first night as roommates, but she seemed somewhat appeased after I handed her twenty dollars, a pizza menu, and the telephone. I promised myself that I’d spend some quality time with her the next day. See how she was doing. After all, this divorce was a major life change for her and I wanted to make sure she was okay with everything.
Thanks to traffic and zero parking, I arrived at the restaurant fashionably late and scanned the place for a blond-haired surfer-looking guy. No one in sight.
Maybe he decided to be fashionably late as well and was simply a bit more fashionable than me. As long as he didn’t stand me up. That would be unbearable. To be stood up by a guy you were just using to prove to the guy you just slept with that you weren’t a loser. Ugh.
Calm down, Maddy. Go get a drink.
After checking in with the hostess, who told me there’d be a half-hour wait for a table anyway, I hit the bar and ordered myself a nice glass of Chardonnay. I would have much rather had one of their delicious margaritas (they had eighty different types of tequila here), but this was a first date which meant I had to behave myself. I had to seem grown-up and sophisticated.
I took a sip and then (in a very un-grown-up fashion) managed to spill half the glass of wine down the front of my tank top. Great. Thank goodness I didn’t order a Merlot.
“Are you Maddy?” a male voice asked as I frantically tried to dab my soaking breasts with a napkin. I looked up.
“Yes, hi,” I said brightly, pleased to see the Czech surfer (okay, I was going to have to start referring to him as Ted from here on out) was actually pretty cute in real life. Had the total surfer look going on. Tanned, in good shape. And of course blond hair and really intense blue eyes. Why the heck was he on an Internet dating service? I mean, he could surely get real life women. Then again, I was on it, too. Though that was sort of for a different reason.
I realized he was staring at my chest and was about to be of ended when I remembered I was still holding a napkin over my right boob. Oh yes. Great way to make a first impression. I lowered the napkin, painfully aware that the combination of cold wine and napkin rubbing had made my nipples stand at attention. He probably thought he turned me on or something. Bleh.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Ted.” He held out his hand. He had nice hands. Not too callused, but not too femininely smooth either.
“There’s like a half hour wait for a table,” I informed him, after we shook. “I put our name in.”
“Cool.” He had an American accent and didn’t seem Czech or German at all. But that was okay. I just needed a photo, not a voice memo, to prove our date. Though that brought me to my next question. How the heck was I going to snap a photo without him thinking I was a freak of nature?
He ordered a Corona and paid with a Platinum card. Ooh, that meant he had money. Not that I was some gold digger, but still … very interesting. Maybe this date wouldn’t be such a wash after all. Then again, he failed to ask me if I wanted a refill, which wasn’t exactly a good sign.
“So,” he said after getting his beer, “do you use Match dot com often?”
I felt my face heat. Did he think I was some pathetic creature who couldn’t get a date? Then I remembered he was on it, too, so he probably wasn’t trying to insinuate anything.
“Nope. I’m a Match dot com virgin.” I chuckled. He didn’t.
“My brother signed me up as a joke a couple weeks ago,” he said. “We had a good laugh over some of the photos.”
Or maybe he was trying to insinuate something. I withheld a grimace. Who did this jerk think he was? He wasn’t that good-looking. In fact, if you lined him up side by side with say, Brad Pitt, he’d seem downright ugly.
“So, then, why did you decide to go out with me?” I asked, realizing my voice sounded a little huffy. “If it was all, you know, a joke.”
“Well, duh. You’re a major babe. Not like some of the other women on there.”