Her Perfect Man

ONE

"...and he kissed me tenderly until the sun came up. Now I know more than ever—no one is more perfect than this man of my dreams." I read aloud as the sobs escaped from my eyes, and onto the cream colored last page of my book.

Oh, Jaleen Loover had to be my favorite author of all time. She made it seem like life for us singles was not all lost in the cesspool of freaks and creeps out there. That we could still find our happy ending no matter what the circumstances may be with the right person. My right person.

Clutching the grip of my smartphone, I pulled out my 'Notes' app and started adding.

#50—He should want to kiss me tenderly until the sun comes up.

I could already picture my lips being so sore from all the kissing. It would be magical. Exactly how falling in love should feel like.

As a little girl, I was always told by my parents to set the bar high. And thanks to the many Disney princess movies I held close to heart, I was also expected to never settle for anything less than a knight and shining armor coming on his noble steed to wake me up. Well, without me being poisoned into a deep sleep, of course. Too bad I've had to kiss a lot of warty frogs to come this far in realizing that.

But Izzy Monroe wasn't a quitter. I had never been.

And reading so many of these books, it only fed further into my quality of expectation.

#49. He'll tell me how much he loves what I do every day.

I read silently before scanning over the entire list I had been working on for over four years now. That was when my last and unbearable relationship ended after he cheated on me with not one— but two of my close friends who I refused to ever speak to or mention again. Apparently to him, I wasn't good enough for him anymore after I chose to chaperone my third-grade class on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in my hometown of Chicago, than to spend the day together watching him play video games.

From then on, I had made the decision to only consider my next possible companion to these basic conditions. No exceptions.

"Miss Monroe?" I suddenly heard a male's voice speak out.

Snapping back to reality, a series of loud bangs echoed throughout the room. Or should I say in this case, the janitor's closet of Parkview Prep School. Uh oh.

"Uh...she's not here." I tried to get whoever it was to go away so I could at least regroup my composure.

"Really? Then why is her staff ID badge in front of this door?" He asked.

I could sense he was most likely snickering at my pathetic qualities in sneaking off into a janitor's closet. Welp.

It was my lunch break though. How else was I supposed to read what I considered my crack in a building full of kids K-12 shouting which social media challenge they wanted to get arrested for or sick from? The teachers lounge wasn't any better. Nothing sets the mood off than reading all the spicy scenes while the P.E. teacher always found a way to stand behind me while telling everyone how a kid upchucked all over the gym floor after the second push-up, and proceeded to laugh about it.

"Okay...it is me." I sighed, already struggling to get up from the cold and hard floor with my nearly thirty-year-old bones. Grabbing the school's mop I'm sure had cleaned up the kid's incident, I opened the door and shyly smiled, hiding the book behind my back. "Martin...how's it going, pal?"

But all I got from Martin was a stern glare, putting his hands on his hips that were being hidden by the oversized custodian uniform.

"Um...did you need something?" I still attempted to make conversation.