by J. D. Robb
“Oh the site’s open to everybody. We’re a really small percentage overall. You can look around and see. Most people are normal.”
Which would make it even harder to attract someone—and even easier for Macy to find someone better than him. Losing hope rapidly, he looked up at his own handle.
“Why am I called ‘GnatMan’?” he asked, hoping it showed a kind of appealing self-deprecation, some awareness of his place in the universe, or maybe some clue that the profile was a big joke.
But, like the grim reaper, Kyle reached out one long finger and pointed at a line in the essay: I have the attention span of a gnat.
* * *
Macy could hardly believe her eyes. Two weeks after breaking up with Jeremy and then hearing absolutely nothing from him, she was sitting in her office after hours looking at his grinning face on an iLove dating profile. He’d actually come up in her Guys You Should Look At section!
Her entire body flushed with mortification. He’d certainly gotten over her in a hurry.
She leaned close. She had taken that photo! They’d been waiting for a table at Captain Newick’s and he’d been smiling so big—he had a killer smile—that she told him he looked like the picture of the cartoon captain on the wall behind him. He’d gathered her in close and they took a selfie with the sign. But only she knew it was behind him now, as it—along with herself—had been unceremoniously cropped out of the picture.
Memories of that day, when they’d driven out to the bay in search of bushels of crabs and cold beers, the sun hot on their heads in Jeremy’s convertible, enveloped her like mid-August humidity. She too had worn a grin that threatened to crack her face wide open, and she hadn’t even cared that her hair was blowing like a willow in a tornado and was likely to look like a tumbleweed before it was all over. Jeremy was laughing and glancing at her so often it was as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and they were singing together to the music, unself-conscious and electric. Neither one of them had had a care in the world beyond finding the elusive Captain Newick’s, which instead of being on the bay was on a back road by a river that fed into it, and boasted the best steamed blue crabs within reach of the city.
He hadn’t been on his phone at all that day. In fact she hadn’t even been aware of the problem yet. She’d still had the wild intoxicating idea that there weren’t any problems between them.
Every woman on here would want that guy, she knew. The one who was totally there, undistracted, happy, in tune. The guy who seemed like he’d be there forever, making up for everything you’d ever lost in your life.
Until he disappeared and you became the superfluous doll across the table from the guy making love to his cell phone.
Had he seen her profile?
She hoped if he had that he took it as a sign that she was over him, even though she was as far from that as she could be. She may have broken up with him, but that didn’t mean the dream had died—the dream that she’d found the right one, that he was all he’d seemed to be, that she had stumbled upon nirvana. It was the dream that was so very hard to let go of. At least that was what she had been telling herself.
She knew better now. Staring down the barrel of the dating gun, she was afraid she wanted nobody but Jeremy. Even the Jeremy who listened with half an ear and couldn’t drag his eyes from a backlit screen.
She flipped a pen through her fingers, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Then, despite herself, she clicked on his profile. It might make her feel worse, but if she didn’t look she’d spend too much time wondering what he’d said.
As she’d learned to do on the other profiles, she skipped quickly over the multiple-choice section and went straight to the personal essay.
Sometimes superficial and regularly overconfident, I can be an insensitive bastard to those who can do nothing for me. I like things my own way and am persuasive enough to get them. I use my charm to make people like me, and am lost when it doesn’t work. I do not trust my own substance. I occasionally use people. I tend to disappear on women I’ve lost interest in. I have a bad habit of not paying attention to people, of only hearing what I want to hear, of taking people for granted. I want love but have no idea what it actually is. If I’m with you, I’ll likely only spend ten minutes out of every hour actually focused on you. The rest of the time I’ll be carrying on conversations with others who are potentially more interesting on my phone because I have the attention span of a gnat. I have an insatiable need to be entertained at every moment. I blame others for my boredom.
What the heck—?
Was this a joke? Was it aimed at her? She was the one who’d complained about his inattention, his phone dependence and, yes, maybe she’d accused him of needing to be entertained all the damn time—but she didn’t say any of that other stuff. Is that what he’d thought? Or was it just true?
Was he going for some kind of sympathy? Did he hope people would take it as a joke? It wasn’t funny to her.
She leaned forward and reread it. I tend to disappear on women I’ve lost interest in. He’d disappeared on her, that was for sure.
She sat back in her chair, gripping the pen in her fingers. It was here in black-and-white—he’d lost interest in her. She had broken up with him, but there was obviously no going back. She considered writing to him, asking him what he was doing there. Had he known she was on iLove too, and was he making fun of her, the site or himself? Or maybe all three? But it would be too humiliating. If he saw her profile at all, let him think she was far too busy with other men to be looking at him.
She clicked on See the Guys Looking at You and up came a screen of head shots of smiling men, short paragraphs listing their vitals next to them. Here was HardLovinMan22 in a blurry shot wearing a cowboy hat, thirty-four years old, Aries, nonsmoker, in a suburb not far from hers. And Waiting4You, balding, sweet-smiled, thirty-eight, Pisces, nonsmoker, closer to downtown. ReelMeIn was posed, not surprisingly, with a fishing rod.
But Jeremy gnawed at her, and she scrolled down through the several pages of guys who’d looked at her, searching for his photo in the lineup.
He wasn’t there.
And now she was wasting time second-guessing herself again. He was not that into her. Even April had seen it. It was time to let go—especially since she’d already let him go.
She glanced again at the guy in the cowboy hat. He looked nice. She wasn’t into cowboys, especially, but she wouldn’t mind a simple, uncomplicated date. She clicked, read the pleasant essay and decided to write. It was time to get off the computer and out on a date. There’d be no getting over Jeremy sitting here in her office.
She dropped the pen on the desk and started typing.
CHAPTER FIVE
Macy’s hands were sweating, and she was having trouble taking a deep breath. Her mouth was dry and her smile felt stiff as she asked the restaurant’s hostess if anybody had mentioned that they were meeting someone here.
The blonde was wearing earrings the size of handcuffs, and she pointed a manicured hand toward the front of the dining room. “Yes, are you looking for that gentleman by the window?”
Macy glanced over, took in the thirtysomething man in the blue button-down shirt with no tie and a pale complexion, and tried to match his features to the guy in the T-shirt and cowboy hat online. Because she was already nervous, this test nearly undid her. Despite the fact that she’d printed out and studied his profile like an SAT primer, she couldn’t tell if it was the same person or not. She’d thought he was more rugged-looking, but then a cowboy hat would do that, wouldn’t it? The chin could be the same, but . . .
She’d have to admit to the stylish young hostess—who probably never in her life would have to resort to online dating—that she did not know what her date looked like.
“Actually, ahhh . . .” As she leaned toward the girl, a couple tried to inch around her to put their name on the wait list, adding two more sets
of ears to the problem.
The girl leaned toward her as the guy said something about a table for two. “I’m sorry?”
“Did he say he was waiting for someone named Macy?” she asked as quietly as she could.
The girl’s finely arched brows drew down and, bless her heart, she moved around the hostess stand toward Macy. “He didn’t say, I’m sorry. Would you like me to go ask him?”
Macy would have liked nothing better, but the line of people behind her was growing, and she didn’t want to hold everyone up. “It’s okay, I’ll do it. But thank you.”
The blonde gave her an understanding smile; she probably saw blind dates all the time. “Good luck.”
Macy gave a short laugh and wound through the tables toward the man by the window. He was kind of cute, she thought, nicely dressed in khakis and that blue Oxford shirt, square jaw, thick hair. No cowboy hat.
He stood as she approached, looking uncertain. He was taller than her, but not by much. Maybe five-eight.
“Are you Bill?” she asked.
His face cleared as if he’d had the same worries she had. “Yes, yes, I am. It’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and she took it in one of those wimpy girl-handshakes for fear of his noting her damp palms.
She let her purse slide down off her shoulder and reached for the chair, but he leprechauned around her with a smile. “Let me get that!”
“Oh! Thank you.” She gave a faint laugh and sat, hoping the waiter would arrive immediately to take her drink order.
Bill returned to his seat, leaning onto his forearms and clasping his hands, looking at her intently. He had a glass of something with a lime in it in front of him.
“You look just like your pictures!” he enthused.
She smoothed the back of her hair down with one hand—it had been breezy outside, and she imagined herself obliviously sitting there with it beehived around her head.
“Thanks, uh . . .” She couldn’t say the same. He looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t put on a cowboy hat if you held a six-shooter to his head and made him. “You look . . . a little different from yours.”
He wilted. “I know. It’s the hat.”
“Do you, ah, wear cowboy hats often? Are you a country and western guy?” She tried to imagine the two of them two-stepping around a dance floor.
“Actually, no.” He appeared to be blushing. “I never wear hats, and I’m much more of a classical music guy. But there was this one time . . . I went to Houston with my, my, my, well, my ex-girlfriend, if you must know, and she took the picture. So . . . I don’t know why I used it.” He tried to chuckle and shrugged.
“Oh,” she said, a picture of the situation materializing. She gave him a smile. “You looked really happy. In the picture.”
“I do?” He looked at her. “I—I guess I was. We were both—or at least I thought we both were, on that trip.”
The waiter arrived, and she ordered a red wine. Bill ordered another gin and tonic.
“How long were you two together?” Macy asked, mostly to fill the silence that remained after the waiter left.
“Almost a year.” He said it with a note of pride in his voice. “We were doing great too, until I screwed up.”
“What did you do?”
He polished off what was left of his drink and looked at her ruefully. “I canceled on some plans we made for Thanksgiving. It was the stupidest thing. I had lost my job and I wasn’t feeling good about myself—I just couldn’t meet her family like that. You know?” His face suddenly cleared. “But it’s okay, I have a job now. No worries about that!” He laughed nervously. “Doing just fine now, it was a temporary problem, a layoff.”
“Hey, a lot of people have gone through that. But good for you for getting back on your feet!”
He nodded absently. “Yeah, yeah I did. But it was too late. See, my girlfriend—I’m sorry, ex-girlfriend, she’s a great girl, but she tends to make snap decisions. That’s why we were good together. I’m the deliberate one, she’s impulsive. I thought we brought out the best in each other.”
It crossed Macy’s mind that it probably wasn’t a good sign to be talking about a guy’s ex-girlfriend right off the bat on a first date, but she wasn’t feeling any immediate attraction anyway, so she figured they might as well have a genuine conversation.
“So you canceled on Thanksgiving and she broke up with you?”
“Yeah.” He nodded to himself again. “Yeah.”
“Did you explain why you canceled?”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I did. But she . . . she didn’t think that was a good enough reason. I guess she thought I was being weak, or something.”
“Really? It’s a big deal to meet someone’s family. You want to be confident.”
“That’s what I said. But she said I needed to man up.”
“Man up? She said that?”
He tipped his head. “But hey, enough about me. Jeez, sorry. Tell me about you! Have you got an ex-boyfriend we can talk about?”
Macy laughed. “Sure, we can talk about me, but I have one last question. How long ago did you break up?”
“Just a couple weeks ago.”
“And you’re online dating already?” She thought of Jeremy, online after only a couple of weeks. Then again, so was she. She held up her hands. “Sorry! That sounded really judgmental.”
He leaned forward. “No, it’s okay. In fact, I want to explain. I had thought, initially, that in order to ‘man up’ in the wake of the breakup I should get right back on the horse.”
“Hence the cowboy hat?”
“Oh, hey, I never thought of that! No, see, I got online, found iLove, and who do you think popped up in my Girls You Should Look At list?”
“Your ex-girlfriend.”
“That’s right. So I put the hat picture up as a sign. To her. A reminder that we had something, that I could be someone else for a minute. Or something like that.” He gripped his head with his hands and gave a mock growl. “Argh, I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to remind her I’m still here. Like I said, she makes snap decisions. Guess I was hoping I’d be one of the ones she regretted.”
Macy thought about Jeremy’s picture. He had zillions of pictures of himself, several of them professional head shots for his job. Why had he chosen that one when there were dozens he wouldn’t have to crop? Was it meant as a signal to her?
Then she thought about his essay. It had been full of things she’d said to him, criticisms and complaints and cynical observations. She spent a horrified moment wondering if that was all she’d ever said to him, negative, complaining things. But maybe he was trying to tell her he got it. That he understood the problem she had with him.
But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he simply call her?
Because she’d broken up with him. She’d pulled the plug, suddenly and without mercy. Certainly Jeremy had no manning up to do—if he was thrown out, he would move right on.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said, the sincerity in his voice breaking through her reverie. “I’ve gone on and on about me and my ex-girlfriend. That’s like number one on the ‘don’t’ list for first dates. I’m sure you’re thinking I’m not ready to date, aren’t you?”
It took her a minute to refocus on Bill. “No, no. It’s okay. I . . . To be honest, I’m pretty fresh out of a relationship myself,” she said, thinking, I make snap decisions too. “Why don’t we treat this as a dinner between friends, huh? No pressure.”
He smiled. “You’re on. Though I may live to regret getting caught in the friend zone.”
As it turned out Bill was every bit as nice as he seemed, but he was so agreeable about everything, taking on every opinion that she had no matter what the topic, that Macy started to understand a little of what the ex-girlfriend might have had a problem with. It would bother her too, she thought, mental
ly putting an X next to his name. Then she caught herself. Was she being—once again—too picky?
The thought made her try harder to see him as a romantic candidate. She upped her energy level, made jokes, looked him in the eye, tried to imagine kissing him, but the more of an effort she made, the more defeated she felt. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Bill, but she was pretty sure that by the end of the evening she’d have no desire to see him again. There simply was no spark.
She was sagging under the thought when a familiar laugh caught her ear. She jerked her head to the left to see, just beyond the near table, another two-top, where a pretty brunette sat holding a glass of wine across from, and gazing into the eyes of, Jeremy.
Her stomach plummeted to the floor as her wine threatened to launch in the opposite direction. Jeremy was leaning forward, seemingly hanging on the brunette’s every word, and the brunette was eating it up. Just as Macy had, when she’d had his full attention. She wondered how long it would be before Jeremy reached for his phone, but when her gaze dropped to his belt, where the ubiquitous holster resided, she was shocked to see it wasn’t there.
Macy got abruptly to her feet, causing Bill to stop mid-sentence. “Is something wrong? I’ve been talking too much, haven’t I? I always do that. I’m sor—”
But before he could get the apology out she excused herself to go to the restroom. She couldn’t do this, she thought. It was too soon. Or too late. Or something.
She’d screwed up. She’d mistakenly condemned Jeremy as imperfect and so she’d bailed—just as she had on dozens of other occasions. The difference was, she hadn’t been in love with all those other people she’d judged and found wanting.
But Jeremy had been different.
Jeremy had been the one. And she’d thrown him away.
* * *
Jeremy’s fingers dropped to his belt only to find for the one millionth time that his cell phone was not there. He thought he’d noticed the addiction when he was in bizarro world, but now, out in reality, it was so much worse. He’d had no idea how many times he went for the phone in the course of a conversation—and he wasn’t even bored. He was far too anxious to be bored.