their stomach and they’re up for a curry and beer night. To be honest I think his best bet is to date his buddy Steve; they make the perfect couple.
Anyway, even if they don’t, I don’t want him.
So, there are a lot of don’ts, and I am normally more of a do person. But I just want a date with a normal guy.
My big problem is I don’t know: a. where to find him, or b. what to say if I do, or c. how to tell if he’s interested (as D. B. Tricket will confirm).
So, finding a date online had seemed like a good idea. I thought I would have some control, and also wouldn’t have to rely on my dodgy ability to read body language. Normally I don’t have an issue with this. I can tell if somebody wants me to piss off, sit down, leave them alone or help – which is why I love working in a shop so much. But my wires just seem to get crossed, or totally fused together, in a potential-attraction situation. Or, well, any one-on-one with a man in a social situation. I get flustered, I panic, I lose my ability to string together sentences, I cannot act like a normal human being.
It is beginning to annoy me.
Using an app, though, I thought I could check for compatibility at least, get the basic niceties out of the way, and we’d both turn up for our first date because we wanted to be there.
Seems I was wrong.
I am now even more annoyed.
***
This bar is a bit like a hotel, with a steady trickle of customers coming and going – but not staying for long. Which leaves me feeling even worse. It isn’t the type of place I’d normally come on my own (to be honest I don’t do bars on my own), it isn’t even the type of bar I’d come to with Robbie, or Bea. It’s a bit brash, loud, trying a bit too hard to impress.
Trendy shiny stools and uncomfortable seats that don’t let you slump, carefully dimmed lights that are supposed to create ambience but just feel false. Not me at all. I’m more a chilled, take me as you find me type of person.
My prosecco, like me, has lost its bubbles. I knock back what is left, and stare at Gabe’s profile and have to admit it feels a bit like I’ve been kicked in the gut. He’s not shown up for our date. Our first date.
Second date I might have been able to stomach (unless I’d really been into him), but first date? Really? He hasn’t even given me a chance.
Bastard.
It’s that feeling you get when you’re six years old and can’t see your mum in the audience at the school Nativity.
He has ruined my master plan. He has let me down, just when I thought I was about to make some progress and come out of what Bea calls my ‘hermit shell home’. I’ve been trying, I really have, and I thought this was it.
Gabe Stevenson. Blue eyes, dark hair. Age 32 and ? (I’d thought that was cute; who doesn’t like a guy with a sense of humour?).
Not famous, a film star or millionaire, but play the guitar (badly), sing in the shower (not quite as badly), cook a mean curry. Like dogs, kids, chocolate and cake. Scrub up okay.
Cute. Slightly serious, but fun. Honest, presentable, can laugh at himself. Perfect. I thought.
Grrrr. Being stood up is bad enough. But this has just got even worse, even more humiliating. I have been ghosted. He will not answer my messages! What kind of inconsiderate moron won’t even reply to a simple ‘Running late? ’ text message?
By the fourth message I may have dropped the smileys and dipped a toe (or whole foot) into the passive-aggressive arena. I did not, however, text ‘Where the fuck are you?’ even though I was itching to. I’m rather proud of my self-restraint, so that’s one positive I can take away from this.
I turn my phone off and back on again, just in case it has lost connection, or has been hiding stuff from me.
It blinks at me.
‘Oh gawd.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘Why am I even doing this to myself? First dates are the biggest load of shite …’
‘Then you’re dating the wrong guys.’
‘Shit!’ I hadn’t even realised I’d moaned out loud, and the deep voice that sounds like it is inches away from my left ear