Page 12 of We Met Like This
“Ouch,” I called after her. “Not cool!”
Back in my phone I typed:Is this a recycled pic or did you take it just for me?
I told you I wouldn’t use recycled material on you. All original.
I actually think you told me at least fifty percent of your material would be recycled.
Oh, right. I knew I said one or the other.
Hey, that’s not a bad idea, though. We could help each other out. There’s obviously something wrong with our banter on these apps if we both continually end up back on them. Maybe you should run all your pickup lines by me before you use them on women from now on.If he was still single, he was obviously still making the same mistakes he had made with me.
And you’ll run yours by me?
Well, duh. This isn’t a one-sided service, I typed.
First advice: strike duh from your vocabulary.
I huffed.Completely? Or just when responding to men?
More the second.
Ha! Will attempt. Does that mean all sarcasm must go or just the bits that make men feel stupid?
You can say duh to me all day long, but other men…
Oh, sure. You have feelings of steel but those other men, they need to be handled delicately.
Exactly. I like it rough.
A smile took over my face, but before I even responded, another message came through:In the most innocent of contexts, of course. Where did your mind go?
My first advice to you: Wait until at least after a first date for dirty talk.
Good thing we already had one of those then.
I blinked at his message. Was this the same Oliver who had ignored me and the waitress, crowned himself the king of font choices, only read nonfiction, and told programmingjokes that I didn’t understand? Maybe this was the Oliver that had known exactly what to do with his tongue.
Maybe he really would be a fun way to pass the time between real matches.
CHAPTER 5
The front door to the office opened with its cheery little chime and Rob’s teenage daughter, Danielle, walked in. Yes, Rob had a sixteen-year-old daughter. He was forty-two. Another reason the stars weren’t aligned for us.
Dani had a backpack slung over one shoulder and she was staring at her phone as she approached my desk.
“Hi,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
She squinted at me like she didn’t remember who I was. I’d literally met her at least a dozen times. Not to mention all the stories I’d heard about her on car trips to Palm Springs or San Diego or the handful of other weekend getaways Rob and I had taken over the last two years. Stories about her soccer matches and her school dances and her purple hair dye. All told while he ran a slow finger along the underside of my arm or placed my hand on his thigh. Weekend trips were some of the few times I felt like we were actually a couple and not some shameful secret.
“I like your shirt,” I said to her now. “I’m a huge Arctic Monkeys fan.”Hugemight not have been the right descriptor,moderatewould’ve been a better one, but I felt myself trying to impress the girl standing in front of me, who was clearly unimpressed.
She looked down at her shirt. “I don’t know them. I thrifted this.”
“You should know them!” Why did I sound so overly enthused about this suggestion? “I’ll make a list of their top five songs for you. An introduction to the band, if you will.”
“Right…”
“Margot,” I said.
