Except, God, was dating this hard for everybody?
Seriously. I gave up on Tinder. The one guy I dated from Hinge was so . . . intense, I ended up just deleting the app. A dozen Bumble dates and I was met with either the blandest personalities in existence or guys who were nice, sure, but there was zero chemistry once we met in real life. (To be fair, one of the guys with no personality was crazy hot, and he was really good in bed, but I quickly decided a healthy sex life wouldn’t make up for the fact he only wanted to talk about the stock market.)
Six months out of a serious relationship, I was ready to give up on dating and romance altogether.
That shit was hard.
Like, to the point where I had so many first dates and so very few second dates, I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to meet a guy I liked ever again.
When one of my best friends at work, Vicki, begged me to go on a double date with her, I groaned. Loudly, melodramatically, meaning every bit of it. I laid my head down on my desk for a long moment before sitting up to say, “Vicki, I swear to God, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, but hear me out!”
“I’m done dating, I told you.”
“Please, you always say that, and you never mean it.” She gestured to toss her hair, forgetting she’d just chopped it all off for charity, her hand swooping through empty air instead. “Seriously, hear me out.
You know that guy I’ve been talking to, Henry?”
“Is this the one with the fish in his first profile picture?”
She pulled a face at me. “He works in an aquarium. It’s not the same as some dude holding up a sea bass from some fishing trip with his friends. Anyway, he asked me to go on a date on Friday and—”
“Oof, Friday. You know what, Vicks, I have plans then! Doing literally anything else. Although, actually, I am genuinely planning to order myself a pizza and watch some YouTube videos and do a face mask. It was going to be a whole thing.”
“This is a whole thing!” she cried, throwing out her arms, with such earnestness in her voice that it turned heads in the office. She sighed, sounding so sad and hopeful all at once, and turned big, brown, puppy-dog eyes on me. “I don’t want to go meet some strange guy at a bar alone. So he suggested I bring a friend.”
“Vicki, listen to me. I love you. And you know I think you have great boobs and I’m very jealous of them. But I’m not going to have a threesome with you.”
She snorted before her seriousness returned. “He’s bringing a friend too. We’ll have our date, and you guys will . . . be on a blind date. Or you’ll just hang out and get drunk and laugh at how awkward me and Henry are being on our first date, and you’ll never see him again. Come on. Please? For me?”
“Fine. But only— only—for you.”
When we got to the bar, we recognized Henry from his pictures on the app. He smiled and waved. And the guy next to him . . .
God, the guy next to him was so not my type. Skinny, almost gangly, his brown hair a little messy and a little long (what, did he think he was in a boy band, or something?) and wearing these thick-rimmed glasses and a Thor T-shirt underneath his flannel shirt, and I knew immediately, he was not my type.
It wasn’t going to be a blind date. It was going to be us getting drunk and being polite to each other while we mocked our friends on their first date.
The one thing Zach had going for him was the way he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for guys’ forearms.
He had a great smile too. He stammered a little when he introduced himself. When we left Henry and Vicki to it, taking a table a short distance away, I joked that we should get shots to see the two of us through the night, and he got us a round of tequila slammers, which he did not down like a champ, and I had to pat him on the back, he coughed so hard.
There was zero pressure. I mocked his T-shirt, so he mocked my charm bracelet. We shared a bowl of cheesy fries and talked about our jobs and our lives and how we knew Vicki and Henry, and at one point we were both just buzzed enough that when I said, “I love this song,” Zach pulled me up to dance, right there in a crowded bar, twirling me on the sticky floor like it was a damn ballroom.
He was so very far from my type, and he told me that was okay because I wasn’t his, either, but I’d never laughed or flirted so much in my whole goddamn life.
Vicki’s date with Henry was okay. She gave it a six out of ten.
Decent, but not great, and not good enough that she’d want to see him a second time.
My date with Zach? Oh, easily a ten out of ten. It was the best first date I’d ever had in my life.
*
Zach helps me pull together a few items of clothing to lend to Isla’s boyfriend. We do it quietly, but there’s a rhythm and coordination to it, bred from four years of familiarity. We know each other so well.
And yet, we know each other so little.
I think about that first date. I think about all the beautiful, wonderful, spectacular moments we’ve shared since. The cute days out, the nights snuggled up together losing track of entire hours as we kissed, the rush of looking for an apartment together, the comfort of spending Christmas with his family and New Year’s with mine, all those times he’s made me smile and we’ve laughed until our sides hurt and one of us (me, it’s always me) would have to rush to the bathroom before they (me) peed themselves.
I love him so much.
It’s so easy to love Zach.
That’s why it hurts so much, to feel like the guy next to me right now is a complete stranger.
We haven’t talked about it since this morning. We’ve settled into this clipped back and forth of, “I’m making tea, do you want one?
Can you close the door? Do you know where my laptop charger is?”
For a few minutes, though, we manage to forget all about that. I finish packing his clothes into a tote bag when there’s a weird rummaging at the door. We both go to look out of the peephole, and find Mr. Harris there, all masked- and gloved-up, a scowl on his face I’m pretty sure he was born with, spraying antibacterial spray on our door and scrubbing it down. Zach stifles a laugh into his hand and I nudge him, shushing him, before he makes me laugh too.
When Mr. Harris moves to scrub down the bannister on the stairs to the floor above, Zach whispers, “I don’t think those clothes are getting to Isla without a strict quarantine period first. Or a good soak in some bleach.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll cover you.”
We wait until we hear Mr. Harris move upstairs. Zach opens the door, peering around it, and then waves me out. I hurry down the hall, knocking on Isla’s door as quietly , quietly, as possible, hopping on my toes for her to answer and collect the bag. I shush her before she can say “hello” or “thank you,” pointing upward, where Mr. Harris can be heard muttering to himself and aggressively cleaning people’s front doors.
“Oh!” she whispers, and nods, taking the bag from the floor. She gives me a thumbs-up before disappearing back inside.
Zach’s humming the Mission Impossible theme under his breath, his back against the door and hands poised in front of him, fingers folded in a gun shape as he squints dramatically at the staircase. He waves me over and when he follows me inside, he dives to the floor, doing a forward roll and then getting his finger gun back out like he’s surveying the area, which sends me into peals of laughter.