I'm not feeling sorry for myself. That's not what this is. I don't have time for that. But I can't ignore the gap anymore. The place where desire used to dwell. The place where a man's hands on my body and his voice in my ear used to make me feelalive.
I miss being flirted with. I miss butterflies in my belly. I miss feelingsexy, which is a word that feels almost foreign in my mouth now, like a language I used to speak, but haven't practiced in so long the syllables feel wrong.
Soon, the water goes lukewarm, and I pull the drain.
Later, I'm in bed scrolling my phone in the dark, something I’m always telling Simon not to do. But he's at Javi's, so there's no one here to catch me being a hypocrite. Small mercies.
I'm deep in the algorithm—a recipe video I'll never make, a dog reuniting with its soldier owner that makes my eyes sting, areel about organizing your pantry that feels aspirational at best—when an ad pops up.
Mountain Mates: Forever.
The tagline:Real connections. No games. Matched based on who you are, not how you look.
I almost scroll past. But then my finger stops, like some rogue part of my brain grabbed the brakes.
Hmm…not even photos.
I click on it, just out of curiosity.
The site is clean and simple, not sleazy. There is in fact an anonymous tier where you're matched on personality alone. You talk first. You connect first. And then, if you both want to, you meet. They run retreats for it and everything.
My first instinct is to laugh at myself.A dating site? Really, Cam?I'm a thirty-two-year-old single mom who eats questionable meals when she’s alone, uses coffee mugs to passive aggressively explain her personality, and hasn't shaved her legs since—actually, let's not go there. The point is, I'm not exactly the target demo for a dating site.
Am I?
The anonymous part is intriguing.
No one can see my eye bags. No one knows I'm the woman who falls asleep on the couch at 9 p.m. with a stack of ungraded worksheets on my chest. No one has to know about the divorce, or my kid who's mad at the world, or that the most exciting thing that happened to me this week was finding a pen that worked.
UnlessIchoose to reveal those details.
Interesting.
Then I think about Beth. About the way Aiden looks at her…as if she's his everything. And how she looks at him in the exact same way. I love that for them. I do. But sitting in the glow of my phone in my empty bed, I can admit, just to myself, that I’m jealous of that.
I mean, I’m not looking for a husband or a stepdad for Simon—the kid can barely toleratemeright now. I just want someone to talk to. Someone who makes me laugh and who reminds me that underneath the mom and elementary school teacher duties and the "I've got it all together" armor, there's still a woman in here. A woman who used to be fun. Who used to bedesired.
My thumb hovers over the sign-up button.
I think about every reason not to.
I'm too busy. I'm too tired. I don't have time.
What if it's weird? What if I've forgotten how to flirt and I embarrass myself?
Then I think about the book I couldn't focus on. About how the fictional happy endings used to be enough and tonight…they weren't.
I press the button and it directs me to sign-up page.
Username:Cursive&Caffeine.
Because cursive is what I teach every Tuesday and Thursday, and I couldn’t do any of it without the elixir of life. It fits.
I fill out the profile, squinting at the screen.
Favorite way to spend a Friday night?Bathtub, book, wine.
What are you looking for? I start typing something safe and generic, then delete it. If I'm doing this, I'm doing it right.
