Chapter 4
My date was on his fourth cup of coffee in forty minutes.
It wasn't even iced coffee. That I could understand. Not that I'd ever chugged four cups, but I could knock back a large iced caramel macchiato under the right circumstances. But hot coffee? No, sir. It took me forty minutes and an ice cube to sip hot coffee.
But this guy was a devotee of the Church of House Blend Hot and Sweet.
He'd scooped a handful of Splenda packets from the courtesy bin after the barista announced our orders.
Not a few packets but an actual handful of them.
He then proceeded to deposit them on the center of the table we chose on the Boylston Street side of the shop.
I'd ignored the small mountain of fake sugar then but now it seemed he meant to consume the entire quantity.
That and a whole pot of coffee in under an hour.
This was what I got for agreeing to a morning coffee date. Not that first dates qualified as proper dates. They weren't. They were interviews. Some of those interviews were more promising than others and they called for better locations, spiffier clothes, prime time slots.
Seven thirty on a Wednesday morning was the opposite of prime time.
He seemed immune to the temperature of his beverage, chugging away like it was tap water. He didn't even blow on it. No blow. Just gulp, gulp, gulp, gone. Then he slammed down the empty like a frat boy playing beer pong.
After the second cup, I started smiling and nodding my way through the conversation.
He wasn't saying anything interesting. It was traffic, weather, and sports; basically, local talk radio.
But I started wondering why he hadn't ordered a larger cup.
This shop offered coffee by the pail, rendering four mediums illogical and wasteful in cups alone.
Unless he was killing time by scorching his mouth.
Or repeatedly leaving the table under the premise of ordering another cup while hoping I'd cut this nothingburger short.
I was still nursing an Earl Grey latte. I preferred my tea iced and accompanied by an abundance of summertime, and this was neither.
I wasn't sure why I ordered it though it was possible I wanted to come off as a touch high-maintenance today.
A bit refined, like a woman who knew her teas as well as she knew her wines, her designer shoes, and herself.
I didn't have a sound explanation for it but I knew I wanted someone to look at me and my Earl Grey latte, and say, "Don't you see?
She's different. You don't fuck with a woman who orders an Earl Grey latte.
She knows something about the world. She's sophisticated.
Snap this one up because she's in short supply. "
Today, I wanted to be that sophisticated woman.
The one in short supply. I wanted the hamster wheel of online dating to slow down long enough for someone to see me as more than my age, location, and interests.
I wanted to be someone worth getting to know.
And then, I wanted to be someone worth treasuring.
I didn't allow myself this feeling often. But I still wanted someone to look at me like I was a brand-new kind of amazing. I'd thought this guy could do that for me. That I could be his brand-new amazing.
There seemed to be chemistry when we'd messaged, but none of that was present this morning. He didn't seem like the same guy who'd sent fun, flirty messages.
"I'm gonna grab another," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Can I get you anything?"
I glanced down at my latte and shook my head, desperately trying to suppress the laugh threatening to burst free from my lips. Five cups. Five full cups of coffee. It was ridiculous. "No," I replied. "I'm fine. Thank you."
He shot me a quick smile and then strutted toward the counter.
Objectively, the guy was attractive. Well-cut business suit, pleasant smile, decent hair.
His fingernails were clean. All good things.
But he was pounding coffee and yammering about road construction and he'd only managed a few cursory questions about me while we'd waited to order.
If my mother was here, she would've told me to play nice. Give the guy a chance. Try. "Throw him a bone," she'd crow. "Don't let him die on the vine."
And that was because she believed I was too tough on men.
Yep, that was her new argument. After all my years of settling and not trying and accepting the plastic straw treatment, I now expected a little too much, a little too often.
She had it in her head that I was working out my petulance by shopping for the perfect man, the one who checked all the boxes, and I wouldn't tolerate anyone found wanting.
As of our last convening on my love life, she was pushing hard on fixer-uppers and letting someone grow on me.
I was tougher and my expectations were higher than they used to be.
But as my mother had pointed out, I'd accepted less in the past and that was exactly what I'd received.
I wasn't going down that path again and I didn't care if that meant I had to sit through one hundred shitty coffee dates in the process.
I was going to find a good, honest, real man who required neither remodeling nor moss.
And people didn't change. I'd learned that lesson after dedicating far too many years of hard labor to the cause.
"The traffic on 95 in Needham is unreal," he continued when he returned. "They've been working on that project for damn near seven years. My sister got married, had a kid, and got divorced, all while those exits have been torn up. Unreal."
"Yeah," I replied, nodding. I wasn't positive, but I thought that construction wrapped up last year. I wasn't going to argue with him. Not when I could obsess over his coffee consumption. "It's quite a mess."
"The worst," he said, lifting the cup to his lips. "I plan my day around avoiding that area. It's a bitch." Before I could reply, he tapped the cup on the table and leaned toward me. "I don't know what your schedule looks like but I don't have to be anywhere until ten."
I shifted back on my seat to avoid the plume of his coffee breath. "Oh, well, I—"
He tapped the cup again. "My apartment's around the corner."
"That's—that's great for you," I said, confused. "I like this neighborhood. I worked on a project near—"
Another sharp tap of the cup. "You wanna come up?"
I blinked. "Excuse you?"
He tipped his head toward the window. "Do. You. Want. To. Come. Up."
I narrowed my eyes at his tone. What a snippy, snappy sonofabitch. "I have a busy morning," I replied with a bitter smile, the kind I reserved for my friends who claimed they often forgot to eat. Pssh. Lies and urban legends. "I should be going."
"All right, whatever," he mumbled as he stood. He pulled his coat on and shoved his hands into leather gloves. "Clearly, your loss."
"I'm sorry," I said, laughing. "What was that?"
"You should be sorry." He didn't bother looking at me. "You wasted my fucking time."
I pushed to my feet and crossed my arms over my chest. "Oh, really? That's how it is now? Because I'm not interested in having sex with you at eight in the morning after you've delivered the weather report and sports highlights? Or after you did lines of Splenda?"
"Not sure what you expected from this," he replied, "but that app is only for hooking up and your tits are all over your profile. If you're not down to fuck, you're sending all the wrong signals. You don't have to be a bitch about it."
For the record, my tits were properly contained. A girl couldn't wear turtlenecks every day but that didn't mean her tits had gone rogue. Nor was I being a bitch about anything.
But more importantly—"Who has a hookup on a Wednesday morning? That's just bizarre."
It was bizarre, and one of the many issues with the machinations of modern dating. Relationships weren't part of the program. It was fucking, not feelings, not forever.
In a strange sense, that was liberating. If I wanted to get some dick, there was plenty of it coming my way. I didn't have to pretend I was looking for anything more than one night—or morning, as it was—and I didn't have to go through a handful of nice, polite outings before getting some.
All of that was great. Truly. It was phenomenal that I could catch a different dick every day of the week and not think twice about it.
But I wasn't in the market for dick. Or, I should say, not only dick. I wanted the man connected to that piece, and I wanted that man to be one of the good ones.
Five-Cup Joe here—he wasn't one of the good ones. Not for me. Somewhere out there was a jittery gal who shotgunned espresso and liked to bone down right after, and I was certain he'd find her. Godspeed to them both.
He snickered as he stepped away from the table. "I'll Venmo you for the coffee."
Shaking my head, I shoved my hand into my bag. "It was tea and here's five bucks. That covers it. Delete my number."
He pocketed the cash without meeting my gaze. "No problem."
I was almost content to let him go. Almost.
"Wait a minute." He glanced back at me, his scowl deep and impatient. "Why didn't you just order a larger coffee? Why five mediums?"
Not asked but also implied: Why are you like this?
His lips twisted into a reluctant smile. "I wanted the barista's number," he yelled across the shop. "I don't even like coffee."
I turned around, physically separating myself from him with the wall of my back. Even if none of this mattered, it still chipped away at me.
I glanced down at the table and the ruins of cups and Splenda packets. I debated leaving it all there because I wasn't about to Donna Reed this shit. But I couldn't do that. It defied coffee shop law and I wasn't about to disrupt the order of urban life by leaving a mess behind.
With a long sigh, I disposed of his trash and my unfinished latte. Once I was bundled up in my coat and scarf, I swung by the shop counter and gestured to the lone female barista.
"Don't worry," she called over the hiss of the milk steamer. "I gave him a fake number."
"Oh," I murmured. Had we been that loud? Or that obvious? "Thanks. I guess."
"No sweat," she yelled as she finished the order. "Can I make something new for you? Didn't seem like you were feeling that latte."
I stared up at the menu board. "Yeah," I said, nodding as I found my indulgence of choice. Earl Grey didn't make me sophisticated. I could be mainstream caramel and offer no apologies on the matter. "A caramel macchiato. Iced."
"You got it." I held out some bills, but she waved me off. "This one is on us," she said, nodding toward the other baristas. "Pablo live-tweeted the whole thing. It's the least we can do for you after providing us with enough entertainment to get through the morning rush."
I laughed to myself as I stepped away from the counter but a not insignificant part of me wilted. I didn't want to be part of this joke anymore. I wanted to find that good, honest, real man and I wanted to find him soon. I couldn't endure this social experiment for eight more months.