Page 4 of The Blind Date

Mum, on the other hand, was the opposite of Dad and me. She was small, soft, and dainty–several inches shorter than my slightly-above-average height. I had her long blonde hair and heart-shaped face, but ultimately, I was a Daddy’s girl through and through.

"Play nice,” Mum warned me in a harsh whisper, though she wasn't very quiet, so I wasn't sure it constituted as a whisper. When Steve?...Stuart?...Simon?...visibly creased at how obvious they were being, I was certain Mum didn't know how to whisper.

They then scurried out of the restaurant like they genuinely had somewhere to be even though I knew they were probably heading down the street to get a Sunday roast elsewhere.

You had to commend my parents–mostly Mum as she was the one crazy enough to come up with this whole thing–on their dedication to the cause.

Sean?...Sam?...Seth?... whatever his name was, was the first one to extend the olive branch, and within moments of accepting it, I deemed him to be the most boring man I had ever met. And that was me trying my very best to be polite.

"Have you had a chance to glance at the menu?" He asked, taking a large gulp from the nondescript liquid in his water bottle. I was nearly certain it wasn’t water.

When he swallowed quickly and went in for another large gulp, my eyebrows knitted together in concern. He sure was thirsty.

"I'm going to get the roast with an extra helping of roast potatoes,” I told him without glancing at the menu. It was my go-to order.

"I'll get the avocado salad,” he mused aloud and closed the menu. He then proceeded to take another large gulp of…water?

"Not hungry?" I asked, half-joked, half-confused. I had been on quite a few dates in my time, and on all of them, none of them had ever ordered a salad. Not even as a side. I had never ordered a salad on any of these dates either, so this was a first for me. This was also the first time I had come across an avocado salad.

It was safe to say that the rest of the date went downhill from there. Not that things had looked remotely promising from the start.

"Those roast potatoes look nice," he praised my plate when our food arrived, his eyes lingering longer than I liked.

"Would you like to try one?" I felt obliged to ask, gritting my teeth slightly. I didn't like sharing food, especially not a roast dinner, but it was the polite thing to do. The last thing I needed was for Stephen?...Stuart?...Scott?...to complain to my parents about how off-putting and unpleasant I had been on the date. Mum certainly wouldn’t be happy to hear about it, and I didn’t put it past her to reprimand me by upping the number of blind dates I had to go on this month.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly have one," he denied with a small gasp, frantically waving his hands no. The way that he was reacting, it was as if I had suggested something blasphemous instead of offering him an innocent roast potato. "I'm on a very calorie-restrictive diet. Having just one roast potato would blow it out through the roof."

"Sounds nice," I murmured and watched as he picked around his salad, purposely leaving out the avocado even though that's what it was. An avocado salad.

The myth of his calorie-restrictive diet was debunked when I returned from the bathroom after our meal to find him topping up his water bottle with a small stash of alcohol concealed in a Tesco bag under the table. I had no idea when he had hidden the bag there or how I had missed it since he had arrived last.

If that didn't scream an alcohol problem, I didn't know what else would.

Honestly, I should have left as soon as he ordered the avocado salad. I should have known something was up when he mentioned that he was on a calorie-restrictive diet even though he looked to weigh nearly twice as much as I did.

I feigned receiving an emergency text from a friend, paid the bill and legged it out of there.

What were my parents thinking? On what planet were Sebastian?…Sawyer?…Santiago? and I a good match?

Their lack of judgement took me a few days to get over, so I pushed back the next set of dates to Wednesday where I got breakfast with Nitty Nigel who wouldn't stop scratching his head the entire time. At one point, I was convinced I saw a little black bug fall from his hair and onto his French toast which he then took a big bite of.

Lunch on Wednesday was with a man named William. He was pleasant, and straight off the bat, it appeared that we had many things in common. Compared to the previous two dates, he seemed relatively normal...and then he told me he was gay. Mum had been so insistent that he would be a good match for me at the golf club two weekends ago that he hadn't had the heart to tell her the truth about his sexual orientation.

I didn’t even know what Mum was doing at a golf club!

An early dinner after work that same day was with Robby, but he texted half an hour before to say that his mother wouldn't extend his curfew, so we'd have to take a rain check. I was quick to agree but didn’t text him back when he tried to set up another time.

I had organised late drinks with my next date, Paul, that same night. It took less than fifteen minutes for me to figure out that he was addicted to his phone and obsessed with snapping everything for his Instagram story, including me when I walked into the restaurant before we had introduced ourselves to each other. For all he knew, I could have been someone else and not his blind date. Paul didn't even glance up when I slipped away before the first round of drinks arrived.

I stayed home, drank more wine than I should have and called it an early night. It was just the recoup I needed for the next three dates I had scheduled for Thursday.

My breakfast date, Anthony, was more interested in how much money I made and when my next promotion would be than actually getting to know me. I had lunch with Nixon who only remembered to take off his wedding band after he finished his sandwich. However, dinner that day was the most unbearable of all. Kareem kept trying to get me to sign up for his Forex trading pyramid scheme–not that he would admit it was a pyramid scheme–even though I insisted that it wasn’t for me. The fake emergency text from a friend had been upgraded to a fake emergency call from my good friend, Victor.

Breakfast this morning was with Ashley who, much to my surprise, turned out to be a woman. It appeared that my parents thought they'd throw the bait and see if I took to it.

I did not.

We cleared up the misunderstanding quickly, enjoyed some eggs and French toast together and then followed each other on Instagram. That had to be the most successful a blind date had ever gone. And it hadn't even been with a man.

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