn’t deliver before nine in the morning, so they’d been saved from my night-owl wrath for another day.
I busied myself putting the flowers into vases.