"He's got a house." Abby slid onto the couch beside me. "And I am going to be in debt until I'm dead."
"An actual house?" I salivated. "With enough space to raise babies?"
"First, why," Abby crinkled her nose and I remembered that most twenty-something's did not share my urge to procreate. "And it's got a pool. A shit above-ground one, which may or may not have mildew on the filter, but it is technically a pool."
"HOW?" I pulled up Instagram on my phone. "How can he afford a pool house?"
"Uh," Abby shrugged. "He's thirty?"
"YOU COULD DATE A MAN WHO OWNS A HOUSE?" I was giddy at the idea. "THIS IS AWESOME. HE PROBABLY HAS FRIENDS WHO ALSO OWN HOUSES."
"Settle," Abby held up both of her hands. "He didn't buy it, he inherited it-"
I typed the name "Michael Gottler" in the search bar. The first profile picture I saw belonged to a straight-smiled, green-eyed man of about thirty. I examined his most recent post. A shot of him and two towheaded toddlers in tow, walking along the rocky shore of a muddy lake. The caption:
my two favorite buddies. #unclemike
I loved it so much, I was going to throw up.
"-I'm nothing but the weird baby cousin, right? So why would he go out of his way to say goodbye to me at the christening?" Abby had probably expected me to pay attention to the conversation. "I mean- he was actually engaged once. That's over my head, right?"
"HE'S DAD MATERIAL." I verbal-vomited. "LOOK AT THIS. LOOK." I shook my phone at her.
"Be careful, you asshat," Abby grabbed my wrist. "You could accidentally like something."
"You have to date him."
"I don't really have control over that," Abby didn't look amused.
"DAD MATERIAL." I snapped back.
"What even is dad material?"
Poor Abby. I knew what she was trying to do, but it was too late. I vividly imagined Abby and Mike's wedding. I threw rice everywhere. There were gardenias.
"Oh no," Abby's eyes bouncedover my face. "Stop it." She shook my shoulders. "Most dads are douchebags."
WRONG.
"Dads are great. They are in that sweet spot between squishy and strong," I argued, "they perpetually wear the fashion of whatever decade they were happiest, they make puns-"
"The Newton Center guy." Abby said.
I put my index fingers in my ears, even though I knew that wasn't going to help anything. Damn my stupid, exceptional hearing.
"They grill. They watch Star Trek. They love Bill Murray movies-"
"They sexually harass twenty-three-year-old astrophysicists when they are supposed to be spending quality time with their ten-year-old daughter-"
"THEY QUOTE EVERY LINE OF BACK TO THE FUTURE-"
"They quote George Orwell when security escorts them off the premise. They call you a skank in front a room full of children."
"That was just the one guy-"
"And he's a dad. Dads are guys." Abby crossed her arms, and I knew I had lost. "Guys can post pictures with kids or dogs or whatever, but you have no idea what kind of dad they're gonna be until they actually become one."
"I guess you could assume that because they've posted pictures of cute things, instead of badly-lit shirtless selfies-"
"Assume nothing," Abby insisted. "Nobody knows anything."
I thought about the chaos dragon and the dumpster-fire of my adult life. I had to hand it to Abby. She gave solid advice. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it was solid advice.
"Nobody knows anything." I picked at the lint on my fuzzy socks. "Should I move to Texas and try to work for NASA? Should I get a Tinder again? Or would that make everything worse?"
Abby was quiet. I glanced over my shoulder at her. She stared at her phone.
"I guess I shouldn't have said nobody." Her eyes met mine. "There's always Buzzfeed."
I groaned.
"Oh come on," Abby said. "You don't know what to do. Buzzfeed can tell you exactly what you are going to do, so then you can go and make it happen and not be so directionless and depressed all the time."
"What if Buzzfeed tells me that I'm going to be doing something I really don't want to do?"
"Look, we already determined that there's no free will, right?" Abby reasoned.
"I don't think we definitively proved there is no free will," I said.
"You've been working at the Newton Center all week. You told your hiring manager that you thought you could be a sex offender during the interview." Abby said flatly.
"Yeah but-"
"Whatever Buzzfeed says you're gonna do, you're gonna do. So you might as well get it over with."
"Easier said than done," I said, even though it made me feel petulant. "I mean, have you asked Buzzfeed anything?"
"Okay, okay," Abby shrugged, "I'll take the plunge." She opened up the Buzzfeed app on her phone.
"Don't pick something lame," I peeked over her shoulder as she scrolled through the quiz section.
"Yeeash," she muttered, "does this meet with your approval, mother?" She held up her phone.
THIS COLOR TEST WILL REVEAL WHO YOU WILL DATE NEXT
"Ballsy," I admitted. "I wonder if they do full names."
"We'll find out." I watched Abby casually tap through each quiz question. I couldn't understand how she wasn't spilling her guts everywhere. Maybe it was her medical training. She had to keep her head while people were dying around her. In comparison to that kind of stress, whatever anxiety she now experienced must have been so mild it was rendered inexistent.
And yet that was that kind of anxiety that could shatter me completely.
I watched as Abby tapped her phone screen for a final time. A small smirk spread across her lips.
"NAMES?" I squeaked.
Abby shook her head, and her smirk turned into a beaming smile.
I grabbed the phone from her hands.
YOU WILL DATE A FAMILY FRIEND
At first, I was disappointed that the result was so vague. But then, a crazy thought occurred to me.
"Didn't you say Mike was your cousin's college roommate?" I asked.
"I met him at Jordie's christening, yeah," Abby covered her smile with her fist.
"ABBY." I couldn't contain myself. "WE COULD HAVE POOL PARTIES."
"First, eww," Abby giggled, "and second, my family has plenty of friends. Don't jump to any conclusions."
"DAD MATERIAL POOL HOUSE," I didn't care if I were obnoxious. This might be the best thing to have happened to us in a long while. I opened up Abby's Instagram. My plan was to look up Mike's profile again and admire all his dad material posts.
Before I could type his name into the search bar, I noticed a new follower notification. I clicked on it.
"AbbyABBYABBY." I slammed her phone into her lap. "HE JUST STARTED FOLLOWING YOU ON INSTAGRAM."
***
After Abby left, I curled up in bed with my laptop and watched twelve episodes of Scrubs on YouTube. Maybe it was the medical jargon or Zach Braff's weak jawline, but Ethan popped back into my head. I opened up his blog on my phone and scrolled through the most recent pictures of his DeLorean.
Something inside me forced me to take stock of my situation. It was 3 AM. I was wearing a blanket like a burrito. A pitch-shifted, boot-legged version of an aughties sitcom sound-tracked my bedroom. My eyes strained in the blue computer light. I would not be able to go to sleep for at least an hour. Tomorrow morning, I would have to work with morons.
And I was still somehow, somewhat hung up on a man whose strongest relationship is with his car.
There had to be a life better than this one.
I shut my computer lid. Clicked out Ethan's blog on my phone.
I opened the Buzzfeed app and prepared to change everything.
***