nästan totalt fiction (III)

The app went from being a distraction to being the focus of his days. You could only send so many messages in one day, so one had to be strategic. No sense in aiming out of your league. Most messages just received no response at all. A few received polite responses that didn’t particularly invite a conversation. But a few did. Chats were slow. A message every few hours or so. But a couple eventually showed promise. Humor. Something not quite like flirting, but… something.

There was one chat that seemed to amount to more than the others, so he pursued it with careful attention until the point where it seemed like it might be possible to ask to meet for coffee. They met in a busy commercial street at an arranged time and walked through the city making small talk. The woman was around his age and pretty in a plain sort of way with long straight dark hair. (Really? Had he really found the ONLY Swedish woman with dark brown hair??) She was tall with the sort of big frame that he liked quite a bit, generally speaking. She was perhaps a bit too big in the hips, but not so much as to change his first impression from a positive one to a negative one. But as they walked and made awkward small talk he began to worry that she wasn’t outgoing or interesting enough to make this meeting a fruitful one. As someone who was bad at small-talk himself, he needed someone with a bit more conversational energy in order to keep things moving along. But he soldiered on because after all, how often does someone in his situation get to have a first date — even a BAD first date?

As they crossed the street towards the cafe, she asked him – “Are you married?”

“No.” he answered, and his thumb involuntarily rubbed the indentation in his ring finger from the band he had left at the hotel.