The Dating Diaries

By Cameron Peters

Kiki Martin is a blonde, blue-eyed Australian girl with hopes and dreams for her future. She begins her adventures as a single girl in Boulder, Colorado. Attending university is exhilarating and fun. Kiki is "one of the boys", and soon learns that the dating game is not as simple as she thinks.

With no shortage of male attention, Kiki has to learn what she is looking for. Often her dating is disastrous, ruined by what she calls a 'blonde moment'. Greg, Xavier, Geoff... to name a few.

Kiki moves back to Australia to continue her adventures in life and love and where she meets Andy, who just might be 'her one'. This light-hearted book follows Kiki's dating and adventures across continents until her 30th birthday is looming.

Will she find love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cameron Peters
• Release date: Apr 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311918802

Cameron Peters

I love writing and crawling under the covers with a good book. Like most, I dream of a perfect life, perfect family and perfect man! Blissful I am, but I hope you all enjoy my stories and please send me feedback!Love and LightCameron [e-mail]

Book preview

Chapter 1: 1999: 1st March. Sydney, Australia

One hundred and eighty three days until D-day- my 30th Birthday- not that I am counting. What have I got to show for my life? Destined to meet and marry Prince Charming and become a kept woman (while maintaining my independence) - I am miraculously still single. Something is wrong with this world!

My expedition through love has proven one catastrophe after another. Some relationships have never gotten off the ground, despite months of throwing myself at the feet of my potential prince. Pathetic, I know. My friends call my experiences humorous. I think I was put on this planet just to amuse them. Hilarious. More often than not, my best attempts at love turn out to be mortifying.

My family members think I am a member of the 1% Club- as only one per cent of the population could be as unfortunate enough to experience what I do. Like the day I was canoeing down the Colorado River in the middle of nowhere with no civilization for miles and miles. A random fly fisherman- the only other person in this wilderness- managed to get his line wrapped around my little finger as I was hurtling down the rapids. What are the chances? Then there was the time I managed to get stuck in the bathroom on a plane to London. No one noticed I was there until after we had landed that the door was jammed. And that blasted spider that jumped off a wall in a hotel lobby onto my left breast causing me to make quite a scene.

That’s me- Kiki Martin- or Kik, as I am known. Twenty-nine. President of the 1% club, thanks to all of these blonde moments. With the impending birthday looming, it is crisis time. I am single. Again.

Why am I single, you ask? I often wonder about that myself as I dream of locking lips and legs with a gorgeous man.

Well- I admit I am no supermodel- and was never ‘discovered’ in a supermarket. That said I am comfortable with my looks in a typical female my bum is too big and I hate my big boobs kind of way.

Yes, I am learning to live with what I have got. In other words I can’t see a spare $30,000 in my bank account to ever visit Dr. 90210.

My dad says my eyes storm blue with the weather- some days they match the sky, while others they rival the sea. My skin is naturally the olive toffee colour- and I always get accusing stares that I spend too much time in a tanning booth.

A small ski jump landed on the middle of my face to form my nose. Carly (my sister) says it is so small you can hardly see it when I turn sideways. My mouth is full of perfectly straight teeth, many thanks to a small fortune donated by my parents.

At 5 feet four inches I am not tall- (though don’t you dare call that short!) I am just the right size, though cursed with breasts and curves. Normal looking is how I describe myself, though I do like my hair. Since I was a small child, I have been called ‘Blondie’- a result of the blonde hair that has streaks of black and caramel that I am always unsuccessfully trying to tame.

I am clever enough to get by in life. Not quite a rocket scientist, but close enough. My career has been the most fabulous roller-coaster ride, though I do get bored easily and change not only jobs, but career paths quite often. Barely making it through high-school, I somehow became a scientist, a Ph.D. candidate, a television researcher and producer and a medical journalist. I have just recently entered the business world.

Through this path I have been exposed to many different people, so there are no shortages of good men out there. I am vivacious (a fabulous cover for my lack of confidence) and able to have a well-rounded conversation about completely anything except calculus and quantum physics. Yes, that does mean I never shut up.

I am quite convinced I would make a fabulous candidate on the television show The Bachelor, only I know I would embarrass myself with my dating catastrophe’s caught on national television.

I am a nice girl. I am. Really. I like my friends and I would do anything for them. Like my father, I am generous to a fault. This means my generosity is often taken advantage of, but in the spirit of good karma, what comes around will one day finally pick me!

I have some great girlfriends, but to be honest, I am one of the boys. My friends have always been boys, and no, I would never date them. Yuk. The boys are all comfortable with me to the point I get invited to all the boy weekends away, and I am the first one they come to when they want some girl advice (yes, you women out there, it is me you can thank when they bring you flowers or take you to a nice dinner and tell you that they care about you!).

Desperate? Me? I am just wanting one normal relationship where the boy likes me and I like him. Is that too much to ask? Yes, I do tend to fixate on one person at one time (go monogamy), but this is just because I want to ensure when I do find Mr. Right I have done a proper evaluation on all the candidates. Pathetic? Me? Well, maybe just a little.

That leaves the only likely reasons for me being single directly linked to the continual unfortunate embarrassing incidents that occur at critical stages of my relationships- or potential relationships as the case usually is. These seem to be hampering my quest for that elusive Mr. Right.

I don’t want to be single in another ten years. 40. Good god. Can you imagine?

Now is the time to sort out me in attempt to unravel the mysteries of my single status. It is time to dig up the past ten years to see if there is something obvious I am missing. Anything that might give me a clue, so that I can change.

I get a ladder and open the heavy door to the wardrobe of my small apartment in Mosman – a leafy Sydney suburb. At the top is a box. It is taped up, and has been for some time. The box has travelled with me from apartment to apartment across Sydney. I have moved quite a lot lately.

Wiping away the thick dust, I open the lid. Inside it are the many journals I have kept since I was a kid, and all the good and bad moments are captured in detail. Out falls old Valentine’s Day cards, letters I have written to boys (and been too gutless to send), and reminders of my hopes and dreams. I expect this little journey down memory lane will help me unlock my suppressed memories of what went wrong.

I pour a large glass of red wine, and get comfortable on the couch.

Chapter 2: 1990: Nine years earlier

It was a glorious summer morning in July. The air had a cool, crisp feel as I took a deep breath and took in this sight from the top of Rabbit Ears pass over the valley below.

The mountains were covered in a sea of yellow and green. The village below was hazy from the rising clouds, but still visible. This was the village in which I had found my wings. Evolved from a shy Aussie girl, to one who was itching for adventure.

This would be the last time I would do this as a resident of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. A lone tear trickled down my cheek, chilled by the breeze that had kissed the remaining snow. I climbed into my Subaru and began my journey to Boulder.

I had landed in Steamboat the day after I finished the higher school certificate in Australia for two reasons: To ski and to escape mum and dad and their protective ways!

While my parents are ultra cool, it was time for some independence and to start a new life for myself- code for drinking lots and meeting boys!

I was only supposed to be in Steamboat for one semester of college, to sort out what I wanted to do with my life and to I trained and competed in ski events. I was a keen Freestyle skier- back in the day one could do ballet-flips and spins on ski’s that looks like clumsy ice skating with poles-, aerials, and moguls.

The college was great for a while, I could ski and study. I started out studying Ski Business. After all, I was in Ski Town USA, and you could see the top of Mount Werner from the classroom. I loved learning about business and marketing, though my favourite classes were the ones in which we had a day on the mountain testing skis. After about six months I decided Ski Business would not be lucrative career choice in Australia- the country to which I was bound to return to one day- given the lack of snow and a short ski season.

Then, in a freshman English class one day, I realised that I could breeze through the course with minimal effort as my standard of English was high compared to some in the class. Immediately, my teacher, Craig Sutter, cottoned on to what I thought, and, for the first time in my life, offered me a challenge.

I could give you an A right now. Both you know that and I know that. I am not going to let that happen. You are going to have to work your arse off for an A in my course, young lady. He had said to me. The nerve. The hide. I had always been just an average student. Didn’t I deserve a break? Besides, I was having way too much fun in my new found college life to put too much effort into schoolwork.

I took the challenge, and soon one semester turned into two Degree’s- and not in Ski Business. This helped me convince my father that I loved studying so much that I should continue on and get my bachelor’s degree. I could do this at the University of Colorado, just a few hours away. So I chose ‘Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology’- or MCDB, with a minor in Biochemistry- in the mountain town of Boulder, Colorado. I think it took longer to pronounce the course than it did to graduate.

Okay- I did just tick a box on the most challenging sounding degree I could find on the list when applying to university. No, I didn’t have any idea what the degree actually was, except that it was science of some sort. And no, I did not realize at the time that giving up mathematics before my Higher