“People do that?” said Evan.
“Yeah.” Paige sighed. “Tinder date I went on a couple of months ago was with a guy who was working out how to turn his spare bedroom into a cheese cave.”
“So what you’re saying,” said Lindsay, “is that he has a job and a home and no whacky hobbies? Although honestly, I’m now mentally trying to work out if I can turn part of my apartment into a cheese cave.”
“Well, he works a lot. That’s the one potential negative as far as I can tell. He pretty much lives in his office, so he doesn’t have time for hobbies. Or dating, really. All of our dates so far have occurred when he finagled time off.” Paige sipped her cocktail as soon as Jenny deposited it in front of her. “And in defense of those Tinder dates, I do work at a cat café, and I like to do crafts in my spare time. Josh pointed out the other morning that I’m just as much of a Brooklyn hipster stereotype as the guys I make fun of.”
“The whacky hobbies were never the issue,” said Evan. “It was that you tend to attract men-children who are not at the same place in their lives as you are, honey.”
“I have the opposite problem,” said Lindsay. “Last time I tried online dating, I only matched with guys in New Jersey who were looking for wives. Where were all these Brooklyn guys then?”
“You probably had your age limit set too high,” said Evan. “Not that I know anything about online dating.” He whistled.
“Sure.” Paige laughed. “I don’t know. Are we at the point in our lives when everyone has baggage? I went on a date with a guy last year who was thirty-five and divorced. Not that this is a dealbreaker, it just seems like a lot of baggage to handle.”
“Caleb was divorced when he met Lauren. That didn’t seem to bother either of them much,” said Evan.
“Okay, fine. And I’m really glad that worked out for them. Maybe the guy I dated was not in a good place mentally, I don’t know. But then I met a guy a few months ago who had kids, and I couldn’t deal with that either. So, see, I’m not even that mature.”
“It’s fine,” said Evan. “And you are mature. You actually act like an adult most of the time. You have a job you love and a nice apartment and you pay your bills on time, right?”
“Right.”
“So you’ve already got a leg up on a lot of people I know. And again, I don’t think it was even the baggage per se that made those other relationships not work out. People get divorced. It happens. What was it Ross said onFriends? ‘Divorced men are notbadmen.’”
“That’s what they put on the cocktail napkins at the divorced men’s club,” said Lindsay, laughing.
“My point, though, is that it’s not the divorces or the kids or the cheese caves,” said Evan. “It’s that these men were not the right men foryou.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Paige.
“But you’re dating Lauren’s brother and she doesn’t know yet,” Lindsay said with a “let me get this straight” tone in her voice. “And you really like him.”
“I do.”
“You’re going out again soon, I assume.”
“Yeah, this weekend, if all goes to plan.”
“Are you going to tell Lauren or wait until you send wedding invitations?”
The thought of telling Lauren made Paige feel like she’d swallowed a rock. But the thought ofnottelling her didn’t sit right either. Paige hated keeping secrets from her friends, especially something so big. “Eventually we’ll tell her. But we don’t want to cause any angst until we know if it’s going really somewhere.”
“They’re already aweand not anI,” Lindsay said.
“It’s… No, I meant… Ugh.”
Evan laughed. “Such a weird problem to have. But I get it. I honestly don’t know how she’ll react. She’s pretty protective of Josh.”
“Thanks,” said Paige. “Like I wasn’t already worried enough.”
“What has you worried, exactly?” Lindsay asked.
“Whatdoesn’thave me worried? What if Lauren doesn’t approve? What if Josh and I make some kind of commitment but then break up? Lauren’s going to side with him over me, and then where will I be? What if she fires me? What if this whole thing changes our friendship?”
Lindsay nodded. “Yeah, that is a lot.”
“But it also mightnothappen, you know. It could all work out. We could all live happily ever after.”
