Page 7 of Your Pace Or Mine

ASHLEY

I stare at my phone, contemplating the message Sebastian sent earlier.

Sebastian:

Hey Ashley, thanks for everything last night and for considering my proposal. I hope all is good between us. I’ll send the paperwork for Single In The Six to your email today.

It’s succinct, like a period at the end of our brief fling. I suppose this is better than a drawn-out talk about our emotions, but it leaves me feeling like he’d checked a box.

You’re the one who pretended to be asleep. I ignore that thought.

I leave it for an hour and a half, just so he’ll know I’m not in a rush. Instead of replying, I force myself to focus on work, the way I’ve been distracting myself all morning. It’s a busy season at the marketing firm where I work, and one of my regular clients is working on a rebrand. I check some analytics for that portfolio, then respond to a message from my manager about some invoices.

When I reply to Sebastian, it’s as blasé as possible; if he’s going to act like nothing happened, so will I. We both know this can’t go anywhere. He doesn’t do relationships, and that’s what I’m looking for, even if the work situation wasn’t already a complication. Still, would it have killed him to act at least a little conflicted about it?

After I request the paperwork, I do some digging on dating influencers, my heart sinking at how many male podcasts focus on getting laid and how few accounts actually discuss finding healthy relationships. Maybe I have the chance to do something useful here and open a dialogue about dating in this city. I tell myself that’s what the butterflies in my stomach are about. That they have nothing to do with Sebastian Rossi.

There are few things I enjoy more than an easy run with my best friend while we get caught up on life. I meet Laurel outside my building to run five kilometers around the neighborhood. I like living in midtown with its mix of shops, restaurants, apartment buildings, and older houses that I’ll never be able to afford. It’s close to the subway line, but not as hectic and crowded as the downtown core. Laurel and I are bundled up against the late January chill. She’s wearing earmuffs over her long dark hair and an LED vest that makes her look like an extra from some sci fi movie. The drivers will certainly see us now. I’ll bet Cal bought the vest since he’s very into safety.

“Stevie didn’t want to come?” she asks. Stevie Choi is the third member of our trio, but her young children make workday outings difficult.

I chuckle, remembering the string of nosey texts Stevie sent me. “She was so mad she had to take the kids to piano lessons. You know she’s been dying for something juicy to happen to me since you’re boring now.”

Stevie and her husband Andy have been happily married for as long as I’ve known them, but she loves living vicariously through me and Laurel. Her advice in most situations is to go with your heart—or some other part of your anatomy—and think it through later. Since Laurel has been coupled up for several months now, it’s on me to bring the entertainment that will compete with Stevie’s favorite Korean dramas, and sadly, I’ve been neglectful in that department.

Laurel doesn’t protest being called boring. We take a selfie and drop it in our group chat before starting at a leisurely pace. We run the first few blocks mostly in silence, letting go of the stress of the day and adjusting to the cold air. About halfway through our run, I tell her about Sebastian’s proposal. She gets indignant, which doesn’t fully surprise me since she’s never really liked him. They’ve only met a couple of times, but he made the mistake of flirting heavily with her, and she wasn’t into it. I suspect she thinks he broke my heart back in the day, though I’d never admit to having had romantic feelings for him; any such feelings were a long time ago and are long gone. Now he’s just a friend who is nice to look at. However, I don’t plan to look closely at him for a long, long time.

“So he dropped this work collaboration, then got into bed with you? This feels like a ‘me too’ scenario.”

“It’s not like that,” I protest. “I’m the one who suggested he come over, and I initiated everything else. I know you don’t like him, but this was on me.”

She gives me a skeptical glance. “He didn’t have to go along with it.”

“You know it’s hard for men to resist my charms, Laur,” I joke.

“Well, obviously you’re hot as hell and any straight man would want to get with you,” she says in such an emphatic tone that I feel a surge of appreciation for her. “Still, I’d expect him to resist, given you were drinking and he asked you to work with him.”

“I guess so. But we have a history, and it just happened.” There’s not much more to say to justify being this foolish and letting our sex drives take the wheel for either of us.

“Did you hear from him today?”

“He sent a text. We’re working through the paperwork.”

“And you’re still going to do it?”

“Sure, why not? It’s an interesting strategy, and I’d be compensated for doing what I want to do anyway—use the app to meet eligible men. Seems like a win-win.”

We stop at an intersection, and I fiddle with my gloves, unsure about her reaction. Sebastian isn’t a terrible person, but after what happened, I’d lecture me if our situations were reversed.

She frowns. “It doesn’t feel weird, him paying you to go on dates with other guys?”

“It’s the company paying me, not him personally. I’ll be doing marketing promos and stuff. It’s not like they’ll tell me who to go out with or how far to go. If I hate it, I’ll quit.” I’ve done enough contracts that I know to read the fine print. Sebastian would rue the day he tried to lock me into a contract that left me vulnerable.

“I guess. If you want to.”

Her reluctant tone grates on me. I spent last summer focused on other people’s weddings: between my sister, my cousin, and an old roommate, I paid a fortune celebrating everyone else’s romantic successes. By the end, I was broke and bloated from all the appetizers. Why shouldn’t I put my own love life front and center for once? Why does everyone else get a happy ending?

“Look, Laurel, it’s a bleak landscape out there,” I snap. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what the dating pool looks like, but it’s getting shallower by the day. If someone’s going to pay me to meet guys in the hopes that one of them will own more than three shirts and a folding table and wants to go to an actual restaurant before propositioning me, I’m willing to try it out. We can’t all fall head over heels with the guy we cut off in traffic.”