Page 34 of The Accidental Dating Experiment
Juliet
As I lie awake in bed alone on Tuesday morning, I don’t even bother tuning in to one of my dating or self-improvement podcasts to learn more about this so-called role-play dating. That can’t possibly be a thing, can it? It’s not fake-dating, or plus-one-ing. It’s a whole new dating frontier. Maybe it’s reserved for the worst cases?
Ugh. This has got to be one of those last-ditch, we’ve-tried-everything-already options. I bet there’s a school of dating coaches somewhere who say things like and the last resort for the truly hapless is role-play.
Monroe’s gone. He took off early, judging from the ungodly time stamp on his out for a bit text. He’s probably off running, or biking, or working on his new course in a coffee shop after having already biked and ran.
I grab my phone and google dating coaches.
Huh.
That’s interesting. There are a ton of dating coaches in San Francisco alone, promising to help you write a great bio, give you pointers on what to talk about, analyze your dates, and improve your conversational skills.
Okay, their services aren’t too weird or pathetic. Those offerings don’t scream, You suck at love. Dating coaches just give you some truth and a little boost.
Monroe’s role-play offer is basically to just help me analyze my dates. This would be a live, real-time dating analysis, which could be super helpful.
But we do work together. Is it dicey to mix business with pleasure like this?
I flick through my text messages, finding the group chat with my girlfriends. A modern woman can’t survive without her besties. I click open my near-daily communiqué with my friend Hazel, a romance writer who lives in New York; my sister, Rachel; and our friends Elodie and Fable, who live in San Francisco. Elodie’s a chocolatier who recently married a single dad bartender. And Fable’s happily single and working as a merch designer for the city’s football team.
Juliet: You know how happily married and coupled-up friends love hearing the antics of the single?
Hazel: Ooh, I’ll bite. Tell me!
Elodie: Watch out, J. That means Hazel’s in full thief mode.
Fable: She sure is. She’s going to steal anything good you share for her next book.
Hazel: Of course I am.
Rachel: So shameless.
Hazel: Exactly. So don’t make me wait. Tell us everything, J.
I draw a deep breath, then open my optimistic heart that’s, admittedly, a little beaten down.
Juliet: To make a long story short, Monroe offered to be my dating coach while we’re here in Darling Springs. I’ll start fresh and pick a few potential guys to date. But I won’t really date them. Instead, he’ll help me spot the signs of trouble in the men I choose…by, well, pretending to be the different guys on a series of dates. And I’m considering saying yes to his outrageous proposal even though, as I re-read this note, it sure sounds like the sign of a woman who’s hit dating rock bottom. I guess you’ll find me on the bottom of the dating pool, sinking in a pair of concrete Louboutins.
Before I lose my nerve, I hit send, wincing as I wait for the bubbles to appear.
They don’t. At all. Not for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Not for a whole minute. Oh god. My friends think I’ve lost my mind. They’re staging an intervention. They’re?—
Oh! FaceTime is calling. And it’s the girlies. All four of them.
I answer, but I fling my hand over my eyes, groaning in embarrassment. “Yes, you can come pick me up and whisk me away for a spa weekend to deprogram me after I’ve fallen this far.”
Hazel laughs, a bright sound with a touch of sarcasm. But that’s her natural tone. “Actually, we think it’s a good idea?—”
“—Potentially,” Rachel cuts in as she swipes on powder in front of her mirror while getting ready for work.
“As long as you keep a few things in mind,” Elodie adds.
I perk up. I sit up. I stare at them. “You think I should do it?”
Elodie flips the closed sign to open in her chocolate shop in the city, the display shelves a gleaming white and the chocolates making me hungry for treats already. She furrows her brow and peers at the phone screen. “Is that a mirror above you?”
How can they see it? Oh, shit. My camera was flipped. I flip it back. “Yeah. It is. This house has mirrored bunk beds,” I say. “Pretty wild.”