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Tom purses his lips. “I asked him about that yesterday. They’d been seeing each other for six or eight weeks. He said she was getting too serious, and he broke things off because he couldn’t envision the future she wanted them to have.”
“I wonder what she was picturing,” Lila muses.
“He gave me the impression she wanted something permanent.”
“After less than two months? That’s kind of fast.” I shake my head. No wonder he ended things.
He nods. “That’s what he said.”
“I can’t fault him for that.”
Tom studies my face. “So you’re considering having dinner with him?”
I frown. “I don’t know. He’s way out of my league.”
Lila’s head whips toward me. “Excuse me?”
“You know,” I say, reddening. “Good-looking, smooth, flirty.” A little too smooth, actually. I don’t want to be one more woman who falls for his lines.
Tom puts down his coffee. “He’s a flirt, I’ll give you that, but that ‘out of your league’ business is a crock of shit. If anything, it’s the other way around.” I scoff, and Tom frowns. “I’m serious, Charlie. Quit selling yourself short.”
“Tom’s right,” Lila agrees. “You don’t see yourself the way others do.”
“Fine. I’ll think about it.” I get to my feet, uncomfortable with this turn in conversation. “I need to restock my massage room. I’m low on towels.” Lila raises an eyebrow, knowing I refilled them yesterday, but she lets me leave without commenting.
Being a massage therapist provides a lot of mental downtime. Most clients don’t talk during their massages, preferring to drift off in silent relaxation. This can be good or bad, depending on my state of mind. Today I spend hours obsessing over whether or not to invite Blake to dinner.
After an entire day of waffling, I decide I’m not ready for someone of Blake’s caliber. He can have any woman he wants, and he knows it. I may be tired of old gray mares, but I’m not up to dating a thoroughbred. He’s too flirtatious for me to be comfortable with one on one, and the entire point is for me to become comfortable again. I catch Lila at work the next morning.
“I’m not quite ready for dinner with Blake yet,” I tell her.
She raises one delicate brow. “Don’t tell me this is more bullshit about him being out of your league again.”
I frown. “Not exactly. It’s more like he’s too much of a jump from the old-gray-mare league for me.”
“So you’re willing to start seeing guys again, just not Blake,” she clarifies. I nod reluctantly. “Does this mean you’re ready for me to check the dating app?”
I sigh heavily. “Line them up. It doesn’t have to be just Wednesdays.”
I’m a glutton for punishment.
The next few weeks consist of one comically bad date after another. There’s Donovan, who was perfectly nice if you didn’t mind the five drinks he consumed during dinner, not counting the one in his hand when I arrived. Then there was Michael, who clearly wasn’t thirty-five and whose toupee kept slipping while he tried to surreptitiously slide it back into place. Paul never stopped talking long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. Quinn never spoke at all except to give one or two-word answers to my questions. Dylan wore half a gallon of cheap cologne and complained about the price of everything. Jay spent so much time talking about his ex-girlfriend Amy that I felt like I knew her by the time the check finally came. Vinnie seemed to be a cardboard copy of a movie mobster, from his slicked-back hair to the overly-heavy Jersey accent to talking with his hands. I half expected him to rush into the kitchen of the (naturally) Italian restaurant to offer to slice their garlic with a razor blade. I did have a nice time with Tyson, the guy who redid the shower for Mark, but he’s got too much drama in his life already to add mine to his pile. (My words, not his.) His ex-wife is stalking him, he’s raising their three kids, all of whom are under the age of ten, and his brief fling from the summer he was seventeen just dropped his previously-undisclosed teenage daughter on his doorstep so she could elope with her much-younger contractor who doesn't want kids.
I never felt a single spark, not even with Tyson, whom I genuinely liked. They were all handsome, decent guys, but I may as well have been conducting a research project.
“I don’t know why I even bother,” I tell Tom and Lila over our usual Whiner doughnuts and coffee. Given my track record, we’ve dropped the “Winner” portion of the name. I describe my far-too-long evening with Alex, who prefers to be called Axel and is trying to launch his grunge band. He takes the “grunge” part very seriously, having arrived in torn jeans and dirty flannel, reeking of body odor. “The waiter thought he was homeless and offered him a free takeout meal. It was mortifying explaining that he’s not homeless, he’s my date.”
Tom turns to me. “Blake’s still hounding me to tell you to have dinner with him.”
I sigh. “I’ll think about it. He can’t be any worse than the guys I’ve been out with lately.”
By Friday morning, I’ve decided. Not dinner, but drinks, and not in the evening, but during the day over the weekend. I text him, erasing and rewriting my words repeatedly before finally forcing myself to hit send before I lose my nerve. My text is nothing short of sheer poetry.
“Do you have plans tomorrow afternoon? Thought maybe we could meet for a drink.”
Blake answers immediately. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
I blush, uncertain how to respond. Before I can decide, another text lands. “You won’t need me drunk to take advantage of me. In fact, I’d prefer to be sober.”
