After two lonely years, I finally agreed to a dinner date with a woman who seemed kind and genuine. But when I arrived, she was sitting with three friends—and all four started ordering the most expensive items on the menu. Then the check arrived, and so did someone she never expected to see.
The apartment hummed with that particular silence I had grown used to after Megan left.
Most nights, I worked late at the firm, came home, ate something I would not remember the next day, and called it living.
I had not been on a real date in almost two years. At 38, I had convinced myself that solitude was a kind of victory.
Then a woman named Brooke matched with me on a dating app.
Her first message made me laugh.
You look like a man who folds his socks.
Please tell me I’m wrong 😂
Guilty 😅 Is that a dealbreaker?
Only if you don’t iron the pillowcases too.
She was warm and easy to talk to.
She told me she liked simple men with good manners, and I wanted, badly, to believe she meant me.
We talked for almost a week before I worked up the nerve to ask her on a date.
I hedged my bets by picking a place she’d mentioned before in a good light and mentioned it casually.
“Dinner Friday?” I asked.
“There’s a place downtown. Marcello’s. Italian.”
There was a pause.
Then, “Marcello’s? The one with the private booths? I love that place!”
“Great,” I replied.
“I’ll see you then.”
I sat with my phone in my hand for a long minute after that, smiling like a teenager. If only I’d known what a huge mistake I’d just made.
Friday came slowly.
I ironed a shirt I had not worn since the wedding I attended alone.
I trimmed my beard. I put on the cologne my brother gave me three Christmases ago, still half full.
In the cab, my hands kept smoothing the same crease on my knee.
“First date?” the driver asked, watching me in the mirror.
“You look like a man hoping for something.”
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