Chapter Four

“And so it is, Mr. Bathroom shall be forever memorialized for his unique ability to use a toilet as refuge from paying the bill. Ladies be warned; if you get picked up by a guy whose meal costs more than what he pays for rent, abort mission. Flee the scene. Leave before he comes back from hiding. At least today we know he gets to go back home to his mommy- let’s just all hope she preps him a little more before his next date.”

My arms fell from the keyboard as I allowed them a momentary rest. This was going to make for a great post, I could already tell. Posts like these came effortlessly with the most challenging part being accurately recalling the extent of the disaster. Every little detail was required to paint the full picture of what I had dealt with, and my readers ate it up.

As I was doing a final skim over the passage for any typos or grammatical errors, my phone buzzed obnoxiously on the table. I was usually good about not allowing my phone to distract me in the middle of writing, but because I was already mostly finished I allowed my eyes to steal a look at the notification that had popped up. It was a text message from Rosie.

I took a break to open the message and immediately regretted my decision. Her text was all of one sentence that I should have anticipated.

have you looked at it yet??

After putting the phone down, I sighed. I wanted to return to editing my post but I knew it would cause me to forget about the message entirely. My brain was good at forgetting to respond to conversations I didn’t want to have.

Not yet. I’m working

I locked my phone and put it face down on the table to return to my blog. I had just begun to regain focus when I heard the buzzing of my phone again. Dear Lord, I thought. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.

OK well tell me when you do look!

Another sigh escaped as I set my phone down. I could almost see her eager face through the screen. It was the same youthful expression I always attached to Rosie when she was excited.

I glanced back to the blog post sitting like an unfinished painting on the screen in front of me. It was going to be good, but it needed a little more work. The editing process was crucial. As much as I hated editing, it was when I could polish the piece and ensure it had the real edge that my readers wanted.

Without thinking, I stole another look at my phone. Her quick response was evidence that she was sitting in anticipation and it was almost as if she was sitting in the room with me, bouncing on her feet and distracting me. Oh Rosie, I muttered to myself. She had officially succeeded in stealing my attention away from my work. I guess I could use a break, I thought.

I picked up my phone and typed a quick response.

fine you win. I’ll look right now.

I imagined Rosie’s smiling face as I sent the message and felt relief in knowing that at least I was making someone happy. I scanned the desk for the post-it note I had used to write down the log in info. For a second I caught myself wishing it had gotten lost—as if that somehow would magically make the profile vanish along with it—but I quickly found it beneath a scratch piece of paper.

It all felt odd, like I was a detective of some sort, as I logged in and opened my profile. It was familiar and yet different enough to be almost creepy. Everything was about me, but I hadn't done any of it. Even my picture at the top of the screen looked like a different person smiling back at me. I need to change this picture if I want this profile to go anywhere, I thought to myself. I looked far to innocent and happy to be on a dating site. Below the picture was a small space for a bio with a few short sentences Rosie had already written.

I’m Harper! I’m smart and single living in Miami and enjoying that warm Florida sun. I love writing and football. (Go Bluejays!) I'm also a big fan of long walks on the beach and getting caught in the rain.

Immediately the passage irked me. I would never use something as trite as “getting caught in the rain” on a profile. I reread the sentences a few more times, each time leaving more of a sour taste in my mouth. This was going to be a disaster.

Her description wasn’t wrong, at least not factually. And it probably wasn’t all that out of place for the Internet, but it was drastically different than anything I would have written. I would have never described myself this way in a million years. The passage was way too happy and optimistic. It read like the bio of a young high school girl and it sounded… preppy? How in the world had they derived a preppy sounding bio with me in mind?

I almost gave up on the website right then and there, but the format of the bio made me worried that there was more toxic information below that I needed to be aware of. Had my sister not thought that, while she was carelessly building this profile, she was also introducing the world to a personality that I couldn’t take back?

With a scowl I continued to scroll down the page. The design and infrastructure of the website was actually quite charming. The page had a warm color scheme and an aesthetically pleasing make-up. There were several boxes to respond to questions on hobbies, education and other various talking points. It was light years ahead of my other dating websites. It was easy to see the difference between paid and free.

I continued to read through the answers my sister had come up with. Her responses were filled with an overwhelming optimism and sense of vigor that seemed to scream up at you from the page. It was all sunshine and joy, with only glimpses of my usual sarcasm, but even that had a happy slant to it.

There was something gnawing in the back of my mind that caused my to stop and pause for an instant. Is this really how my sister sees me? I wondered. Is this really how she thinks I would have answered? She had sought Thomas’s help in building the profile… is this how he thinks of me? I could hear Rosie’s words echoing in my head, he actually does a really good impression of you. Did my sister and my brother-in-law really see me as a walking bundle of blissful joy?

I guess it’s not the worst image they could have painted, I thought. But is this really how I come off to them? What had I done to leave that impression? And more, what had I done to give them the impression that this

is how I would describe myself?

My mother, on the other hand, would have certainly come up with answers far different than these. I wonder whose work would have been more dangerous, I thought with a chuckle. My mother probably would have posted that I wanted a family right away and that I wanted as many kids as possible.

Finally, I clicked on a tab on the bottom right corner of the screen that said, “Chat.” A screen unfolded with numerous conversation bubbles. At the top of the screen was the name, “Gabe.”

Gabe. I repeated it out loud. Names are always important. They carry the tone of the person and are part of the first impression. A Nichole gives a very different vibe than a Nicki.

This one wasn’t bad. It actually had kind of a strong, masculine tone yet it wasn’t too stiff. I actually liked his name. It’s too bad I’ll have to change it when it comes time for your blog post, I thought and laughed to myself.

I scrolled to the top of the conversation. Rosie and Thomas had apparently rather enjoyed conversing through my mask. There must have been fifteen, twenty, maybe even thirty messages between them and this so called ‘Gabe.’

A groan escaped from my throat as I glanced at the clock above my desk. It was already close to midnight. I looked back to the computer and conversation in front of me. It was like a book that I was only just beginning. I’m too tired for this, I thought. And I don’t have the energy. Meeting Optimistic Happy Harper had taken it out of me. And I didn’t want to begin a book that I knew I couldn’t finish before passing out. I’ll come back when I’m able to read through the whole thing in one sitting, I told myself.

I felt another small surge of relief. I had avoided the full reality for at least one more night. Part of me still felt like a nosey detective snooping around someone else’s personal business. At least I wasn’t the one who had intrusively made the account in the first place. And signed someone else up for a date!

I thought about closing my computer and heading to bed, but I was still curious about this guy. If I am going to go through with this date then I should at least do my homework, I thought and clicked on his name at the top of the screen.

His picture was the headshot Rosie had showed me initially and I began clicking through his other pictures. They were all candid shots with him looking happy and pleasant. He wore a smile that was gentle and rose into his cheeks. In most pictures, his hair maintained its slightly messy ruffle, but in every picture his green eyes sparkled. They seemed almost brighter than the screen. He was definitely in good shape and he looked to be slightly taller than average standing next to his friends.

I scrolled to his bio.

Hi I’m Gabe! I like long walks on the Miami beaches, Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain.

My temples tensed subconsciously at first and then with an irritated squint. No wonder he had picked my bio- we were practically twins. Does he really think this works, I thought. Attractive guys can be so naïve. This bio is going to work well in his future blog post. I had almost stopped reading at the end of the sentence but something drew my eyes to the rest of his bio.

I love to watch sports. I’m a big fan of football and baseball and I bleed blue for my Miami Bluejays!

A short spout of elation shot up from my stomach and into my chest. Sports fan. Bluejays fan.

At least that meant we would have something to talk about on the date. I had been on a few quiet dates and they were always awful to write about. Not that they ever went well, but silently and awkwardly looking down at your plate the whole time doesn’t exactly make for riveting blog material, even when the guy is a total train wreck—as they almost always were.

I sent Rosie a mental high-five. Ever since we were kids, Rosie had always known about my intense love for sports. She often joked that if football were a guy I would have married him long before ever getting a chance to start my blog. Clearly, she had remembered this passion when writing my bio. And evidently he liked sports enough to put it in his bio. That’s probably the whole reason we matched in the first place. Stupid, bogus algorithms that matched us off the keywords in our bios. How brilliant, I thought.

Well it was settled, I would have to talk about sports the whole time. But I could do that. I could talk about sports all day. If this guy knows what he’s talking about this might actually be kind of fun, I thought and then stopped. I paused and stared blankly at my computer as the mouse hovered on the screen. Fun? Did that thought really just cross my mind? When was the last time a date was actually fun? It had been awhile. So long that I couldn’t really even remember what a fun date

felt like.

I blinked away the daydream and blew the hair out of my face. What am I thinking? This date will be like all the others. Why would it be any different?

After another hurried glance at the clock, I closed the webpage and sank in my chair. That was enough for the night. The clock read past midnight and I needed to finish editing my blog so it could be posted. I would do more research on this guy later, for there was more research to be done. Inside everyone was the potential for a catastrophic date.

I knew this guy, with his dark windblown hair and sparkling green eyes, was no exception. There was the potential for a good blog post somewhere inside of him. The only problem was that he was good at shielding his signs of disaster. He had already successfully hidden them from Rosie. But all it would take was discovering his particular brand of crazy.