As if she’s reading my mind, Hazel texts, Don’t thump your date, ’kay?
Duly noted.
I’m not a barbarian. All spanking is consensual.
In fact, I think I might be too civilized for this. I don’t really know what to say or do because this feels remarkably like picking someone out of a lineup for sex. I swipe, tap and poke my way through a blur of pictures, feeling more awkward with each photo—each woman. There’s a person behind each picture even if all I see is the outside. There’s a hairstylist who does celebrity hair, a booker for a local TV station, a software engineer, a hand model and an organic-fruit farmer.
Holy shit, I could not be less interested. I squint at the picture currently filling up my screen. It belongs to someone named May and she seems fairly normal when I zoom in on her picture. She has shoulder-length blond hair, brown eyes, an impish smile. She’s pretty. She looks happy.
I’m a kindergarten teacher who loves yoga, apple-picking and the ocean. Weekends are for baking and watching movies or curling up with a book with my perfect someone. Right now he has four paws, a tail and a passionate love for his squeaky bone, but I’m taking applications for new friends, as well. If you want to join me, send me a message.
I dutifully try to imagine going out with her. The last non-Molly dinner date I had was with Hazel, naturally, and it was technically a business expense. We went to a casual seafood stall down on the San Francisco wharf, where we had a slightly smelly view of the water and a dozen sea lions. We worked our way through a mountain of crab on newspaper with lemon and butter because Hazel had made it clear that anything else would be a cardinal sin. I think we’d closed a big deal that day, but that memory is gone—that was just business. I remember the important stuff. The way the salt air had teased her hair into a Jackie Kennedy bouffant do. How she licked red lipstick and butter from her mouth.
I tap out a quick hello to May before I can overthink things. Max, Dev, Hazel—they’re right. I need to try meeting people. May must agree with them because she messages me right back.
Five minutes later, I have a date.
The restaurant May suggests that we meet at is highly reviewed on Yelp and is on the edge of the Santa Cruz boardwalk, cantilevered far enough out above the water that falling overboard would necessitate an ER trip. I’ve tipped/bribed the host for a table by the windows, which are open to let in the sea breeze, and I spot May the second she arrives. People sometimes lie, posting pictures from ten years ago or borrowing from a J. Crew catalog, but May looks like her picture. Blond hair floats around her shoulders and she’s wearing a lavender sundress with skinny straps. A cropped denim jacket with crystal buttons is slung over her arms and she’s wearing a pair of wedge sandals. The polka-dot ribbons crisscross around her ankles. She looks fun and approachable and sexy.
She waves at me as the maître d’ leads her to our table, so perhaps I look like my picture, too. Or whatever she imagined a venture capitalist looks like. Possibly, she just googled the hell out of me because it’s not as if my face isn’t online. I stand up to greet her. I’m waffling between a handshake and a friendly hug when she takes the decision out of my hands and brushes a kiss over my cheek. She smells like summer flowers, the kind Hazel’s sisters grow in their front yards.
I’d like to say we make awkward conversation, but we don’t. There’s mostly just silence. After we order drinks, she toys with her straw and I try to think of something to say. Work. Work is always safe. Everyone has work stories.
“So. How are the kindergartners?”
May shares a cute story about today’s arts-and-crafts project, in which macaroni noodles and toilet-paper tubes feature prominently. She shows me pictures on her phone and I make the appropriate noises.
When May asks me about my own week, I share a couple of carefully curated stories with her because I don’t quite trust that whatever I tell her will stay between the two of us. It’s happened to acquaintances—you meet a girl or a guy, have a few cocktails, swap a few stories, but then your dinner conversation shows up on a gossip site or someone horns in on the deal you were making. It’s a cutthroat world. We should talk about her instead. I rack my brain, trying to remember the details from her dating-app bio.
“Have you picked any good apples lately?”
May stares at me blankly.
I recognize that look. Usually it makes an appearance when I bust the person pitching me on something they added to their pitch deck because they thought it sounded good, but then they forgot that they put it in and that they know nothing about it.
“Apple-picking? A deep-seated love of? In your profile?”
She laughs. It’s a happy, light, totally obnoxious sound. Does she make it in bed, too? “Busted. My friend wrote that for me.”
She says this as if it’s no big deal that I just caught her in a little white lie. And maybe I am overreacting. Dating profiles are just marketing, right? And we all know the creative license a marketing department takes—the CEO doesn’t approve every single word.
I forge ahead. “Okay, so no apples. Bananas? Pears? Pecans?”
May stares at me as if I’m crazy.
When she excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room—ten long minutes after she arrives—I seize the chance to text Hazel.
SOS.
Hazel’s response is immediate: Don’t be such a baby. What’s wrong?
I have a long list, but I’ll sum up. Sitting in
