Daddy's Sweet Obsession

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Dana opened the door before I even knocked.

She must have seen something in my face because she didn't say anything at first, just stepped back and let me in, which was the right call, because if Dana had said Are you okay or what happened or anything at all, I might have actually lost it right there in the hallway.

I sat on Dana's couch. Dana sat next to me. The apartment was warm and smelled like the candle she always burned, something with vanilla in it, and for a second I just sat with that. The warmth in this room was everything. The fact that this was a place where nothing had happened yet, and I could just be in it for one more second before I had to say the words out loud.

Then I started to say what happened.

I said it flat, the way you tell things when you're still in shock, no drama, just the way i felt. I went to find Jake at his office. That i had caught Camille there with my boyfriend doing whatever, and he didn't even follow me.

Dana didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then: 'Camille.'

'Yeah.' I said.

'Your Camille. Our Camille.'

'The same one.'

Dana stood up. She walked to the kitchen, and I heard the sound of a cabinet opening, a bottle being pulled out, two glasses. She came back with wine, not the good stuff, the Tuesday stuff, the kind we drank when things were bad, and handed me a glass and sat back down.

'How long do you think it has been going on?,' Dana said. Not a question exactly. More like thinking out loud.

'I don't know. The way they...' I stopped. Took a sip. 'A while. It didn't look new.'

'God.' She looked at me.

'Yeah.'

We sat with that for a minute. Outside, the city made its noises, someone's bass through a wall, the baseline hum of ten million people going about their night. I drank my wine. I kept waiting to cry, and it kept not happening, which felt strange, like my body hadn't gotten the message yet.

'He looked relieved,' I said. 'When he saw me, he looked — like I'd done something for him.'

Dana looked at me.

'Like he wanted to be caught,' I said. 'Like he'd been waiting for an exit and I just handed him one.'

'That's the most cowardly thing I've ever heard.'

'I know.'

'He couldn't just — he couldn't break up with you like a normal person, he had to...'

'Dana.'

'I'm just saying.'

'I know what you're saying.' I set my glass down. 'I've been saying it to myself in the cab for twenty minutes.'

Dana was quiet for a moment. Then she said, carefully, the way she said things when she'd already decided something but wanted me to think she was being spontaneous about it: 'You know what you need.'

'Don't.'

'I'm serious. You need to get back out there. Not to find someone, just to remember that you exist outside of Jake Calloway. That you're a person. A very hot person, might I add, who is currently wearing a genuinely incredible dress on a couch with me.'

'I'm not going on a date, Dana.'

'Not tonight, obviously. Tonight we drink. But...' She reached over and picked up my phone from the cushion between us. 'You deleted all your apps when you got with Jake, right?'

'Dana...'

'I'm just asking.'

I looked at her. Dana looked back, holding my phone with an expression of pure innocence that I had never once believed in six years of friendship.

'Fine,' I said. 'But I'm not swiping tonight. I'm not doing anything tonight. Tonight I'm just...'

'Drinking. Obviously. Give me your face, you have mascara.' Dana was already reaching for a tissue from the side table, already leaning in, already taking care of me the way she always had, and I let her, sat still while she fixed my face and refilled my wine and put something stupid on the TV.

We didn't talk about Jake again that night, didn't talk about Camille either.

But sometime around midnight, after the second bottle, while Dana was half asleep against my shoulder, I picked up my phone and redownloaded the app. I didn't open it. Just sat there holding it, the icon glowing on my screen.

Just in case.

✦ ✦ ✦

I made a profile a day later.

Dana helped, which meant Dana essentially took over, which meant the photos were better than anything I would have chosen myself and the bio was short and a little funny and didn't try too hard. Dana had opinions about bios that tried too hard. She had opinions about most things, which was one of the reasons I loved her.

'You look hot,' Dana said, reviewing the finished profile with the seriousness of someone filing a legal document. 'Approachable but not desperate. Interesting but not weird. This is good work.'

'You wrote half of it.'

'I wrote the good half.' She handed the phone back. 'Now swipe. Not him, not him... God, definitely not him... ooh, wait...'

'I'm doing it myself.'

'You're going to swipe left on everyone out of self-protection, and you know it.'

That was fair. I took the phone back and sat with it for a moment, scrolling slowly. There were men I swiped left on for obvious reasons and men I swiped left on for reasons I couldn't explain and one or two I hovered over for a second before moving on.

And then there was one I stopped on.

The photo was outdoors somewhere — a hiking trail maybe, or just a path somewhere green. He was squinting a little into the light, the kind of squint that came from actually being outside and not from posing for a photo. Salt and pepper hair. Strong jaw. The kind of smile that looked like it happened because something was genuinely funny, not because someone said cheese.

His bio said: Architect. Dad. Better cook than my kids will admit. Looking for something real.

Something real.

I looked at the photo for a moment longer than I'd looked at any of the others.

'That one,' Dana said, reading over my shoulder.

'He's older.'

'He's distinguished. There's a difference.'

'Dana...'

'Swipe right. Live your life. What's the worst that happens.'

I thought about Jake's face. That exhale. That relief.

I swiped right.

We matched in four minutes.

His first message came an hour later — a real sentence, not just hey, asking about something in one of my photos. I read it twice. Then I wrote back.

His name was Jason.

✦ ✦ ✦

He asked me to meet him on the coming Friday. A bar in the West Village, not too loud, the kind of place that had candles on the tables and a good whiskey list and didn't take itself too seriously. I said yes before I'd fully decided to.

I spent the week telling myself it was just a drink. Just one drink with a stranger, no expectations, nothing to lose. I said this to Dana approximately nine times and Dana nodded along patiently every time, like she wasn't already planning what I was going to wear.

'It's just a drink,' I said on Friday afternoon, watching Dana hold up two different dresses against me in the mirror.

'Absolutely,' Dana said. 'This one.'

✦ ✦ ✦

The bar was exactly what his message had promised: low light, good music at a volume where you could actually hear each other, bartenders who knew what they were doing. I got there a few minutes early and took a seat and ordered a glass of wine and told myself again: just a drink. One drink. I was allowed to have a drink with a stranger. That was a normal lady activity.

I was halfway through my wine when the door opened and I looked up.

And I thought, oh.

He was taller than I'd expected. The photos hadn't done the jaw justice, or the way he moved — unhurried, like a man who had never once needed to rush anywhere. He scanned the bar once and found me immediately and smiled, that same smile from the photo, the one that was real, and walked over.

'Mara,' he said.

'Jason,' I said.

He sat down and signaled the bartender and looked at me like I was the most interesting thing in the room, and I thought: okay.

This is fine.

This is just a drink.