“But she cheated on you!”
“Yeah, I just…”
“She cheated on yousix monthsago! Inyourapartment!”
I rolled my eyes at myself. “I know. I know. When we first broke up, I was going to be on the road for months, so I was happy to have her stay for a while. It’s hard to find an apartment in New York, and she has a lot of stuff.” I did hear how that sounded. It was just that Karlie wasn’t going to be able to afford a place that was up to her standards. I didn’t wish her ill, and what use was an empty apartment to me? “Anyway, she was supposed to be out by now, and she’s… not.”
I was coming off as such a doormat. This was not how I wanted Gretchen to see me, though I understood that having a way I did or did not want Gretchen to see me was not a good look. I tried to summarize my last “discussion” with Karlie in a way that would put an end to this topic. “We agreed she’d be out by September,” I said decisively. “So here I am.”
That seemed to satisfy her, at least in the sense that she dropped the subject, but she was staring off into space, and she looked sad.
“A penny for your thoughts,” I said, though I had no idea why. The conversation had come to a close, and she was the one who’d intruded on my solitude to begin with.
“My thoughts are worth way more than a penny,” she said, and based on just her words, you’d have thought she was kidding—it was a jokey thing to say—but she still had that wistful vibe about her, and she was still staring at the darkening sky.
Fuck me if I didn’t respond by reaching into my pocket and pulling out a crumpled ten-dollar bill—I had stopped at the camp store for the bag of almonds Gretchen was eating as we talked, and I still had cash on me. I moved over a bit and set it on the glider between us.
That cracked her melancholy. Her laughter rang out over the lake. “I was thinking about that don’t-ask-don’t-tell thing we talked about earlier. Or on-again, off-again. Maybe that’s actually the way to go. Like, by design. Call it what it is from the outset of a relationship.”
“Nah, I’m just damaged goods. Karlie and I were not a match, not elementally.”
“No, seriously. I’m trying to think how I would react if a Tinder dude outrightsaidhe was only interested in getting in my pants.” My eyes zoomed back over to her thigh. Her pantsless thigh. “I’m not sure I’d go for it, but I think I would respect it. I’d certainly respect him more than all the terrible guys I ended up with.”
I cleared my throat. “Aren’t most people on those apps only looking to hook up, though? Isn’t that pretty much the point?” I wasn’t on any apps, but that was the impression I got.
“Maybe for a lot of people, but not for everyone. I have it right in my profile that I’m looking for a long-term relationship.” She glanced sideways at me. “I want love. I know you probably think that’s naive and foolish, but I don’t care.” I tried to object, to tell her I had no opinion on what she did or did not want out of life, but she waved me off and tossed back the rest of her drink. “I should say Ididwant love. Ididhave that junk about long-term relationships in my profiles. I’m over it now.” She stood abruptly. “I should go.”
I didn’t want her to leave.
Which was weird as hell, but Drunk Sourplum was pretty good company. “Tell me about these Tinder guys.”
She screwed up her face like what I was asking was the most bizarre thing ever. When I raised my eyebrows, she made a silly face and said, “Well, how much time do you have?” I shrugged. I didn’t have anywhere to be. All I had were some songs that were not going to write themselves and also, apparently, were not going to be written by me.
“OK, but I’m taking this, then.” As she sat back down, she picked up the ten-dollar bill, and I chuckled. But I sobered pretty fucking quickly when she shoved it into her bikini top—like, slid it into her cleavage and then just… out of sight. That was—
Shit. I realized she’d started talking—about the thing I’d told her to talk about—and I’d missed the start.
“… anyway, most of them are your garden-variety bait-and-switch.”
“Meaning?”
“You’d message back and forth a bit and think,We’re on the same page.I mean, they’d read my profile, right?” I wanted to say that maybe theyhadn’tread her profile. Maybe they’d seen her pink-and-blond hair and her blue eyes—and her killer thighs if her profile contained any full-body pictures—and swiped without reading a word. But I held my tongue.
“Eventually the messaging is promising enough that you go on a date. Then, I don’t know, either you sleep with them and they ghost you, or youdon’tsleep with them and they ghost you. Or God forbid you decide it’s not a match and deign to say so in the politest possible terms, intending to save everyone time, and they send you a tsunami of harassment, usually involving an itemized list of everything that’s wrong with youand/or an essay riddled with grammatical errors about how they didn’t want you anyway.”
“Really? Jesus.”
“Yeah. I think the problem with dating apps is everyone is paralyzed by choice. Like, why settle for me when there are so many other people out there? Or in there.” She leaned over and pointed at my phone, resting on the armrest of the glider on my side. Her breast brushed against my arm, but she didn’t notice.
I thought about the ten-dollar bill.
“It’s been years since I’ve had a real relationship.” She threw a handful of almonds in her mouth, then appeared to have a memory that amused her, because she started laughing—then coughing and spraying out fragments.
I sat up, alarmed—did I remember any of that CPR?—but she waved me off. “I was remembering this one guy. Talon.”
“His name wasTalon?”
“You should talk,Tennyson.”
