My Favorite Half-Night Stand(19)
Forty-five minutes in, and in the depths of the Rephrasing Phase, I take a deep, steadying breath and glance around the room.
Norm McMaster, our oldest faculty member, with ears the size of shoes, is asleep with his chin to his chest. Annika Stark, the department’s only neuroendocrinologist, is staring daggers at her nemesis/fuck buddy, Isaac Helm, who is currently rewording Scott’s point about the need for more stringent admissions criteria. Deborah recently had to kick a student out of her lab for failing classes two terms in a row, and Isaac is clearly just poking the bear, hoping for a fight that may or may not end up as sex later.
Sitting in his normal spot toward the back of the room, Ed is surreptitiously playing Clash of Clans on his phone. My own screen lights up with a text from Alex, sent only to me and the other guys.
Dude, did you guys see what Millie sent?
Chris replies a moment later.
These profiles are good.
I slide my phone onto the table, resisting the urge to check my email right now. Did Millie end up rewriting our dating profiles after all? And if she did mine . . . is that weird? What would she say? My name is Reid Campbell, I’m 31, six foot two, and when I’m not being a workaholic idiot, I enjoy running, manning the barbecue, and having astonishing sex with my best friend?
When I return to my office, I see that, in fact, it’s far, far better than that.
From: Morris, Millie
To: Campbell, Reid
Subject: FINE.
I wrote this because yours came into my head, and then I realized I had to write all of them because I am an enabler and way too nice to all four of you. If you don’t like it, don’t tell me. I just wasted like an hour on these.
-Mills
I was raised on a vineyard and live near the ocean, yet I know neither how to make wine nor surf. But I do love to be outdoors: hiking, sailing, even hanging on the beach with friends. My travel bucket list is a mile long. I have weekends where I’m kicking back at home, catching up on Netflix, and weekends where I take off on a road trip with friends to find the newest, greatest brewpub. I’ve run a few marathons, but can never resist cookies, or barbecue. I’m probably considered old-fashioned when it comes to dating—I think a first date is dinner, not just drinks—but I was raised by a woman who thinks a man needs to take his time and earn respect, and I agree. I absolutely love what I do for work, but am looking for someone to help me find adventure elsewhere, too. If you think we might be a good fit, I’d love to hear from you.
I reread it once, and then again. It’s simple but . . . better than anything I’d come up with on my own.
I’m reminded of the day I showed up at Millie’s last summer, in the impulsive mood to tear down the highway with the windows down and music turned up loud. We drove toward San Luis Obispo, and found a tiny new brewery there, had a lunch of messy burgers and tangy IPAs, and then drove home, quieter on the way back, with full bellies and the sound of flapping air and Tom Petty in the car. It was the perfect day with the perfect person.
And I remember when all five of us tried to surf, and only Chris managed to get up on the board while the rest of us gave up and watched from the warm sand of the shore. Millie was beside me, wearing a blue two-piece. She didn’t bother to spread out her towel; her stomach and legs were dusted with coarse sand, her eyes closed and face tilted up to the sky. We were new friends; she’d only been out of the relationship with Dustin for a matter of weeks at that point, and it was the first time we’d really talked about it—after a decent amount of prodding on my end: about how distracted Dustin was, about how weird it felt to be single, about how relieved she was to no longer be living with someone with such a hot temper.
I see our moments in every line of this profile, except one: I don’t know how she knows that I can’t imagine going on a date with only drinks, that a first date over coffee seems odd to me. I wonder whether she sees deeper, too, to a place even I can’t really access, and which understands better than my conscious mind does the ache I feel at the thought of Millie also writing a profile for herself, for others out there to read.
I’m unprepared for the way this hits me. The train of thought gives me a lurching nausea that resembles what I felt earlier, talking to Mom—the sense of something being all wrong. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, and then open the IM thread with the guys.
Reid Campbell Ok Millie’s attempt at my profile is pretty good.
Christopher Hill Let’s see it.
Reid Campbell You, too. Here’s mine . . .
I paste it in, and then read theirs as they pop up on the screen.
Christopher Hill My friends would call me the calmest member of our group, and although I think it’s true, I sometimes feel like I have so much strident curiosity burning inside me that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to retire. I have a silver Labrador named Maisie, and she is the current love of my life, but there’s absolutely room in there for more. Having married—and later divorced—my high school sweetheart, I learned not that relationships are treacherous, but that finding the right one isn’t easy, and we are all constantly growing with the world around us. I am a devoted fan of Cal football, roosters in any form, road biking, and will drive a hundred miles to find the best doughnut.
Christopher Hill That rooster line is going, but otherwise—it’s pretty good.