How I Met Him: Part 4

    Hello! Everyone sleeping well and eating healthy over the holidays?
    Lol! Me either :)
    I'd planned to not sleep in this week, but that got all messed up with both kids having change-in-schedule nightmares. They've been good enough to alternate nights (except for that one night... two big kids do not fit well with mom in only a double bed lol), but disrupted sleeping has made my plan for a good routine impossible so far. On the plus side, our holidays have been really easy for socializing due to really liking everyone we socialized with, and every day so far has included a block of quiet time. My hubby, myself, and our kids are all introverts. The quiet time blocks are wonderful.
    We did venture out and perform Boxing Day / Week Sale shopping yesterday. It's something I don't remember willingly doing in all of my years of being alive for this lifetime, but yesterday I knew I wanted to pick up some out-of-the-ordinary things and I wanted to get them on sale if I could. Turns out I could for most of what I needed. Stores were busier than I like, and today I'm grateful to be home without commitments, but the shopping got done and my high anxiety never got the chance to spike into an attack. I'm calling it a win.
    Part 4 is the final part of How I Met Him, and that means having it posted today also comes with the free downloads! Just click here to jump over and download your free ebook. A new story will start next Friday... next year!
    I'm looking forward to the weekend and then the arrival of 2020 next week. I hope you all have a great weekend, and that the best good luck of the New Year finds you and stays with you throughout all twelve months! 

Part 4

        “No, I’m just excited to be going for dinner with someone who knows work doesn’t only happen in an office building during office hours,” I said.
        “Going for dinner? You didn’t just take my number to be polite?”
        It was my turn to laugh. By the look on his face, he’d really expected me to toss his number. “I’ve got things planned this week, but we could do an early dinner on Sunday if you want?”
        “Really? I mean, yeah. Sunday would work for me if it works for you,” he said.
        “Great.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket with his number and texted him while standing in the stairwell door to my floor. “Now you’ve got my number, too,” I said, smiling as his phone beeped.
        “Okay, great! I’ll text you tomorrow or… is tomorrow okay or…?” He laughed nervously and shifted the carry-out bag in his hands. “I haven’t dated in a while. What’s the expectation?”
        “I’m expecting we’ll have a place figured out to meet at on Sunday, before the time we’re planning to meet there. Bad relationship?” I asked, tacking on the question carefully as I knew there was potential for a heavy answer.
        “Good relationship. Or, at least, I thought it was. Bad ending. About a year ago.”
        “Sounds like a story to spin over dinner,” I offered.
        “That would be amazing. I mean, I’d like that,” he cleared his throat loudly. “I’m going to go deliver this before I say anything else stupid. I think I’ve hit my quota for today.”
        “I like how you’re talking so far, so consider the quota empty enough that texting tomorrow is fine.”
        “Very cool,” he said. I was still looking at him when he realized his own little cartoon heart was bobbing over his head. I was also blushing hard from being looked at like that, so at least the reflected color from my face matched the imagery. “I’m going to go drop this off while I’m still emotionally writhing about the awkward things I’m apparently still saying. Then I can start panicking about what to text you tomorrow once I’m safely alone out on the street.” He hefted the carry-out bag and leaned his whole body to gesture toward the stairs leading up.
        “You can text later tonight and ask about appropriate topics to text about tomorrow if you need to?”
        “I might actually do that now that I know I can,” he admitted. We were both smiling and waving as I stepped into the hallway and out of holding the stairs’ door open. The stairwell door closed before I’d gotten to my apartment and I heard the echo of his excited whoo clearly. I had to agree with him, it had been ages since I’d felt this giddy about a date.
        I emailed Amber from my desktop with my updated schedule for the week, including that I was done the auction commission and would drop off pictures of it for her tomorrow, and then got the stand lights set up for the formal photos. The stars looked ready to spiral off the canvas in the first, and the leaves appeared to have only stilled between gusts of wind in the second. In the third, the little spider’s eyes held the sky in reflection. In all three, I saw maybe a hundred things that I could tweak and improve, but there wasn’t anything I wanted to change.
        I turned off the stand lights and took a few low-quality photos with my phone using just the overhead lighting and then texted the best one to Amber with the message that these pieces were my new favorites. She wouldn’t be able to see the details, but she’d been by for coffee last week and knew what I’d been finishing. I included the magnified pics I’d snapped of the spider’s eyes, the dew drop, one of the leaf designs, and the twin stars I was the most proud of because of color matching to reality. Amber surprised me by still being awake to message back a bunch of hearts.
        I tucked into my pajamas and curled up on my chair with my sketch book to look through the work I’d done today over a cup of tea. One of my cloud sketches had a really great shape that sparked in my brain in a good way. I darkened those lines so I would see it immediately tomorrow before I flipped to the next page to see what was there. A few pages on, I darkened in a couple strolling through the museum and added a few lines to look more like me… and Anthony. (Of course I was being silly, but it was a good silly.) The flower in the sidewalk definitely needed to be painted. My next three commissions were already planned, so I’d be painting on my own time for the sidewalk flower. It wasn’t going to be a big piece, though, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
        My phone chimed. Probably my mom, she was the only one who texted this late. I ignored it because I was darkening in the shadows and adding highlight colors in pencils to the sidewalk flower while the memory was fresh. Painting it would be easier with a good reference. I finished my tea and decided to work on the flower sketch again during morning sunlight hours, picking up my phone after putting down my pad.
        Anthony had messaged me.
        I opened it hesitantly, hoping he wasn’t a hidden creep asking what I was wearing to bed or if I planned to touch myself before going to sleep. He was only taking up my offer of pre-texting to inquire if he should open tomorrow’s texting with a joking comment about the weather on our working-from-home commutes, or with saying good morning and asking how I was. I breathed a sigh of relief and texted back that either was a good option so he could pick from both of those based on how he was feeling. He replied with a thumbs-up emoji almost immediately.
         I left my phone plugged in at its usual place in the studio while I got ready for bed, catching myself smiling each time I saw my reflection. It had been a pretty good day. Tomorrow wasn’t looking bad, either. I was most excited for Sunday, though.