The Dating Game

by Kiley Roache

  I let my keys slip out of my hand; they clatter against the table, breaking the silence. In my room I slip out of the stupid five-hundred-dollar dress he had no business buying me. Couldn’t he have just bought me a beer or a Domino’s Pizza, like a normal college boyfriend?

  It’s funny how quickly “put this on and be ready at 8” can go from looking like a cute surprise to like being summoned as arm candy, when you scratch back the pretty facade and catch a glimpse of the person writing the note.

  I slide on baggy Warren sweatpants and my old high school track-and-field T-shirt. I’m pulling my hair, still crunchy from hair spray, into a messy bun when my phone lights up.

  Yaz: So what exactly happened?

  I texted her when I left the benefit, but she was slow responding. This is her second message, following a bunch of frowny emojis she sent over an hour ago.

  Me: Nothing.

  I send the first message and keep typing.

  Me: I mean like nothing new. it wasn’t a big fight. It wasn’t really anything... I just realized I spent so much of my time trying to rationalize his behavior, trying to remember he’s done more good than bad. Trying to convince myself and other people he wasn’t a total dickhead and it was just like why? You know. Shouldn’t it be easier than that?

  I think of my parents. They aren’t dramatically “your eyes light up the room, I can’t live a moment without you” in love. They might have been when they first got together, but it isn’t like that now.

  They don’t go on fancy vacations, and the gifts they get each other are always nice, but useful, like a sweater or new kitchen mixer. And when my mom would find out my dad had to work late, she wouldn’t cry that she couldn’t spend a night without him, she’d mumble “well that sucks” before asking me if I wanted to go for a gals’ dinner.

  But, when we watch TV, she always sits next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. When he leaves for work, she’ll run down the stairs, hair half-dry, to kiss him before he goes. And when she’s sick, he brings her tea and her favorite fuzzy blanket.

  I also have a number of distinct memories of leaving a restaurant or movie theater when the weather was cold. He’d offer her his coat and make the same joke about how funny it is that she’s always cold when she “looks pretty hot to him.” And it just seems so sweet and easy.

  My dad always told me not to judge a guy by how he treats me, but by how he treats the waiter. Because he might be trying to impress me now, but it’s how he treats people he’s not trying to win over that shows you his true character. And that after the initial flirtation fades, that is the person you’ll be in the relationship with. He would give me this speech when I was heading off to homecoming or another school event, even though I was always going with a group of friends, so it wasn’t too terribly relevant.

  But now that I think about it, he has a point. Maybe a mean person who happens to be nice to you is still a mean person. And maybe you are the exception, but that doesn’t mean you’re special. It just means that they want something from you.

  My phone buzzes.

  Yaz: Have you made it home?

  I stare at the words. I guess, I type, still not really sure I can say this dorm room is my home. I pause and click backspace. There’s no need to be melodramatic; she meant it quite literally.

  Me: Yep

  I slide the phone into my sweatpants pocket and pad into the living room, not bothering to click on the light, the shine of the streetlight outside the window making it easy enough to see.

  I stare at the hulking flower arrangement that seems to take up most of the room. I think of the helicopters, the Instagram posts about me being the most beautiful girl in the world, the only one who could make me settle down. I reach out and touch one of the roses, and the edges of the petal crumple in my hand. No longer silky soft, the flowers are dry and fragile. They’re dying.

  I look at the pieces in my hand, then sigh and dust them off as I make my way to the couch. I flop down and pull the throw blanket off the back, cuddling up with me, myself and I.

  It starts to rain outside and I wonder if I should make tea. I’m not sure if it would help. I’m not really cold, not really sad. There’s just a kind of a dull, vague pain throughout my body.

  It’s different this time, to see the sky open up over California. It’s not a one day of gloom in an always-sunny place, but needed replenishment in a time of drought. Funny how easily your perspective can change like that.

  I am deep in my melodramatic thoughts about metaphors and karma and am seriously considering turning on some Adele or Lorde when someone knocks aggressively on the door.

  “Hello!” Yaz says as soon as I open it. She looks almost manic with her soaking wet hair, makeup smeared down her face and giant smile. She shoves the large cardboard box in her arms toward me and pushes past me into the room.

  “What are you doing here? It’s pouring rain.”

  “Are you kidding? One of my girlfriends is going through a breakup. My bat signal went off.” She slides off her raincoat and folds it over the back of a chair. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could keep me away. I’m like a Marine.”

  I laugh. “I’m pretty sure that’s the Post Office, not the Marine Corps.”

  She wrinkles her nose, which is slightly pink from the cold. “God, that seems a bit over-the-top for people delivering letters.”

  I shrug as I shut the front door. “You gotta think about a time before Snapchat or texting.”

  She considers this, bobbing her head back and forth as she leans down to peel off her clunky Hunter boots. They make a loud squeaky sound every time she moves. It’s so funny how people here pull all sorts of rain clothes out of nowhere as soon as a cloud appears.

  It rains in Minnesota, and people just wear whatever they were gonna wear that day. But in California, rain is An Occasion.

  “Okay!” She runs her hands through her dripping hair and exhales. “Where was I?” She takes the box back from me. “Right, so we have wine, chocolate, ice cream, Chinese menus—because ordering it to my room and then getting it soaked as I walked across campus seemed stupid. Figure out what you want, and I’ll cue up a rom-com for while we wait, or maybe something less romantic and more girl power? How about Chicago, or do you think it’s too murder-y?”

  She blinks at me, waiting for a response, but I just smile, thinking that maybe some of the grandest, most romantic gestures don’t come from boys after all.

  Part Four

  Exit Strategy

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Roberto

  “Should I get hot wings?” Sara asks. She looks at me over her menu, biting her lip as she considers this important quandary. “Like, I’m not hungry at all. But at the same time, they’re just one of the best foods invented, so how do you not?”

  I laugh. “It’s up to you.”

  We’re sitting in a sports bar near campus. It’s one of the few places that actually resembles a college bar. Only a few places in town cater to students—most establishments are wine bars and swanky restaurants courting tech employees.

  She flips the page of the menu, her freshly painted nails sparkling in the dim light of the pub.

  Sara told me about the breakup as soon as I opened my door. The words sort of tumbled out of her mouth, “Braden-and-I-broke-up-and-I-know-we-are-not-talking-but-I-need-my-best-friend-and-can-we-just-skip-the-drama-and-go-get-a-beer?”

  So I said, “Okay, let me get my keys.” So far, we’ve talked a lot about sports games neither of us saw but we heard happened, the weather being nice again, a dog she saw from across the street, and now, Buffalo wings. Which is fine with me.

  “Are you guys ready to order?”

  I look up to see our waitress, a thirtysomething woman in a black minidress and high ponytail. Her name tag says Natalie.

  “Uh...” I gla
nce at the menu. I realize I’ve spent the last four minutes studying Sara instead of the beer selections. “I’ll take a Guinness.”

  That seems like the type of thing they probably have everywhere. Natalie nods and scratches a few words onto her notepad. I close my menu.

  “Do you have a recommendation for wine?” Sara looks up from her menu.

  Natalie narrows her eyes. “You look pretty young. Can I see some ID?”

  “Oh.” Sara pulls her purse onto the table. “Sure.” She hands her the card quickly and turns back to her menu.

  “This is expired, Lauren.” Claire taps her notepad with her pen.

  “Yeah, I know.” Sara crinkles her nose. “I’m here for school. Doing my fifth year, and haven’t been back to Ohio to renew it.”

  The waitress nods knowingly. “I’m from the Midwest too, small town in Iowa.” She winks. “I’ll get you a beer.”

  Natalie sets down Sara’s fake ID and scoops up the menus.

  Once she’s over by the bar, I hold up my hand to block the side of my mouth and whisper, “Did I miss something? You didn’t ask for a beer, right?”

  Sara shakes her head, a huge smile spreading across her face. “Nope. I was gonna get a rosé.” She laughs. “But I wasn’t gonna argue after that.”

  “Yeah, that was smooth,” I say.

  Sara reaches for a pretzel from the bowl in the middle of the table. She examines it before taking a nibble.

  I chuckle.

  “What?” she asks, her eyes wide.

  “I was just thinking about that first party we went to, and how nervous you were, trying to order and everything. Look at you now.” I gesture in her direction. “You have a whole backstory. You, Sara Jones, a fifth year. I would never have seen that coming.”

  She snorts but a smile plays on the edge of her lips. “My name is Lauren.”

  Over by the bar, Natalie pushes the tap back into place and loads two full pints onto her tray.

  “Shhh shhh,” Sara says, although I wasn’t saying anything. “She’s coming. Don’t talk about it anymore.” She transitions from a full panic mode to a gracious smile as Natalie slides up to the table with our drinks.

  The opening bars of a song I used to really love and forgot about starts to play in the background as I take the first sip of my beer and Sara asks me another small-talk question.

  * * *

  There are two empties, one half-full beer, a half-eaten bowl of pretzels and one napkin ripped to shreds in front of Sara when she says, “Do you think there is a point to heartbreak?”

  She doesn’t look away. Her hands are still fiddling with napkin bits, but she looks me in the eye as she asks a question that most people would step around, even with those who know them best.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like everyone says everything happens for a reason and you learn about yourself and all that. But it seems so scary. To give so much of yourself away.”

  She looks down at her half-empty beer.

  “Even just dating Braden for a few months, I could feel myself becoming more like him.” She shakes her head. “I hate feeling like who I am is being muddled by getting involved with someone if they aren’t it, you know?”

  I consider this. “I think that if you love someone, you probably like the things that make them them, you know? Like their little quirks and sayings as well as the way they look at the world and live their lives. There’s a reason you’re drawn to their spirit, right?” I swallow and look at my hands. I’m trying to keep the vision in my mind a generic one. To not think of her, and the way she gets over-the-top excited about color coding or her inexhaustible energy or even just her smile as I say these things.

  “So when you start to notice that you’re picking up these little habits, or maybe that even when you think about the bigger questions in life, you can’t help but have things they said pop into your mind...that’s not a bad thing, right? Because you’re becoming more like that quality that drew you to them. Which is not to say loss doesn’t hurt, or that having that person leave that place in your life won’t suck for a while. But I think that if you walk away having become more like the one you admired, who was able to light up any room—and make a boring trip running errands something you’d look forward to all day, then how could it have been a bad choice?”

  Sara sweeps up the napkin bits, piling them high on the dark wood table that is slightly sticky in a way that bar tables always seem to be. “But what if you don’t like the way you’re changing? What if you find yourself becoming more selfish, more negative, more angry?”

  I consider this. There is a polite answer, and a true one. I go for true. “If you don’t like them, maybe you shouldn’t be with them.”

  We both laugh about that.

  “Ugh.” She places her head in her hands. “I am so stupid.” She looks back up at me. “How is it that I could be so romanced by someone, have a crush on him, think maybe even I might one day love him and not even like him as a human?”

  “I don’t think that makes you stupid,” I say. “I think a lot of us are drawn to people who are—” I try to ease the feeling in the pit of my stomach while I think of Braden and Sara together “—charming. Even if that charm is manipulation. Even if they’re bad people, they’re tempting when they say the right things.”

  She presses her lips together and nods. She looks down at the napkin bits. “I’m sorry, you know, about...” She looks me in the eyes. “Questioning doing the camp. And how I reacted when you called me out on it. And just...for being a shitty friend recently.”

  Sometimes this weird thing happens, where someone hurts you, and you end up comforting them. Reassuring someone that you’re not that mad about the bad thing that they did. It’s almost like you end up apologizing to them, when you did nothing wrong.

  Sara looks at me, her long eyelashes blinking over her doe-like eyes.

  I’m not going to pretend that her ditching me and the organization that is so important to her wasn’t wrong. And I don’t want to say, “it’s okay” because it wasn’t. But I know Sara isn’t her worst moments. There’s a reason I am still her friend, that I am still here now.

  “Just, you know, next time, do better,” I say.

  She nods.

  * * *

  As night creeps closer to early morning, the bar fills up with more and more people. The crowd gets younger and less dressed. The vibe turns from people sitting in booths and nibbling on food to people crowding together so close that you can barely get to the bar or the bathroom without stepping on toes.

  “Do you wanna take a shot?” Sara yells over the music, which has doubled in volume in our time here.

  “Sure!” I yell.

  We shimmy our way to the bar. There is no room to stand against the bar, so we hover behind a guy and girl who already have their drinks. Hopefully they’ll move soon.

  They don’t seem to notice us though, and I’m scared to say excuse me. I can’t hear what they’re saying over the bass radiating from the speaker, but given their body language, it does not seem pleasant.

  The guy reaches into his back pocket and pulls out an iPhone. He opens an app I recognize far too well and pulls up the profile of the girl. She has Silver status. He holds out the phone and makes a show of unmatching with her.

  Rage grows in the girl’s eyes. She picks up her full beer and throws it on him.

  “Oh shit.” I stumble back to avoid being sprayed, bumping into Sara in the process.

  “What the fuck?” he yells.

  “You hurt someone’s rating just because they won’t sleep with you on the first freaking date!” the girl yells. “It’s against the rules!”

  “There are no rules!” He wipes beer off his face. “And please, don’t act so innocent—I know you’ve been giving head for upvotes for months.”

  “What di
d you just say?”

  “Lizzy, what’s going on?” Another guy has pushed through the crowd.

  “This asshole just called me a whore.” She crosses her arms.

  He shoves past us, closing the distance between them. “What’d you call my sister?” He grabs a fistful of the guy’s shirt.

  “Get your hands off me.” The douchey guy coils his arm, and I realize what is about to happen.

  I turn and grab Sara’s shoulders. “Move.”

  We’re pushing through the crowd when the first punch lands square in the brother’s jaw. He must fight back, because I hear people yelling “Stop!” and a few chanting “Fight, fight!”

  I do not look back. I’ve heard too many stories to want to stick around to see if someone uses a broken bottle or something worse.

  Despite the pandemonium of what might be Palo Alto’s first bar fight, we’re able to make it out the front door. I breathe in the fresh air of the quiet street and let out a long exhale.

  “That was wild,” I say.

  When Sara doesn’t reply, I turn to make sure she’s okay. She doesn’t look injured, but her face is chalk white. “What the hell have we done?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sara

  “Dude, it started a legit fight.” I set down a tray on one of the long industrial tables.

  Yaz sets hers across from me and slides into her seat.

  “That’s bonkers,” she says.

  I nod and take a bite of my tacos. Not bad for dining hall food. I finish chewing and dab my face with a paper napkin. “I’m seriously starting to be embarrassed that people know I made it,” I say.

  “About that...” Yaz moves her fork around her salad. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I deleted the app from my phone.”

  My chest tightens. “For real?”

  Yaz was one of the biggest fans of Perfect10 I know.

  “Yeah.” She nods. “It is messing with my psyche too much. I know I’m awesome, and I don’t need random dudes to weigh in about whether or not that’s true.”