Page 35 of Perfect Date
“Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, as you well know this whole dating thing hasn’t been going super well for me lately. I was thinking maybe I need to just give it up.”
“Give it up?” He squints at me and I can tell the wheels are turning in his mind.
“Yeah. I mean, maybe the timing just isn’t right. I don’t think I can handle anymore disasters.”
He stares at me for a moment, and behind Justin there’s a shadow in the doorway of my operatory.
Kimberly is standing in the hallway outside my door. She makes big motions at me and looks like an idiot with the way she’s yelling at me without actually vocalizing a word. She looks like she’s about to have a coronary.
I know what she’s saying to me. She wants to know what the hell I’m doing; what I’m thinking. How can I possibly answer that when I don’t even know myself?
“Tell you what,” Justin says bringing my focus back to him. I smile thankful for the fact that Kimberly is behind him and he has no idea of her antics. Although I wouldn’t put it past her to march right in here to make it clear what she thinks about all of this. She better not. I’ll kill her.
“I know what to do,” Justin says again.
“What’s that?”
“Fake date me.”
“Um, come again?”
“I get it. You’ve had some bad experiences and you’re not sure you want to continue with the dating thing, so how about we change it up a bit?”
“Change it up a bit?”
“Right, exactly. You and I, we’ll fake date. I’ll take you out and show you how dates are supposed to go.”
“How they’re supposed to go?”
God, is there an echo in here? I’m totally a strike one right now, I’m sure.
“This way, you can get the bad ones out of your system, there’s no pressure, but most importantly…” he leans toward me and I find myself hanging on to every word. “I’ll show you how you don’t need some dating site to find a guy. All you need is one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Me. I’ll be the bait.”
“The bait,” I repeat, and almost cringe. Here I go again.
“Right. I’ll help you lure in another guy, no problem. Thus, the fake date. It’s like, I’ll be your wing man.”
“I don’t know about this,” I tell him and the fact is, I feel disappointed.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking… you don’t want to actually date me. So, what do you want here? What do you get out of this?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to date you, Charlie. You said that you weren’t sure about dating anymore, so I offered you another solution. Don’t really date me then, just fake date me. Look at it like this… you’ll get some practice in.”
“And you’re just fine letting me use you for practice?”
“One hundred percent.”
“I think I need to think on this.”
“Do you have your phone in here?”
I get up, move to the drawers under my computer, and take my phone out.
