Not My Type by Melanie Jacobson Page B

eyes and grabbed my laptop to click open his LDS Lookup profile. “He’s not ugly.” I plopped it on her lap while I scrounged for my favorite tinted lip gloss. Brent was my age, from Sandy, and was finishing up a degree in biology at the University of Utah. He sent me a message on Wednesday saying he liked most of my tastes in sports teams and wondered if I wanted to catch the Real Salt Lake soccer opener with him because he had an extra ticket. Granted, I had only listed the Jazz and the Cougars as my favorite teams, so I’m pretty sure we only had half of my favorite teams in common. And it was a fairly underwhelming offer as dates go. “Wanna use my extra ticket and maybe share some nachos?” Which, okay, was not exactly how he had put it, but it’s more or less what he meant. Still, it was a date, and that’s what I needed for my column. Besides, he was reasonably cute. His picture showed him posing with his mom, and he had nice hazel eyes and neatly cut sandy blond hair.
    “He’s okay,” Ginger said. “Maybe you’ll find some hotter guys later.”
    “Hotness isn’t everything,” I said and took the laptop back. Landon had schooled me on that one.
    “Really? So you have an amazing spiritual connection with this guy, huh?”
    I shot her a withering look.
    Rosemary, bored, slid off the bed. “I’m going to get cookies,” she said.
    “Me too.” Ginger followed her toward the door. “That way I can see the Mom drama unfold.”
    Five minutes later, I followed them down. They both sat on the living room sofa with a bag of Oreos between them, watching the door instead of the TV. I sighed. “Mom, I’m leaving!” I nearly made it to the front door, but she was too fast. She charged out of the kitchen with my dad right on her heels.
    “Don’t go,” she said.
    “You can’t make me stay,” I pointed out reasonably.
    “But I can prey on your guilt. I’m going to worry about you the whole night. Do you really want to put me through that?”
    “Teresa, we can’t interfere with her decisions,” my dad said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “If Pepper thinks it’s worth a calculated risk to her safety and our mental well-being, we can’t interfere.” He looked at me hopefully.
    “Good try,” I said, halfway through the door. “We’re meeting in a public place, I’ll text you every hour, and I’ll call you as soon as I’m on the road home. Let me be a grownup, please.”
    My mom looked like she wanted to argue, but Dad squeezed her shoulder. “Every hour,” he said.
    I flashed him a thankful grin, needing to escape before any more of my mom’s paranoia rubbed off on me. Tugging the door closed behind me, I took a deep breath and headed for The Zuke and the soccer game. And Brent, my date for the evening.
    * * *
    An hour later, I wished I’d let my mom talk me into staying home. I wasn’t in any danger, unless it was death by boredom. I texted a quick update and then watched the field again. Brent shifted in his seat next to me, which meant I had to shift too, since every time he moved he encroached on my personal space. His build was tall and athletic, as advertised on his profile, but “tall” didn’t really do him justice. We had met at the entrance gate, where I had told him to look for a confused-looking girl with short hair and a yellow purse. I figured my cute, twelve-dollar Old Navy bag was a better way to identify me than me standing around with a rose pinned to my shirt or something dumb like that.
    He’d told me to look for a tall guy in a maroon shirt. He found me a few minutes before game time, and I knew I had the right guy because he was six-foot-seven. I’m average height, exactly halfway between five and six feet, but standing next to him, I looked like I had drunk Alice in Wonderland’s shrinking potion. He wasn’t twiggy, basketball tall either. He was solid, more like football tall, which is why it felt like he had been in my space for the last hour. He