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I would need to thank Robbie and Jack at the bar for convincing me to come. Between my scene during rehearsal and now this, it was turning out to be a fantastic night.
When I returned to the booth with my pitcher of beer, Braden wasn’t alone.
Sitting with him were three other guys. They were leaning close, talking quietly, and then cut off when I approached. They all looked vaguely familiar, but I recognized the guy in the tank top first. He was the stage hand from the theater, the one who had installed the lights.
“See?” he said to the others while pointing at me. “She’s definitely Angela from Tinder.”
7
Nadia
It took me a moment to realize I was Angela. And this guy had just called me out on it.
“Uh, what?” I said. “Who are you?”
“You’re Angela, the Tinder hookup we were meeting tonight.” He held up his phone and nodded. “Look, I’m not saying I’m a digital forensics expert when it comes to tits, but this is totally you.”
“Is it?” Braden asked me. “Did you go into the bathroom and cancel the date?”
All four of them were staring at me. I felt like I’d been ambushed.
“Yes,” I said.
Braden visibly deflated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I crossed my arms. “Why did you give me that bullshit story about not liking Tinder?”
“Because it’s true,” one of the other guys said. “Braden isn’t the kind of guy who trolls Tinder for sex. Hey, aren’t you the backup dancer in the show? Tatiana’s understudy?”
I realized how I knew him. The blond hair, the glasses, the button-down shirt… “You’re the technician whose lights malfunctioned,” I said.
“His name’s Andy,” Braden said.
“My lights are fine!” Andy insisted, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “It’s that damn theater that’s messed up.”
Once I knew who three of them were, it was easier to recognize the fourth guy. Dorian, one of the minor roles in the show. I danced with him for a few songs in the show, including one of the numbers we’d rehearsed tonight.
“What is all of this?” I gestured at the four of them. “Are you all here for moral support? Scoping out his Tinder dates before he takes them home? Were you sitting in another booth, judging how hot I was?”
“It’s not like that,” Braden began.
“Then what is it like?” I demanded with a little more anger than I intended. “You claim you don’t use Tinder, yet here you are, waiting on a Tinder date with your buddies watching.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
I finally sat down, hip-checking Dorian until he gave me more room on the booth. I poured beer from my fresh pitcher into my glass and set it down hard on the wooden surface.
“I’ve got beer and time to kill. How about you explain it to me?”
The four of them shared a look. One that excluded me. I was about to get up and walk away when the stage hand guy—Ryan was his name, I thought?—spoke up.
“It’s not Braden’s profile.”
I snorted. “It’s got his name and photo, but it’s not him?”
Ryan rolled his eyes at me. “It’s a photo of the four of us. And the name on the profile says BRAD, all in caps.”
“Which is short for Braden.”
