Christian Dating Site: A Cautionary Tale (CLOSED)

Mark Richards was 31 years old, 6'1", with dark hair that he kept cut short and styled simply, and green eyes that his mother had called pretty, and no one else seemed to pay the slightest bit of attention to. His life, both personal and professional, had followed much the same pattern, and he was quickly reaching a point where he was admitting to himself that he was, in the words of his drunk father, "a colossal fuck-up not worth the squirt inside your mother." Ah, dear old dad.

Mark worked at a movie theater, taking tickets, making popcorn, switching the reels when the little bug appeared in the corner of the film that was playing. The only time people noticed him was when there was a problem and they needed someone to complain to. Happy couples on dates held hands, whispered things in each other's ear, kissed as he scooped up popcorn and filled up cups for them. He smiled and told them to enjoy their movie, and inside he hoped they choked to death on it. He'd dated a few girls in his time, sure, and even got to sleep with a few of them, but they eventually realized he was going nowhere and ditched him in favor of anything with the promise of a future. His friends from high school, the few he'd managed to stay in touch with thanks to Facebook, were married with kids and careers and boats. He had a poster of Snakes on a Plane in the living room of his one bedroom apartment.

About the only things Mark had going for him was some measure of genetic luck that meant that he stayed in pretty good shape for a guy that considered working out making more than two trips up the stairs to his apartment in a given day, and an intelligence that was not reflected in the series of bad decisions and wrong turns his life had become. When sitting in front of a computer screen, given the time to think about his words and without the awkwardness of a girl looking right at him, he could even be surprisingly charming. It was this fact that led him to dating sites as a means of meeting women, after all other methods seemed to fail miserably.

Through trail-and-error, he eventually found his way to a Christian dating site, D-Compatibility. Their commercials were annoying, a perpetually grinning man talking about their "digital method for finding the highest levels of compatibility between people" while showing pictures of happy, attractive couples that had met using their service, but the place did seem to work. He'd never had any particular religious affiliation himself, and didn't give much thought to any of it in general, but he'd gone to church with his mother for a time after the divorce and knew enough that he could fake his way through it. It wasn't long before he'd met and talked with someone enough that a date was arranged, and for the first time in a while he actually felt hope. They talked well in their e-mails and he even found himself able to make her laugh a little and carry on a normal conversation on phone with her, which felt like a big step.

They eventually decided to meet up for a date, deciding on a little Italian place that had outside seating so they could enjoy the cool night air. Their date was on the Friday before a three day weekend, and Mark hoped that if everything went well he'd be seeing her again before the weekend was over.

They'd agreed to meet at 6 for dinner, and being paranoid that he'd be late and she'd leave, he arrived at 5:45 and was shown to a table. He'd dressed casually, a simple light blue button down shirt, wrinkled khakis (though they were the least wrinkled of what he had, and the entire time he dressed he cursed his aversion to folding and putting away clothes), and simple brown shoes, their scuffed state indicative of just how long he'd had them.

He waited, feeling more awkward by the minute, and certain that everyone in the place was watching him and knowing he was being stood up. It was hard to not start to think it himself, as well. Glancing at his watch, he saw it had only been five minutes that he'd been sitting, and he tried to slow his mind down. Lifting the glass, he took a long drink of water and then crunched absently on a piece of ice, all the while trying to focus on anything besides the idea that he was about to be stood up and made to look like a desperate and pathetic fool in front of everyone.

Looks like my co-writer lost interest.
Deleting my work.

Five minutes turned into ten, ten was quickly fifteen, and by twenty-five minutes of sitting alone, fending off the waiter's attempts to get him to order something, anything, with dirty looks and half-committal answers. He had been stood up, he knew, and at this point it was just a matter of finding a way to save some small amount of dignity when he ordered something to go after sitting here starting stupidly at a menu for nearly a half hour.

Mark looked up as the waiter walked by his table again, nodding in frustration as the man glanced down at him, and then he turned his eyes back to the menu, looking in earnest at it now. Whatever he got he'd be eating in front of the TV, alone, while he watched a rerun of Law & Order on TNT before stumbling off to bed, and so he didn't have much enthusiasm for any of the dishes on the menu. He'd just decided - spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread, he just didn't have the patience for anything more fancy at this point - when he heard someone call his name.

Blinking, he looked up and found himself presented with... a fairly attractive woman, as it turned out. He blinked again, nodding a bit dumbly, entirely thrown off by her sudden appearance next to his table, and then he rose from his seat when she offered her hand, shaking it lightly.

"Amanda! Yes.. um.. yeah. Hi. Hey! I'm Mark," he sputtered, releasing her hand and shaking his head, "No no, you're fine. I was actually running a little late myself, so I'm glad you weren't here waiting for me," he lied. In a matter of seconds, his shame at being stood up transformed into perverse kind of joy he wanted to shove into the face of everyone else in the restaurant for thinking, as he was certain they did, that he'd been abandoned by whoever had agreed to meet him here.

Mark felt like he towered over her - and he did, really, by nearly a foot - and so it felt important to show her that he was gentle and gentlemanly. It was a weird situation, and just as quickly as his shame shifted to the twisted joy it turned again to awkwardness, and clearing his throat he moved quickly around the table to her chair, pulling it out for her with a smile.

"It's great to finally meet you too. Here, let me get this for you..."

Looks like my co-writer lost interest.
Deleting my work.

Mark nodded as she took her seat and thanked him, but while he was behind her his eyes were scanning the dining room, looking for anyone that might dare to look his way and see that he was, in fact, here with a date. No one did.

Moving back around to his own seat, he opened his menu and was going to look at it more, if only to give her the comfort of not feeling too awkward being the only one to look, when he was interrupted by the same asshole that had been bothering him for the last half hour. His face was quickly red, he could feel the heat in his cheeks, and he glanced up at the waiter, wishing with all his might that the fucker would go away.

His gaze flickered back to Amanda when she asked if he'd ordered already and he nodded, his lips parting to answer when he was again interrupted. His lips met again, pursing slightly, and his eyes narrowed as he looked up at the waiter again. His emotions were shifting quickly again, embarrassment melting into anger, and were he not on a date he'd probably be telling the waiter exactly what he could do with his house special.

Instead, he swallowed his words, nodding in agreement and looking back to Amanda. He handed over his menu without another glance at the waiter, then shook his head.

"He's just an-," asshole, he wanted to say, but he caught himself and finished with, "...jerk," instead. "Anyway," he said, shaking his head and smiling, trying to calm himself and lighten the mood a little, "How was your day?"

Oddly, the waiter may have helped without intending to, as Mark was not so preoccupied with tamping down his anger at the asshole that he didn't have time to get inside his own head so much and feel so awkward with Amanda. It would probably crop up later, it always did, but for now he was going to seize this opportunity while he had it and try to have a nice, normal conversation with her.

Looks like my co-writer lost interest.
Deleting my work.

Perhaps expecting a normal conversation while picturing the way it would look if you drove your salad fork into a waiter's eyeball was hoping for a little too much, but Mark was going to try. The anger bubbling inside him made it a bit hard to focus, however, and it was hard not to let his mind drift back towards the waiter. His eyes wanted to search the room for him, if only to shoot dirty looks in his direction. He realized then that it might be a good way to get something unpleasant put into his food or, worse, hers.

Well, that was a lie. It would be worse if it was his. He'd be a little embarrassed if it was hers, sure, but he could also have a quick and easy justification for his anger, and he'd likely get at least a free meal out of it, too. Maybe giving him dirty looks wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. But then it would look as if... he realized then that he hadn't been paying attention to much of anything Amanda was saying, and could only hope there wasn't something he'd missed that would be coming up later. He'd try his best to fake it if so.

Hearing his name brought his attention fully back to her, and his brows rose a little in curiosity at what her question was. He did his best to hide an embarrassed wince upon hearing it, however, and a deep and empty feeling began to form in his stomach. This date suddenly felt like it was on a windy mountain road, and they might be about to blow a tire and head off a step and rocky cliff. Steer carefully, Mark, he told himself.

"Oh, uh," he paused, clearing his throat, and took a small drink from his half-empty glass of water, his mind whirring as it tried to come up with something, anything, that didn't make him sound like a guy in his 30's that worked in a movie theater... which was exactly the case, of course. "No, it's one of those big chains, you know?" He set the glass of water down, and then without consideration of the fact that it was a blatant lie, quickly added, "I'm one of the managers there, though."

It was the best option he had, of course. He couldn't imagine a blind date with an attractive woman going well if all the less-than-stellar bits were laid out on the table right away. Besides, people never put their true selves forward when they first started seeing someone, right? It's what everyone said, and it was easy justification for his mind to latch onto for the lie he'd told.

The house specials they'd ordered apparently came with salads, and Mark was actually a bit glad when the man turned up with them then, hopefully glossing past the lie he'd just told and allowing the conversation to move on a bit. When the salad was placed in front of him, he nodded a silent thanks without looking up at the man, his eyes quickly scanning it for anything foreign or out of place, and upon seeing nothing he looked back up to Amanda, finding himself able to smile quite easily in her presence.

"So I imagine you get the question a lot, but... have you read anything interesting lately?"

Looks like my co-writer lost interest.
Deleting my work.