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“Like I said, I didn’t want to waste your time tonight. You were going to show up at the date with an idea that we would go further.”
“I wasn’t expecting sex, if that’s what you’re implying.” Suppressed anger deepened his voice.
“I didn’t mean that. Kissing, maybe. Or hand-holding. Whatever you were thinking might happen, it was going to be further than I was interested in going. We would arrive with very different expectations and, well, I didn’t think that would be fair to you.”
Trevor was silent long enough that Marsie worried he had hung up on her, which didn’t seem like him at all.
Of course, they hadn’t had their third date yet, so what did she know about what kind of guy Trevor was in his heart.
“Okay,” he said finally. “That hurts, but I appreciate your honesty.”
Marsie sighed with relief. Even though she wasn’t interested in going any further with Trevor, it was nice to know that she hadn’t been wrong about the kind of guy he was. Both for his sake and the sake of the woman who did fall head over heels for him, but also for selfish reasons. It meant her good-guy radar wasn’t horribly off.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Because she was. Both for herself, that she had to keep dating and keep hunting, and for him, because she’d hurt him.
“Yup. Me, too.”
They were both silent for a couple seconds. Then she heard Trevor take another breath in and what he said next surprised her. “Do you want to get dinner anyway?”
“But it wouldn’t be a date. And you want a date.”
“Well, yeah. I’ll be honest with you. You’re hot. You’re smart. You have an interesting job. We seem like we rub well against each other. But this was only going to be our third date. I’m interested, but not fully invested yet. I’m hurt, but not crushed. And I’d be interested in being friends. Everyone I know who has done online dating said it was also a good way to meet friends. I’d like to give that a shot.”
“No agenda?” This was not the reaction she had expected, though she was pleased with it.
“Other than being friends? No. No agenda.”
“Dinner is still on, then.”
“Great. See you in a couple hours.”
Marsie signed off the phone, relieved. Then she shoved her spreadsheets and laptop to the side. She needed some time away from them before she had the mental space to rethink everything she’d ever wanted in a partner.
* * *
MARSIE RETURNED FROM her dinner with Trevor relaxed, happy and certain that she had made the right decision. Trevor had been much more enjoyable to talk to when she wasn’t fretting about the fact that she couldn’t imagine kissing him. Despite their different career paths, they shared similar stories of growing up in a single-parent household—Trevor had only had his father around—and the push to be the best at all cost.
She sat back down at her laptop with a glass of wine and a new sense of confidence—both about herself and about her algorithm. She was on the right track with her thinking. Her assumptions were close.
Faces came up on her screen after she signed into the dating website. She clicked on the first face that came up, and this time she didn’t evaluate the guy against her algorithm, she evaluated the algorithm against the guy and made notes about anything in his profile—good or bad—that wasn’t reflected in her algorithm.
To fix her problem, she needed more data.
She was too busy thinking about the notes she’d just made to pay much attention to the next picture she clicked on. It wasn’t until the full profile picture loaded that she realized it was Jason’s online dating profile.
JSN0562 was his handle. Not very inventive, but she wasn’t one to talk. Hers was DeeDee10, which was supposed to represent that she had her doctorate in economics and be an actual name, rather something like kitten or snowy or whatever.
It had been a bitch to think of something. Anything clever had already been taken. God, she’d even talked with Beck about what her profile name might be communicating.
Beck had told her she was overthinking it.
She pulled her mind away from her own online dating insecurities back to Jason’s profile. She should click away. It felt like she was invading his privacy by looking at his profile. She knew him. She didn’t need to see what he said about himself.
