2. Jack
JACK
“So…you like your coffee black, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, offering a single word to the chatty tornado of energy in front of me.
I'm going to kill Adam for setting me up with this woman.
Not because she's unlikable, but because she is. She's sweet. She's nice. She's trying her best to compensate for my lack of energy and personality on this date by saying ten words per second.
I think I've said exactly three words since we sat down in the booth at Dolly's Diner, and already I feel exhausted and guilty. If this woman were annoying or rude, or shallow, or had some other sort of character flaw, I wouldn't feel so bad.
But I've been trying to find an excuse to ditch her since we first sat down, and so far I'm coming up empty.
She's great. She’s sweet. And that's the problem.
I don't do sweet. Actually, I don't do dating at all.
But if I'm going to be with a woman casually, she needs to come with the kind of disillusioned, world-weary mentality that can handle a man like me.
A woman who gave up on happily ever after a long time ago, and doesn't have a Pinterest board dedicated to her wedding day.
A woman who, like me, has had her heart broken one too many times, and the last time it broke, she didn't have the energy to piece it back together.
That's me. Permanently broken, with better things to do than try to fix myself so that I can have one more round of trying and failing to find my fucking soulmate.
“Soulmate.” Ha.
Whoever coined that stupid term put a curse on humankind. If people didn't know about the concept of soulmates, they wouldn't waste so much time looking for theirs.
They wouldn't all agree to waste their formative years on a wild goose chase, searching among the millions and millions of people who populate this earth for the one special person who matches them and complements them so perfectly.
There's no such thing as a soulmate.
There's no such thing as love at first sight.
There's not even such a thing as unconditional love.
There's just…companionship. That’s it. And if I want companionship, I’ll adopt a dog.
Yeah, I know. I'm the opposite of a romantic. The opposite of the woman who is practically vibrating with hyperactive energy in the seat across from me right now as she sips her third cup of coffee.
She should probably switch to decaf, I think, glancing at the steaming mug. She doesn't need any help in the energy department.
“Funny. I can't stand black coffee,” she says eagerly, leaning over like she's disclosing some long-held scandalous secret. “I like lots of cream and sugar.”
“I, uh, I noticed,” I say politely, clearing my throat and looking over her shoulder.
I asked the waitress for the check ten minutes ago.
The sooner I can get out of here, the sooner I can go back to my cabin. As soon as I get back home, I plan to give Adam a call and tell him that I'm not interested in a second date with Carla, or with any more blind date fix-ups.
The woman giggles, looking down at her mug full of light brown coffee.
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess you would have noticed…I have a bit of a sweet tooth. Speaking of, this diner has really good apple pie. Would you like to -?”
“No,” I say quickly, trying to twist my facial expression into something resembling polite kindness rather than my usual resting bitch face. “No, uh, thank you. I’m good. You can order some for yourself, of course. I’m just not in the mood. For…uh, pie.”
Her smile falls, and I feel like a fucking jerk.
I shouldn't have agreed to this, no matter how much Adam insisted. For some reason, my group of friends got it into their mind that I needed a woman in my life again.
I don't know why. I've been living alone for almost a decade, and I have been fine, and it's been fine. Well, it was fine until I met her. Alyssa, the mysterious dark haired beauty who rolled into town for one night in search of something she didn’t share with me.
Alyssa is the one who ruined the whole “being on my own and ignoring women” thing. Before her, I'd been a solitary man in every sense of the word.
No woman in my life at all, no sex, and I'd gotten used to that existence until one night I made the mistake of pulling over to help a woman out on the side of the road. Her tire was flat, and she was lost.
Her cell phone had died. It was pretty much the worst kind of situation you can be in out in these mountains, especially this time of year.
I might be antisocial, but I’m not totally heartless.
I pulled over, helped her out. She looked at me with misty brown eyes and spoke with a stutter, either because she was freezing cold or because she found me intimidating.
I’m still not sure which, because a lot of women tend to find me intimidating at first. It’s just the cost of being a tall, large man.
A tall, large man with resting bitch face.
Before I knew it, I was offering to take her down to this very same diner and buy her a cup of coffee.
A cup of coffee turned into a couple of beers at the bar down the road, and a couple of beers at the bar down the road turned into coming back to my place up in the mountains, my cabin, where not a single woman other than her has ever stepped foot.
You can figure what happened next.
I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was just loneliness. Maybe it was feeling touch-starved and isolated. I didn't think that being isolated bothered me until she looked at me like I was some kind of fucking hero when I pulled over and offered my help.
Apparently, feeling like a fucking hero does things to me, and it makes me make bad decisions.
Ever since I met that woman, I've been unable to forget her, and it's like she reminded me of something missing in my life.
Trouble is, if my friends would just leave me alone about it, I would forget again.
I would get used to the solitude again and go back to the way things were before I met her.
But my friends won't let up. They tried to find her and track her down after they found out I'd hooked up with her, but no such luck. She was an out-of-towner.
This was clear based on her rental vehicle and her lack of preparedness for the mountainous terrain in Wildwood.
She was just a visitor passing through. She left the very next day, never to be found again.
When my friends couldn't locate this mysterious Alyssa From Out Of Town, they decided maybe I just needed to start dating again.
A little bit of companionship, a little bit of sex, and all of my moodiness would disappear. That was their theory, anyway, and that's how I ended up sitting across from this woman on a Friday afternoon.
“Look, Carla,” I begin. “You're great.”
She sighs.
“Here we go,” she says, her demeanor breaking from her previously sunny personality and turning flat.
“Here we go?” I ask.
“You're rejecting me,” she says. “Don't worry, it's not like it's a surprise to me. I don't know why my cousin had the idea to fix us up in the first place. I mean, we're clearly not each other's types.”
She peers at me.
“Sorry,” she continues shyly. “I don't mean that in an offensive way.”
“It's not offensive,” I say quickly. “It's just obvious. We're not a match.”
“Exactly,” she says. Then she looks down into her mug.
“The thing is, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
I've been on so many dates. I dress up and look the part.
I try to crack jokes and ask the men about their lives and be overall pleasant to be with.
Yet I can't get a second date. I don't know what the deal is.”
I tilt my head.
“Why are you in a hurry to meet a guy?” I ask.
She smiles grimly.
“Jack, since we're definitely not going to have a second date, I'll level with you.
I'm trying to meet a guy because I want to have a baby.
I'm about to turn forty. I have a low egg count and endometriosis.
The cards are stacked against me. I wouldn't say I have a ‘biological clock’ so much as a biological ticking time bomb in my uterus.”
I shudder, and she wrinkles her nose.
“Sorry,” she says. “Was that TMI? Talking about endometriosis and my uterus?”
“No,” I say. “That stuff doesn't bother me. Just the fact that you want kids. That you want to have a baby.”
I say the last word like I’m describing an unwanted garden pest.
“You don't want kids?” Carla asks, raising a brow.
“Hell no,” I say. “Definitely not. I like a quiet life. That's what I've been trying to tell Adam and the guys. I don't need to be fixed up on these blind dates. I don't need a woman…and I definitely don't need a baby depending on me and interrupting my routines and peace and quiet.”
“We are definitely not a match,” she says with a slow nod.
“Sorry,” I shrug.
“It's all right,” she says. “I assume you're paying for the coffee?”
“Of course,” I say. “It's the least I can do for wasting your time.”
She smiles, standing up and slinging her bag over her shoulder. She seems to consider for a minute, then bends down and gives me a quick peck on the cheek.
“I hope you find what you're looking for, Jack,” she says warmly.
“I hope you do too,” I say back to her. And I really mean it. Even if what she is looking for seems nuts to a guy like me.