User Unknown

Chapter 8: Choices

unknown*user: You've been very quiet today, is everything okay?

I felt the message from James ping up on the phone in the bottom of my bag at the exact moment I met my last-minute date — Andrew, a thirty-five-year-old mortgage broker who was about three inches shorter than he'd written on his online dating profile, but took my mind off the predicament with James for long enough to persuade me to meet him for a drink. He'd managed to make me chuckle with his messages and didn't appear too offensive-looking in his profile pictures. Not that that means anything these days, of course; those profile pictures could easily have been ten years old or more. Still, I figured I could give him a chance since I had nothing else better to do.

"Most girls don't like to meet on the first day, I was surprised when you said yes," he laughed as I introduced myself to him, and he ordered me a glass of white wine without even asking what I wanted to drink first.

"Well, I was free, you were free, this seemed like a nice pub," I offered in way of a response, cocking my head and eyeing the dated, faded interior that in absolutely no way matched the modern-looking exterior. I'd been wrong about the pub and it was becoming more and more apparent that I'd been wrong about the man, too. I was sure of that right when he said: "I don't really like red lipstick, but you wear it well, I suppose."

It's astonishing what you can learn - and dislike - about someone while you wait to be served at the bar.

"So, what do you do for work?" he rambled, waving a £20 note around in a bid to get the barmaid's attention.

Inwardly, I groaned. We were about to do the dating merry-go-round of bullshit dating questions: career, home, family life, favourite sexual position — I was sure of it.

"I'm a personal assistant. And you're a mortgage broker, right?" I replied, checking out the clock on the wood-panelled wall behind him and wondering how long you were morally obligated to stay on a first date before making up a crappy and obviously fake excuse to leave.

"Yep, mortgage broker. Do you need a mortgage?" he laughed and snorted, wrinkling his nose up as he did so. If I'd have been into him, the snort and the nose-wrinkle would've been quite cute, but I wasn't, so I just found it repulsive. I'd also noticed that his socks didn't match, and that his jeans were ever-so-slightly too short in the leg. Not that those were viable reasons not to date someone, obviously, but they were certainly added to the mounting pile of reasons why I didn't want to date him.

"Nope, but I'll give you a call if I do!" I fake-laughed back, without a snort. My mind was somewhere else. Specifically, it was wondering whether or not forty-five minutes was too short for a first date. It had taken us almost twenty minutes to introduce ourselves, grab drinks at the bar, and eventually find a table that wasn't taken/sticky/covered in an assortment of empty and abandoned glasses. I reckoned I could probably survive another twenty/twenty-five minutes if I squeezed a second large glass of wine in. Thirty minutes, at a push.

"So, do you live alone?" His voice brought me back from my escape-plan thoughts.

"Yep, all alone. You?" I knew I was giving him barely anything to work with, but I also couldn't be bothered with the small talk. He wasn't a bad-looking man: dark, short-shaved hair, and a face that was kind and warm. His eyes crinkled up at the edges when he smiled, which I quite liked. He seemed genuine. On any other day, I might've been a little interested in him. Today, however, my body longed to be lounging on my couch, trashy reality TV playing in the background; and my mind wanted to be entertained with the mysterious, anonymous new friend in my life and all of his witty conversation starters. Maybe if I was a real bore to this Andrew fellow, he'd make his excuses and leave? Just how immoral was it to deliberately tank a date you weren't at all into?