"No!" Dominick yelled, not wanting to know how Conrad planned to finish that sentence. "Maybe it's because you're referring to my date as a ‘good one.' Have you ever considered your general attitude toward women is why Morgan didn't have an envelopeforyou?"
"Not cool, dude." Conrad’s body sagged, causing Dominick to relax his posture. He was about to tell Conrad he was sorry when his roommate raced over, grabbed the envelope, and held it out of hisreach.
"Give it back." Dominick tried to grab it away but was several inches shorter than Conrad. He jumped a couple of times, feeling very much like a small child on the playground who’d just had his lunch moneystolen.
When Conrad hopped onto his bed, Dominick put his arms down. He sat down on his own mattress and waited for theinevitable.
"It’s mine now,Nicky. Let's just see who we have here..." Conrad tore at the envelope and threw it aside. In his hands were a piece of paper and a photograph. Dominick couldn't see what his date looked like. He couldn’t see anything to give him insight into the date. The fact that Conrad got the first glimpse was more than just a littlefrustrating.
He looked at Conrad's face. His roommate’s mouth pulled into a frown and his brows lifted in sympathy as he pulled his gaze from the picture and toward Dominick. "Sorry,man."
"Sorry? What do you meansorry?" Dominick jumped off his bed. He seriously considered getting up onto Conrad's to try to grab the papers out of his hand once more. But he stood on the ground looking up at himinstead.
"She's abutter-face."
Butter-face?
Dominick sighed. "What exactly is abutter-face?"
"Everything looks good…but her face." A slow grin spread across his face as he shook his headslowly.
That was exactly the kind of thing Conrad would find funny. Dominick was less amused. He didn't like to think of himself as the superficial type, but was his date really that bad looking? Conrad wasn’t exactly the most discerning when it came to theoppositesex.
"You’re kidding," Dominick said, and instantly began imagining some kind of birth defect, or maybe an accident leaving his match’s face covered inscars.
The shame came almost immediately—because he knew it shouldn’t matter—but not before Conrad had seen his initialreaction.
"See?" Conrad gloated still atop his mattress. "I knew you weren't as perfect as you like to pretend. You would have been pissed if shewasugly."
"No, Iwouldn'thave."
"Don't worry." Conrad jumped down. "The chick's actually pretty smokin'. If it doesn't work out, make sure to let me know. Maybe I'll trymyluck."
He winked and handed the photograph to Dominick before going back to his game. In no time, Conrad had his headset on and was cursing through the small microphone attachedtoit.
Dominick took a deep breath, and used the brief moment of privacy to look down at the paper and photograph in his hands. When he saw his match, a girl named Harmony, he couldn't contain the smile on his face. He'd seen her several times at one of the many local coffee shops, constantly working behind the espresso machine. She never seemed to run the register, which meant they hadn’t spoken a day in their lives, but Dominick had always thought she was beautiful, even before knowing she was his perfectmatch.
In the picture, she had dark hair that fell just below her shoulders, wide eyes, and full lips curved into a smile. Harmony was at the coffee shop in the photograph, and Dominick wondered if she had been working when it wastaken.
How did someone like him end up with someone like her? He was awkward with ladies and shy to a fault. It was why he had jumped at the chance to use the Date Maker. Harmony, on the other hand, seemed to be the popular type—always dressed nicely, always confident— and that made herunobtainable.
Dominick felt like he'd just won thelottery.
That was until he examined the other piece of paper. When he read the outline of the date, his heart sank. He was supposed to take Harmony to a fancy restaurant for dinner. It was downtown and had the reputation for being very expensive. He was at school on a generous scholarship. Hadn't he told Morgan that during the interview process? A date to the park, or even the food truck rally, would have been a much more affordableoption.
But there was more. After the date, the two of them would be going to a painting class. Him? A painter? The idea was laughable. Even though it was one of those places that walked you step-by-step though the painting, Dominick would be lucky if he managed to draw astraightline.
He looked at Harmony's picture again. Going out of his comfort zone would be worth wooing a girl of this caliber. And if that meant spending his meager savings to do so, so be it. Not every date would be an expensive one. Deep down, he knew that. The initial one just had to bespecial.
He should be thanking his lucky stars Morgan hadn't sent them off to Universal Studios or some other theme park. He'd heard something like that was a possible date with the Date Maker service, but had no idea how he would have paid for it had Morgan decided that was where he and Harmonywouldgo.
"Does the silence mean you're happy?" Conrad's voice called out, breaking his train ofthought.
Dominick chuckled to himself. “I’m surprised you could hear anything but the yelling in yourheadset.”
More gunfire rang out from the television. "Nah, I'm not really listening to the chatter right now. I'm more interested in whether or not you're calling dibs on the coffee shophottie."
"I hate to break it to you, Conrad. But there is no way I'm passing up a datelikethis."
