This was a horribly bad idea. She could just wring Greg's neck for putting her in this mess. What kind of best friend was he supposed to be when he's handing her off on blind dates with some guy he just met? I don't think he's gay, so I sent him your way. That's what he'd told her when he'd announced that Chloe had a date so she better get ready. Her immediate response was a dumbfounded look before he yanked her to her bedroom and started pulling clothes out of her closet. What if he was some kind of murderer? Or rapist? Greg just kept going on and on about how good-looking he was but she didn't care about that half as much as she cared about her own life. Inviting Greg to stay for the summer was not an open invitation to her love life!

But she'd agreed to go, much to do with the puppy dog look Greg kept giving her. However, Greg kept vetoing every single thing Chloe pulled from her closet. Too matronly. Too ugly. Too black. Finally when she pulled out the green halter maxi, he gave her a thumbs up. Chloe didn't want to dress sexy cause she didn't want to give this poor schmuck ideas. She even covered up her arms with a jean jacket, stating that it was still a bit chilly at night. Greg just rolled his eyes and let it go. But Chloe made sure to tuck a thing of pepper spray in her purse, which was followed by a condom, thanks to Greg. She didn't have time to tackle that one cause as it was, she was soon to be late. And poor schmuck he was, she didn't want him to think he was being stood up.

Greg had set them up at the Dolphin Den, which happened to be one of Chloe's favorite places to eat. But brownie points went to Greg on that one, not this guy. What was his name? Clarence? Clarey? Something like that. It sounded like a name that belonged to one of those office guys who worked in a cubicle with a pocket protector. Which at this point, well that would be a pleasant surprise. She was expecting some burly tattooed guy who was ready to take her off some place dark and kill her.

She found a parking spot (damn the place was packed tonight!) and headed inside, stopping to speak to the hostess. Greg had made reservations for them and apparently the girl knew who Chloe was looking for as some dreamy look came into her eyes. Weird. She pointed towards a booth at the back (at the back!!) and sent her own her way. Taking a deep breath, she slowly followed the direction to see just what kind of ex-con was waiting for her.

"Hello." She said to the man, who looked up at her with a confused expression. Well he didn't look so bad, but he didn't look happy to see her. Umm... As it turned out, the hostess didn't indicate which side her mystery date was on and she was standing before a man whose wife had just departed to the bathroom, leaving him alone. "I'm Chloe?" She tried again, wondering what his deal was.

A blind date. He was going on a blind date. For Carey, they rarely ended well. Over the years, his friends had taken to setting him up. Sometimes the women were nice but most of the time, they just weren't his cup of tea. And this time, he didn't know the guy setting them up all that well. Greg was someone he met at the gym and the guy was pretty cool. But he couldn't but wonder if this friend of his was butt ugly or worse, crazy as hell. An ugly woman he could deal with but a psycho? He'd been there before and sure as hell didn't want to do it again.

He wasn't sure what to wear so he'd enlisted the help of his younger sister. It was a bit sad; he was 30 and going to his 18 year-old sister for help. She hadn't teased him, which he was grateful for. Considering he was on vacation, most of his clothes were casual and much to his sister's disgust, khaki. He'd wanted to wear a nice t-shirt but his sister had put her foot down and after a brief argument, they reached a compromise. He got to wear the dark jeans he'd wanted from the start and in turn, he wore the shirt she'd bought him for Christmas. It wasn't exactly his normal style but after actually trying it on, he found that he liked it.

After he'd gotten dressed, he quietly left his room, his ears listening for his mother's voice. She had no clue about this blind date and he'd preferred to keep it that way. When it came to mothers who liked butting into their kids' lives, she was the absolute worst. And he wasn't in the mood to hear it. If he was going to make it through this date, he needed to go into it with a good mood. Figuring the coast was clear, he darted toward the front door. On his way out, he heard his name but he closed the door and hurried down the steps before he could be lectured. Sometimes, she seemed to forget that he was a grown man.

The ride to the restaurant was filled with him going over different scenarios in his head. That and him singing way off to key to songs on the radio. Was he going into this date with high hopes? No. If anything, it was something for him to do that didn't involve 'quality time' with his family. A part of him did want the date to go well and while he'd intentionally sabotaged dates in the past, he'd promised to be on his best behavior.

Pulling into the restaurant parking lot, his nerves finally caught up with him. If the night ended horribly, he'd no doubt give Greg a stern talking to. After talking briefly with the hostess (who had given him plenty of flirty looks, boosting his confidence), he sat down in the booth he was led to with a heavy sigh. Carey folded his arms on the table, taking a quick peek at his watch. He was early, as usual. When he did manage to remember to be somewhere, he was always early.

The Dolphin Den wasn't a restaurant he'd been to before so he decided to kill a little time by looking over the menu. The prices weren't a big deal; one thing Carey had never been was super cheap. While he didn't spend a ridiculous amount of money, he splurged every now and then. He was debating on going with something safe like chicken or being more daring and trying oysters or scallops when he heard a woman's voice behind him. At first, he didn't pay much attention and then he heard her name. Chloe. That was the name of his date.

He could have stayed in his seat and said nothing, let her figure out that she had the wrong table but he wasn't that kind of guy. Instead, he stood and turned around, his eyes flickering over her. "Chloe?" He offered a small smile as he said her name because that was what he was supposed to do, wasn't it? He'd been out of the loop for way too long. "I think you might be looking for me, Carey?" If she wasn't looking for him, well, he'd just look like an idiot. Not that it'd bother him too much; he'd had his fair share of dumb moments.

She was going to really kill Greg now. He sends her off on some wild goose chase and the guy she's meeting doesn't even know who she is. She was about to excuse herself to leave the restaurant when a voice spoke up behind her, calling her name. She whirled around and tilted her head back at his height, muttering in her head that of course he had to be tall. Just once she wished she'd meet a guy who didn't stand a food taller than her. Damn her being short. "Ah yes, Carey. That's it." So she was just turned around the wrong way, was all. She turned back to the man she'd mistakenly introduced herself and gave him a polite apology before sliding into the empty side of the booth.

Well she'd be damned. He wasn't hard on the eyes at all. Judging from the look of him, she'd guess that he was in his late twenties or early thirties and she wondered if he realized just how young she was, comparably. She was sure he didn't know about how she was a single mother or the fact that she had an ex-husband determined to root himself back in her life, but he would. Maybe she was just trying to scare the poor guy off or test him to see if he could deal with those things, but she'd been burned before by men whose entire expression changed when they learned she had a toddler at home.

"So Carey." She started, picking up the menu, her eyes immediately falling to the two items she would debate between. Scallops or crabs? Decisions, decisions. In the end, scallops would probably be less messy and while she wanted him to know the truth, she didn't want him to think she was a complete slob. "Greg tells me you're here on vacation." She let the menu fall to the table but was unable to say anything further when the waitress came to take her drink order. "Sweet tea, no lemon." She smiled sweetly at the young girl before turning back to the man in front of her.

"Do you often accept blind dates with strangers, set up by a stranger? Because I got the impression that you weren't exactly an old friend. Just curious, of course." She would have told him how she had pepper spray in her purse, but it wouldn't be good to tell the bad guy where your weapon was hidden. He didn't look like an ex-con and she saw no visible tattoos, but that didn't mean he was the guy next door. It meant that he was just really lonely and desperate for a night out, or that he was really horny and desperate for a good lay. Her impression of him had yet to yield any other possibilities.

When she turned around to fully face him and tilted her head back, his eyebrows rose. She wasn't bad looking although she did look a little on the young side. Hell, she probably still got carded. If he had to guess, he'd say she was in her early 20s, still able to pass for a high school student. An attractive one but still, she didn't look much older than Sylvia, which didn't really sit well with him. But he'd see what her personality was like because, after all, that was far more important.

He slid back into the booth, folding his hands together on the table. His eyes were drawn to a fish decoration on the wall behind her, the same damn fish he'd been staring at since he sat down when he'd first arrived. It was like he'd reached a new low; he was having a staring contest with a fish. A fake fish. Carey was happy when she spoke and he rested his eyes on her. He started to answer but was cut off by the waitress. His glass of water sat untouched, sweating and wetting the napkin it sat on.

"Not usually." For some reason, he felt like he was being interrogated. Not that he could blame her; it was a blind date. "It was either this or sit at home with my family, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya until it erupted into World War, seven, I think we're on now. What about you," he asked, sliding his water in front of him. "What made you say yes?" He was genuinely curious as to why she would agree to a blind date. Who the hell really knew what they were getting themselves into by going on these things? For all she knew, he could have been a serial killer.

She had to wonder just what his life was like to be his age and vacationing with his family, obviously single. It reminded her that she knew absolutely nothing about him and in her mind, she started making up a story. He was recently divorced and lonely, and rather than spend the summer alone with his empty house and the empty picture frames, he thought that he'd be better to at least be around people who wanted the best for him. That was certainly better than the other extreme of him being recently paroled out of prison.

"Well, I'm not going to lie. The thought did cross my mind that you'd be some kind of escaped convict who would kidnap me and dump my body in the ocean when he was done. But..." She thanked the waitress for her tea and carefully slid the straw out of the paper, crinkling it up into a little ball and flinging it towards the table before continuing, "if anyone has experience going home with strangers, it's Greg. And I don't think he'd go home with someone giving off bad vibes. So he wouldn't have sent me off to meet someone who could potentially be a psycho." Unless he was really good at hiding the crazy part of his personality. It was the thought that Greg would have gone home with him if he'd had been interested that set her mind at ease.

"And like you, I need to get away from home every once in a while and it's hard for me to do that these days. So I thought...why not? Throw caution to the wind and all of that." Oh God what if he thought this night would end with them being naked somewhere in one of the cheap motel rooms? No, she just needed to relax. They'd just met and there was no need in getting up in arms about something that might not have even crossed his mind.

"So." She was usually great at talking to people, but the circumstances of this particular situation were new to her. It had been so long since she'd 'dated' that she'd almost forgot what it was all about. With Adam, this stage of their relationship had happened in the beginnings of high school which felt like a decade ago. It nearly was. "Other than the whole world war seven business you've got going on, how are you enjoying Hatteras so far?"