George's boss appeared and whisked the poor man away to scenes of spreadsheets and dollar signs. Maisie tore into her email, answering one after another until 10:00 announced the start of the staff meeting. As she walked down the hall to the large conference room, she could feel her co-workers looking at her. Had tale of the page spread throughout the office already?
Her anxiety level grew throughout the meeting, and more than once she was sure a pair of women across the table were whispering about her. She'd purposefully kept her social media profiles private so that her personal life wouldn't interfere with her professional life, but drunk Maisie had not taken that same precaution.
"Are you with us, Ms. Frampton?" Mr. Roseberg, Maisie's direct boss, asked. She swung her head in his direction.
"I'm sorry?"
Roseberg frowned. "I asked for your sales projections for the rest of the month."
"Oh! Of course." She shuffled through the paperwork she'd brought into the meeting and read off the numbers he wanted. Everyone stared at her. When she was finished. Roseberg cleared his throat and moved on to the next salesperson. Maisie wanted to kick herself for allowing the stupid facebook page to be a distraction at work. She would delete it as soon as she got home.
****
Her plan to delete the page had not changed by 6PM, when she finally walked through the door of her apartment, greeted as ever by Dashwood rubbing against her legs. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to tell Talia, who was waiting on the couch.
"Good, you're back! I've got some initial results for you." Talia waved a small stack of paper in the air. Maisie dropped into the seat next to her.
"I gave you a key for emergencies."
"Your love life is in life-or-death mode. Is that not an emergency? Here." She dropped the research into Maisie's lap and kicked her feet onto the coffee table. "Plus, my roommate is being a huge twat and I needed to get away."
"It's 6:00. You get off work at 5:00. How much time could you have actually spent with her today?" Maisie glanced down at the list of names. Talia had highlighted, circled, marked through in red, and made notes on each one of the prospects Maisie had picked out.
"About twenty minutes, but I only needed thirty seconds to be completely over it. Her douchey boyfriend was over again, eating MY cereal, and surfing porn sites while Carrie cooked him dinner."
"Get. A. New. Roomate."
Talia sighed. "I've tried. Everyone's married with kids. Except..."
"Don't say me! You know it would be disastrous if we lived together. I love you too much to cohabitate."
"Fine." Talia pouted. "I guess I'm just stuck with the crazy bitch and the tool-y asshole."
"You could always live by yourself."
"No, I can't. You know I need someone close at hand at all times."
Maisie held out both hands. Raising the right, she said, "Living alone, having no one to pester at three in the morning when you come up with the brilliant idea to dye your hair pink, or," she lowered her right hand and raised the left, "living with the psycho who steals your food and clothes, insists aliens abduct her once a month, and has practically invited her gross boyfriend to move in without paying rent or utilities. Sounds like a no-brainer to me."
"Ugh. Enough about Carrie. None of the men you had me look into are serial killers, at least from what I can tell, but there are definitely a few misogynists to stay away from." Talia pointed at the names she'd crossed out. "Now these," indicating the highlighted portions of the page, "are winners. Not surprisingly, they were mostly nominated by friends or family, not themselves. Jack," she jabbed the first highlighted name, "is a veterinarian who volunteers at homeless shelters on the weekends."
"Sounds promising."
"Yep, and I couldn't find any evidence that he supports Trump, likes video games, or sends dick pics to unsuspecting women."
"Great, search over! I'll just marry Jack."
"You have a date set up tomorrow night." Talia grinned and flipped to the second page in the stack. She'd already scheduled Maisie for three dates.
"I told you I would contact anyone who checked out!"
"I didn't believe you."
Maisie checked her annoyance. Truthfully, she wasn't sure if she believed herself either. Dates with complete strangers were not high up on her list of things-to-do. She could always back out, but as she looked at the information in her lap, she knew it was now or never. When would she finally look for someone? Passively going along with Talia to every bar in Raleigh was not how she was going to meet a nice man, and despite what she told her mother, she wasn't thrilled with the lack of romance in her life. She looked up at her friend. "What am I going to wear?"