Second Act - Diana Xarissa Page 0,1
him address the caller as ‘darling,’ which isn’t typically how someone addresses a work colleague.”
“So he’s married.”
“I think so. We barely spoke, really, in between his phone calls. At the end of the meal, he invited me to go away with him for a weekend. He has a little cabin in the woods, apparently, and he seemed to think that I would enjoy spending a weekend there with him.”
“You? In a cabin in the woods? Did you tell him that Ramsey is your idea of a remote getaway?”
Terri laughed. “I’m not that bad, but I was a big city person before I moved here and I can’t imagine enjoying a weekend in a cabin away from all of the modern conveniences. I do love Ramsey, though, you know that.”
“You aren’t planning on seeing him again, then?”
“I might have considered it, but he got rather rude when I refused his weekend invitation. He said something along the lines of him being my only chance of getting laid again before I died, which I found somewhat off-putting.”
Camille stared at her for a moment. “He said what?” she asked eventually, as the waiter delivered the appetizer.
Terri shrugged. “It was awful, but also amusing. I’ve blocked his number and moved on.”
“I’m starting to feel really bad about giving you this challenge.”
“And that was the best of the three dates,” Terri told her with a laugh.
Camille gasped and then sighed. “Now I remember why I’d given up on dating.”
“Dan was next. He’s forty-nine, but he likes older women, or at least, that’s what his profile said.”
“Which part wasn’t true?”
“Both parts. He was actually around thirty-five, and he really wants a woman in her late-twenties, but when he put that in his profile, he never got any dates.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. Why would you lie about your age and what you wanted just to get dates with women you know you aren’t actually interested in?”
“I asked him that, but he just shrugged and said that at least now he was getting to go out once in a while. He seemed nice enough, but it was immediately clear that we weren’t well suited. He spent most of the night flirting with the waitress, who clearly wasn’t interested, and complaining about his mother, who really wants grandchildren and doesn’t understand how difficult it is for him to meet nice women.”
“I’m not sure if that sounds worse than Mike,” Camille said thoughtfully.
“At the end of the night, Dan tried to kiss me,” Terri told her. “He walked me to my car and we were chatting about the weather when he suddenly pulled me into his arms and, well, licked his lips.”
“What did you do?”
“Stomped hard on his foot.”
Camille laughed. “Was he very upset?”
“He turned bright red and then turned around and ran away. I assume he went back to his car and went home, but I didn’t wait around to see.”
“And now you’ve blocked his number, too.”
“I haven’t actually, as he hasn’t tried calling or texting again since our dinner. Mike rang the very next day, which is why I blocked him.”
“And the last story is the worst?” Camille asked.
“Ah, Joe,” Terri sighed. “He was the one with the most potential. I was actually excited about meeting him. We talked on the phone for hours before we met and I truly thought, well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. He wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting.”
“Why not?”
“For a start, he didn’t look anything like his profile picture. When I asked him about it, he told me that he’d used a photo he’d found on the Internet because he didn’t think looks should matter.”
“I’m going to guess that he chose a photo of an attractive man, though,” Camille said dryly.
Terri nodded. “Very attractive. But I was more than willing to give him a chance, anyway. Looks aren’t everything, after all.”
“But? There has to be a but.”
“But he wasn’t at all what he’d claimed to be in his profile. According to that, he was a lawyer who’d been married and divorced once with no children. Over dinner, he talked about his ex-wives. Turns out there are three of them. I asked him about his job and he admitted that he was a law clerk, not an actual lawyer. Over dessert, he casually mentioned his four kids, who all have different mothers.”
“So he’d lied about everything on his profile.”
“Pretty much. When I pointed that out, he just said that everyone lies on those things. When I said that I hadn’t