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It gives me some time to sit on the bench at the perimeter of the playground and check my phone. The first thing I do is go to BLIND LOVE to see if Stranger7721 is on.
She’s not. And she hasn’t replied to my last message.
It makes me a little antsy. We have to keep their streak going so we can hit the ninety days in a row and unlock the ability to exchange numbers and photos. If one of us misses a day, we have to start over. And we’ve already gone fifteen days. I don’t want to reset the clock back to zero, because the truth is, I think about her.
A lot.
Way more than I expected to think about someone whose face I’ve never seen. I love how she makes me feel whenever we talk. She can brighten my day unlike anything or anyone else, and when I’m talking with her, I forget about the stress of the job, my home life, everything. When I haven’t talked to her, I feel on-edge.
Which is probably why, though I’m sitting in the sun on a perfect June day, I can’t stop checking my phone, wondering what she’s up to at this moment.
Maybe she isn’t thinking about me nearly as much as I think about her. Maybe this is all a joke. I know very little about her.
She could very well be some dude catfishing me for the fun of it.
I might not know her… but I feel like I do. And I know she’s a sweet, intelligent, very feminine workaholic who turns me on more than I expected to be from a simple online message. I’ve never had this kind of banter with anyone. She matches my energy. She has an actual personality. She doesn’t hold back. There’s depth to her and every time we chat, that depth becomes deeper.
“Aargh!” Jace rushes me with a stick he’s pretending to use for a sword, stabbing me in the chest with it.
It’s surprisingly painful, catching me off guard.
“Whoa, kid. You got me.” I look around for his buddy. “Where’s your first mate?”
“He had to go to baseball practice.”
I scan the area. He’s really gone, no trace of him around. I need to pay better attention to my nephew.
“Aw, too bad. What do you say we go get those smoothies?” I ask.
He jumps up and down, pulling on my arm.
We return to my condo, climb into my car, and head out for the closest smoothie place, in downtown Yarmouth. Sahara Smoothie Café is hopping when we pull into the parking lot. Everyone’s taking advantage of the nice weather and had the same idea we had, because there’s a line out the door. I bet it’s at least an hour wait.
Even so, I can’t tell Jace no, so we get out of the car and stand at the back of the line on the sidewalk. I check the menu on my phone.
“What do you want… strawberry banana? Or… there’s one here with orange juice and pineapple and mango?” I ask.
He nods right along with every suggestion.
I forgot I’m talking to a six-year-old. It’s better not to give him too many options.
“I’m going to get the Sunshine. It’s pineapple and mango and strawberry. You want that?” I nudge him.
“Yeah!”
“Cool.” Great, so we know our order. I look over the heads of everyone, toward the front of the line. It hasn’t moved. Apparently, people up at the front of the line aren’t as well-prepared as we are. It’s going to be awhile, and Jace is already jumping around, as antsy as I am to get another message from my stranger. I clap my hands together. “So…”
He looks at me.
“You make your move on the girl that sits next to you?” I ask.
He shakes his head, staring at the floor. “I think she likes Jackson.”
I can’t take the kid getting down on himself.
“What? Why? What’s this defeatist crap? You’re twice the man Jackson is.” Okay, I don’t know who Jackson is, but it doesn’t matter. “You just need to go there and tell her—”
I stop when he gets this petrified look in his eyes.
“Let me guess. You still haven’t talked to her yet?” The expression on his face tells me everything I need to know. I crouch in front of him and take his shoulders in my hands. “Dude. You need to talk to her. School’s going to be out soon, and if you want to see her over the summer then you need to ask her soon. If you do, and she says she’s not interested, okay. At least you know. You don’t want to spend the whole summer living with regret. Do you?”
It's strange, giving dating advice to a kid, but I’m trying to teach him a valuable lesson—the importance of being yourself and going after the things you want in life. The worst thing that could happen is she shrugs him off or says no, and in that case, he’ll learn another valuable lesson about how to handle rejection.
