The sunlight has moved to the white wall behind our television now, the screen fully visible. Said guy does have an equally cute dog, and the caption—“Her name is JenJen”—seems harmless enough.
So far, nothing out of the ordinary.
I don’t trust it.
Blind to my raised brows, Rosie bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, brown eyes widening behind her glasses. “He’s not bad! Swipe right!”
Rosie and I fit each other. She sees the best in everything—including men, despite it working against her more times than not—and I overthink words, actions, people. I’d rather be overprepared for nothing than underprepared for something.
The same thing happens here. As cute as the guy on screen is, I know something has to be wrong with him. I search for it until it inevitably shows itself.
“Ha!” My hand almost knocks Rosie’s popcorn out of her lap and onto the carpet. With the best mocking frat boy voice I can muster, I read his bio. “On weekends you can catch me drinking, partying, or both.”
“Oh, be serious.” Rosie reaches for the phone, and I extend my hand to avoid her. “You’re not promising marriage! Whocares if he’s a party guy? If he takes you on a good date or two, maybe it’ll help you with your book.”
“Short story.” I correct. “And I told you this is just to relax before I go into study mode.”
Her eyes narrow. “It’s only a matter of time before you realize how ground-breaking my idea is.” Ditching the bowl of popcorn, she wrestles the phone from my hand. I repeat myself, and she ignores it, swiping until another brown-haired, conventionally attractive man pops onto the screen. “How do we feel about Peter?”
Peter is surrounded by women in his first picture. In his second, he’s holding a wad of cash to his ear and tugging his bottom lip with his pinky.
The muscles of my frown deepen when Rosie uncovers photos of him sweaty in a club, surrounded by bottles. When she gets to one of Peter barely covering his bottom half with a hotel room towel, I can’t stop myself.
“I will kill you if you keep going.”
She rejects his profile but turns to smirk at me. “Sounds like that would be good inspiration for the crime fiction class you skipped out on.”
If she wasn’t such a good friend, and if she wasn’t right, I would be hurt by the jab to my ego.
I’m beginning to think no matter what I try, I’m destined to fail a class for the first time in my life. It would have been rational to not pursue a master’s degree at all. I had a ten-year plan to use my psychology degree in the Human Resources field, get comfortable in a corporate position, and see my parents happily retire.
It wasn’t a wistful or passionate future, but it was practical. That’s what I know and that’s what I’m best at.
The first time I stupidly took a chance on myself and my own wants, I sent my application in to the Brookstone Universitygraduate program. The excuse at the time was that a master’s degree would be useful regardless of the field, and with my undergraduate English minor, this Fine Arts program shouldn’t be too hard.
I have since been humbled.
Rosie is smiling optimistically at another mediocre man whose profile details are obviously fabricated. She doesn’t seem to notice.
The hopeful look on her face makes me smile. I appreciate her for being here with me and stopping my inevitable spiral of self-pity.
“I know his profile says his greatest skill is ‘disappointing my mom’ but honestly is that a big deal?”
Even if she has horrible taste in men.
two
GRANT
It’s notnormal to feel underdressed to a family dinner.
Nothing about being my father’s son has ever felt normal to me, though.
Family dinners used to be my favorite part of the week. My mom and I would find a random recipe blog and try to make something we were always a few ingredients short of. It never turned out right, but we swore it tasted better our way. Objectively, that was probably a lie.
Subjectively, it was my truth.
Those nights were just the two of us, at a worn-down dining table in the townhouse we outgrew. But it felt livelier and bigger than the soulless walls of this penthouse suite.
