With No Warning (Romance/Inspirational)(Complete)

CHAPTER 3: Jilted Jibberish

CHAPTER 3: Jilted Jibberish

The dull rumble of voices, and the clink of glasses and pool balls, could barely be heard over the music from the live band in the adjoining room. A combination grill, and game room, the establishment had drawn it’s Thursday evening crowd with Drink Specials.

       When Dakota ordered a plain coke, the young, petite, tightly clad waitress tried to change her mind by reciting those specials. Her two companions seated at the table with her added their influence, but she shook her head, her eyes drawn for a second to the sparkle of the jeweled adornment in the waitresses nostral. Her mind wistfully conjured her father’s negative reaction, several years back, when her sister Shanna, still in high school at the time had begged him to sign the permission form required from their local piercing shop for her naval.

        "Sure you don't want a margarita?"  The waitress smiled, yet again, before finally writing a Coke straight up for Dakota, and pocketing the ticket pad in the short apron that ringed her tight jeans.

       Nobody ever understood, but even in her college years, even if she had temporarily put her doctrinal upbringing aside like so many her age, she had hated to get drunk, because she hated to lose control. It was something she felt strongly against, and now she just didn’t take the chance, even with one drink. Nowadays with so much ado about having a designated driver in the group, she could usually fall back on that excuse without seeming so much the prude or the preacher.

       Getting away from the campus with the two other teachers she had become acquainted with, had seemed like a great idea when they had hatched the plan directly after the Pilates group met this afternoon. They had each gone to their dorms, trading their exercise attire for more casual, comfortable clothes, and had met back up at the designated dorm, where they took one car the short distance to the Tyler eatery.

       Kelli was the girls Phys Ed teacher and dance instructor. She headed the Pilates group. With a pert, attractive hairdo and face that matched her personality, she was lithe, tanned and toned. Before coming to Mirabeau, she had been a dance line instructor at one of the area high schools. She herself had been a cheerleader in high school, and had studied dance off and on from adolescence through college. Very outgoing, with a perky enthusiasm for whatever was happening at any given moment, she had a great sense of humor, and the outing tonight had been her idea.

       Lora was the Literature and English instructor, and she was somewhat more reserved, but very friendly. Only in her twenties, she could already be labeled as matronly, strictly going by clothing style, but soon after getting to know her, Dakota found she was anything but. Within the first hour, the timidness had shelled away, and what bubbled from inside was an intelligent perspective on worldly matters, and a sharp quick wit.

       Both women were native Texans, and they had both taught at the school last year as well. They caught Dakota up on the inside information on a lot of the students who were in their second, third and fourth years. They also delighted in giving her the inside scoop on the unmarried, male faculty.

       Dakota took this part of the conversation in companionable stride, though she had no interest in dating at this time, or probably for a long while, maybe never again. Maybe she would become a spinster, with seventy cats, that school kids made fun of. Old Lady Winslow, they would call her, and roll the house where she lived alone with her felines, late at night when the arcades closed. Her lips curved slightly at the inane track of her thoughts, and Kelli grinned back.

       “So you HAVE seen him, and the icing on the cake is, that he is as nice as he is a hottie.” She said, and it took Dakota a moment to realize that the boy’s basketball coach was the prime subject of their current whimsical discussion.