PERFECT PLACES

Nicole being Nicole, she’d figured it’d be hard to attract men in this town. This small city of factory hands and casino dealers and nurses who commuted across the border. But it wasn’t difficult for Nicole to attract men; it was difficult to attract men she liked.

There were a lot of older guys around here, and from their Tinder profiles to their bar stools, they all loved Nicole. They marvelled at how warm the weather was lately; they gushed about their ex-wives and their kids and the great jobs they once had. Men close to Nicole’s own age of thirty-two? Not interested. Sure, they liked Nicole, yes. They’d joke with her, gossip, talk shit in line at Food Basics. High-five her when she crushed it at karaoke, wave hello when she came through the bar. And if a guy was giving her a legit hard time, that guy went out on his ass. (That’d only happened once, yet Nicole had never forgotten it—the bartender headlocking the guy out the door and yelling, “You come back here, your face is pavement, bud!”)

She was friendly. She made easy friends. But mutual attraction? Mutual interest? She’d tried to be game, but it just wasn’t happening.

Now, Nicole got her D. That wasn’t a concern. Grindr, hooray, she got her D. And she had gone on plenty of dates since moving here. It was just that those dates were all born of forced hopefulness. Every time she said yes, she’d go, I don’t think I’m actually going to like this person. And so far she hadn’t been wrong. She’d gone out with corporate-ladder narcissists, list-checking curious cases, and, of course, the occasional straight couple whose interest vanished when Nicole divulged she was packing a boring old pussy. (Yes, Nicole was out on her profile, but her cunt did not qualify as pre-date conversation; she had some standards of propriety.) Before these forced-hopefulness dates, when she’d get mopey, Nicole would tell herself: Chin up, chin up! Surely the guy in question could surprise her, surely she knew how impossible it felt to accurately represent herself on a dating app, right? Ergo, didn’t that mean she, too, could just as easily find her assumptions upset? So far: not really. She hadn’t gone on a date with a single person here who filled her with genuine hope or excitement. Until that winter, a slushy January, when she received the message from Anthony: I loved Young Adult. It’s fantastic.

He was just a few inches shorter than her, with a kind face and scruffy dirty-blond hair, black glasses, and what looked like permanent dark stubble. His profile was about boring shit like restaurants and Game of Thrones. Nicole liked him immediately, and she messaged back right away:

Charlize amiright?

Seriously! I would watch her do anything. I would watch a movie that’s just her eating a sandwich. I would watch a movie of her sleeping.

lol creepy

Haha I guess that’s not a savvy first impression from me huh. I’m Anthony but everyone calls me Ant. Weird I know but who gets to choose what people call you lol. You’re really pretty