Page 49 of Your Pace Or Mine

My heart softens. I sure know what it’s like to have a crappy family. Seth’s parents are antisocial, to put it mildly, and haven’t been involved in his adult life that I know of. He’s one of the few friends I see regularly, but I hadn’t considered that it’s likely the same for him, a shy guy who doesn’t make friends easily. He and I only connected because we sat next to each other on the first day of computer science class and decided to be study partners.

“I’m thrilled to be part of it. Seriously. Let me know what I need to do, and I’m there.”

“What have you been up to?” Seth asks, changing the subject. He hates talking about his baggage almost as much as I do.

“I’ve been hanging out with Ashley,” I say, stopping myself before I say I slept over. Seth can’t know about the personal side of our relationship or he’ll get anxious about how it might affect the company. “We went running together this morning.”

“She seems so fun!” Diana exclaims. “I watch all her reels. You should bring her to the wedding.”

“Maybe. We’ll see,” I reply as though this is a brand-new idea and not something I’ve been imagining all day. “She could be my plus one or something.”

“I don’t get it,” Diana says, furrowing her brow. “You spend all this time with Ashley talking about your dates and her dates and your respective lives. Why don’t you just go out with each other already?”

I catch Seth’s sharp inhale, but he doesn’t jump in.

“It’s not like that,” I mumble, not wanting to go into this yet again. There’s no way I can spell it all out for Diana in a way she’ll understand. Sure, Ashley is sexy, funny as hell, and a good friend, but she wants white picket fences and two kids and a dog one day. She’s happy to have fun in the meantime, but I know that in the end, she doesn’t want to be playing the field ten years from now. And I’m not the guy who moves to the suburbs and gets a minivan. Even if I wanted to try, there’s no way us dating wouldn’t end with me letting her down.

“We want different things,” is all I can say to explain.

“Well, she’s a catch,” Diana says, and before she can keep going, I interject with a question about spreadsheets. Seth responds quickly, likely relieved to drop this conversation. We have a brief work discussion that ends when I realize he’s not paying even a smidge of attention.

“I’ll email you to follow-up,” I say, giving him an out. “You two keep celebrating. I’ll be working tomorrow if anything huge comes up.”

We sign off, and I spend the evening focused on app stuff while intermittently texting Ashley about Seth’s wedding. She sends me outlandish bachelor party ideas, and I send back deeply inappropriate memes in response, and it distracts me from wondering about my dad at all.

Mr. Six Reel (with transcript)

Mr. Six appears wearing a T-shirt with a tuxedo print.

“Hi everyone! I know it’s still March, but we’re getting close to warmer days, and you know what that means. Cottages and beaches and patios? Nope. I’m talking about weddings.

“For those of us in the wedding stage of life, we know the season starts in May and can take up every other weekend for the next few months. Hope you’ve been saving up, because engagement parties, bachelor parties, showers, gifts, and fancy attire all cost money.

“Even before Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn enlightened the world to it, many of us already knew that weddings can be prime spots for a single person to find some overnight companionship. It might last a few hours, or it might last forever. Weddings have the perfect mix of alcohol, music, people who cleaned up nice, hokey sentimentalism, and the existential fear of ending up alone. I must admit I’ve had my share of weddings where I left with a new special someone on my arm.

“Have you had a wedding hookup? Did it turn into something long term? Share in the comments.”

Comments:

Absolutely. I know there’s this stereotype that women at weddings are desperate and looking for love, but I’ll embrace it. I’m sappy and if there’s a hot guy that wants to take me home and take the edge off my singleness, I’m in. I’ve had some good times.

Oh God, I’ve started bringing a random date to stave off the guys who watched Wedding Crashers too many times and see it as an instruction manual. Just because I’m here in a dress doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you.

SIXTEEN

ASHLEY

In the last weeks of March, I jump back into the dating scene. It takes a lot of positive self-talk and a few kickboxing sessions at the gym down the street, but I manage to get out there despite my fears of meeting another Clint. Some of the men are nice enough, while others remind me why I took time off.

I go on dates with:

Callum, who has an incredibly hot Scottish accent but zero personality and is thirty minutes late to meet me for appetizers.

Todd, who works in sales and is also from Waterloo, and after talking about our upbringings and families, turns out to be the son of my mom’s second cousin. Yikes.

Vadym, an extremely large and attractive recent immigrant from Ukraine. He’s nice, but there’s a significant language barrier. This does not stop us from kissing in the booth at the bar after shots of vodka. He might have asked me to come home with him, but gestures only got us so far.

Charlie, a sweet guy who works in real estate but has no sense of humor and does not laugh a single time during dinner.