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For a brief second, Beck thought about changing her profile picture to one with her and Seamus, but then decided she was overthinking the whole thing and needed to stop before she drove herself crazy.
Instead, she did what she thought was the reasonable thing and replied to Mr. Swoony’s message.
Thanks! Seamus, my dog, is a sweetheart. Stinky breath, but really, what dog doesn’t have stinky breath? You said in your profile that you like to hang out in downtown Raleigh. What’s your favorite place? I loved Busy Bee and was enormously sad that it closed.
What will I do without those tots?!
Her finger hovered over how to sign the message. With her name? Mr. Swoony hadn’t signed with his name. Maybe names just weren’t done at this stage in online dating. Maybe they were supposed to get to know each other a little better.
Maybe he’s not an online-dating veteran, either, and everyone in this room knows you’re overthinking this, Beck. Self-chiding done, she sent the message and called herself done with online dating for the day.
She had work to do and better things to think about than a romantic-looking guy who, if she were to believe today’s bride, was too handsome for his own good.
* * *
WELL, HELLO, CALEB thought as he read the message on his phone from Ms. Dogfan while he waited for his takeout, sitting in one of the plastic chairs in his favorite Chinese restaurant. Like the tables, the chairs were mostly for decoration. No one ate here—they ordered off the sign above the counter and got their food to go. The food was good and the restaurant catered to the busy professional who didn’t have the time or energy to figure out how to use the kitchen.
Or, as in Caleb’s case, only swept the crap off the kitchen counters when company was due over.
He’d shove everything into his office and shut the door for Ms. Dogfan. She hadn’t written very much, but it was cute. Short. Succinct. Charming enough to make him want to know more. That and her smile was enough to write back.
Ah, yes. Busy Bee had the best tater tots. And huevos rancheros. You could never go wrong with their brunch. It’s not a bar and it’s not tots, but have you had the fries at Chuck’s? I’m partial to those. And the milkshakes don’t hurt.
Seamus, huh? That seems like a good name for your dog. Does he have a green collar? And do you buy him a little green bow tie on St. Patrick’s Day?
—Caleb
There. That was enough to keep the conversation going. After all, these emails were really about deciding if they wanted to meet in person. Best not to give too much away and either not live up to the email charm or say something so phenomenally stupid that the woman wouldn’t be interested in meeting at all.
Not exchanging lots of emails was part of the trick, too. Emails gave you time to think about what you wanted to say, to edit your words and your tone. To rethink. He’d been on a couple of dates with women who’d been absolutely enthralling over email but flat in person.
Likely, a few women had thought the same about him before he’d learned to offer a date early—like three quick exchanges in.
“Thirty-five,” the man barked from behind the counter. Abby, his daughter, must be at soccer practice tonight, because she wasn’t working the register. She was a bubbly girl who chatted with the customers as she rang up their orders; she even shared little details of her life with her favorites. Caleb knew how to ask questions, so he knew what college she wanted to apply to—North Carolina State University. What she wanted to study—Fashion and Textile Design. And what her parents thought about her dreams—nothing good.
Caleb felt for the girl. He’d disappointed his parents, too, despite trying to do the opposite when he’d started writing for his college paper and discovered that he loved it. Whenever Abby complained, Caleb gave her the same advice that every young adult needed to hear—life was long and your life almost never turns out as planned, but it usually turns out okay if you let it.
Much like online dating, Caleb thought as he accepted the plastic bag of food Mr. Lin shoved across the cracked laminate.
His phone rang as he approached his car. Only after he’d opened the passenger door and shoved enough papers out of the way to have a place to put his food was he able to reach into his pocket. A missed call from his sister, Candice. After he got settled, he called her back.
“Caleb, you have to get me out of this date.” Her voice echoed against the hard surfaces of whatever room she was in—probably the bathroom.
The hairs on the back of his head stood at attention. “Do I need to come get you, get you out of this date?”
“No. It’s not that bad. Just, I said yes to a date with a coworker and I shouldn’t have, because, awkward if it doesn’t work out.”
“Just tell the guy that you’re not that into him.” He was backing out of the parking spot, which is why he didn’t notice the silence on the other end of the line. “You’ve slept with him already, haven’t you?”
“Is it better if there wasn’t any sleeping?” He groaned and she tsked. “Not like you have any room to judge.”
“Dating is a game and it’s not an even playing field.” Like life and all the best sports, there was a strategy to dating, and Caleb had studied it. Not that he abused the tricks he knew—he wasn’t out to prey on women or trick them into a date they didn’t want. But he wasn’t going to sabotage himself, either, and he fully expected the women on the other end of the computer to be using the same tricks—or be in the process of learning them.
But he knew the rules were stacked in his favor. Candice generously shared with him all the dick pics she’d gotten, even though he assured her that one was enough. But he’d rather look at “the log,” as she called them, than any of the screenshots she’d sent him of men calling her a bitch when she wouldn’t show them hers.
“You say that...” He didn’t need her to finish her sentence. They’d had this argument many times, usually when she called him because she’d gotten herself into a sticky situation.
“You’ve got to think about,” he started to say, stopping when he heard her voice finish the admonition, “what your desired outcome is.”
Candice said her desired outcome was a steady job, steady housing and a steady boyfriend. Then she would do something like have sex with her coworker before she knew if she liked him, put her job at risk and—this was his baby sister, after all—then she’d likely find out the guy was also her new roommate’s favorite cousin.
“You sleep around.” A familiar argument for a familiar ride home.
“I like women. I’m looking for company for a night or two. Nothing else.”
He liked how soft a woman’s skin was and all their laughs and the variety of their bodies and their smells. Whenever his coworkers said he was a lady’s man—almost always with a raised eyebrow and a twinge of jealousy in their voices, even the married ones—he told them they could be, too, if they started liking all women and approaching them with metaphorical open arms. Women knew when a man was listening to them just because he wanted to get some. And make no mistake, Caleb liked sex and usually wanted some with the woman he was on a date with, but he’d enjoy the conversation and the company whether sex was on or off the table.
He’d watched a few of his coworkers approach women at bars during happy hour. Some women they wanted to listen to. Some they just wanted to bang. And in other cases, it only seemed to matter that they had two X chromosomes. Women could feel the difference in the way a man approached them, and they responded accordingly. And men couldn’t fake it. They were either genuine or creeps.
The car in front of him stopped suddenly and Caleb had to slam on his brakes, holding out his arm to stop his dinner from flying forward into his dash. The phone, sitting in the center console, nearly spilled out onto the floor. If his sister landed in the pile of papers covering the floor mat, he’d never find her. And he’d never hear the end of it. He might have embraced the idea that all journalists are pack rats, but his sister still called him a slob and wondered what the appeal of the unkempt writer was.
When this special series on election maps was over, he’d bundle all this paper up in a box, nicely labeled, and pack it in his attic, until the next story buried him.
He recovered enough from the near accident to pay attention to the phone call and hear his sister’s voice fill his car with, “Maybe all I want is a man’s company for a night or two.”
“Then walk out of the stall you’re in, head to the guy’s table and tell him the one night was fabulous—”
“It wasn’t.”
“You’re about to dump him. You can lie about the fabulousness of the night.”
“Do you lie to your dates?”
“We’re talking about you and how you’re going to tell him that the one night was all you wanted. And you’re going to stop telling men how you need to find a nice guy. That’s what gets you into these situations.”
“I do want a nice guy.”
“No, you don’t. Like me, you want a good time and a disappointed father.”
Candice’s giggle carried Caleb down the street to the entrance of his own neighborhood. “Did you get a text from him today, too?”
“The one about the Kerrs having their fourth grandchild? Yup.”
“What if this guy gets mad?”
As he turned into the small road leading to his townhome, he repeated the same thing he always told her. “If he gets mad, then you made the right decision. If he doesn’t get mad, he might be worth another night of a good time.”
Then he remembered what his sister had said about her one-night stand. “Only not this one, since the first night wasn’t that good of a time.”
As he put his car in Park, he thought about the book he joked about writing. Dating Advice by Caleb. Something to compete with those creepy pickup artists who advocated cornering women and never taking no for an answer.
His goal was good company, great sex and no long-term commitments, in that order. He was also just fine with the idea that a woman had sovereignty over the decisions she made about her time and her body.
“I just got home. We good?” He turned the car off.
“Yeah. He probably suspects something is up. Mad or not, he won’t be surprised.”
“Uh, no,” he agreed with a laugh.
“You have a hot date you need to get ready for?”
“Hot date with a continuing-education class on writing narrative nonfiction.” Tonight, his relationship included not alienating his computer by spilling fried rice on it while he finished his copy. He needed the keyboard to still like him enough that he could pursue his own passions after meeting his deadline.
“I didn’t know you were interested in writing nonfiction.”
“I’m a man of surprises.”
She laughed hard enough to practically bray. “No, you’re not. You just think you are.”
“Go out and break a man’s heart. Send me a text and let me know how it goes when you’re done.”
“Bye, bro.”
“Bye, sis.”
Once they’d hung up, Caleb tossed his phone in the bag with his food and prepared for the usual night of a single man, rather than the nights all his coworkers imagined he lived. If he were feeling especially frisky, maybe he’d ask the cute dog lover to meet him for drinks. That was all the action he could handle tonight.
CHAPTER THREE (#uc8205a00-018e-573a-9ffe-d67265e0bf47)
BECK STOOD ON the sidewalk outside a cocktail bar in Durham’s small downtown, trying not to look stood up. It wasn’t easy. With all the people out and about early on a spring evening, there wasn’t much space to stand with anything approaching nonchalance.
Caleb, aka Mr. Swoony, was late. She looked quickly at her phone. Okay, calling him late wasn’t entirely fair, since she had been fifteen minutes early. She’d rushed everything today, starting from the moment she’d sat bolt upright this morning, an hour before her alarm had gone off. She’d had three cups of coffee, two more than she usually had when she woke up. But she’d tried to waste some of her extra hour over coffee and a magazine. It had been that or stare at her closet and rethink what she’d planned to wear today, which was guaranteed to be a bad idea. Of course, too much coffee had given her the shakes, which meant her homework assignments for her art class were a mess.
And then she’d stared at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out what first date hair and makeup should look like. And she’d changed her mind about what to wear before settling back on the ruffled cream-colored dress with a peachy cardigan, seafoam green scarf and matching bangles. Later, when she’d called her friend Marsie—who had been dating forever before meeting the man she was set to marry—her unhelpful friend had told her not to worry about what she was wearing and instead think about what she would talk about with a stranger.
Knowing what to say to a stranger had never been a problem for Beck, but finally she had decided Marsie was right about the first part. She pulled out the outfit she’d planned to wear originally, got dressed and then left for her date.
Of course, she’d driven too fast and there hadn’t been any traffic, so her plan to sail casually through the door of the bar at exactly six in the evening wouldn’t work. Now she had to try to make it look as though this wasn’t her first date since...college.
And, as it had for the entirety of the day, trying was failing her. As she shifted from foot to foot to foot and wondered where to rest her hands, she probably looked like a woman who’d already had too much to drink and was about to have more.
“Beck?”
She started at the smooth, deep voice that said her name from the left. “Caleb?” she asked as she turned. All this time she’d been staring out to the parking garage to the right, not expecting him to come from the left.
His shoes were nice. Casual black loafers, well-worn, but not scuffed, like he both wore them a lot, but also took care of them. Dark jeans with trim hips and the hem of a light purple button-down.
And an outstretched hand, which she took before meeting his eyes. But when she did meet his eyes... God, they were as light green in person as they had been in his pictures. Not only were they an unreal light green, but they were smiling, and his entire face was surrounded by pitch-black hair that made it look as though he’d just gotten out of bed in the best possible way.
He might be the most handsome man she’d ever seen in real life, and if it wasn’t for the slight crook in his nose where he’d probably broken it, she’d think he stepped out of a photoshopped magazine spread.
He was slender and tall, too. Willowy, without being weak-looking. Frankly, it was all a bit unreal.
She smiled back at him as she took his hand. Well, if this was going to be her first date in over twelve years, at least she was starting on a high note.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. God, his hand was warm, even on a cool late-spring night when he wasn’t wearing a jacket. He was probably perfect and did things like keep the woman in bed next to him warm, even if she always had ice-block feet.
“Likewise. Shall we?” He swept one hand onto the glass of the bar’s front door.
“Yes.”
He opened the door for her and she took one step into what felt eerily like her new future.
* * *
BECK WAS NERVOUS enough that her hand shook as he had gripped it in his. She even walked like she was nervous, with her shoulders up near her ears and quick, rabbit-like steps that made the ruffled bits at the bottom of her dress bounce about her fine legs. And her square jaw had tightened as she’d smiled, rather than opening in the bright grin he remembered from her profile picture. Her rich brown hair was shoulder-length and feathery around her chin and collarbone.
She was just as cute as she’d been in her profile pictures, with intelligent eyes and an open face. In fact, her nerves were endearing. Caleb couldn’t remember the last time he’d been nervous on a date, nor could he remember the last time he could recognize that one of his dates was nervous.
Her profile said that she was divorced. If he had to guess, she hadn’t been divorced long. Once inside, he stood back to watch her move as she approached the bar.
“Hi,” she said to the young woman wiping a glass dry. Then, to his surprise, she stood on her toes and her legs looked almost a mile long sticking out of the bottom of her dress. The hem of her cardigan lifted, though not enough for him to see if she had a nice ass.
He was trying to figure out what she was all about when she said, “That’s a nice dress,” to the younger woman behind the bar, who beamed wide with pleasure. “That’s a Marauder’s Map on your dress, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl says. “You like Harry Potter?”
“Doesn’t everyone? Or everyone who knows anything.” Beck sank back on her heels and Caleb could see that she was smiling.
Well, isn’t this different. Caleb had been on hundreds of dates and planned to go on hundreds more before he died. Many of those women he’d gone out with had been nice. They’d been friendly to waitstaff and kind to the person who helped them in the shop. But Beck struck him as different. She was one of those rare people who was kind to people because she saw each and every person in front of her as a unique and interesting individual who was worthy of getting to know.
That was different from someone being polite because they were supposed to or because they were a cheerful introvert. Even through her nerves, Beck exuded a warmth that even the bored-with-life hipster behind the bar responded to. Caleb had been to this bar what felt like a thousand times, both on his own and with dates. The bartender had never looked back at him with a real, honest-to-God smile, no matter how polite he was.
Beck was different, alright. If Caleb had to guess, he’d say Beck was one of those people who hugged strangers and they didn’t mind.
He was so lost in his own thought and evaluation of her that he didn’t notice she’d ordered and paid for her drink until the girl was handing over a martini glass with a purplish liquid in it and Beck was agreeing to start a tab.
“Anywhere you want to sit?” she asked, turning to face him.
There weren’t a lot of seats in this bar to begin with, and his favorite date table was taken. “How about that one?” he asked, gesturing to a booth away from the door.
“Sounds good,” she said and then stepped away. He stayed put but continued watching her make her way through the people until she was at the table he had gestured to. Then she got out her phone, typed something quickly, and then seemed to turn the volume down and put the phone into her purse.
He’d turned the ringer of his phone off back when he’d parked his car. And it was a point in her favor that she’d done the same and tucked it away where it couldn’t be a distraction. He turned back to the bar and ordered his gin and tonic and some bar snacks. He ignored the little voice in his head that told him his life was changing today. His life had the possibility of changing every day, with every breath.
Beck was sweet and he dug the intelligent sweep of her eyebrows, but she wasn’t going to change his life any more than any of the other women before her had. Even if the smile she greeted him with held a hint of mischief.
CHAPTER FOUR (#uc8205a00-018e-573a-9ffe-d67265e0bf47)
