Four Reasons to Come

by Sarah J. Brooks

  I did feel a bit like a stalker because we had gone to so much trouble to track this guy down, but I couldn’t just forget about him. I knew that dating app was trying to find me a match, and I was totally up for playing that game. But I couldn’t just give up on the idea that I would be able to find my own match. Life was confusing and messy, and I finally felt like there was a man out there that I could have a decent couple of dates with; I couldn’t let that just pass me by.

  I knew that Emma wasn’t all that interested in going out with Merrick again. They seemed to have a smoldering attraction that could possibly end in one of them hurting the other. I had never actually seen Emma get so worked up by a guy before. Typically, she would just ignore him and give up on him. But this guy was getting under her skin, and it was very amusing to watch.

  “You sound so excited about this date,” I said sarcastically as I laughed.

  “Hey, anything for my friend. I will suffer through it if it means you find a hunky man to bang in your office,” she joked.

  It was a little running joke that someday she would come into work, and I would be the one with a man in my office. I really didn’t think that would ever actually happen since I had never found myself so inclined to bring a man to my office like that. I usually preferred just to go to their house or have them pick me up for my date from the studio. They didn’t need to know where I lived, and I didn’t need to invite them into the studio for sex.

  “I appreciate you being willing to go on a date with an extremely handsome, rich man. I mean, you are really taking one for the team here.”

  “I know. I know. It’s a rough life I have, but I love you, so I’ll suffer through it.”

  I did appreciate what she was doing, though. If Emma had protested about trying to find the guy I wanted to find, I would have backed off. Her willingness to make a fool out of herself by getting in touch with Merrick had been a life saver to me. I was way too shy to have gone after this guy all on my own. I needed Emma there as my sidekick.

  “So what time is this date tomorrow?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Oh, my gosh; I’m so excited. What should we wear?” I laughed.

  “Just pretend like you’re confident and lie to yourself about it. I sometimes tell myself I’m the most beautiful woman in the room.” Emma laughed.

  “You are beautiful.”

  “I know. But you get what I mean. Trick yourself into believing it. Lie about it in your head. Seduction is about lying to yourself more than it is about lying to the person you are with. When you believe you’re seductive, it will come through in how you act.”

  “I’ll try it if I can manage to keep a straight face,” I said with a smile.

  “Go do your dating app thing, and we will talk about what to wear tomorrow. I’ve got a class to teach soon,” Emma said.

  “Alright, but we are going to have to shop tomorrow. I need a cute dress for our date. I should get a cute set of panties and bra too just in case I feel like getting lucky.” I laughed.

  “You go, girl. You definitely need to get a little lucky with this guy.”

  When I arrived at FAO Schwartz, I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I had been for my visit to the coffee place. This time, I already knew I had an awesome date planned for the next day with a very handsome guy. So there was no need for me to worry if this guy didn’t turn out to be all that great.

  FAO Schwartz was a huge toy store and not really the kind of place you wanted to be if you were trying to meet someone for the first time. My eyes got wide as I took in the tall ceiling and enormous stuffed animals. The sound of kids music played in the background and I could feel my heart pounding in pure excitement. I waited by the front door for a while and then decided to walk around the store and see if I noticed any single guys lurking around. Normally, I would think it was relatively weird if there was a single guy walking around a toy store looking to meet a woman. Toys stores were for parents, and from what I could remember on his profile, this guy wasn’t a parent.

  It dawned on me that I might not have been paying that close of attention to Wyatt’s profile, though. He must come to FAO Schwartz if the meeting was set up there because I certainly never came to the place on any sort of regular time frame. I clicked back into the app to see if I could look at his profile again, but it was still not available. I was really not a fan of the online dating thing at all. It baffled me that the Date Tonight app had such wildly positive reviews. There was no way people dealt with this sort of secrecy and didn’t give bad reviews, but I had read through tons of them online, and they all raved about meeting their perfect match; it was one of the main reasons I kept going with the game.

  “Oh, no,” I heard a little boy say in a sweet voice as I heard a bunch of boxes tumble from the shelf.

  I rushed over to help him. There were about a dozen Lego boxes on the ground, but no pieces had spilled out. The noise from the fall had scared him, and I saw tears welling up in his eyes as I leaned down to help him. His big blue eyes looked up at me and I saw a small tear in the corner of each of them. I wanted to reach out and brush his dark brown hair out of his eyes, but held back as not to scare him.

  “It’s alright. I’ll help.”

  I grabbed a few boxes of Lego and started to put them back on the shelf while I looked around for his parents. There didn’t seem to be a mother or father in the direct vicinity, and that made me a little nervous.

  “Thank you,” the little boy said. He was now also looking around for his parent.

  “Did you come here with your mom?”

  “Yes, but she’s not here. I think she is lost.”

  We finished putting the boxes on the shelf, and I grabbed his hand, and we turned to stand up. I was more than happy to help him find his mother or get him to a staff person so we could find her together, but as we turned around, I came face to face with the man from the club.

  He was standing right there only inches away from me, and I had almost rammed right into him. Our eyes locked on each other and then his eyes went down to my hand, which was still holding onto the little boy.

  “Hi,” I said with a nervous smile.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  He looked damn good. His light brown hair and green eyes sparkled in the lights of the store. He was dressed in a custom made suit that clearly fit every inch of his body like perfection. I was mystified. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think of what I should say as I stood there nervously smiling at him and not talking for what seemed like an eternity.

  “Um, I’m good … I um … I hear we are supposed to go on a date tomorrow,” I managed to say without sounding too excited.

  The excitement that was building up inside of me was hard to contain. He was there, right there in front of me. His navy blue suit fit him perfectly, and I wanted to reach out and touch it to see how soft it was. I also wanted to stay there talking to him, but I had a lot going on at the moment. I had a little boy I needed to help find his mother and a blind date that I had to search the store for.

  “Yes, I’ll see you then,” he said and then walked away.

  “Um, okay, see you tomorrow,” I said as I tried to hide my disappointment.

  That had not gone well at all. Not only did I look like a maniac as I held the hand of some stranger’s kid, but I hadn’t been able to get anything to come out of my mouth to explain why I was holding the hand of a child. He likely thought I was this child’s mother. But more horrible than that, he probably thought I was a babbling idiot who couldn’t even form sentences without assistance. I felt mortified.

  “Ryan, where have you been,” a woman said frantically as she came and grabbed the little boy from me.

  “We were just looking for you,” I replied with a smile.

  “Are you okay darling? I was so worried about you,” the woman said to her son as she shot me a nasty look.

  She looked at me as if I had done something wrong and certainly didn’t offer me any appreciation for keeping
her son safe from kidnappers. I was left standing there feeling like a total ass. I had fumbled running into the guy from the club; I had looked more like a child kidnapper than a helper as I stood holding the boy’s hand and not moving. Nothing was going my way.

  My heart pounded hard as I tried to hold back the emotions that were welling up inside of me. I didn’t feel up to meeting a total stranger from the dating app, even if I happened to be able to figure out who he was.

  After I walked around the store one complete time, I called it a night and made my way home. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Emma; I wasn’t in the mood for anything. I had gone from being totally excited to being barely able to think straight.

  Life had been cruising along relatively normally until the last few weeks. Recently, I felt like my whole life was out of control. I had clients trying to throw themselves at me. Online dating guys who I matched up with but couldn’t actually meet. Mysterious club guys who I felt connected to but couldn’t talk to when I needed to. Nothing was going my way.

  I decided it was time to delete the Date Tonight app. It wasn’t helping me at all, and chasing after some guy that I had never met was just stressing me out. I had a date coming up with a very handsome man, and if I hadn’t just ruined it by not being able to talk to him at the store, then I hoped I would be able to fix things on our date.

  But as I pulled the app up to delete it, I noticed there was a window available to send a message to Wyatt. That definitely had not been there before, so I took advantage of it. I wasn’t sure if the app had been sending him different locations to go to like it had for me, so I started the conversations slow.

  ---Hi, Wyatt, how’s the game treating you so far? It’s been frustrating for me.---

  I sent the message and then waited as if Wyatt was sitting on the other end just waiting for me to message him so he could respond. It was silly, but I felt like he was there. The whole app game had been a frustrating mess for me, and I desperately needed a sign that I should continue working with it or just delete the thing.

  Sure enough, a message popped up in return.

  ---Yes, very frustrating.---

  ---How was your day today? What do you do for work?---

  ---My day was good. I’m in the financial services. It was a very good day today. Should we just schedule a meet up?---

  ---Sure. How about …---

  Then the entire app went blank again, and I wasn’t able to type anymore. I felt my level of frustration peak as I almost threw my entire phone across the room. Why the hell would the stupid app give me just the opportunity I needed to talk to this guy and then take it away before we could schedule an actual meeting?

  I climbed into bed and closed my eyes and wished for a do-over for my day. The next day just had to go better than this one had.

  Chapter 13

  Wyatt

  She had a kid with her. It was a bit of a shock to me, but that wasn’t why I took off so quickly. I had been looking for the woman from the app for almost twenty minutes and just as I ran into the blonde from the club, I realized there was a woman standing by the escalator who was looking around like she was meeting someone.

  But when I got to the escalator, the woman had gone. It was a relief that we got to talk to each other on the app because I really did want to meet her. Even if it was just for curiosity, and we never took things any further, I just had to meet her and talk to her.

  Then just as quickly as the messaging app had opened up, it seemed to crash. I saw the notification that Dakota was typing a message, but then the app went blank and froze again. I hoped she hadn’t sent a message suggesting where to meet up or something like that.

  “Ren, you’re app is stupid,” I said before he had time to say anything.

  “Hey, I’m working on fixing the errors with your account. It’s just taking time.”

  “I was able to message her a little bit, but then the whole thing crashed again,” I said with a large amount of frustration in my voice.

  “I’m working as fast as I can.”

  “Fix it, Ren. I’m about a day away from just throwing my damn phone in the water and giving up on this whole thing. What I don’t get is how the app has so many positive reviews?”

  “Oh, we bought most of those.” Ren laughed nervously.

  “What? You’re kidding me!”

  “Yes, I’m kidding. Lighten up there, Wyatt. Your program is just messed up because you and the girl had so many things that you matched up on.”

  Speaking of matching up on everything, I had been wondering a lot about that. It seemed odd to me that we could be a 100% match. Some of the questions were geared toward men, and I assumed some were toward women. How exactly was the match percentage figured if the questions weren’t the same?

  “How does the program figure out the match percentage? Does it mean she answered her questions the same as I did? I’m not sure I want to date a woman who is exactly like me.” I laughed, but it was totally the truth.

  “It’s a complex algorithm. It’s not based on your specific answers being the same. The program looks at the meaning of each answer and pairs it up with the ideal meanings in the matching person.”

  “So you can program all that complex stuff, but you can’t figure out how to let me talk to this girl?”

  It seemed ridiculous that his app prevented most communication between the two people. I hardly knew anything about this girl, but she was getting built up in my head as the perfect woman. I wanted to meet her so bad that I had been rude to the real life woman that I was supposed to have a date with the next day.

  “It’s artificial intelligence; it’s complex.”

  “So you don’t know?” I laughed and goaded him on.

  “I know how it works; it’s just hard to explain to someone else who doesn’t even know how to change a spark plug in a vehicle.”

  “Oh, that was low!”

  Ren had brought up the story I told in our investment club a few weeks before. I had a rental car and drove to Pennsylvania, but while on the interstate, the car broke down. The tow service was taking forever, so I decided to take a look at the car and see if there was anything particular that I could tell was wrong. When I opened the hood, there seemed to be a screw sticking out of the engine, and I thought it must have gotten lodged in there. So I pulled it.

  The screw turned out to be a spark plug, and I looked like a total idiot when the roadside assistance guy showed up. I was telling the story to our group to show the importance of pulling in specialists when you were thinking of buying heavily into a new market. Someone who specializes in a market can explain the important aspects to you in much less time than it would take you to research it.

  “Sorry.” He laughed unapologetically. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got some news on everything.”

  I still wasn’t convinced that the dating app was going to take over my bank accounts if I didn’t keep following its directions, but there was a small piece of me that worried it would. I resigned myself to going with the flow and seeing what the next direction was. I’d just follow it and go from there.

  When sleep finally came that night, it wasn’t peaceful. There was way too much going on in my life, and I needed some calmness. I also really needed to get laid. Luckily, Merrick and I had that date the next day with the cute girls from the club. I needed a stress reliever and spending some time with that blonde was the perfect solution. I was a little worried that she had a kid, though, but I assumed she’d have a sitter, and we could still enjoy our night out on the town.

  The next day, I arrived at Merrick’s house right at 7:00 p.m. I knew he wouldn’t be ready, and I wasn’t going to risk being late for our date. Merrick was on time and responsible when we were at work, but going out on dates wasn’t his strong suit, or at least, it wasn’t when we were together.

  “Let’s get you looking handsome, so you can sweep that redhead off her feet,” I joked.

  “Come on; it doesn’t matter. She’s going
to fall for this the second she’s got her eyes on me.”

  He slid his hands up and down his body, and I had to laugh. Merrick was a decent looking guy, but it was his high level of confidence that seemed to attract the women. Sometimes, I thought they actually enjoyed his piggish nature. He knew how to give a compliment, though, and even the toughest of women would succumb to his flattery. I wasn’t exactly sure how he was going about his date with the redhead, though since she had been pretty tough with him on the times I had seen the two of them together.

  “You know I can wear anything. This doesn’t have to be a big thing,” Merrick said.

  I grabbed a pair of jeans for him, black shoes, and a black polo shirt. He actually had a very nice wardrobe although even his jeans were extraordinarily expensive. I had on a similar pair of jeans that were about 1/10th the price and a blue button up shirt.

  To my surprise, I felt the rumbling of being nervous. I knew we had great chemistry, and I couldn’t wait to get a chance to talk to her again but couldn’t figure out why the hell I was actually feeling nervous. It wasn’t like me at all. But it also wasn’t normal for me to be seeing a woman for the third time and just now going on a date. The whole situation was different, and I figured that was probably why I was nervous.

  “You look like you’re sweating,” I said to Merrick as the taxi pulled up to the dance studio.

  “I think that’s you who are sweating. You better keep your jacket on; I bet you already have pit stains.” He laughed.

  It was me who was sweating. I couldn’t stop myself. The more I tried to calm myself down, the more I felt like a teenage boy who was about to meet his prom date. None of this was normal for me. I didn’t sweat before a date and didn’t get nervous before a date. I was the laid back guy who the girls loved. I was the guy with a hilarious sense of humor, and that was what got me through my nights like this, but I didn’t feel like myself at all.

  We climbed the stairs which didn’t help my sweating at all. I made Merrick wait for a minute while I caught my breath before we went into the dance studio. It was unusual to pick girls up from a place of work, but then again the redhead did seem pretty unusual.