The firm specializes in, according to their boilerplate, insurance fraud, police investigation support, cold cases, missing persons.
I click on “Staff” and there he is, Bailey Kirk, unsmiling with that searing gaze. Former NYPD homicide detective, graduate of John Jay College, he is the firm’s “top investigator” with a nearly 100 percent success rate.
It’s the “nearly” that interests me. Failure is much more interesting than success; it tells you so much more about a person. What is a success rate exactly when you’re talking about detective work? Cases solved? Lost people found? Bad guys caught?
I flash on the image Bailey Kirk showed me, the pretty girl he said you were dating.
Who is she?
For that matter, who the hell are you?
The man with whom I’ve been sharing my bed, my body, my life for the last three months. It’s not very long; I know that. But it feels long. In this modern age, it’s a serious relationship. Not a hookup. Not a “situationship,” which Jax says is someone you hook up with regularly but from whom you don’t expect more than sex and some laughs. I expected more than sex and laughs. You did, too, right?
And what does this detective know about you? Curiosity keeps me rooted.
The truth is that I only know what you’ve told me. Your name is Adam Harper. You’re turning forty in February. You’re from Upstate New York, originally, though your family traveled most of your life because your father couldn’t hold a job. Your parents are divorced. You’re not close to either of them. You’re totally estranged from your brother. You are a cybersecurity expert, with an engineering degree from MIT. You can cook. You can be a workaholic. You don’t snore. In fact, you barely seem to sleep at all.
I still feel you on my skin.
The things you told me were supported by the odd detail—your tattered and worn MIT sweatshirt, your passion for a great meal, your knowledge of the web and its back alleys, the fine lines around your eyes, the tension in your shoulders when you talked about your family.
There were no moments where I doubted the truth of what you said.
All the places where I would go to dig deeper now—your social media feeds, your dating profile—are gone. There’s nothing at all to connect us, except this stranger. No friends in common. No neighborhood bar where we might bump into each other.
Bailey Kirk doesn’t glance back again to make sure I’m still there. He knows I’m hooked. Of course I am. I met a man online. He disappeared. He wasn’t who I thought he was. How many letters has Dear Birdie received about just this thing? My brain is in overdrive, revisiting our conversations, the intimate moments we shared. Was there an off note, something that should have been a red flag? No. There’s nothing.
The detective comes to our table with the coffee, seats himself, keeping his black bomber jacket on. A scent wafts off him, something soapy and clean. There’s a day of stubble on his jaw, a golden blond roughness. His image on the website is airbrushed. In real life, he has fine lines around his mouth, a furrow on his brow, the slight bruising of fatigue under his eyes.
“So, you met him online, right?” he says, starting the conversation.
He slides the coffee over to me; he has ordered the same for himself. It’s scribbled on his cup. Is it a mirroring thing, a technique to put me at ease? Or maybe he has a dairy intolerance and a caffeine addiction like me.
I nod. “On Torch.”
He gives me a look—a kind of amused eyebrow lift.
“Isn’t that more for just hooking up?” he says.
“It can be,” I say with a shrug. “I wasn’t really looking for anything serious.”
That’s what everyone says these days. It’s true and not true, right? Deep down everyone’s looking for love, aren’t they? When did we forget that it’s the only thing we really want?
“What were you looking for, then?”
They—those experts who seem to know everything—say that online dating is the biggest change to the mating ritual in a millennium. Once upon a time, your dating pool was limited to a small group of say fifty-to-a-hundred-plus people. It was an intimate, if somewhat shallow pool—your neighborhood, town, school, church. The first big change was the rise of agriculture and the growth of cities and towns. The pool got bigger, but ways to connect remained somewhat consistent in that you had to meet someone somewhere, or through someone else you know. Close tie connections—family, friends, geography.
Then, enter the internet and the rise of dating websites, and that pool grew to essentially everyone else in the world looking for—whatever. Sex. Love. The fulfillment of whatever other appetite, need, desire.