CHAPTER THREE
Hayley promised, once my profile went live, that there would be plenty of men to choose from when I saw fit to start looking.
Here’s the thing: she lied.
All right, maybe she didn’t lie per se, but she wasn’t exactly on the money.
Sure, there’s plenty of men. Tons of men. More men than I could shake a stick at, if I felt like shaking a stick. Which I don’t.
But there aren’t many who make me sit up and pay attention. Even several hours after finishing the profile, with a decent night’s sleep between then and now, I’m not super into this crazy idea of hers. Not when I look at my pool of possibilities.
Don’t get me wrong. They’re all cute enough—for the most part. They all seem interesting.
None of them do it for me, is all.
“You’re not doing this for anything long-term.
Don’t forget that,” she reminded me before leaving the apartment last night—or rather, this morning.
We stayed up pretty late, polishing the profile while finishing off a bottle of wine.
“Have fun. Experiment. You could even create an amalgam, you know? One main character in your new book who shares traits with a handful of men.”
A handful of men. I’m pretty sure she’s conducting a social experiment on the side, seeing how many men I can date without picking up a disease. Or a stalker.
I’d rather stick to one man, if at all possible, even if I know darn well my editor would be on Hayley’s side in this. There are certain lines I don’t want to cross, and that’s one of them. Besides, I can barely handle dating one man at a time while working on a book.
There are filters I can click on to narrow down my selection of potential dates, so I figure it’s a good idea to do that first.
“Age range,” I mutter, leaning in to look at my choices.
There are a bunch of ranges with clicky buttons next to them. Eighteen to twenty-five, twenty-six to thirty-five, and so on.
The first age group seems too young for a doctor, so I leave that one unchecked. It seems to me that twenty-six to thirty-five is a reasonable age range. I don’t want to mix in too many tropes and go for a man much older than me.
“Body type,” I continue, and now, I’m paying attention.
Granted, the guy doesn’t have to be a fitness model on the side.
I can write him just as jacked up as my readers expect him to be.
But I want to be attracted to him too. I decide to settle on somebody who’s fit and healthy.
I would think that a young doctor would be fairly fit anyway.
Wouldn’t he know better than to let himself go?
After I fix my filters, the search results come back at roughly half of the several hundred I was looking at when I first logged in to my account.
This is more doable but still overwhelming.
I need somebody exciting, somebody interesting, somebody who’ll inspire me to write something readers won’t want to put down.
It would help if he wasn’t a total jerk or, even worse, one of those alpha meatheads some readers are nuts about. I can write him as an alpha male, no problem. I just don’t particularly feel like dealing with a my way or the highway type in real life.
Only there’s no way to tell whether a guy is or isn’t that sort just by looking through his dating profile. It’s a shame there’s no filter to help weed those types out.
It takes a lot of scrolling and the help of a solid breakfast and several cups of coffee, but before long, I’ve clicked several promising profiles.
All the men are cute, all of them either posed with dogs or doing something active.
There’s a cardiologist on a cliff overlooking a gorge.
There’s a pediatric specialist on the beach, standing next to a surfboard.
They’re not going to expect me to do these things with them, are they? I mean, I can hurt myself just by getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t need any help.
First things first, I guess. Reach out to them. What am I supposed to say?
“You’re a writer,” I growl at myself. “Think of something.”
What would my heroine, who right now doesn’t have a name or even a physical description—really, I need to get moving on this project—say to attract her ideal partner?
Why do I have to go and make things harder for myself? It’s like I have a talent for it. What a shame that I can’t make a living from it.
Hi there, I type before deleting it. I don’t want to look too eager or corny. Hi, I settle on. I found your profile and knew right away that I wanted to reach out to you.
Okay, that’s a good opener. Should I include something original to each guy? Like surfer boy, for instance. Should I say something about surfing? No, since I don’t know the first thing about it. Maybe that’s what I should say—that I’ve never surfed before but always found it interesting.
No. Even though it’s true I do find surfing to be really interesting, I just know that if I ever tried it, I would end up drowning. Maybe that’s a little too negative, but what can I say? I know myself.
Plus, what happens if he asks me to go surfing with him? I can’t help but cringe at the very thought of trying to balance on a board with the ocean rushing under me. No, that wouldn’t work at all.
I crack my knuckles and shake my hands out, wishing Hayley were here with me. She would know what to say. How could she leave me alone with this Herculean task before me? She should know better.
“Blame her all you want,” I whisper, my fingers poised over the keys before I start typing again.
I like going to the beach, too, when my schedule grants me enough time for it—though I’m way too clumsy to be much of a surfer. I’m much more comfortable in front of the laptop, where the only drowning I’ll do is metaphorically drowning under the weight of a deadline.
No, no. That’s dumb. I’m overthinking this. It’s probably for the best that Hayley isn’t here because she would roll her eyes hard enough that they might fall out of her head.
I take out everything after the word surfer and write this instead: Please, when you have a chance, check out my profile. I have it set to private, but you should be able to access it now. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yes, that will have to do. I’m not going to sit here and craft a message for each of these guys since who knows if they’ll ever get back to me? It might end up being a waste of time.
Besides, simple is always the best. Isn’t that what Maggie tells me time and again—right before she tears a chapter to shreds and removes some of my favorite lines for the sake of tightening up the story? Maybe I tend to lean too far toward wordiness.
I copy and paste what I just typed out into the message form for each individual profile. All that’s left is to wait and see whether I get any bites.
After a few minutes of constantly refreshing my browser, it’s clear I need something else to distract myself.
If these men are doctors, I’m sure they are super busy, and don’t have the time to check their dating profile constantly.
They’re probably, you know, riding into the ER on a wheeled gurney, doing chest compressions on a dying patient while shouting orders to the doctors and nurses around them.
I may watch slightly too much TV.
I have to get up. Does my fridge need cleaning? Could I stand to do a load of laundry? Sure, why bother writing character profiles when I could spend my time dealing with busywork like chores?
I’m halfway to the kitchen when a pair of voices out in the hall catches my attention.
It’s Saturday, so I wouldn’t expect Matt to spend the entire morning working, but this is different for him. Normally, he doesn’t keep his overnight visitors around until midmorning—at least, if he ever does, I don’t hear them leaving. They’re usually more discreet, I guess.
But not this particular girl.
“You’re gonna call me, right?” she asks. It sounds like she’s standing right in front of my door.
Ooh, ooh, this could be interesting. I’ve never witnessed a one-night stand interrogation like this.
I know I shouldn’t take glee from this situation.
But that doesn’t stop me from tiptoeing to the door, holding my breath, listening hard for anything Matt might have to say in reply. I can practically feel his discomfort.
“I mean, I had a good time with you. But like I said, I’m usually pretty busy.”
Lame.
“Who isn’t usually busy?” she challenges. She still sounds like she’s kidding around, being playful, but it’s a fair question. “I’m not asking you for an engagement ring. Just a phone call. I had fun too—and we could have fun again.”
The ball’s in your court, buddy. I look out into the hall through the peephole in the door.
Matt scored a very pretty girl last night after leaving me and Hayley to our work. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would say he chose a girl who looks a lot like my best friend.
Why does my stomach clench a little at the thought? Maybe because it seems pretty creepy, picking up a girl who looks like a girl who just turned him down last night. Not that I think he was seriously interested in Hayley … was he? I guess I can’t put anything past him.
“I’m sure we could, but I’d rather be up-front with you. Instead of leading you on, wouldn’t you rather I be honest? It’s nothing personal.”
Ouch. That’s the worst thing he could’ve said.
I don’t even know this girl, and I feel sorry for her.
For a split second, I have half a mind to fling the door open and give him a piece of my mind.
But that would probably be the most awkward thing ever, and since I probably will have to see him again at some point in my life, I keep my mouth shut.
“Nothing personal? Cute. Maybe grow up a little and let go of your commitment phobia, okay?” she scoffs, looking him up and down before tossing her head and turning away. Her heels click against the floor and then against the stairs as she stomps her way down.
Now, I have a clear view of Matt, who’s dressed in nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans. Even now, with my nose wrinkled in distaste because he said such a jerky thing, I can’t help but appreciate his chest and arms and just about everything else. Darn hormones.
He leans against the doorframe, eyes sliding shut as he lets out a long, slow breath.
I almost feel bad for him now. Not just because of the awkward situation he was just in, but because he’s so dead set against being involved with somebody in a real way.
It’s almost enough to make me angry actually. He likes to pretend he’s too busy for anything real or solid, but I know a man who truly is too busy to be in a relationship. His life is nothing like Blake’s.
It’s just a silly excuse used by a silly boy who wants to have fun but doesn’t want any of the responsibility that comes with devoting himself to somebody. I can’t help but click my tongue in disappointment.
His eyes open.
He fixes them on my door.
No, not on my door. On the peephole. He’s staring straight at me. I press my lips together, holding my breath, afraid to so much as blink and give myself away somehow.
All he does is raise an eyebrow, lowering his chin a little like he’s acknowledging me, and then he steps back and closes the door.