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  1 Learn Pole Dancing (Single Wide Female: The Bucket List)

  Chapter 1

  I ran my fingertips over the well-worn piece of notebook paper. It had ridges from the amount of times I’d folded it up and tucked it away. I had written the list at a time when I didn’t really believe I would ever actually accomplish anything on it. But I had, and now it was time to look at the next item.

  I rolled over on my bed and stared down at it. When I had added it to my list, it was just a fun little whim, not something I thought I would actually do. But then again, I never would have thought I’d be able to lose so much weight either.

  “What was I thinking?” I said out loud as I gnawed on the pencil between my teeth. I was tempted to just erase the item and replace it with something else. No one would have to know. But I would know. I cringed at the idea of actually following through with it. But I had to do it. I had to. It was on the list. I groaned and rolled over on my bed. I stared up at the cracks in my ceiling for a moment. Then I sat up with a new determination.

  “Yes, I will do this,” I said, looking down at the item on the list. “Pole dancing class, here I come.” I was attempting to sound brave for myself, when I caught sight of the time on my alarm clock.

  I grabbed my jeans out of the laundry basket beside my bed, and slid the pants up over my hips with my eyes squeezed shut. With a sigh of relief, I let out the belly I had been struggling to hold in. I didn’t think the zipper would slide up so easily, but it did with one smooth zip. I smiled at my reflection in the tall mirror as I studied the way that my jeans hugged my hips and rear. All of my hard work, all of the passed-up snacks, had really paid off. My body looked different and I felt different.

  “Hey, you sexy lady,” I said to the shapely woman in the mirror, twisting my hips first one way and then the other. “Do you come here often?” I asked in the deepest voice I could muster and batted my long lashes at my own reflection.

  “Uh, Sam?” a voice said from the doorway of my bedroom.

  I froze and held my breath for another reason. It was Max. Max, my best friend. Max, with the deep green eyes and a body that would make any woman glance in his direction. I turned around slowly to face him, not wanting him to see what I knew would be sheer embarrassment on my face.

  “What?” I asked as innocently as I could.

  He stared at me with one quirked eyebrow, looking as sexy as ever. Max was not conventionally handsome, but a quirky kind of cute, like the kind of guy that got the lead in romantic movies. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but just goofy enough to grow on you and make you think he was adorable by the end of the movie.

  “I’ve heard of bisexual, but what would you call it if you try to pick yourself up?” He smiled and leaned against the doorway.

  God, but that smile made me want to snuggle right up to him.

  Friend, I reminded myself. Max, my friend. No matter what my fantasies wanted to believe, we had never been anything more than that. Of course, when my eyes were closed late at night he played a very active role in my life.

  “I don’t discriminate, Max. If I see something as hot and lovely as the lady in the mirror happens to be, I’ve got to give it a shot.” I grinned, hoping he would not notice that I was mortified.

  “Well, I’d have to agree with you there,” he said with a laugh, and shook his head as he walked into my room.

  We had spent hours snuggled up on this very bed on several occasions. Him thinking we were just watching a movie, me praying he would lean over and kiss me. He never did. At least, not in reality. The things that he had done in my mind…

  “What are you up to today?” he asked, perched on the end of my bed.

  “I’m going out,” I said, fluffing my newly bleached blonde hair with my fingers.

  He was smiling as he watched me.

  “Are you going out to break some man’s heart?” he asked, brushing his thick dark hair away from his eyes.

  He was studying me intently. It always unnerved me when he looked at me so closely. I could never tell if it was with approval, desire, or confusion.

  “Sure, of course,” I said and stuck my tongue out at him.

  He tilted his head to the side. “So you don’t have a date?”

  “Stop it, Max.” I sighed and shook my head as I turned away from him. Only then did I spot the black leotard and tights still lying on the bed. I felt a rush of horror flood me. If Max saw them, he’d be full of questions that I didn’t want to answer.

  “Stop what?” he asked as he leaned back on the bed. His hand came to rest just beside the tights. “I’m just curious. You haven’t had a date in a while.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out.” I reached past him to nudge the leotard away from where he was sitting. Sometimes having a man for a best friend was not ideal. “I’ve had plenty of dates. You don’t know everything there is to know about me.”

  Of course I hadn’t had any dates lately, but Max didn’t need to know that. As confident as I was in my beauty, it would appear that being big and beautiful hadn’t translated to a man tripping head-over-heels in love with me—not yet anyways—a fact that was beginning to make me slightly nervous. At thirty-two, my clock wasn’t quite ticking just yet, but I did feel that I was ready to fall in love.

  “Then tell me,” Max said, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Are you keeping secrets from me?”

  “Secrets?” I laughed a little at the idea. In the fourteen years that Max and I had been friends I had never been able to keep a secret from him. But this time I was determined to do it. My dignity depended on it.

  I sat down on the bed next to him and slid my hand casually back across the bedspread toward the tights and leotard, now behind him on the bed.

  “So are you saving yourself for me, is that it?” he asked and met my eyes.

  End of the preview.

  This book is currently free.

  Get #1 Learn Pole Dancing (Single Wide Female: The Bucket List) here:

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R334AE4

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  *6 book bundles are also available

  All titles by Lillianna Blake Can be Found Here (Author Page)

  http://www.amazon.com/author/lilliannablake

  All titles in the series Single Wide Female: The Bucket List

  Mega Box Bundle - Now Available (Books 1-24)

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011ARRJTG

  *6 book bundles are also available

  1 Learn Pole Dancing

  2 Start a Blog

  3 Learn to Cook

  4 Create a Masterpiece

  5 Run a Marathon

  6 Go Skinny Dipping

  7 Start Online Dating

  8 Learn Yoga

  9 Be a Mentor

  10 Crash a Wedding

  11 Be a Movie Extra

  12 Join a Writing Group

  13 Enjoy a Spa Day

  14 Donate Blood

  15 Learn Poker

  16 Get a Tattoo

  17 Host a Dinner Party

  18 Publish a Book

  (*See below for the book Sammy writes in #18 - “Becoming Zara” )

  19 Walk Across Hot Coals

  20 Learn to Swim

  21 Learn to Meditate

  22 Quit My Job

  23 Learn to Salsa

  24 Fall in Love

  Other Single Wide Female Titles

  My Valentine’s Day

  St. Paddy’s Day Disaster

  A Bunny Tale

  Single Wide Female in Love

  Save on the 4 book bundle! (Available for pre-order)

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0153LEB5K

  1 The Date

  2 The Girlfriend

  3 The Fiancée

  4 The Wife (
December, 2015)

  Introducing Sammy’s first book:

  “Becoming Zara”

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XVJ938M

  All titles in the series B.I.G. Girls Club

  The Rockstar’s Girlfriend

  The Former Model (Coming Soon!)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.