“Not especially cute, I’m afraid,” he says. “There’s soy sauce on my shirt.”
“There’s probably a woman out there who likes that.”
“Good, can you give me her number?” he says.
Uh, yeah. We are definitely flirting. I need to regroup.
“I bet you make resolutions anyway,” I say. “Admit it.”
He sighs. “Of course I do. You have to. Otherwise you have nothing to talk about at the office.”
“Not me. My office is in my house, and it’s currently littered in Hershey Kiss wrappers.”
“I thought you didn’t like chocolate.”
He remembers.
“I don’t, but Alyssa sent me a bag of ‘New Year’s kisses’ because she pities my spinster existence. And hangovers make me hungry. Anyway, what are your resolutions?”
“You’ll make fun of them.”
I probably will.
“I promise not to.”
“I don’t believe you. But my attraction to your scorn is deeply ingrained.”
It gives me no small measure of satisfaction to hear him acknowledge that I’m not the only one who’s still attracted.
“Try me.”
“Spend less time at the office. Find a girlfriend. Get married. Have a baby by thirty-six.”
I whistle. “Damn. You have work to do.”
“I know. It’s crippling,” he says.
“Maybe if you didn’t pressure yourself so much it would be easier to just, like, live?”
“But I don’t want to just live, Molly Marks. I want to suck the marrow from the bones of life and fulfill all my most mundane heteronormative fantasies.”
It feels oddly intimate that he is disclosing this to me.
“Do you want me to show you how Tinder works?” I ask, trying to lighten things up.
“Oh, believe me, I know how Tinder works. I feel like I’ve dated every woman in Chicago. But they keep breaking up with me.”
“I have trouble believing that,” I say nicely, because he sounds sad.
“It’s true. Dave claims I’m a serial monogamist who plows into doomed relationships because I romanticize love as a cure-all.”
“Hmm,” I say. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but this kind of tracks. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. Every time I meet a nice gal, I get very excited. It alwaysfeelsreal.”
I can’t imagine this problem won’t sort itself out soon enough. He’s hot, rich, and good at sex. He’s just had bad luck.
“Well, don’t worry,” I say. “You’re an eligible bachelor. It’ll happen. All that wifed-up stuff is easier for men.”
