“I met my share of duds as well,” Julia said, and she had. It didn’t take her long to discover the men who were single were that way for a reason.
Heath relaxed against the back of his chair and tossed out a challenge. “Bet my dating experiences will be worse than yours.”
“Oh yeah?” Julia said with a smile. “First time out was with a guy who was the friend of a friend. Sheryl thought we would be perfect together. Have you noticed how that is what they all say? ‘I know someone perfect for you’？”
“Heard it enough to realize my friends don’t know me near well enough.”
“At any rate, Sheryl said this about Harry, that was his name, claiming we had a lot in common. Like me, he had been recently divorced. We met for dinner and everything was going along fine until after half a bottle of wine, when Harry started talking about his ex-wife and his children. Then, out of the blue, he started to cry. And when I say ‘cry,’ I mean howling sobs and tears. There I sat in the middle of a crowded restaurant, with a man weeping into his napkin so loudly that the waiter asked if there was something he could do to help. I assured him there was and asked if he could call for a cab. I thanked Harry for dinner and left.”
Heath grinned. “My first time out was equally bad. An old college roommate set me up with a woman he knew, convinced we would hit it off. Callie worked in social media and was seriously into her job. Like you, we met for dinner, and she—I am not exaggerating—snapped at least forty selfies, which she posted on Facebook. I don’t think she swallowed more than two bites of her lobster, and yes, she ordered the most expensive item on the menu. Then she asked me to take her photo for Instagram. Not one photo, mind you, several, none of which pleased her. Later she let me know I didn’t make her look as good as I could have. With that, she informed me it would be better if we didn’t see each other again.”
Julia shook her head in sympathy. “Apparently taking a good photo for Instagram is a prerequisite for a relationship these days.”
“It seems so,” Heath agreed.
Julia was enjoying this and wasn’t about to let him win this challenge. “Okay, okay. See if you can top this. Another friend-of-a-friend situation. I trusted Susan. She’s smart and assured me I was simply meeting the wrong kind of men, and I should put all my past failures behind me. Typically, she claimed she had the perfect man for me. In fairness, she did mention he was a bit older. She described him as mature, established, and financially secure. He sounded too good to be true.”
“Don’t they always?” he asked.
“Right. Anyway, once again we met at a restaurant and Lloyd had to have been in his late seventies, if he was a day. This guy was on his last legs. If that wasn’t enough, when we went to order dinner, it took him ten minutes as he listed off all his physical ailments that prevented him from eating almost every item on the menu. He asked the server so many questions, needing to know every detail of the preparation, that I nearly dozed off. That server had the patience of a saint. The worst was when he went into detail, as to the reason he couldn’t eat red meat, which he claimed gave him diarrhea.”
“Good one,” Heath said with a chuckle. “I had a stalker.”
“A stalker?” she repeated, not sure she could beat that.
“We had a total of two dates. I should have followed my instincts after the first one. Nothing terrible happened. She was pleasant enough, and by this time, I was getting discouraged. Of all the women I’d met, she showed the most potential. I liked that she was enthusiastic and could carry a conversation, so I decided to ask her out again to see how it went.
“We attended a concert, and afterward she was all over me. It felt like an octopus who had all eight of its arms wrapped around me. I had to pull over on the side of the road and explain I couldn’t drive with her trying to undress me.
“That was enough to tell me it wasn’t going to work. When I dropped her off, she asked when I wanted to see her again. I said I’d call her, to which she responded July worked best for us to schedule the wedding date. Foolishly, I thought this was a joke. If so, it was on me.”
“She was talking marriage after two dates?”
“Oh yes, and that was only the start of my troubles with Candace. It took me nearly three months, a lawyer, and a restraining order to get her out of my life.”
“Okay, you win,” Julia said, lifting her hand in defeat. “I have nothing to compare to that disaster.”