I sound like a desperate cat lady who doesn’t even have her own cat.
My wine glass is mysteriously empty, so I refill it again and set it on top of my plastic drawers, which I’ve been using as a nightstand. After deleting everything I just wrote, I start typing again.
It needs to be a little sexier, I decide. After all, this app is primarily known for one-night stands. Maybe that’s what I need,a fun night to cleanse my palate before I move onto something more serious. If so, my bio needs to at least make it sound like I’ve heard of sex before and I’m not one spam email away from sending all my money to a Nigerian prince.
Just out of a long-term relationship and ready to try something new. The only long thing I’m interested in right now is a nice, long…
A nice, long what, Margot? You are not seriously about to type penis.
Yikes.
I delete it again and start over. By the time I’ve finished my third glass of wine, I am so sure that I nailed it, I don’t even bother re-reading what I wrote. I take off my glasses and snap a quick selfie to complete my profile and hit publish. Setting my phone down on the bed, I curl up with a pillow and drift off to sleep, looking forward to the multitude of potential suitors that awaits me in the morning.
8
Ethan
Anotification pops up as I’m scrolling through Sip, chatting with a couple women to see if I can squeeze in a quick date before the weekend ends. It’s not ideal, but neither is being turned on by my assistant’s flannel cat pajamas.
New match in your area!
I click on the notification, which redirects me to someone’s profile. When the name Margot appears in bold letters at the top of the screen, my stomach tilts a little. It’s not the most common name, but I’m sure there are hundreds of Margots out there. The odds that it’s my Margot are miniscule, especially since she’s still recovering from her breakup.
No, it can’t be her.
Unfortunately, the profile does very little to confirm or refute this. The main picture is a blurry photo of a door. I tilt my head to the side, trying to make sense of it.
I scroll down to the About Me section, where I find several huge blocks of text. The wordsrobotandamortizationjump off the page at me. I keep scrolling, counting the paragraphs as I go.
Fourteen.
There are fourteen paragraphs.
Doesn’t Sip have some sort of word limit? I guess I wouldn’t know. My bio is a couple of short sentences. It never occurred to me to write more than that.
That’s when I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this profile belongs to my newly single assistant.
***
The next morning, Margot arrives twenty minutes late. She’s never late, except one time when there was a small fire in her apartment building and everyone was evacuated.
This time, I know there’s no fire to blame.
I wonder how late she stayed up crafting her opus and photographing her bedroom door. Maybe scrolling through messages from men who aren’t deterred by the sheer insanity of her profile. Or worse, maybe she was up late actually responding to their messages. Knowing Margot, she would think it was rude not to reply to every weirdo who tried to hit on her door.
The idea of her talking to all those creeps on that app brings out a protective streak in me. In a friendly way, of course. It’s clear that Margot isn’t ready to start dating again. She’s still emotionally fragile, and some men pick up on that. Some capitalize on it. I won’t let that happen to her.
Margot stays planted at her desk most of the day. At six o’clock, the rest of the office is empty, but Margot is still working. When I step out of my office and stop in front of her desk, she keeps typing. Eventually, her eyes pull away from her computer screen and find mine.
“I’m just finishing up those reports you wanted,” she says.
“They can wait until tomorrow. Let’s go grab a drink.”
She furrows her eyebrows at me and frowns. “Right now?”
I nod. “Yeah, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Oh… okay,” she says slowly. Her eyes search mine for a second before she begins to gather her things and shut down her computer.