Sipping my hot herbal tea, I squinted at my phone screen. My dating bio said “single but not available” and I nodded in satisfaction. I wrote it at 11 p.m. on a Sunday which is the only hour I had ever been truly witty.
I thought my bio sounded mysterious but Charles thought it sounded like a hostage situation which I didn't find funny. “What does that mean?” He wrote, three minutes after we matched.
I stared at the screen for a moment, chewing my lower lip, my palms damp. Gerald, my cat, was asleep beside my laptop. The honest answer to this stranger's question was long and I wasn't sure how much I would be willing to reveal.
I was single, that was easy but I wasn't available Tuesdays because it was trivia and my team made up of college friends had a reputation to defend. Wednesdays was Gerald's thyroid pill which needed two firm hands, a towel and an emotional apology afterward. Thursday was my twin sister's group chat crisis which ran often for about one hundred and eighty minutes. Weekends were for sleeping and I took that exercise very seriously.
I sighed and typed. It means I'm a limited edition product.
“Ha,” he wrote back within seconds. “Is there a waitlist?” I laughed out loud alone in my kitchen like a person who hadn't laughed in a long while. My voice echoed in my apartment and Gerald made it weirder when he opened one yellow eye and judged me.
Charles and I chatted for two hours. It turned out he had a golden retriever named Jill and a job in an audit firm that he described as “spreadsheets with headaches”.
At 9.05 p.m., my eyelids became droopy as sleep hovered close. I have to go to bed, I typed. Sorry, I'm eighty-one years old.
“Same,” he wrote back. “My knees just creaked like the old floorboards in my basement.” I laughed some more as I turned off my phone. My heart did something small and stupid like a hiccup as I lay awake for a full fifteen minutes.
Dating went like this for three weeks. He texted good morning and I replied at lunch and we both pretended that was a normal pace. He learned the schedule that Tuesday was sacred and that you do not call during thyroid pill or Gerald wouldn't forgive me.
“So when are you available?” He asked one night.
Saturday, 2 p.m., I texted in the morning after mulling over the question through the night. It's a brief window. Bring coffee and cake.
He was punctual with coffee and chocolate cake. Jill was adorable and happily jumping onto me, shedding all over my favourite comfy slacks. I decided right then that I would forgive the dog anything.
We walked the long way around the park, talked and laughed for hours. Neither of us checked our phones. At one point, he reached for my hand and missed, grabbing my sleeve instead and we both pretended it was on purpose.
Months later, Tuesday is still trivia though Charles now sits at the end of the table and gets every geography question wrong. He now holds the towel on Gerald's day with the pill while my cat protests loudly.
I changed my dating bio last week and it took me a long time to pick the words for they had to be right. I typed them at 11 p.m. on a Sunday, wide awake.
It now says: Booked. Bring snacks.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "single but not available”.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
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