Page 17 of Swiped
Relief and gratitude hit her chest in a warm, sparkly wave. This wasn’t the job of a publicist, but rather the move of a friend. “Oh, I have to take this,” she said with a stage wince.
Eric rolled his eyes. “Classic. The rescue call.” He glared at her. “I knew this wasn’t your first rodeo.”
She hopped off the stool. “No, it’s not like that.” She grabbed her purse, wondering if Justin was with his sister. “It’s my — it’s a work thing!”
Eric gave her an exaggerated wink. “Sure. Smart thinking.”
“Sorry!” Nat cried as she picked up the call and rushed into the lobby.
She plugged her free ear as she dodged people on their way in.
“Jo? Hello?” But it was too loud. She could hear her voice, but not what she was saying.
“Hang on!” She squeezed past a trio of laughing women in cocktail dresses. “Everything’s OK, right?”
“I know, I just feel kind of trapped, you know?” Jo’s voice was tinny and small.
“I can’t hear you!” Nat shouted as she ducked into the empty corner behind a large plant. “Are you doing a rescue call? Because I swear to God you are psychic and I love you so much right now—” She froze at the sound of Jo’s cackling laugh.
“Oh, she is for sure gonna get eaten alive on these dates! Listen, Nat is amazing and I love her, but she’s a lot. Total genius, but sometimes people are their own worst enemies and they can’t even see it.”
Nat sank against the wall. A pocket dial. She knew she should hang up, but she couldn’t. She heard Jo take a drag of a cigarette, and she knew she had more to say.
Jo’s voice came back. “But it’s good for me to see, like, the kind of person I don’t want to become, you know?”
Nat ended the call so fast she almost dropped the phone. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears, and her hands shook. She stepped out from behind the plant.
From the lobby, she had a full view of the bar and the empty stool waiting for her return, and Eric, who was leaning over, waving a fully extended arm to signal the bartender. Tears pricked in her eyes, and her mouth drooped. A sob swelled into her throat as she ran for the ladies’ room.
Inside the well-lit glare of the bathroom, Nat leaned against the sink and let the tears come.
Gray, mascara-tinged drops hit the white marble.
Her heart ached in her chest like it was a vacuum trying to suck her whole body into its dark void.
She told herself she was overreacting because Jo was her assistant, and their relationship was professional.
She scolded herself for being so needy. In theory, it should be fine that Jo didn’t like her, and as the overheard words pinged around her mind like deranged moths in a lamp, it was painfully clear that Jo didn’t like her.
Still, Nat’s mind flashed back to the hundreds of laughs she’d shared with Jo over their meme-and-emoji shorthand, and the hundreds of times the intimate details of her life had spilled out in their conversations on the way to lunch or while they tried on online shopping purchases for each other over a coffee break — really, the ways in which she’d let her guard down around Jo were countless.
Because she’d thought that she could. She’d thought Jo enjoyed her company, not just her actual company, but of course that was impossibly naive.
Nat was Jo’s boss, not her friend — even if Nat had believed otherwise.
She pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and dabbed at her red eyes.
There was a kind of comedic cruelty to this all happening when she was in the middle of an absolute nightmare of a date.
More tears ran onto the paper towel. Eric .
The rude, self-absorbed conversation, the bait-and-switch of his height (like she wouldn’t notice him being almost a full six inches shorter than he’d said?), not to mention the painfully obvious fact that she had willingly chosen to go on a date with this guy, supposedly an above-average match.
It was humiliating to her person and her algorithm.
She looked at herself in the mirror. The paper towel was rough and stabbed into her puffy skin, only making it angrier.
Her eye makeup was melted into black creases and smears.
Her cheeks were blotchy, and her nose was red.
At this moment, she could see why Jo didn’t want to be anything like her. Who would?
Maybe she had been looking at her dating search all wrong. Maybe the hard part wasn’t finding someone she could like. Maybe the real feat would be trusting that anyone could ever like her ?
A stall opened behind her, and the elegant, gray-haired woman who had been watching her struggle with the front door emerged. “Oh no!” she cried, taking in Nat’s appearance. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, sorry,” Nat said. “It’s stupid.” She managed a companionable smile. “Just trying not to look like a raccoon right now.”
The woman drew close to her. “Let me show you a trick, sweetie,” she said and pulled a tampon out of a glass jar on the counter.
Nat balked. “Oh! No, I’m not—”
But the woman held up an index finger to cut her off as she popped the tampon out of the applicator and gestured for Nat to take the soft white cylinder. “It soaks up the tears and it won’t scratch your face.”
Nat dabbed the tampon to her face and watched the mess melt into the cotton. It was soft as she wiped it under her eyes. “Oh God, thank you,” she said. “I’m not usually like this.”
The woman washed her hands with a casual shrug. “Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.” She smoothed her sleek bob and righted a twisted necklace. Her blue eyes met Nat’s in the mirror. “You sure you’re OK to go back out there?”
Nat crumpled her tear-soaked towels, tossing them in the trash, and nodded as they headed to the door.
The woman opened it for Nat and turned to face her as she walked out. “And trust me?” she said. “He’s not worth it.”
Nat sighed and headed back to her seat at the bar.
Eric’s stool was empty, and she was relieved to have another moment to herself before he came back.
Now all she had to do was end this date as painlessly as possible.
Even though she knew that the rest of the night would probably be spent crying into her wine glass with Sara and her cat, it was still better than being here.
The bartender approached with a tray, and Nat cringed, wondering if Eric had ordered another round while she was away. But he handed over a leather-bound book with an envelope sticking out. “He paid his half, so here’s your tab,” he said.
Nat blinked in shock. “He left?” she said.
The bartender nodded.
Nat opened the envelope. Inside was a bill from the restaurant splitting everything fifty-fifty, including Eric’s massive drinks and fries. Eric had also left her a note scrawled on a napkin.
Hope you enjoy your “phone call” and DYING ALONE .
Stunned, she looked up and searched the bartender’s impassive, bearded face as if he could somehow right this deeply wayward ship. “Ready to close out?” he asked.