by Lauren Wood
“Ha, real funny. I’m not being served at the soup kitchen,” he replied. “I’m a volunteer there. And if you’re going to follow me in, you best be prepared to put on an apron and pick up a ladle.”
I stopped for a moment, trying to soak up this new information. But I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around it.
“Wait...I didn’t even realize soup kitchens were still a thing.”
“You’re aware worldwide hunger is still a thing, right?” he scoffed.
“Sure...I guess. Well, actually, I never really think about it.”
He stared down at me from the corner while we waited to cross.
“You don’t have to look at me like that.” I sighed. “I know how awful that sounds. I’m busy with work, that’s all. I don’t have time for much else. What do you do, anyways, that affords you the flexibility to work at a soup kitchen in the middle of a Monday morning?”
“You could say I’m retired.” The light changed and he carried on across the crowded street, striding in between the foot traffic.
I quickly scurried behind, dodging other people passing by on the sidewalk. “Retired? But you’re only thirty-five.”
He didn’t bother answering, but I refused to lay off of him. I followed him right up to the doors of the soup kitchen and then inside, feeling more confused than ever about exactly who this Mark Silver guy was.
Three hours later, my feet were killing me. Heels weren’t exactly the best for standing in one place, filling bowl after bowl with steaming beef stew. Aside from Mark and me, there were only two or three other volunteers. It took our small group a long time to serve the hordes of hungry people that lined up outside.
“I guess it’s good I was there,” I offered as we left. “Where were the rest of the volunteers?”
“That was it,” he answered, still not slowing down one bit. His feet took off the moment they hit the pavement and he was well on his way to his next destination...which I could only hope involved some kind of lunch and maybe a cocktail.
But as we carried on, I realized we were going deeper into that side of town...right to the youth center on the corner. I was in disbelief when we started up the front steps.
“Please tell me this place has a bar and a salad menu,” I huffed, out of breath from all the walking. Mark was unamused. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You volunteer here, too?”
“I tutor kids after school,” he said dismissively. “Given all your background in youth business leagues, I’m sure you have a thing or two you can contribute.”
He continued up the steps, leaving me standing there with my mouth gaping wide. Who was this guy? Some kind of saint? How did he have the money to afford him the time to do all of this stuff? Soup kitchens and after-school programs weren’t exactly how I expected an internet troll to spend his days.
And he wasn’t done. After the community center, he dragged me along to a nursing home, where he visited with residents. By the end of it, my head was spinning. I had made more charitable contributions of my time in one day than I had in my entire life...and I didn’t even feel good about it. I just felt confused.
“You’re a mad man,” I fumed when we finally walked out of the nursing home. “I would say this was all some kind of setup to make me soften and let you off the hook for attacking my family’s company, but all of these people obviously know you. Do you do this kind of stuff every day?”
“Not these exact places. There are a few other organizations that count on me. But yes. Usually Monday through Friday, about eight to five, I volunteer.”
“You don’t work?” I huffed.
“I think it’s work. Just a different kind. Come on.” He bobbed his head and took off again.
I glanced down at my watch as I ran after him. “Well, you said until five and it’s nearly five now. So, please tell me you’re not leading me off to another place to volunteer.”
Finally, he laughed. “I didn’t expect you to last this long. You didn’t have to follow me around all day. But since you did...I can at least buy you dinner.”
I wanted to stop right then and there and refuse. Buying me dinner was like a date, and given his dating record...I definitely didn’t want anything to do with that. But my stomach had been growling for hours, since Mr. Do-Good was apparently too busy to stop for lunch. So, I kept following along.
“Fine. If there’s food, I’m in.”
A short while later, we were sliding into a booth at a local restaurant I had never heard of before, much less been to. Some Italian joint, by the looks of it.
“My mother was Italian,” he offered. “This place has the most authentic Italian food—not as good as hers, of course, but closer than anywhere else in the city.”
The smell of roasted garlic, fresh bread, and meatballs filled the air, making my mouth water...almost as much as the sight of his arms bulging through his button-up shirt’s sleeves as he pulled off his jacket and sat down across from me.
“Your mother...is she…”
“Passed away. My parents had me at an older age than most, so they lived long, happy lives...I just happened to sadly lose them sooner than I would have liked.”
“I’m sorry.” I recoiled. “I guess since you already know everything about my family...you know we lost our father a few years ago.”
He nodded. “My parents left me in a much better off financial position than your father left you in.”
“So, that’s how you have all this time to volunteer? You don’t work?”
“It is work,” he said again.
“For money,” I shot back. “You don’t work for money.”
“I don’t need to. I grew up in this community and I wanted to use my time to give back. To make sure this area thrives. I’m just one man and can’t do much…”
“Feeding the homeless, teaching children, giving company to the old and sick…” I marveled. “I’d say you do plenty.”
The waitress came by with our menus, but I didn’t need to look to order the largest glass of wine they had to offer. “Bring the whole bottle,” I added. Mark raised an eyebrow. “You said you were paying and you can obviously afford it. And since you’re hell-bent on running my family’s company into the ground, you can consider me one of your charity cases. Because at this rate, I will be broke and homeless by the time you’re through with us.”
I was only joking, but I still cringed at how easily he laughed. “I’m serious, Mark. You’re costing us a lot of money. Maybe you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing anymore, but we’ve had to rebuild everything we have from the ground up.”
“It can’t be that bad,” he scoffed.
“You’d be surprised. It doesn’t take much to bring a company like ours down these days.” My throat tightened at the thought of it, but it was nothing a big gulp of wine couldn’t fix, at least temporarily. And thankfully, it arrived just in time.
We were left in a stand-off...each sipping from our glasses as we stared the other down, each of us trying to figure the other one out. I still had a million questions, but didn’t know where to start. And he seemed to think he had my family and me all figured out, but something in his eyes was curious. Like he knew there was more to me than he’d originally pegged me for.
“What happened with Sydney?” I asked finally. “I hand-picked her for you. She was gorgeous and seemed really interesting. You didn’t have to fall in love with her and get married, but it seems impossible that the date was really so bad.”
“Do you know what dates really are?”
I waited. Of course I knew what dates were. My entire business was centered around them. But I could tell by the gleam in his eye that he thought he was about to tell me something I didn’t know.
“A promise impossible to fulfill,” he continued. “We get all of our ideas about love from songs, books, and movies. And on the first few dates, it’s easy to slip into the delusion that life could really be like that. But it’s a lie.”
I couldn�
�t help but roll my eyes. “I’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again. If you hate dating so much...then don’t do it. The truth is...I think you’re waiting...no, more than waiting. You’re putting all of this out there as a challenge. You want someone to prove you wrong.”
As I said it, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t taking the bait. I was not about to get my own heart broken in the process of trying to reform a broken, bitter man. I didn’t care how good he looked in the dim lights of the restaurant, I was not going to be that someone.
6
Mark
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I assured Camille. “I’m much better off if no one tries to prove me wrong. I’m just trying to convert more people to my side of things. If more people accepted the truth, the less pressure we’d all feel to buy into this huge lie.”
“Why don’t you just get it over with and tell me the real meat of the matter here?” She groaned. “Who broke your heart?”
I lowered my glass of wine back down to the table slowly. “What makes you so sure someone did?”
“Okay, then whose heart did you break?” she shot back. “You’re one of the most bitter, jaded people I have ever met. If someone didn’t hurt you, you hurt someone else and you’ve never forgiven yourself. So, you’re trying to convince everyone else that love is a sham so you don’t have to feel bad. You’ve convinced yourself there was an inevitable end no matter what you did.”
“That’s not it.” I shook my head, almost laughing.
“Then, Mr. Silver...I revert back to my first question. Who broke your heart?”
“Who broke yours?” I suggested instead.
Her eyes darkened. “I’m not the one on a crusade to ruin relationships for everyone else. Quite the opposite. I’m encouraging people’s happiness.”
“Oh, yeah. Because breakups are a real breeding ground for happiness.”
“Actually, they are,” she answered with a breezy, almost sarcastic confidence. “You hurt and then you get over it. And you move on to be an even better person than you were before, and you try again. Don’t take it out on everyone else just because you can’t get past step two.”
“If we’re going to make it through this dinner alive, we’re going to need a change of subject.”
“Fine by me. Or at least it would be if my reputation and career weren’t on the line.”
“What do you do for fun?” I asked as quickly as I could.
Her reaction was almost grimmer than when I asked who broke her heart. “Fun?”
I laughed. “Why do you say that word like it’s a disease?”
“Not a disease.” She shrugged, looking uneasy. “Just...foreign.”
“Yikes. That’s depressing.”
“Look. I haven’t exactly had time for fun. My father died right as I was finishing college and my brother was forced to come up with something to earn back everything we lost. Which put the pressure on me to go to business school to make sure whatever he came up with actually worked.”
“So, the dating and romance angle wasn’t your idea?”
She tilted her head. “Does it look like it was my idea?”
Every time I’d seen Camille, her dark hair was pulled into a tight, high ponytail. The long locks that fell behind her were straight and sleek. She usually wore black-rimmed glasses that did little to hide the intensity of her icy eyes. She wore basic make-up—eyeliner, mascara, and a little gloss on her lips. She always dressed in a gray or black blazer and pencil skirt. She didn’t exactly come across like a carefree, wild-and-loose kind of girl. In fact, she looked more like a lawyer than a CEO of a dating app.
“Point taken,” I submitted. “But...I mean…”
“What? Spit it out. I hate it when people stammer around the point.”
“Well, I was going to say you’re obviously hot and probably have guys clamoring all over you. But with a tone like that, I can see why it never works out.”
“I told you before…don’t be so certain I don’t have a private love life. You can sic all the social media investigators on me you want to. It doesn’t mean you’ll find anything.”
“Of course not,” I retorted. “Because it doesn’t exist.”
“I vote for a change of subject number two.”
“You never answered my first question.” I swirled my wine around in front of my lips, waiting.
“I told you…”
“Just because you haven’t made time for fun doesn’t mean you don’t have some idea of what gets you going.”
Her cheeks turned a slight shade of pink at my choice of words. “I like museums. My father used to take us out sailing, and I enjoyed that, too. Of course, his debtors seized all of our boats before I ever had the chance to take it up myself.”
“Sailing.” I nodded, picturing her in all white with a sweater tied around her neck. “I can see that.”
Her brow furrowed. “And you? What...gets you going, as you put it?”
A smile spread across my lips. At that moment, I had to admit it was Camille that was getting me going. But I had a feeling that answer wouldn’t go over too well.
I rambled on about golf and hiking for a while, and suggested she try her hand at golf. I couldn’t see her getting down and dirty in the woods, but I also had a feeling there were some things about her I didn’t know. Things she kept buried deep down under that hard exterior.
“Next question,” I proposed once that topic faded. “What really brought you to my doorstep?”
She stared back at me cluelessly. “There’s no way you were asked to come and see me in person,” I added. “Nor does it exactly seem like the most efficient way of dealing with internet trolls. Surely I’m not your only one.”
“You’re the most determined and relentless one.”
“Thanks!”
“That wasn’t a compliment,” she groaned. “Anyway, I told you on the phone. You’re a customer...just like any other. And if you’re unsatisfied with the services we’re providing, it’s my job to ensure that improves. Therefore, I’m determined to change your mind about dating.”
“Well, you’re off to a great start,” I admitted. “This is a far better dinner than any I’ve had since I signed up on the website.”
“This isn’t a date.”
“Dinner. Date. What’s the difference?”
“There’s a difference, I assure you,” she huffed. “What made you sign up, anyway?”
We were several glasses of wine in now, and my mouth was firing off before I had a chance to think better of it. “My friends convinced me to after…”
She perked up, knowing she had caught me. I didn’t have to finish the sentence. The tone of my voice told her everything. The big heartbreak that had turned me so jaded and bitter, just as she’d accused. I waited for her to gloat and interrogate me more, and was surprised when she stopped herself.
“They can put the bottle of wine on my tab,” she offered instead.
“I don’t need your pity.”
“I didn’t order a very good one. That’s the only thing I feel sorry for, and I don’t expect you to pay for it.”
As much as I wanted to argue, I appreciated her not battering me about my admission. I didn’t want to push it and risk opening up the whole can of worms. Besides, I knew she was keeping her own secrets. I decided she could keep hers if I could keep mine.
“Well, in that case...what do you say I order another one? A better one.”
The edges of her lips curled. “Deal.”
Several more glasses of wine later, we were laughing up a storm. When we weren’t bickering in a verbal sparring match, we were telling jokes and stories. There was a perfect conversational rhythm that I had to admit gave me a certain thrill.
“So. Let’s say this was one of your botched internet dates,” she said. “What do you say exactly that pisses these girls off so much? Enough to run home and write angry reviews and delete the app?”
“I tell them the truth,” I replied. “Th
at love is a lie. In more words, of course, but...every time, it pisses them off.”
She sank down in the booth a bit. “Huh.”
“You seem perplexed.”
“I just find it odd that people are so insecure that they can’t be confronted with a differing opinion without it destroying their whole night...and their investment in the app.”
“Believe it,” I sighed. “One after another. They storm right out on me. Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“I’d be pissed you wasted my time,” she admitted. “But that’s why I don’t date. It’s a waste of time.”
The mood between us changed. She looked like she had just been caught red-handed, and she had. I had my slip of the tongue, and she had hers.
“So, I was right. You don’t date, but you sell a dating app to millions of people.”
“I don’t work in marketing,” she defended. “I simply handle our investors and business plan. I help with strategy for growth sometimes, but that’s hardly me trying to pull over some scam. If people don’t want to date...fine, they don’t have to. There are plenty of other willing customers out there.”
“Which is why I must drive you mad.”
“Yes, precisely. If you would just go live your life and stop trying to dictate what everyone else does, I wouldn’t need to be sitting here right now.”
I was drawn into her sassy confidence and the way she spoke with such certainty and authority. I got lost there for a moment, staring deep into her eyes.
“To be honest, I’m kind of glad you are.”
She looked away and blushed, just as the waitress came back with the check.
As we walked away from the restaurant, everything was suddenly quiet. We couldn’t shut up before, but now we both seemed afraid to speak.
“You okay?” I asked finally.
She nodded her head, but didn’t look at me. Her hands stayed planted firmly in the pockets of her jacket and then she stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I’m a little drunk,” she confessed. “But truthfully...I can’t help but wonder if maybe part of the reason you’re so dissatisfied with dating is that…”