by Frey Ortega
“I don’t even know how to talk to him!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to wear, I don’t even know what to order at the restaurant. He didn’t tell me where we were eating! Oh God, what if I screw this all up? What if this is the universe’s way of throwing me a bone and I can’t collect myself well enough to get shit done?”
“Okay, first of all, calm down, little miss drama, it’s just a date. He’s not proposing to you,” Talia replied. “Just talk to him the way you talk to us.”
But there were so many things that could go wrong with that plan. What if I brought something up that didn’t include him? What if he got offended by little inside jokes?
The wheels and cogs in my head kept turning and turning and I could feel a migraine coming on. There was just so much involved in dating and I didn’t want to fuck it up with my awkwardness.
Talia stared at me like I had grown a second head.
“Wow, you’re really messed up about this, aren’t you?” she said.
“Isn’t he just messed up in general?” Rye muttered. Chase and Talia both grinned. Talia even nodded. I rolled my eyes.
“This is serious, guys,” I said, feeling my inner drama queen bubble up again. It was the same voice that told me that throwing wine in someone’s face, like those ladies did in those reality television shows, was sometimes appropriate given how some people were just begging, with all their rudeness, to have wine thrown in their face. “How do I even talk to him? How do I live these next four days until the date on Friday? How do I even act like a normal human being?”
The three of them became quiet again. When I looked up, the three of them were giving me looks of equal parts awe, embarrassment, maybe just the tiniest bit of disgust—or maybe I was reading too much into their surprise at how dysfunctional I actually was.
Because yup, that was me.
“Dude.” It was Chase, sounding awestruck.
Out of nowhere, before the verbal ass-whooping I was probably going to get from Rye and Talia, the doors burst open and in comes Dale, into my apartment, like a bat out of hell. He’d never even set foot here before and it surprised me to see his bleached-blond and perfectly-tailored body through my apartment door.
Dressed much in the same way as he was back at the office, he held in his hands a bottle of what looked like red wine when he came barging in. “Okay, Emmett, you have got to tell me more. You have a lovely home and I’m sorry for interrupting your evening, but here. I brought wine, your friends are lovely, my name is Dale, and we were at work, so I couldn’t poke you for more information but now, I need to know!”
He immediately handed me the bottle he held in his hands. I looked down at it. It was a good bottle of red wine, which I would have opened if I wasn’t so flustered at the breaking-and-entering. Was it just entering if a person just barged into your home like he did?
“Holy shit,” Talia muttered. “He sounds like he’s been snorting sugar. Did you forget to lock your door?”
“Evidently, yes,” I answered. “And it’s not really even unwanted, at this point, because I need all the help I can get.”
Dale closed the door—and made sure to lock it—before plopping down to a seat by Talia. He took a good look around, offered a little smile, and then looked at me.
I introduced them to each other, then I explained everything, laying bare even the fact that I’d slept with Joe, and how he just suddenly appeared to ask me on a date—which Dale was there for—in fact, he was the one who screamed in glee from the pantry.
“But to be fair, Joe came on to him first,” Talia defended. “So even if it sounds like a completely unprofessional thing to do…”
“Which it is,” I concede, because it definitely was and Dale being my boss meant that I had to at least cover my ass. “I don’t know what came over me and why it happened, but it did. I think I just finally stopped overthinking for once.”
Dale nodded. “Well, it was consensual, you’re both adults, and he probably knew what he was getting into doing that. I can’t fault you for liking him, because a lot of people do have big crushes on the guy. It’s not like he doesn’t know he’s attractive. Still would have been nice if he made you sign an NDA or something.”
“Why would a non-disclosure agreement help?” Chase asked, his face scrunched up, looking confused.
Dale turned to look towards him and shrugged. “Well, that way if he’s screwing you over, you have a leg to stand on, legally. You can’t just let things like that slide, at least.”
“I don’t think he’s that kind of person,” I said. Joe didn’t seem like the kind of guy to get litigious, after all.
“We’re never that kind of person,” Dale replied. “Until we are.”
My friends all nodded sagely at Dale’s words. “He’s right,” Talia replied. “He may look like he’s about to go to the country club to play golf with the oldsters, but he’s right. When the option presents itself and it’s your only way out of a sticky situation, we do things we’re not quite proud of.”
Dale laughed. Talia grinned, pulled the bottle of wine from my lap, and went to the little kitchen nook to grab some glasses and get some more alcohol flowing.
“So, what seems to be the problem?” Dale asked, taking a glass of wine just as Talia handed him one. “You look like you just ate some of the canteen’s egg salad surprise.”
“Why do they call it that? Do they add a secret ingredient?” Chase asked, suddenly piqued.
For the wrong reasons, of course, but I let the conversation run its natural course.
“Well, the surprise is the diarrhea after you eat it,” Dale replied, looking Chase dead in the eyes. “Don’t ask.”
Chase shuddered. I couldn’t help the sardonic little grin that appeared on my face.
What wasn’t the problem with this?
“The problem is that I’m a barely functioning adult human being,” I replied. “And I’ve never been on a date before.”
“Not even to prom?” Dale asked.
Talia smirked. “This has been established literally five minutes ago, but no, Emmett has never had a date. He’s basically broken. Can we return him to the store?”
“You know, the only advice we can actually give you is that you need to relax,” Dale said. “But that’s easier said than done for you, isn’t it?”
I scoffed. “I can be relaxed.”
“We know,” Talia said, lifting her glass to her lips and taking a light sip. “But not when it comes to human interaction. I wouldn’t say you suck at it, per se, but you’re definitely not good for small talk.”
“Why does small talk exist, anyway?” I groused. “I can’t talk about the weather, and I can’t carry a conversation. Asking questions about people is not in my particular skillset.”
“Odd, considering you’re a journalist and a writer,” Rye muttered underneath his breath before sighing. “Look, all you need to do is talk to him like you would talk to a friend. Get to know him. Find out what he likes. Figure out whether he watches trashy reality television. Find some common ground to talk about, and then maybe talk about some life experiences like embarrassing memories and moments.”
It was Chase’s turn to chime in next. “Just let the conversation flow, and don’t force it! Relax, chill out, and enjoy the meal, you know?”
“When has telling a person to relax and chill out ever worked?” I asked.
“It works on tons of people! But I get what you mean. When you’re the kind of person who thinks about every little detail and obsesses about them, things are bound to get crazy,” Chase said.
Crazy was a pretty apt word for it. I would have personally used batshit insane, but then again, I had a flair for the dramatic. This seemed like an appropriate time to do something in the vein of being dramatic, but I didn’t want to ruin the casual ease of the night.
With Talia sipping on wine, Rye taking a bite of a doughnut and Chase perusing my laptop, Dale looked at me with such intensity
for a moment, it made me uncomfortable.
“What’re you staring at me for?” I asked.
“Just trying to figure out the best way for you to be at ease with this date,” Dale said. He put a hand to his cheek and gently tapped it. His eyebrows furrowed, and then he snapped his fingers. “I got it!”
I didn’t know anyone who snapped their fingers when a good thought came into their head. It felt really old-timey, and somehow, I knew if I was feeling better I would have ragged on him for being an oldster, but right now I needed all the help I could get.
“Why don’t you approach this the way you approached the interview?” Dale asked.
“You mean completely unprepared, oversleep, and rely on other people to help me do my work?” I said.
Rye groaned at the self-deprecation. It was clear my attempts at levity were not being appreciated for what they were.
Dale shook his head. “No, like a reporter. Do some investigative journalism on him, but on light, soft-ball topics. See what sorts of things he likes or hobbies he’s said he likes in interviews, or in articles or even in videos on the internet, and spark up conversations on things like that?”
“So, basically, cyberstalk him is what you’re telling me to do,” I said. I could’ve sworn I saw Talia glare at me.
Dale rolled his eyes. “It’s not cyberstalking if the information is already out there on the internet. He has fan-pages all over social media. Hell, he has an Instagram and a Facebook, and even if you don’t have access to his personal account, you certainly have access to the public ones. You’ve probably seen all of the information you need to know about him considering you interviewed him for a magazine. This means that you’ve basically gotten a lot of the awkwardness of the first date out of the way, and now you’re just trying to find some common ground!”
My friends nodded sagely at that. Dale was on a roll and my mind was scrambled. I was feeling self-defeated, as always, but wasn’t that something that writers and artists dealt with constantly, on a regular basis?
My face was quirking and changing, but the ever-present frown was on there. I looked down on myself constantly. Maybe there was something to what Dale was saying.
Maybe. It was hard for me to digest all of this, and I already knew there were problems in his plan. That didn’t really account for my awkwardness, nor my inability to have small talk around people.
“You know, this circle of negativity you put around yourself is very off-putting,” Dale commented after a few moments of silence. “We care about you so much we dropped whatever we were doing to come see you and figure out what was happening and to find a solution with you, but all you’re doing is trying to find reasons and excuses why you can’t step out of your self-deprecating comfort zone. I can see now why your friends are being quiet, getting drunk, and silently exasperated at everything you say.”
“I don’t mean to do it!” I say almost immediately, and my voice is a bit higher than it should have been. I was trying to defend myself and my constant negativity. “It’s just…you know. It’s hard not to be negative about yourself.”
“Is it, though?” Dale asked. It was a rhetorical question, especially with his grating tone and the light quirk of his eyebrows. “I haven’t been here ten minutes and the question in my mind is whether or not you’re just making excuses for not wanting to go on a date with Joe Kaminski. You could have just said no, if that was the case.”
I paused at that. “He was so compelling, though,” I muttered underneath my breath.
“Well then, here’s some tough love for you: you could have still said no, and now you’re complaining and whining over something that hundreds of thousands of people would jump at the chance to do. Stop acting like this is the end of the world! You’re just meeting someone new, getting to know them, and maybe you’ll end up being friends, maybe you’ll end up being more. Just stop putting so much power in the label and stop going into this acting so defeated. He already told you he likes you, regardless of how much of a pain in the ass you’re being right now. Chill out, do your research, read up on him, and have fun! Dates are supposed to be fun! You’re treating this like you’re about to be…”
He thought for a moment, and it seemed as though Dale couldn’t find the right words. Until he snapped his fingers and looked me right in the eyes. “…Fisted without lube by a boxer. Wearing his boxing glove.”
I sat there, dumbfounded, and bobbling my mouth open and closed like an idiot.
My boss—someone who considered me a friend in spite of the many sarcastic quips and barbs I’ve tossed his way over the past few years—was in my living room, surrounded by my friends, giving me a sermon about my attitude in life, and just compared me to a person being fisted.
I felt my hackles rise out of that, and some people might have even said that my jimmies had been rustled, or so the saying went, nevertheless we were about a hair’s breadth away from full-on throwing wine in each other’s faces and calling each other bitches when Talia suddenly put down her glass and slow-clapped.
She fucking slow-clapped in the middle of all of that awkward silence. It didn’t take long for both Chase and Rye to start doing it, too.
“Bravo,” Talia said. “We were wondering when someone in our group would have the balls to tell Emmett to just chill out in exactly the same, breakdown manner you just did.”
Dale raised his glass. “Someone had to do it,” he said. “I’m glad I could be that person for all of you.”
I suppose I’ve always been a little too negative for my own good. Overthinking was my curse, and in fact I often obsessed about anything and everything so much to the point that I was getting stress dandruff. All of this still pointed to me not quite understanding basic human interaction. Sometimes, I wonder why my friends put up with me, but maybe I wasn’t so bad.
Maybe there was something to forcing yourself to see the good, positive things rather than dwelling on the shitty things.
Maybe.
I sighed.
“Alright,” I finally said after a few moments. “I’m gonna need your help, you guys. Maybe we can make a dent in my armor if I know absolutely everything there is to know about him by Friday.”
“Sounds great,” Talia said. “But make sure you relax and turn yourself down to about a five instead of roaring at a ten so you don’t sound like a stalker. Or, you know what? Maybe he expects that. Maybe he finds that cute. Nevermind.”
I groaned and put my face in my hands. This time, it was met with a soft chuckle.
“Why does being a normal human person have to be so hard?”
Chapter Ten
Days of research, interspersed with hours of working and then the minimal amount of sleep allotted to keep myself sane (that was at least eight, which was something I would never give up anything for, ever) followed that fateful night.
The very next morning, Dale took me jogging. It was miraculous that I was even up at five o’clock in the morning after all the wine from last night, but there I was like some third-rate Usain Bolt. He even slowed down so that I could keep up, and it ended up being a walk more than a jog that still winded me terribly. He told me he’d get his cardio in elsewhere, but he was happy to have me actually go out and see the sun and not stay inside my apartment the entire day.
The afternoon after that, Talia took me shopping before visiting Camille in the hospital for a coffee break. I was exhausted from all the exercise but she just kept going on and on, buying shoes and dresses and getting bargains at sales, and the reprieve of heading to the hospital cafeteria and having a quiet conversation with Camille was what I needed to recharge.
I caught up with Chase and Rye just as Rye was about to perform outdoor theater and we had an evening of it. We spent the evening surrounded by people and I even made some small talk with someone and found out I didn’t quite hate it as much as I thought. Rye was fantastic, as always, and I was impressed at how good he was able to project his voice given that we were outside.
That same night, Joe texted me and asked me if we were still on for Friday. In lieu of hyperventilating and having a conniption fit, I actually replied. We sent a few messages back-and-forth, and he sent me a friend request on some of his private social media profiles. I even sent him pictures of things happening. Thankfully, I was at the outdoor theater, so I could send him pictures not just of the manuscript I was working on, but me actually doing something fun.
Somehow, I felt like that earned me points with him. He told me to meet him at a Vietnamese restaurant downtown named “Pho Real.” I had to casually remind him that I wasn’t Vietnamese, I was actually Chinese. Thankfully, he said he knew that. I didn’t know if it was just him covering it up, but I’d been in such a good mood that I didn’t really call him out or nag him about it. Instead, the two of us just had a good laugh about the restaurant.
Also, I showed Chase and Rye the text, and we all laughed that the restaurant didn’t sound authentic, but I didn’t want to tell Joe that. He was so excited to eat there.
The night before the big date, Ysa helped me with my research on Joe and drilled me like I was in school, question-and-answer style. It had been perhaps the most helpful activity of this whole week. Ysa had always easily been the academic of the bunch, if one didn’t include the resident doctor of our friend-group. It was nice to have a night in with a friend after a long week of doing things outside. Maybe it was just the introvert in me.
It was interesting to have such a strong social network. If I had been grieving for a loved one who’d passed, this was probably the best group of friends I could ever ask for. I wondered why they’d suddenly become so attentive and why they’d started to invite me to go out more, and it had been a particularly enlightening chat conversation.
“We just want you to get used to going out and be comfortable with human interaction,” Ysa said. “So that your date with Joe goes swimmingly.”
There was a large bunch of reactions after that. Hell, even Dale had been invited into the chat and was quickly enfolded in like he’d belonged all along. As an adult, it was a little harder to make friends, but I was glad to have him around. He’d been much nicer than I gave him credit for, and I was wrong about his cheerfulness. It was certainly just a good thing all around to be exposed to.