Game Changer.

As much as she was loath to do so, it was time for Bonnie to give divorced plus one age two an answer. Even she wasn’t cruel or ignorant enough to not know that the time had come to play it out. Her boss had been missing for hours, everyone had been smart enough to leave her alone, and now with Valentine’s Day less than twelve hours away, it was cruel to keep him hanging on if there was a chance he actually liked her and wasn’t just trying to sleep with her.

Dialling his number she felt a stab of disappointment in herself that she still hadn’t entirely embraced different messaging forms as the basis of communication in her relationships. It would’ve been so easy to just shoot off a text message or a quick few words on Facebook, but not only did that not sit well with her, she also had to weigh-in to the equation that if she did the wrong thing here her brother would never let it die.

‘Darren? It’s Bonnie.’ Squinting in pain at what was coming, Bonnie sat spine fully erect in her chair thinking queen-like, murderous thoughts.

‘Hey, I was wondering when I’d hear from you.’ He had the type of phone voice that always made her mind drift to places it shouldn’t while she was at work.

‘Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.’

‘That’s okay. You been busy?’

‘No.’

There was an awkward silence and while she recognised that the socially accepted protocol would’ve been to lie and say yes, it wasn’t in Bonnie’s nature to avoid telling the truth for someone else’s sake.

‘Ah. Well. These things happen.’

And it was happening. It wasn’t that Bonnie was socially awkward, it was just that she didn’t care. She said exactly what she was thinking, did exactly what she wanted, and struggled with the niceties of human interaction. Clearly he hadn’t been aware of that when he asked her. She’d contemplated letting him down easy, but then she would’ve bumbled through the words and gotten tongue-tied. Instead she was Bonnie.

‘You asked me on a date.’

‘Yeah, I did. I was thinking Sunday afternoon we could go to that pizza place you like. How about I’ll pick you up around 2pm and we stick around for a feed and a few drinks?’

Game changer, she thought to herself. It was her perfect spot. It was her perfect time. Driving had been eliminated from the equation. She stood up, turned to the whiteboard behind her with its list written in some indecipherable code and added her shorthand for ‘Darren’ to it. Congratulations Darren, she mused, for he had gone to the top of Bonnie’s Eligible Bachelor’s list.

‘That sounds perfect,’ she purred into the phone, because really it did. She smiled to herself and accidentally caught the eye of a nearby employee. Murderous thoughts back in her head just like Charlize instructed and the colleague quickly looked away.

So it was settled then. Bonnie Martin had a date for Sunday with the man she now considered the most likely contender for the role of her knight in shining armour.

‘Great,’ she muttered under her breath as she realised the one little detail she’d been forgetting. A date meant excitement and even she wasn’t robotic enough to avoid the small-talk in the office next week if the date went well. For now though she pushed her fears of human interaction out of her mind and went back to staring blankly at the manuscript, all thoughts on what exactly she was going to wear.