The Novak Dolls

Chuck Doesn't Date (For Good Reason)

Chuck doesn't date.

He just doesn't, for about a million reasons. For starters, he doesn't have the time. Secondly, he has seven children, and in his experience, all the women that are okay with him having seven kids are either creepy, or they want more.

And since Amara has threatened to personally castrate him should he ever bring another child into the world, that's a no.

It's not that Chuck hasn't tried the dating thing. He has! Him and his editor, Marv, went to a whole circuit of speed dating events during his first few years of being a single dad, and he had actually managed to find a few decent women in them. The only problem was, none of them made it past the first date.

His first date in single dad land was with a woman named Janice. She had an obnoxious laugh, but Chuck could deal with that. She had gone on and on about how brave he was for being a single father, until he mentioned that he had seven kids under ten. 

Janice had faked a phone call emergency a minute later and left.

His second date was with Candace. Candace didn't like that he was a writer and tried to convince him to get a REAL job. Candace had ten cats, and Chuck had slipped out of dating her by convincing her that all of his children were deathly allergic to cats.

His third date was a blind date after Amara had set him up on a dating app. "Jennifer" turned out to be a decent looking guy named Dave, and despite the whole catfishing thing, Chuck thought the date hadn't gone too bad, but Dave was more into the catfishing scheme than actually dating people.

And as for the rest....

Camille threw a drink in his face, Andi called him a man whore, Lenora had spent half the evening trying to convince him to give full custody of his kids to their mother so that he'd be a 'free man', Julie had offered to adopt all of his kids for the same reason, and Carl said he wasn't ready for a committed relationship.

So Chuck didn't date anymore. He had tried for a couple months to get Amara back in the dating game, but all she did was download Tinder and insist she was living her best life. And that was fine, that was Amara, and Chuck settled for being content with being single.

But then....

Then he met Nicole. 

Nicole was a few years older than him, another writer that Marv managed. She liked children, but didn't want to have her own, so she was fine with the idea of Chuck already having kids, by all accounts, Nicole was perfect.

She was normal, she liked children, she understood the writing craft, and she wasn't bad looking, although she wore too much makeup. What more did Chuck need? Amara said a mental health screening and a good credit score but Chuck waved her off. His sister thought she asked too many questions about Chuck's finances, but Chuck didn't care about that, money wasn't interesting.

He went on a first date with Nicole, and it had gone WONDERFUL. She thought the stories about his kids were funny (even the ones about Satan), and they talked about writing and Marv and future projects. He even got a second date.

Of course, though, on the day of said second date, Gabriel and Hannah decided to catch a horrible cold, and since Hannah was so little Chuck didn't want to risk leaving her with Amara. He trusted his sister, yes, but Hannah was his baby and if she was hurting, then he wasn't going ANYWHERE. And Nicole had actually understood that and had offered to reschedule. Did he mention that she was perfect?

So they went on a second date, and a third.

And a few more....

Until one day Chuck decided, hey, why not bring Nicole home and see how the kids like her? If they ended up dating for real, they'd have to get along, might as well start now. Plus, every internet source he had looked at for advice around dating when you had kids said that people would show their true selves around children.