This Ain't No Bridget.

Bonnie was no Bridget Jones though.

This wasn't a woman who was desperately searching for a man in the hope of tying herself down and giving birth to mini-Bonnies. The opposite of that was much closer to who she actually was. Her lack of motivation for her life stemmed from a failed career as a writer and from her dedicating too much of her precious time to Tumblr. Well, that and her drinking. It still wasn't clear to her how she felt about marriage - other than of course that she liked the idea of being adored forever, but also understood entirely that statistically that was unlikely given that her life was not the Hollywood movie that she had once hoped it would be - and while she loved her niece and nephew, whenever they were left in her care for more than a two hour stretch she went home exhausted and in need of more alcohol than a typical day's end would normally require.

It was a predicament of sorts. When you're in your thirties, or so Bonnie had found, men who weren't sold on the idea of children were significantly harder to get your hands on than men in their twenties, yet your twenties was exactly when you wanted a man willing to commit and take the next step. Even Bonnie herself had wanted that five years ago and had left a long-term partner who had refused to deliver on that desire. He had since also refused to deliver with the next woman and was in danger once again of being left for someone who was more willing to donate some sperm in the pursuit of propagation.

The thought made Bonnie shudder.

It was the very reason the divorced man was still waiting on a reply to the lunch date invitation he'd extended to her three days earlier. Divorced she could handle, divorced plus one age two was slightly more confronting.

That conundrum was the very thing that was occupying her thoughts the next day as she stared blankly at a computer screen and tried to ooze just enough negative attitude that people left her alone, but not so much that they might report her for breaching the company's code of conduct on interactions between employees or whatever it was called. It's not like she'd actually bothered to read the document.

Unfortunately some were not so adept at reading Bonnie's cool veneer.

'Hey, Bonnie. How was your weekend?'

Of all the things that annoyed Bonnie - humidity, children who hung around for more than two hours, dessert that wasn't chocolate-based, and people who didn't know how to pronounce 'pinot noir' - forced familiarity was definitely in the top ten things that made her want to grab random objects and either smash them against a wall or snap them over her knee.

Her eyes narrowed on the poor defenceless creature standing before her and forcing poor Bonnie to view them as a target.

'Fine.' Her words were curt. She let a beat pass after she'd spoken before she forced a candy-floss dripping smile. Shoot people a cutesy-pie look and they knew. They knew they were better off walking away than continuing to stay in her sights.

He took the hint. 'Oh, that's good.' Slowly he backed away and she kept her eyes on him the whole time to ensure he didn't get cocky and try with a follow-up question. 'Have a nice day'.

Not a question. She let it slide.

Look, it wasn't that she didn't like people, she wanted to scream at the room, it was just that small-talk was the most pointless of all talk. Had something happened that she wanted to discuss with this man she barely knew, she would've brought it up. She was staring at a screen, something she was paid to do, and he came along asking her questions that she didn't care about and which she wasn't paid to answer. She didn't need to be reminded that she had spent the entire weekend alone because all of her friends had gone and got married and had children. It was tough enough to have to deal with without having to relive it every time a near-stranger decided they wanted to make small-talk.

It truly was a wonder she made it through her days without resorting to violence more often, she thought to herself.

But back to the divorced plus age two guy. If she was clever she'd be able to deliberate on it long enough that at least three hours passed without her even answering a phone or replying to a single email. She knew because that was how long she'd drawn it out for on Friday when she'd first received the invitation.

Yep, she thought to herself, it is going to take something very rewarding to steal me away from this gig in a hurry. So she let the humidity continue to annoy her, she held off on giving him an answer, and instead she spent the morning staring at her old, failed manuscript and wondering whether she should throw it away like the trash it clearly was, or try to polish a diamond out of it's worthless pages. And in between those thoughts she took pleasure in ignoring all calls from her boss and routinely sending glares out in the direction of anyone who dared veer too close to her cubicle.

That was exactly how Bonnie Martin liked to spend the hours her lifestyle required her to kill at work.