A Real Story

For about three years I kept a note on my phone titled ‘Chris List’ because I swear every fourth match was named Chris, and half of them listed their height as 6’1″ when they showed up closer to 5’9″. I stopped caring about height around date four. What I started noticing instead was smaller stuff — how a guy talked to the hostess, whether he asked me a single follow-up question, whether he flinched when the check came even though he’d suggested the $34 tasting menu himself. One date spent twenty minutes explaining why he tips exactly 15% ‘because that’s what the math says,’ and I remember thinking, this is the whole relationship, right here, in this sentence. I paid for my own $9 side salad that night and never texted him back. Another guy, a woodworker from three towns over, showed up fifteen minutes early to a coffee shop, had already ordered me a tea because I’d mentioned once in a message that I don’t like coffee, and asked what I was reading before he said a word about himself. We talked for two hours about nothing important — his dog’s terrible hip, my sister’s wedding drama — and I didn’t check my phone once. That’s the whole trick I eventually figured out: stop grading the profile and start grading the fifteen minutes right after you sit down, because that’s the only part that isn’t curated. We’ve been together two years now, and he still orders my tea before I ask.