3. Jasmine
3
JASMINE
N ever wear a crop top in Toronto in February. There is no event worth this skin-puckering cold. For the entire subway ride, I keep my arms wrapped around my midsection despite the calf-length wool coat I wear overtop. The silk lining brushes against my tummy, creating a strangely illicit sensation. One I’m not interested in experiencing on a first, essentially blind, date.
Core Cupid has strict rules for matches. First names only, to prevent curious Googling. Locations—submitted by matches but ultimately chosen by the maker—must be public, for safety. Highest-ranking matches made first, because that’s how confident the organization is that the algorithm works. Ghosting is prohibited; if you miss a date without adequate warning you’re removed from the client roster. No sex on the first date—obviously more of a strong recommendation than an enforceable rule. Clients are highly encouraged to look beyond our usual types to “the connection beneath.” That’s the sticking point for me. How can a computer code tell me what kind of connection I’ll have with a stranger?
I take the sticky stairs down to Moonbar on the basement level of the old King Street building. The dive bar is a far cry from the fancy plant-based restaurant I suggested. In an almost comical contrast to the other women in jeans and T-shirts, I’m in winged eyeliner and poppy red lipstick that complements my red hair. Jade wanted me to wear it down, because my red hair is my “best feature,” but I reminded her my hair would still be red in a bun and put it up instead. The high-waisted pleated pants are sophisticated and showcase my long legs, the top simple but sexy and a little daring, according to Jade.
Mostly, I vacillate between loving the way it shows off my ample, expensive breasts and worrying the person I’m meeting will judge me for having plastic surgery. Through my teenage years, I was teased mercilessly for my flat chest. Even my mother commented on my lack of development, reminding me constantly that she’d been a C cup by the time she started high school.
I bought every type of padded bra known to the intimates section. Tried push-up bras even though I had nothing to push up. I sprinkled flax seed on my food because I read an article touting the—limited—scientific evidence supporting the claims that flax seeds’ phytoestrogens encouraged the growth of breast tissue. I even found a recipe for an at-home massage oil that claimed the combination of ingredients and massage would increase the size of my breasts by at least one cup, but it just made my skin smell like mustard.
On my eighteenth birthday, I knocked on my dad’s home office door with my sales pitch already prepared. I had a binder of doctors to choose from, most of them referred by my friends’ moms. I wrote a five-page thesis on why I was emotionally mature enough to have the surgery. In the end, I don’t think he was convinced by any of it, he just wanted me out of his office. If I’d known that was the last birthday gift I’d ever receive from him, maybe I would have asked for something more expensive. Like his care and attention.
The bar is dark and a little dingy. Graffiti spans the wall across from the long bar top. A few tables are crammed into the space at the front of the room where thin, high windows allow in weak light from the streetlamps outside.
My date’s name is Nick. But other than the bartender and a group of patrons who look at least half a decade younger than me gathered around the stage at the back of the bar, there aren’t any men who appear to be here alone.
Waffling near the front door in an outfit that no longer leaves me feeling sexy and sophisticated but rather out of place, I’m garnering stares. So, I take a seat at the bar and slip a mini bottle of hand sanitizer out of my purse. There’s nothing glaringly viral about this place, but I can’t tell if it’s just dark in here or if everything is covered in a fine layer of grime.
“What’ll it be?” The bartender slides a Labatt Blue coaster in front of me and leans in like my drink order will be our little secret.
“Do you have wine?” I ask, raising my voice above the music pumping from crackling speakers overhead. My chances don’t look good. There are enough beer taps to justify a barback whose only job is keg changing, but I don’t see a single bottle of wine.
He looks offended that I had to ask.
I perk up. “Cab sauv? French?”
His lips twitch. I can’t tell whether he wants to frown or laugh. Neither would be preferable.
“I know what I like,” I say before he can make a snide remark.
“Good,” he says with a nod. “Most people don’t.”
As he walks away, presumably to unearth a long-lost bottle of French cab sauv, I open my camera app to check my makeup. Technically, my date doesn’t start for a few more minutes, but already I’m nervous; not a single person has walked through the front door since I did.
The bartender stands up from behind the bar with a green bottle in his hand. With a pop, he pulls out the cork from the pre-opened bottle and sniffs it.
Please don’t let that be mine. Please don’t let that be mine…
Lips turned down, he presents the bottle, his hand wrapped around the neck. “We have a merlot. I think we opened it last week?”
Maybe I should meet Nick outside and suggest another place. There are plenty of bars to choose from on King West.
The bartender watches me, his gaze slow and perusing but not uncomfortable. “Are you meeting someone?”
After a moment of weighing the safety risk of sharing my plans with a stranger, I admit, “Yes.”
I feel exposed, waiting here at the whims of an unknown man some computer deemed romantically compatible. As if a computer has any clue about romance.
The bartender angles in again, the move sending a wave of dark brown hair falling over his eyes. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. In his Buffalo plaid flannel, he looks like an ad for Northern Ontario tourism. The fabric is well worn. It’s not threadbare, but soft, loved. The kind of textile an entire exhibition could be planned around. I’d start with the history of Scottish tartans, the pattern’s origin and how it was made iconic through its adoption by the rustic fringes of society. I’d include early examples produced in Scotland, in the North American wool mills. There’d be a room on twenty-first century mass production of the pattern and its proliferation throughout design, its synonymy with masculinity and the queer community.
I blink once, then again, pulling myself back to the present. Sometimes I catch myself dreaming like this. Creating visions that unfurl like flowers, soft and almost alive, like silk held delicately between my fingers. Despite catching myself in the dream, I can never stop the inevitable swoop in my stomach that follows, the reminder that this will always only be a fantasy.
“Pull it together.” Berating myself, I then bring my glass to my lips for a fortifying sip of old wine. The last thing I need tonight is to fall into a downward spiral. Actually, considering alcohol is a depressant, maybe I should spit this out.
“Excuse me?” the bartender asks, his brows arched.
I shake my head and wince as I swallow what could arguably be called a cooking wine. “I was talking to myself.”
He cocks his head to the side, examining me like I’m a strange bird species. I wish Jade was here. People enjoy talking to her, and more importantly, she wants to talk to them. I’m too in my head. Too worried about my clothes and if my phone has enough battery and whether my fucking date will show up.
“Are you going to sign up for karaoke?” he asks.
I follow the bartender’s gaze to the stage at the back of the room and shudder. Wherever this Nick is, I hope he didn’t choose this bar for the karaoke. “God, no.”
Even the idea of singing in front of strangers turns the wine in my stomach. And that wine was already pretty well turned.
In this bar, a sea of sensory overload, he is a buoy; not still, but moving with the tide. A raft I can cling to. Without saying a word, just a teasing expression that isn’t as snide as I originally thought, he makes it easier for me to say more when I’d usually stay silent. Maybe bartenders have the hairdresser effect, enabling people to spill their guts to them.
“The only thing worse than singing in public is singing terribly in public.” I straighten the coaster between us. “Which is what would happen if I were to sing.”
“It’s karaoke. You’re not supposed to be good .” He maintains eye contact as he turns the coaster on a forty-five-degree angle.
Oh my god. Dick .
“It’s funner when you’re not.”
“More fun,” I say, kind of under my breath but kind of not.
With a grin, he rolls up his sleeves, his forearms thick and peppered with dark hair. When he catches me looking, I glance at the door even though no one new has entered the bar.
Sighing, I pat down my hair for the hundredth time, then check my phone, though I haven’t received a single notification since I arrived. Anything to distract myself from the conspicuously empty seat beside me and the thick veins that trace their way from the back of my bartender’s hands to the inside of his elbows.
A woman with a halo of tight curls and light brown skin rushes through the back door and slips behind the bar. “Sorry I’m late, Nicky.”
“No worries, Berns,” my bartender says as he dries a pint glass.
My heart stutters. Nicky. Nicky? Nick?
I blink between them as she leans over the bar to take an order. He knocks twice on the wood.
“Be right back,” he says before I can confirm. Is he Nick? Is this my date?
He bounds onto the stage and the volume in the bar rises to a cacophony. Under the attention of the rowdy group, he completely transforms, his smile growing, his chest following suit. The curtain on the small stage pulls back to reveal a band—with drums and various other percussion instruments, a keyboard, and a bass and electric guitar—crammed into the space. The words Underground Karaoke are projected onto the screen rolled down behind them.
My bartender, Nick, beams, a cheeky man-boy who suddenly looks half his age and clearly loves the attention. It’s terribly obnoxious, mostly because of how charmed I am by it. I can’t help but smile. Though it is a bit unconventional to suggest one’s own workplace for a date. Especially, since…is it rude to be working during the date? Has he already realized that I’m his date and didn’t say anything?
“It is time,” he says into the mic.
The room breaks into raucous whistles and cheers.
I’ve walked past the bar a thousand times. It’s never seemed like anything more than a dive. The kind of place that smells like vomit and lets underage girls in without checking their IDs. And it is dark and dirty. But it’s almost like there’s community here. As if these people know him. As if this is a routine they’ve come to expect.
A giddy laugh bubbles out of me, and I take a sip of the disgusting wine to ground myself again.
“We have a newbie to karaoke tonight.” He waves at me.
Like a puppet on his string, I find myself waving back. Until the group of karaoke-ers turn to wave, too. Face flaming, I drop my arm and force a smile.
Okay, double dick . Maybe that’s why he scheduled this date while he was clocked in, that way it would be hard for me to hide the body of this well-forearmed lumberjack cosplayer after I murdered him for inviting me to my own personal hell. Because he has to be my date, “my” Nick. He’s just so…familiar.
I busy myself with my phone screen again, letting the flush fade from my face. Hopefully, he gets the point that I will not be obliged into performing.
He introduces the first performer, then the band dives into what sounds like the rock version of a Spice Girls song.
“I’ll take the next song, Nick,” the other bartender says as he slips behind the bar again. She glances in my direction in a way I assume is meant to be stealthy but isn’t, especially when she winks.
His cheeks flush and he mutters something that sounds like “Shut it, Bernie.”
Even though he sealed his fate by scheduling our date while he was on shift, watching him get flustered about it is still cute. Incredibly so.
“So, you’re Nick,” I say when he takes his spot across from me again. “I’m Jasmine.”
I hold out my hand. Hopefully, a firm shake will convey how I’d like the rest of this date to go. Because even though he’s charming and attractive, the algorithm definitely got this match wrong. It’s not just that I have to sit here and watch him work for who knows how long; he’s just not my type. I can’t date a bartender . Our schedules would never align. Co-workers and patrons probably flirt with him constantly. The hint of a smile that seems permanently etched onto his face, while hot—hello, dimple—also makes it appear as if he’s always joking. Even now, a heartbeat after a flicker of confusion passes over his face when he looks down at my proffered hand, the smile reappears. It’s accompanied by a Peter Pan–like twinkle in his eyes that confirms this would never work.
Plus, with the turnover in the industry, there’s basically no such thing as stability or security in bartending.
But that doesn’t mean the whole date has to be a bust.
Instead of shaking, he gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s nice to meet you, Jasmine,” he says in a voice that’s almost too low, too quiet to be heard over the woman butchering Mel B’s lines.
“So, listen.” I lean forward and he mirrors me and whoops I didn’t actually mean to bring my mouth this close to his.
Backing up a fraction, I say, “I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You seem very nice but it’s probably not a perfect match.”
A crease forms between his brows. “Is that a requirement for you?”
“I mean, it would be ideal, yeah.” Especially considering how pricey this service is. “But what are you doing next weekend? Specifically, Saturday night.”
He shakes his head, the frown deepening. “I…I…don’t know? Working probably?”
“Do you think you could get the night off? I know it’s a big ask when all you know about me is my first name and that I’m looking for a match,” I say quickly as his face morphs from confused to incredulous. “I have this engagement party I have to go to. It’s kind of a long story but I need a date. I think you’d be good for that.”
He’s handsome and easy to talk to, the perfect person to bring to an event where I’m determined to prove that I’m not the trash my ex-boyfriend so obviously thinks I am.
“Do you have a suit?”
“I do,” he says slowly. “But…”
“I can take your shift.” Bernie, the other bartender, pops up over his shoulder. “In case you were asking him on a date?” she asks me. Her smile is large and mischievous, her voice almost singsong with delight.
“I guess, technically, I was.”
“He looks excellent in a suit.” She drops her chin on his shoulder.
Nick brushes her off like a long-suffering older brother, which only endears him, them, all of this to me even more. I know what it’s like to be annoyed by while also at the whim of another.
“That’s great. So, what do you think?” I ask. “Will you be my date?”