Mixed Signals (17 page)

T
here is no traffic on Monday morning as I drive to work. In fact, there isn't even another car on the highway with me, making me wonder if I missed a detour that bypasses this road.

On the radio Branigan is taking calls. “And on line two we have a caller who claims to work with Jillian,” he says.

Here we go again. With the lack of traffic, I thought I might be headed for a good day, but no. I wonder which of my coworkers is selling me out and quickly settle on Ryan. I turn up my radio, waiting to hear what he'll say.

“So how long have you worked with Jill?” Branigan asks.

“Four years.” I almost drive off the road when I hear the caller's voice because it is most definitely not Ryan's. It's Ben's. “Guess what she asked me to do to help her get over Nico?”

Maybe I should drive off the road? Why is he doing this to me?

“Why don't you tell us,” Branigan says.

Behind me, someone honks. I look in the rearview mirror, surprised to see bumper-to-bumper traffic. Where did it come from so suddenly?

“She solicited me,” Ben says.

I feel like he punched me in the gut. Why would he call the show to tell the world that?

“She did the same thing the night of the company holiday party too,” he says. “Which was the night after she got engaged.”

I might hate Ben more than Nico right now.

Behind me there's beeping again. I glance in my rearview mirror. It's Mr. O'Brien driving an eighteen-wheeler that is bearing down on me.

The honking gets louder as the truck rear-ends me. I hit my head on the steering wheel and black out. I wake up in my bed with my alarm clock blasting and Mr. O'Brien banging on the wall.

It's Monday morning. Time to go back to work and face Ben again. Clearly, I'm dreading it.

* * *

Neither Renee or Ben is at the office yet when I arrive. I breathe a sigh of relief and hope that Ben has decided to take the day off. In my cube, I log into the radio station's website to see if the stupid survey is still active. I find that it is—sort of. There is a survey, but it now reads,
Did Nico make a mistake breaking up with Jill?
I don't believe for a second that the radio station posted this question. More likely, Lucas and Ben are at it again. They must have hacked the site before Renee's party, because Ben wouldn't have wanted to help me after it. The headline is the only thing they messed with because
Yes
still accounts for more than 98 percent of the responses, but because of the way the question is worded, those respondents are now on my side.

I turn on my radio to hear what Branigan is saying about the survey. “Whoever is messing with our website scored big this weekend,” he says. “Nico and Bonnie had a falling out this weekend and decided to call it quits. Today, he would probably be part of the majority of respondents who think he made a mistake breaking up with Jillian.”

“Jill never tried to change me,” Nico whines.

Nico and Bonnie broke up. I thought when I heard that news my spirits would soar like a helium balloon released from a child's hand. Instead, I feel nothing, except curiosity about what they fought about. Did he leave his jacket hanging over the back of his chair? Pile his dirty dishes and glasses by the sink, expecting her to wash them, or was it something more serious?

My thoughts are interrupted by footsteps and voices in the aisle. I didn't hear the door open so am surprised by the sound of them. “Did you have a good time?” Renee asks.

“Sure,” Ben answers. “I enjoyed meeting your friends.”

“Did you have fun with Jill?” She says it in a teasing voice.

I remain perfectly still, waiting for his response. There's a long pause. “I hate seeing her so hung up on Nico still,” he finally says.

A few seconds later, he enters his cube and looks over the wall into mine. “You're here already?” he asks.

I nod but keep typing and don't turn to face him, hoping he'll think I'm busy and leave me alone.

“Do you want to go to the cafeteria and grab a coffee?” he asks.

“I have to finish this,” I say, my fingers dashing across the keyboard.

“Jill, we should talk.”

“Later. I have to get this to Stacy.”

He stands where he is, watching me, until his phone rings.

* * *

I successfully avoid Ben all morning. At lunch, he leaves the building with Lucas while Renee and I eat in my cube, reviewing the profiles of the few men who contacted me on the online dating site. The picture we're looking at now is of a pudgy blond man with deep dimples.

“He's absolutely adorable. I want to eat him up,” Renee says, taking a bite of her tuna sandwich.

“I don't know. He doesn't seem too smart.” I point to the last line of his message.
Lets meat. You definately won't be sorry.

“Oh, honey,” Renee says. “At your age, you can't be ruling out potential dates because of their spelling.”

I flinch at her words. When I was a teenager imagining my life in my midthirties, I assumed I'd have a handsome husband; two beautiful children, Amanda and Trevor; and a golden retriever named Agassi. We'd go for nice long walks through our tony neighborhood, my husband holding Agassi's leash with one hand and mine with his other. Our dark-haired kids would be riding their bikes in front of us, Amanda arguing that she was ready for the training wheels to come off and Trevor wanting to stop the ice cream truck. It never occurred to me that I'd be searching a website, looking for a man who is husband material.

“How about him?” Renee asks, using the mouse to click on a user named Doug1234. She studies his picture. “He's not too bad.”

“Yeah, that's exactly where I set the bar: not too bad.” I stare out the window. It's good to see grass instead of the mounds of snow out there.

“It's hard to reach the bar when you get older, sweetie, so you have to lower it.”

“We're done here.” I reach for the mouse so I can click off the site.

She moves it away from me. “Not until you respond to someone.” She settles back in her chair and crunches on her smelly sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

I read through Doug's message again. It's perfectly nice. I study his picture. His average-looking face stares back at me. He looks like a typical Bostonian male from Irish descent with his pale skin, light eyes, and receding hairline. I bet when people meet him, they're convinced they've seen him before.
I know you from somewhere
, they probably say. He nods knowingly.
I get that a lot.

So he's not handsome, but he's not ugly either. Maybe Renee's right. I am being too picky. After all, who do I think I'm going to date?

The Bradley Cooper look-alike who you work with.
The thought takes me by surprise, and I get that same sinking feeling in my stomach I had at the pond and when I was creating my ideal match. Do I want more from Ben than one fun night? No! I don't want anything from him. I hit the reply button and type a message to Doug.

“Good girl,” Renee says.

The door at the end of the hall buzzes open. Ben's coming down the aisle. I recognize the sound of his walk. He takes larger and therefore fewer strides than anyone else.

He peeks into my cube. “You two look guilty of something.” He steps behind me as my message disappears into cyberspace. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find Princess Picky over here a date,” Renee answers.

“You're doing online dating.” There's a hostility in his voice that makes me feel like he slapped me across the face. Even Renee flinches.

“What's wrong with that?” I ask.

He folds his arms across his chest. “N-nothing,” he stammers. He leans closer to my monitor. “Can I see your profile?”

I bring it up on my screen. He and Renee exchange a look. Until now, she has seen the profiles of the men who contacted me, but not mine. “Oh, honey,” she says. “You need a better picture.”

It's true. Rachel didn't use the best photograph when she created the profile, and I didn't bother to replace it. In it, I'm sitting at a picnic table in her backyard drinking sangria. My hair is tied back in a ponytail, and my cheeks are flushed. It's probably the only picture she has of me without Nico. It's not the best shot of me, but I don't think it's as bad as Renee suggests.

Ben stares at my screen. “That picture is perfect,” he says in a tone I can't read.

Renee elbows him. “I have one from the party you can use,” she says. “Ben, I'll send it to you so you can cut yourself out of it.”

* * *

Ben and I don't talk about anything other than work for the rest of the day. Before he leaves for the night, he sends me an email with the subject line “Your Photo.” I don't open it until he's gone. His message says
Good luck with online dating
. I blink as I stare at the image. Ben cropped himself out of the picture, but he's also made other changes. He altered my appearance, making me look twice my size. He added deep lines around my eyes and mouth, and sprinkled gray streaks through my dark hair.
What the hell?

* * *

Doug and I exchange several emails throughout the week and agree to meet for a drink on Friday night. When I tell my coworkers, Renee bounces in her seat. “That's exciting,” she says.

“You never spoke with him on the phone?” Ben asks. “That's a red flag.” He's in his cube, shouting over the wall, but he's sitting so I can't see him. Things have been strained between us all week. I'm not sure if it's because of Saturday night or because I'm doing online dating.

“You're acting like an overprotective father,” Renee says.

“Or a jealous ex-lover,” Ellie adds. She's leaning against the support pole in Renee's cube.

“I didn't want to talk on the phone. I thought it would be awkward.”

“Talking on the phone is awkward but meeting in person isn't?” Ben asks.

“It's easier if I can see his facial expressions and read his body language,” I explain, wishing I could see Ben right now so that I could better understand what his objection is and why he's not supporting me in this. Wasn't he just complaining he hates seeing me so hung up on Nico?

“What do you even know about this guy?” he asks. Ellie, Renee, and I all exchange a look because the irritation in Ben's voice is impossible to miss.

“The point of meeting him is to get to know him,” I say.

O
n Friday night, I sit at a table in the bar facing the entrance, watching for Doug. He's almost ten minutes late. Every time the door opens, my entire body tenses. I hope he doesn't show. I'd rather be curled up on my couch alone with a bowl of popcorn, watching a good movie, than here waiting for him and wondering what he's going to be like. Nico and I had spent more than five hours sitting beside each other, talking and rooting for the Red Sox, so I knew what I was getting on our first date.

In college we had an unwritten rule that we would only wait fifteen minutes for late professors. I'm applying the same principle to online dating, staring at my watch eagerly. Doug has one minute and forty seconds. With less than twenty seconds to go, the door swings open and a man of about fifty steps inside. It doesn't occur to me that he might be my date until he waves. He is at least a decade older than the man I saw in the picture.

“Jillian?” he asks as he approaches my table.

Sorry, no.
The words are on the tip of my tongue.

He extends his hand. “I'm Doug. Sorry I'm late. Just as I was leaving, my son called to let me know he got accepted to MIT.”

“Wow, he must be bright,” I say. What I mean is
wow, you have a kid old enough to go to college
. His profile says he has two kids, but I pictured them being the same age as Rachel's, not a few years younger than me. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I could probably relate better to his son than to him.

He sits across from me and stares. “You need to get a better picture for the dating site,” he says. “The one you have up looks nothing like you.”

Because of the ridiculous changes Ben made to Renee's photo, I kept the one that Rachel used. Still, Doug has some nerve. He has black hair in his photograph. In person, it's salt-and-pepper, mostly salt, and there is even less of it than there is in his online image. “My picture doesn't look like me?”

He smiles. It's a nice smile that takes about ten years off his face, making him look about forty-five. “You're much more beautiful in person,” he says.

Well, now I feel bad. “Thanks.”

A waitress greets us. I order a glass of wine. As Doug asks about beers on tap, I see Lucas's familiar blue cap bobbing through the door. Ben is right behind him. I nervously tap my foot against the leg of the table.
What are they doing here?
They both scan the room, stopping when they see me. Ben flashes me a coy smile. He knows I was coming here tonight, so why would he show up here? He and Lucas make their way across the restaurant to the bar and choose a table facing me. I want to run out the door because the last thing I need is Ben watching my clumsy reentry into the dating world. Wasn't last week's try with him bad enough?

The waitress leaves. I drag my eyes off Ben and Lucas, back to Doug. “So tell me about yourself,” he says.

God, I hate that question during job interviews, but it's even worse on a date. I shut my eyes and then slowly open them. “What would you like to know?”

“What do you do for work?”

“I'm in marketing for a company that does cyber security,” I answer, realizing I'm doing a horrible job promoting myself. “What about you?”

“I'm an engineer. My company designs robots.”

He continues talking about his job while I glance over at Ben. He's leaning back on his stool, exaggerating a yawn and looking at his watch.
Sorry my dates aren't as exciting as yours!

Doug turns to see what I'm looking at. Ben and Lucas both wave. He nods. “Do you know them?”

“I work with them. I'm sorry. Just ignore them.”

“Did you know they were going to be here?”

I shake my head, but I can tell by the look he gives me that he doesn't believe me.

The waitress returns with our drinks. We sip in silence for the most uncomfortable minute of my life. At the table behind Doug, Ben scribbles on a napkin.

“How's online dating working out for you?” Doug asks.

Ben holds up the napkin. In his beautiful penmanship, he's written, “Lose him. Join us.”

Why is he even here?
“You're the first person I've met.”

Following my eyes, Doug looks over his shoulder. Ben drops the napkin to his lap. “Ahh, your first online date. That explains why you brought backup.”

I shake my head to reiterate that I didn't know they would be here.

“Don't worry. You'll get used to it,” he says.

“How many people have you met?”

“You're the twenty-second.”

I almost spit out my wine. “Twenty-second!” He's suffered through this twenty-two times. Kill me now!

“I'd like to figure out what I'm doing wrong.” He looks at me eagerly.

I want to cry for him. Honestly, I do. “Well, you know. It's a numbers game. Keep trying and eventually you'll meet her.”

“What did you think when you first saw me?”

Oh boy! Why is he putting me on the spot like this? I glance at Ben and Lucas, hoping they'll somehow help me answer this question, but they're talking to their waitress and not paying attention to me.
“
You're fine.”

“No, I saw your face drop when I first came over,” Doug says.

Did my face drop? It probably did. I've never been good at hiding what I'm thinking. How can I politely tell him he looks much older than his picture? I look away from him and blurt it out. “I was expecting someone younger.” I am the worst person in the world. A woman who discriminates based on age, that's who I am.

“Didn't you see my age in my profile?”

I might as well finish what I started. “You look older than forty-four. Sorry.”

“Forty-four,” he repeats. “You must be mixing up my profile with someone else's. I'm fifty-five.”

I shake my head. “You're the only person I responded to.”

He pulls his phone from his coat pocket and busies himself pecking and swiping at it. Finally, his hand freezes. He pulls the screen closer to his face, squinting. “Well, that was a typo,” he says. Instead of fixing it, he slides his phone back into his pocket.

I stare at him without saying anything, trying to figure out if his virtual lie was an honest mistake.

“You think I did it intentionally?”

“Your picture is outdated too.”

“My daughter picked it out. She said I look handsome in it.”

“Well, you do look great for fifty-five.” That sounded better in my head.

He winces. “Yes, because men as old as me are usually decrepit.”

“I'm sorry. That came out wrong.”

The waitress has left Ben's table. He stares at me with a concerned expression, like he can sense the tension over here.

Doug and I sit awkwardly, not speaking. He signals for the check. We've been together for less than fifteen minutes, I have had two sips of my wine, and the date is ending. I am terrible at this.

“I'm sorry I didn't meet you a decade earlier,” Doug says. He puts money in the billfold and walks away before I can thank him for the drink or say goodbye.

By the time he reaches the door, Ben has taken his seat. “What happened?” he asks.

“What are you doing here?”

Lucas sidles over to the table and hands Ben his jacket and beer. “I'm taking off,” he says.

“Not so fast. Why were you here in the first place?” I ask. “To spy on me?”

“Spy? That makes it sound bad. We came here to keep an eye on you.”

“Why?”

Lucas shrugs and points to Ben. “His idea.” He pats Ben on the back. “See you Monday, Bro.”

Ben and I stare at each other across the table. “Why are you here?” I ask.

He lifts his mug. “To make sure you didn't do anything stupid.”

I watch his Adam's apple bob up and down as he sips his beer. “Like what?”

He returns his glass to the table and raises an eyebrow.

“Seriously, what did you think I would do?”

“I didn't want you to make the same suggestion to him that you made to me last week.”

“You suck!” People at nearby tables turn to look at us. I lower my voice. “You think I would ask just anyone that?”

“I don't know where your head's at.”

I reach behind me for my coat. “You, Ben. You're the only one I would ask.”

As I slide my hand into the sleeve of my jacket, he reaches for my arm. “Please don't go.”

I shake free of his touch and stand. “Why do you care anyway?”

“Because I care about you!” He grabs my arm again. “Please, sit back down.”

I let out a deep breath and return to my chair.

“If we hadn't started talking about Nico that night, you wouldn't have had to ask me,” he says. “When I saw you in that dress, I didn't even want to go to Renee's party, but then I saw that stupid jacket in the kitchen. Like you're just waiting for him to come back.”

My eyes get misty because Ben's right. I have been waiting. I look away from him.

“He doesn't deserve you, Jill.”

“Over the past few years, he's been the one constant in my life. My brother moved. My parents left. Rachel started her own family. He was the only one who was always there for me.”

“Things change. People leave. That's life,” Ben says. He motions for the waitress and orders us both another drink.

As we wait, he looks around the bar. “Table to the right of the emergency exit,” he says. “They're on a blind date.”

“How's it going?” I ask.

“A lot better than yours did.”

I smile, happy to have things back to normal between us. “I don't know. I think mine has turned out all right.”

The waitress returns with our drinks. “To us having a good time together,” Ben says, clanking his beer mug against my wine glass.

“So why no date tonight?” I ask.

He tilts his head and studies me. “There's this girl I've been wanting to ask out, but the timing has never been right.”

“Why not?”

“Jillian? Is that you?” I turn. Tania from my tennis club is standing behind me. “Haven't seen you since the tournament,” she says while she hugs me. “Are you injured?”

“No, I, I've been busy.”

I introduce her to Ben. Despite Tania's protests, he stands to shake her hand. I imagine that if I were here with Nico, he'd look back at her over his shoulder, nod, and then immediately return his attention to the television above the bar.

Tania turns to me. “With his height, he'd make a great partner,” she says. I raise an eyebrow at her. “Nothing would get by him at the net.”
A tennis partner, of course
. She addresses Ben. “You should do the mixed doubles tournament with Jill next year.”

He nods. “I'd love to. Jill and I make a great team.”

“Are you any good?” Tania asks Ben.

“At tennis?”

She nods. “I can hold my own,” he says.

An image of us giving Branigan a smackdown in the final flashes through my mind, Ben hugging me by the net after the winning point. We should do it.

A woman sitting at a table in the dining room motions to Tania. “Hope to see you at the club soon,” she says before leaving to join her friend.

“So why haven't you been playing?” Ben asks.

“The members want to tar and feather me.”

“You can't let them scare you off.”

“I'm not going back there.”

“You are and you're taking me,” Ben says.