Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Minimum.
“I’ve told you that before.” I hold out my hand. “Let’s do it now. Bring me your phone.”
He fishes it out of the pocket of his long cargo shorts and slaps it in my palm, then follows me to the round kitchen table. It’s in front of a bank of windows—and sunny—everything bright and cheery.
“Have you downloaded any actual dating apps yet?” SilverSingles, perhaps? “It would be nice if you didn’t just meet people on random social sites.”
He nods. “Yes, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.” Dad pulls a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and puts them on his face.
“When did you start wearing glasses?” I ask, surprised.
“They’re for show.”
I roll my eyes.
“What?” he says. “We need pictures for my profile, and I like the way I look in glasses.”
I breathe in.
I breathe out.
Patience, Harlow. Patience . . .
Dad leans over the table to watch me tap open a popular dating app. Nothing exciting happens—unlike how a little red heart will come whirring to life when singles log in to the Kissmet app, and a tiny cluster of lips will appear on the screen like little bubbles of carbonation.
So cute and clever.
My idea, obviously.
*Hair flip*
“We need to start with your basic information.” I glance over at my father, who is watching me move my fingers around the app intently. “Name?”
“Ha ha.”
I type Steve into the name field. “Age?”
“Put forty-six.”
“You are fifty-eight.”
“No one needs to know that.”
I swivel my body in the chair so I’m facing him, giving him a look that undoubtedly says “You have got to be freaking kidding me.”
“Dad.” My jaw drops open. “Why would you start out with a lie?”
“Because no one in their thirties is going to want to date a fifty-year-old.”
I stare at him. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Serious about what?”
“Wanting to date someone in their thirties?”
“Isn’t that what the guys my age are doing?”
“Absolutely not!” I object. “No. We are not catfishing women, and you are not lying about your age, and you are not dating someone in their thirties.”
I shudder.
No.
Thank goodness he has me to help him with this.
“Have you set up a profile for yourself?” he asks while I continue adding information such as location and distance and other attributes to help the algorithm find him a match.
“No. Not yet.” I’m avoiding his stare.
“How come?”
“Haven’t gotten around to it.”
“You said you were going to.”
“I am. I’m going to.” He doesn’t have to constantly remind me that I’m single—it is not a crime. Just because he hates being single doesn’t mean I do. There are pros and cons to everything, and my relationship status is no exception.
“We should do it together.”
My smile is wry. “Let’s get you squared away first.”
It takes no time at all to enter the standard data into his profile. I keep his search radius relatively small, as we don’t need him hoofing it all over God’s green earth to get coffee with a woman three counties over. Which he would most certainly do considering, he’d been looking for love in the Philippines.
Not to knock it—it’s just so far. And who’s to say anyone is who they say they are.
“Okay, now we have to create a bio. That’s going to be a quick blurb about who you are and what you’re looking for. Or not looking for. So what should we say?”
There is a pad of paper on the kitchen table, and I slide it toward me, then reach for a nearby junk drawer and pull it open to retrieve a pen.
“Should we jot down a list first to make life easier?”
Dad nods.
“Okay. Go. What are some of your hobbies?”
I already know what he’s going to say, so I jot down the word wine before it rolls off his tongue, then glance up at him for more activities.
“Wine tasting. Reading.”
“What kind of books?”
“I don’t know—biographies? History.”
I write that down—specific details are helpful. “What do you like to do on the weekends besides smother me?”
Dad considers the question. “I like riding my bike through town.”
That he does, now that he has full use of his entire body again. For a while there he couldn’t do any physical activity, and it put a huge damper on his social life. We’re thrilled he can ride his bike again, though not his moped.
Some days he even puts my dog in the basket that’s on the back, and they ride around for attention, Dad something of a local celebrity when it comes to being notable. Recognizable. A man about town, he used to call himself until I put the kibosh on that—the phrase drives me nuts.
I add bike ride to our list.
“What else?”
“I like going for lunch.”
Indeed.
I scribble that on the notepad too.
“What else do you want in your bio? What should we add to it to make it interesting? Should it include something about being active and being a father of two adult children?”