“You’re more like me than you like to admit.”
“I think it’s you that’s more like me than you like to admit. Tomorrow. I’m holding you to that.”
“I know you are. Good night, Jess.”
“I could come over and—”
“I’m in bed.”
“It’s seven o clock.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I counter.
She sighs. “Fine. Enjoy your HGTV. Lunch again tomorrow. Same place.”
“Fine. Lunch again tomorrow.”
We disconnect, and I don’t know why, but I log on to the app. Alerts pop up. I now have fifteen messages, no doubt driven by that photo that looks nothing like me.Thank you, Jess,I think again. I searchfor my profile and quickly delete the photo. I upload one of my perfectly “geeky” images that actually looks like me, the real me. Now we’ll see who really wants to message me.
Out of ridiculous curiosity, I click on my potential matches. I’m about four in when a surprising image appears. It’s Kevin Rogers, a man I didn’t think I’d ever see again. I’m not sure seeing him right now, even in a photo, is a good thing, either.
Chapter Ten
I dated Kevin Rogers. Me, the self-proclaimed Invisible Girl.
Sorta. I mean, I did.
It was all so strange.
I’d heard that Mary Beth Rogers, an elderly woman who’d been a regular at the library, had died. I’d noticed the address in the public announcement was walkable. Hoping to share my love for Mary Beth with others who loved her—she’d really become like a mother figure to me—I’d gone to the bakery, bought a selection of pastries, and dared to walk to the house.
I’d been awkwardly standing on the porch of a cute little home, second-guessing my decision to come here uninvited, when a tall, handsome, dark-haired man answered the door. Turned out Kevin was her grandson.
“Thanks,” he’d said, accepting the baked goods from me. “You know where the funeral is, right?”
I hadn’t planned to go to the funeral, but for some reason I just couldn’t say no. Flash forward to the next day. He’d been there, of course, but quite alone. Turns out Kevin and Mary Beth were all the other had left on Earth. It had been me, Kevin, and some elderly friends of Mary Beth’s. Kevin had cried and buried his face in my shoulder. When he’d asked if he could take me home, I thought he was just being polite. Turns out Kevin needed something I needed, too—a girl doeshave needs—and we’d ended up on my bed in what was a pretty fast and hard release.
I’d assumed he’d leave afterward. I was prepared for it. I didn’t really feel less inconsequential with him because we’d had sex. I’m not sure he knew my name at that point. I also fully understood that he wasn’t at my apartment for me. He didn’t want to be alone. He was with me to be with someone, anyone. But Kevin didn’t go home. He’d stayed the night. He’d eaten the breakfast I cooked.Thenhe’d left. I still knew nothing about him, aside from what he looked like naked and his relationship with Mary Beth.
It had been Monday morning when he’d surprised me by calling me and inviting me to lunch. During said lunch, he’d asked me to tell him about myself. He’d woken up from his grief and seen me. I’d radiated to the place of my heart and shared my love of books with him. In turn, he’d told me about his career as a programmer who developed games. Turns out he also liked to play them, which was fine at first. We’d been dating three months before I’d realized that we often sat next to each other on my couch while I read and he gamed, but we never actually talked. That’s when I felt invisible again with Kevin. I comforted myself with the fact that when he met Jack, Jack had liked him. As for Jess, when Kevin met her, he didn’t react to her beauty. She seemed invisible to him as well, almost as if he simply masked all of his true emotions to such an extent that I didn’t really know him at all.
Curious now, my focus is back on the dating app, where I click on my messages, shocked to find one from Kevin.You look beautiful in that photo.
I lean back, straighten, blinking in surprise. I lookbeautiful? He never once in our short relationship told me I was beautiful, but then, I don’t look like myself in that photo Jess used for my profile. I blink again when I realize his message just hit my inbox, and my photo, the one I replaced Jess’s with, was already in place. I don’t understand.
My mind goes to the day I knew he and I were over. In a rare meeting of the two Js, I’d been out to lunch with Jack when Jess had joined us. With both of “my people” present, it was difficult to hide my distress. I sink back into that moment, living it again.
Jack is the first to notice my state of mind. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I reply, not to lie to him, but rather to force my answer to be true. But it’s not, which is exactly why I comfort myself by shoving one of the big, fat crispy french fries, which came with a much less interesting hamburger, into my mouth.
“Kevin again,” Jess interjects as if I just confessed rather than suppressed my thoughts on the subject. “The mummified man that sits on your couch most evenings these days.” Before I can answer, she adds, “You feel invisible again.”
“Yes,” I confirm painfully. “Kevin.”
“I’m going to say it again, as I’ve said it ten thousand times,” she states. “You are both”—she waves her fork between me and Jack—“what you choose to be. If you feel invisible, you are invisible. And you both feed this in each other. You use each other as security blankets. When was the last time you dated, Jack?”
“We aren’t talking about Jack,” I quickly chime in, trying to save him.
