Page 6 of Love in Focus

Sure! Here’s my number.

A few seconds later, I get a text from an unknown number.

Hey, beautiful, it says.

Okay, I think.A little direct, but not the worst first text I could have gotten.

Hey!I type. After a moment of hesitation, I add on a smiley face before I press send.

And then, Craig sends me a picture of his dick.

When I open the message, it takes me a few seconds to even process what I’m seeing. I’m no stranger to dicks, but the sheer ridiculousness of my current pink-and-hairy situation renders me speechless. My day keeps getting more and more ridiculous.

I text my friends,I think I got my first dick pic.

The door to my friends’ bedroom immediately slams open.

Kiara storms out first, wearing the satin scarf she wraps over her hair whenever she goes to bed. “Oh myGod. Are you serious?”

“Yup,” I reply. “I’d show you, but I know how you feel about dicks.”

Kiara makes a gagging sound, like she’s about to throw up. “Yeah, no, please don’t.”

Val follows Kiara, shaking her head. “Cis men can be so immature sometimes. A dick pic, really? In this day and age? This is why I don’t date them anymore.”

We all laugh. Before Kiara and I met Val, she used to date men. Or, as she said once, “play video games with them and then end up fucking.” She doesn’t consider herself bi likeme, though. Just a late bloomer lesbian that was previously yet another victim of comp het. Now, as a long-running joke, she likes to say, “This is why I don’t date men anymore,” whenever she sees a guy doing something stupid.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for dating apps,” I bemoan as my friends sit down next to me on Clementine.

Kiara looks down at her smartwatch. “Well, it’s been less than six hours since you downloaded them! You’re totally valid for wanting to quit after what happened with Craig, but maybe try going on at least one date? With someone else, of course. Not Craig.”

“No shade if you do decide to go with Craig, though. If you liked what you saw,” Val adds jokingly. “But also, as an IT professional, I must warn you that the dick pic he sent might not even be his. It could be a random image he found on Google. Or worse, an AI-generated one. Those are getting more and more realistic by the day.”

Kiara shrieks, and we all laugh.

“Maybe I should try meeting people out in the wild, first,” I say. “So far, dating apps don’t seem like they’re for me.”

“That’s a great idea,” Kiara replies. “We’re free tomorrow night, aren’t we, babe? Since it’ll be a Thursday. Why don’t we all go out to a bar or something?”

“Sure, sounds good,” Val says. “Gemma, do you know anywhere that’s still doing those spiced fall cocktails? I’ve been getting my annual pumpkin spice latte craving but haven’t gotten the chance to get one yet this year since I hardly ever go out.”

Kiara and I snicker as we look at each other. Val likesmaking fun of what she says are “basic bitch” things, but the one thing she canneverresist is a good pumpkin spice latte. Or PSL-inspired cocktails. And of course, given what I do for a living, she asks me for recs on where to get one every year.

I smile. “I know just the place!”

Fortunately, the next day at work isn’t nearly as bad as the previous, mainly because I have something to look forward to at the end of it. Luckily, both James and Daphne seem dead set onmostlyignoring me, with the only moment of drama occurring when James wrinkles his nose after our eyes accidentally meet on my way to the elevator.

“At least I’m not the one making out with a coworker in the printer room!” I want to yell at him. But I obviously don’t.

Shane also seems pretty content with whatever arrangement he must have worked out with James, because he just gives me a friendly “Hey, Gemma!” when we cross paths. Either that or he wants to pretend that nothing happened. Which is understandable.

I throw myself into my work again. Aside from the lifestyle recommendation articles, which are always fun, myfavorite part of my job is reading the stories behind the people asking for advice on Dear Karl. I truly, deeply love all the different stories I read about other people’s life experiences, and today, I find myself especially immersed in a submission from a man in his fifties who’s trying to make the holidays good again for a woman whose husband died around this time last year. Thanksgiving is next week, so we’ve been getting a lot of advice requests about the holidays.

Love isn’t dead, after all. Or at least, it isn’t for some people.

I bookmark the man’s email for now, along with some other messages I received about upcoming holiday events around the city. Providing a list of cute date ideas seems like the right approach, but I want to double-check with one of my Gen X coworkers first.

After work, Kiara, Val, and I bundle up in our coats and walk to the Financial District. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk, but it seems much longer than that, especially since we have to walk past the condo I used to live in with James.

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