The bar is a short walk from the office. I order a local craft beer, while Margot looks queasy at the mere mention of wine and orders a ginger ale instead. That might explain a few things about her foray into online dating last night.
She takes a tiny sip of her drink and glances up at me, looking uncertain. “So, did you need to talk about work or is this more of a… friend hang?”
“A friend hang?” I repeat with a laugh.
“I don’t know!” Margot says defensively. “It’s not like we routinely go out for drinks together after work.”
“No, Margot, this is not a ‘friend hang.’ This is an intervention.”
A skeptical laugh bubbles up from her throat. “And you thoughta barwould be the best place for that?”
“Not an alcohol intervention—an online dating intervention.”
The color drains from Margot’s face, except for the rosy blooms high on her cheeks. “How do you know about that?” Each word stumbles over the last.
“I got a notification on my app.”
“Oh,” Margot says, eyebrows flying up her forehead. “Does that mean we… matched?”
Judging by the way she cringes, she’s either very disappointed or deeply terrified by the possibility.
I shake my head. “No, it means that you’re a new female user in the Denver area under the age of forty-five.”
Relief visibly washes over her features. She releases a breath and holds out a hand, as if to stop me. “Whoa there, don’t get too carried away with the flattery.”
I laugh and take a sip of my beer. “Don’t worry, I won’t. In fact, I don’t have a single flattering thing to say about your dating profile.”
Leveling a doubtful glare at me, Margot objects, “Well, you’re not exactly my target audience, Ethan. I’m sure there are men out there who appreciate…” As she continues speaking, I pull up her dating profile on my phone and set it on the bar. Her eyes drift down to the screen and her mouth clamps shut. “What’s this?” she asks, furrowing her brow in confusion.
“That,” I say, “is fourteen paragraphs about the movieI, Robotthat you wrote last night.”
“I’ve never seenI, Robot.”
“Yes, that’s very obvious, but just in case there was any lingering doubt, you actually mention that there at the bottom.”
Margot’s lips move slightly as she scrolls to the last paragraph and starts reading. She takes a deep breath and lifts her eyes to meet mine.
“Okay, so this isn’t the best dating profile.”
“Wait ‘til you see the profile picture.”
She rushes to scroll to the top of the screen and squints. “Is that…?”
“Your bedroom door? I believe so.”
Margot presses a palm to her face as if she’s trying to hide behind it and shakes her head. “I’m just going to delete the whole thing,” she says, fishing her phone out of her purse with her other hand.
“Don’t do that,” I tell her. “I’m going to help you fix it. Let me see your phone.”
With a skeptical look and her finger still hovering over the screen, one click away from deleting the app, Margot weighs her options. Eventually, she sighs and passes her phone to me.
There are three salvageable parts of her profile: her name, her city, and the fact that she’s interested in men. Everythingelse has to go. I start updating each section until one particular question catches my eye. Actually, it’s Margot’s answer that makes my brows furrow.
“Did you make a mistake here?” I ask. “It says you’re interested in long-term, short-term, and one-night stands.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them. It’s none of my business. Margot would have noticed the error eventually and fixed it. But as her friend, I’d rather she didn’t have to learn the hard way from a thousand perverted messages.
Silence stretches out between us. When I finally glance up at Margot, her cheeks are bright pink. She gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head and looks anywhere but at me when she says, “No, that’s right.”