What girls do for fun? How about eating a bag of chocolate chips in bed?
Everyone has their dirty little secrets.
Mine are cocoa-colored and run down my chin, smearing onto my pillow. They’re not so noticable in the dark. But when the lights come on?
I. Get. Caught.
“I can’t believe you did it again, Michelle,” my husband says, snatching the half-empty bag of chocolate chips from my nightstand. “Go look in the mirror. You look like a Chocoholic Zombie.”
I smile and lick my lips. So what if my hair sticks out in several directions and my eyes are glassy from all the caffeine? I don’t often go to bed with a bag of Nestle’s finest – but I make no apologies when I do.
Life is too short. Chocolate is too good. And chocolate with the lights out? Well, that’s even better.
“It’s what us single girls do for fun,” my pal Sheila Shearlock told me later that day.
Thrice divorced with a penchant for guilty pleasures, Sheila says chocolate has been there for her when men haven’t.
“Guys come and go but chocolate is forever,” she said. “And a good homemade brownie can make your toes curl!”
All this talk of chocolate was making me hungry. So I grabbed a dark chocolate Moser Roth bar from the cabinet and nibbled while we chatted. “You know the most sacred of all chocolate holidays is coming up,” I told my friend.
“Yes, Valentines Day! It’s circled on my calendar. But the day after is when all the good stuff goes on sale. You gotta hit the stores early on Feb. 15 if you want to snag the half-priced Dove Promises.”
Speaking of Promises, I promised my husband I wouldn’t take chocolate to bed any more. So when he caught me, I tried to smooth things over with a joke.
“How many chocolate chips equal happiness?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither. But so far its not 1,542.”
“You still have chocolate on your chin, Michelle,” he said.
“When life gives you lemons make chocolate milk.”
He cracked a smile. Not a big one. But I saw it.
