The Best Laid Plans

File that under "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time."

Along with the Dorothy Hamill haircut, camping out for concert tickets to The Who, the Vegas wedding, and the tattoo in a spot where gravity and middle age are eventually going to distort it into something unrecognizable.

Still skeeving just a little but glad I'd had a good laugh with Mom, I drove to work thinking just how I was going to explain to "the Gals" just exactly how my date went. I wouldn't be able to dodge the questions. Even if I stacked meeting upon meeting, eventually I'd have to face the music.

And as I drove, I heard the familiar little tone my phone makes when I've gotten a text message. True to my friends in the Trauma department, I will not look at the phone while I am driving. Especially not on the bridge, high above a raging river, with a high speed train running along side the rails of the bridge and the driver in front of me applying her mascara in the rear view mirror of her minivan. A disaster just waiting to happen.

I get to work and as I ride the elevator from the roof of the parking garage to the lobby of my building I flip open the phone praying that the message is from my sister. Or my colleague that I'd texted from the loo the night before. Or one of my kids.

Or a collector or a bounty hunter or a stalker or the Devil himself. Anyone but Casey. Please.

A girl can dream.

Of course it was from Casey.

"Good morning, beautiful."

My stomach turned. I close my eyes and hope to vanish.

He knows where I live. He knows where I work. He knows where I worship. He knows my phone number. There is no escaping him and there is evidently nothing that can offend him into leaving me alone.

Or maybe there is.

I put my thinking cap on. It is more a warrior helmet. This is a project I can sink my jagged little teeth into.