Page 134 of Experiments in Offline Dating
“That sounds stupid. Go on.”
“Okay, let’s say you could get a hold of him, and you realized you were, in fact, endowed with a beating human heart and in love, and let’s just say that Tadhg loves you too—”
“Sims, I was a complete bitch to him.”
“I know you were. But this is hypothetical. So let’s just say, as a thought experiment, hypothetically, that he still has feelings for you. Could you make it work? Would there be any way to give it a shot?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Could he move here? Hypothetically?”
“Hypothetically, no. I don’t think so. A, he can only stay like three months on an ESTA, and B, he wants a farm with sheep and to be close to all of his nine thousand brothers and sisters. I just . . . I couldn’t ask him that.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but for the sake of good science, we have to explore all options without bias. So what if . . . you went there instead? Hypothetically. You said you loved it there. You could always just . . . you know. Try it out?”
“And throw my whole life away for a man?”
“Maya. Don’t be so dramatic. You do know we don’t need to record in a studio, right?”
“I know.”
“So you could record there, couldn’t you?”
“And what the hell would I record? Would I just keep going on dates, Simone? What about that, huh?”
“Well . . .” Her voice softened a bit. “It was never going to last forever. We knew that. And it doesn’t mean you have to stop doing podcasts. But, you know, maybe we could pivot. Workshop some new ideas.”
“Well, that’s insane!”
“No, it’s not. I’m just saying to keep your mind open, you dickwad,” she said tenderly. “Not everything is so black and white. This isn’t impossible. You could find a way to make this work. If you really wanted to. Hypothetically.”
“Even if that wasn’t complete and total horse crap and terrible advice, which it is, he won’t answer my calls. How am I supposed to talk to him? It doesn’t even ring, Sims. It’s like he changed his freaking number.”
“Okay, what about emails?”
“Why would I have his email address?”
“How do I know? Well, what about Jackie? Could he help?”
I scrunched up my face. “Maybe? But then Tadhg would just think Jackie was meddling in his life again. And what could I say? ‘Hi, Jackie. Your conniving little tricks worked, and now I think I might be in love with your son, but I don’t know the first thing about love or what to do with it, and I live halfway across the world, so I can’t even ask him out for a date to find out if it even really is love or if it’s just perimenopause, and in the meantime I think Tadhg changed his whole damn phone number because I was a complete bitch to him. Can you fix it for me? With more of your conniving tricks? Tadhg would really love that. Thanks!’”
Simone shrugged and sipped her drink. “Okay, so maybe it’s not great. What else you got?”
“Bupkis! I don’t know. Ugggh! Can I just build a time machine and go back in time for a do-over?”
“Sure. We could probably find one on Facebook Marketplace.”
I laughed a little and crammed the rest of my slice of cake into my mouth in one giant bite.
We watched the short Hallmark movie that I’d brought, A Recipe for Seduction, which was literally a—no joke—Colonel Sanders love story with Mario Lopez playing a young colonel, and we laughed until our sides hurt. And then we watched French Kiss, one of our all-time-favorite comfort rom-coms, and I cried a little bit into my popcorn. Then I changed into Simone’s pajamas and we crawled into her bed, full, exhausted, and a little drunk.
“Sims?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you asleep?”
“Not with your wine breath in my face.”
