2. Chapter 2 #2
Now, let me tell you about Greg. You might want to sit down for this gripping tale. Greg hired me to write his dating profile. Yes, people actually do that.
I’m good at words and I needed rent money and it turns out people will pay you to make them sound like the version of themselves they wish they were. He wanted to sound “appealing,” which apparently has a very specific legal definition I was not aware of.
In my defense, I didn’t realize “avid hiker with a passion for clean eating” counted as fraud when the man’s idea of cardio is walking from the recliner to the fridge during commercial breaks. I might have also implied he was six feet tall. And owned a kayak. And volunteered with marine mammals.
I didn’t think it mattered. I mean — everyone lies online, right? Filters. Angles. Pretending you enjoy hiking so you don’t seem like a swamp creature.
I just … professionalized it. Except the woman he met was a paralegal whose favorite hobby is consequences. And the state of Florida agreed with her.
In my head, it was harmless optimism. In the state of Florida, it was “misrepresentation for financial gain.”
Which I think is a little unfair, because technically all dating websites are misrepresentations for emotional gain.
So now I’m doing community service. And writing to you. Which feels like a bizarre turn of events, because you’re a stranger with better grammar than Greg.
My hand was cramping slightly, so I flexed it as I reread what I’d written so far. Was I oversharing? Probably. But I refused to start over, Sasha could fucking deal with it.
He’d asked, hadn’t he?
The way you write makes me think you’re terrible at small talk. Like if someone said ‘crazy weather lately,’ you’d just stare at them until they questioned their life choices.
You seem very … results-oriented. Direct. Focused. Hands on.
I meant conversationally. I think.
“Oh my God,” I whispered into the silence, covering my face. What the fuck was I doing?
I stared at the offending sentence, considering scrapping the whole thing. The idea of starting over sounded dreadful. Nevertheless, I turned to a blank and unoffending page and made another attempt.
Hi Sasha,
Thanks for the reply. I hope you’re doing okay. Community service is fine. I’m staying out of trouble. The story about Greg is pretty long, you’d probably get bored.
—Addy
I stared at the words, unblinking. Ugh, this was even worse than my word vomit. It sounded like someone who didn’t slip in coffee or burned ovens to 800 degrees or lied on dating apps to help lonely men find love.
I didn’t sound like me.
And the little voice in the back of my mind whispered, You ruin things by talking.
The worst thing was, the voice wasn’t wrong. My inability to shut the fuck up was precisely what caused me problems when I was dealing with the bakery and the health inspector, with the fraud incident and to be honest, my entire fucking life.
Huffing, I flipped back to the original version.
Really, did I even care what Sasha thought of me?
No, I didn’t. Or at least … I shouldn’t. He likely wouldn’t read my word vomit anyway. Most people didn’t bother with me and my ramblings, at least not recently.
My dad was the only person who never got frustrated with me. I have never felt more alone than I have since he died five years ago. He truly understood me. My mom and sister tried, but we were just too different.
I always ended up feeling like too much, especially around them.
After Dad died, I tried to keep his bakery running exactly the way he had. Tried being the keyword here. I really did want to do a good job and keep his legacy going.
I worked so hard trying to save the business, I forgot to save myself. But don’t worry, I still made payroll. Mostly. Eventually. Kind of. Never mind.
Anyway, the only reason I was dealing with Greg in the first place is because I used to run a bakery.
Emphasis on ‘used to.’ My family had owned it for generations — I swear there’s still flour in my baby pictures.
My dad was a baker. My mom did the bookkeeping.
My sister and I mostly got in the way and licked the spoons.
It was always warm and cozy in our bakery, and everything smelled like sugar and vanilla. Then my dad died, my mom retired, and I decided I could keep the place going with enthusiasm and Google.
Turns out you can’t pay rent with optimism. Or at least my landlord was super close-minded about it.
I tried to keep it going and … failed spectacularly. I’m talking like, forgot to order flour, argued with a health inspector about whether dust counts as ‘atmosphere’, and once, accidentally, seasoned a whole batch of muffins with salt.
Live and learn, huh?
I mean, nobody died. One guy might’ve thrown up politely behind a plant when I mixed up salt and sugar that one time.
So the bakery went under. I didn’t burn it down, but I did once set the oven to 800 degrees and call my mother crying, so honestly that may have been foreshadowing.
But the truth is, I really tried. I loved our bakery. It was a place where I belonged. And then it didn’t exist anymore and somehow, I still did.
It feels like everything I touch gets a little ruined. Or maybe everything was already cracked and I just talked enough for people not to notice.
So now, I take whatever work I can get. Really, if you think about it … My bakery closed, my dad died, capitalism yeeted me into chaos, and I met Greg — meaning you and I only know each other because I confused salt and sugar once. Kind of wild if you think about it.
I was staring at the page, unseeingly, my pen poised to write, but no more words were appearing on the page.
The unwelcome sensation I had shoved to the back of my mind earlier was fighting to break free. Blinking rapidly, I focussed on the paper again, on the words I’d already written and added more.
It’s like life keeps shrinking the room and I keep forgetting to lower my voice. I’m not trying to be too much. I just don’t know how to be smaller than I am.
Biting down on the inside of my cheek, I stared at the letter. I shouldn’t be considering sending it to him; I shouldn’t even be writing a letter like this. What I should do is rip the page out and throw it in the trash.
But I didn’t. For some insane reason, I decided to keep going.
Now you owe me a crazy story from your life. Or any story, really. I’m not picky.
Talk to you soon,
— Addy
Shaking my head at this letter which could only be described as a physical representation of my insanity, I put down the pen.
The paper rustled as I folded it, accompanied by the hum of the fridge. Getting up, I yanked open drawer after drawer — somehow, they had all turned into junk drawers — on the hunt for an envelope.
I had to dig through four drawers before I struck gold. I couldn’t remember buying a single one of those things, so frankly, I had no idea where this one had materialized from. Huh. A mystery to be solved on another day.
Stuffing the folded sheet of paper into the envelope, I sealed it shut with decisive movements.
I’d probably end up regretting this, but right now I didn’t give a single flying fuck.
Sasha wouldn’t read it anyway, and I’d rather be myself and be rejected than play it safe and pretend to be boring.