Page 141 of Experiments in Offline Dating

Maya: Um. Spoiler alert!

Simone: Yeah. Oops.

Maya: Okay. Control yourself. So, to pick up from Episode Thirty-Nine, I flew to Christchurch and waited, having sent Tadhg tickets but not knowing if he would turn up.

Simone: And?

Maya: Well, he obviously did turn up, looking like a damn Celtic god, but that’s neither here nor there.

Simone: I think it’s both here and there.

Maya: The point is, he turned up. And, by doing so, signed his life over for the Love Experiment.

Simone: Is that really what we’re calling it?

Maya: I just called it that, so yeah. The rules were thus: We would throw ourselves into a baptism-by-fire three-week-long date, notably devoid of any string of ancient, ill-suited suitors, and we gave ourselves a deadline—if, by the end of twenty-one days, we didn’t want to uproot our entire lives to be together, then we would walk away and never speak again.

Simone: Of course you did. Because nothing says love is a complicated, nuanced, subjective, and indefinable thing more than a needlessly over-the-top ride-or-die ultimatum.

Maya: I knew you’d get it.

Simone: For those listening at home, I just rolled my eyes so hard that I popped a blood vessel. But do go on.

Maya: Well, it started off well. I surprised him with tickets to the Golden Shears, the world’s biggest sheep-shearing festival.

Simone: That’s . . .

Maya: Stop laughing! Waaah. If you had seen his arms while he lifted sheep in a tight T-shirt. My panties melted clean off me, I tell you. Clean off!

Simone: I mean. I don’t want to yuck your yum. But yuck. Sheep smell.

Maya: What a prude.

Simone: Oh yeah. I’m the problem.

Maya: Anyway, we did the whole road trip, with Fionnuala, the grumpy sheepdog who I adore like she’s a cat, and we visited waterfalls, and rainforests, and the fjords, and saw penguins. Penguins! Did you know there were penguins in New Zealand? Real ones. Wild. They swim up the beach and then go to sleep in the rainforest at night. Can you believe it?

Simone: I can’t.

Maya: It’s true. We also went into a cave and saw real-life glowworms that looked like a portal to the fae realm. And so many filming locations for The Lord of the Rings.

Simone: Literally no one is wanting to hear about worms, Maya. Give us the good stuff.

Maya: Fine. So, the thing is, all that unspeakable beauty, and I barely noticed any of it.

Simone: ADHD? Hangover? Stupidity?

Maya: Because by day three, I knew I was so head over heels in love that I just floated around outside my body, and the only thing that kept me from floating away was his hand holding mine.

Simone: Ew, Maya. Let’s try to keep this family-friendly.

Maya: Yeah. Sorry. That’s fair. Anyway, I struggled with myself for a week or so, trying to be levelheaded and scientific about it. I told myself that infatuation could mostly be blamed on norepinephrine, oxytocin, and vasopressin, etcetera, that would fade sooner or later. But I knew I was lying to myself. Fuck, Simone. Love, ay? What a dumb mess.

Simone: That’s more like the Maya we know and love.

Maya: Anyway—cut to the end—I had saved our visit to Hobbiton for the end of the trip, because oh my God, but then Tadhg surprised me. He’d called Jackie, to whom everyone on the planet owes a favor, and Jackie charmed some people and pulled some strings and somehow managed to get them to agree to let us stay in Hobbiton for the night, like it was ours.

Simone: Aw. Okay. That’s really freaking cute. I’ll bet you peed your pants.