Page 17 of Experiments in Offline Dating

He didn’t invite me to sit in the chair across from him but, rather, pinned me with an expectant glare that made me panic. Could I even remember how to sit down in a chair?

I could definitely figure out how to sit on that grumpy face of his. No! Oh my God! Stop it!

I did, in fact, manage to sit without knocking the table over. He didn’t say anything to congratulate me for it. He didn’t say anything at all. His eyes were glued in the direction of the musicians, but because of the little wall of the nook, I knew he couldn’t actually see them. He was just choosing to look anywhere but at me. They’d given us a hundred euros—too much to drink without a hospital visit—which meant a meal and, if my calculations were correct, an hour, or maybe even ninety minutes, of mandatory date time.

Ninety minutes of floundering through a painfully stuttery conversation. Ninety minutes of knocking things off the table as I made wild, irregular gesticulations. Ninety minutes of saying all the wrong things. Ninety minutes of trying very hard not to look at his crotch.

What were we going to talk about? Awkward silences were my kryptonite. This silence stretched out so long that I felt like my body was on a medieval torture rack, each passing second a click of the wheel pulling my vertebrae apart, until I could stand it no longer.

“So. Um. Hi. Again.”

His eyes flicked to mine for a brief second, but he didn’t smile. Were they green? Brown? Devil red?

“I’m Maya.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

For a moment, I thought that salty little chestnut would be the only thing he would say, and we’d spend the rest of the date in excruciating, diarrhea-inducing silence. But then he sighed—it was a big, long-suffering, fed-up gust—before he straightened the angle of his body and looked at me finally. “I’m Tadhg.”

“Tige?” It sounded like the word “tiger” without the R.

“Yeah.”

“Oh. That’s cool!” I nodded. It’s cool? You’re an idiot! “Is that like . . . a nickname? Short for . . . I dunno, Celtic tiger? Or . . .” I shrugged and shook my head. “Tiger in the sack?” Ooh, my sweet holy crap!

His jaw tightened further. I worried about the state of his molars. This . . . was going to be a star-spangled shit show.

“No.”

The word, once it fought its way out from between his clenched teeth, was very final.

And yet I persisted.

“Is it like . . . short for some really long, crazy Irish name with a bunch of D’s and H’s and B’s in it?” Why couldn’t I stop?

“No.”

“What is it short for, then?” Stop fixating! Change the subject!

He took a minute and closed his eyes. Like he was trying very hard not to turn green, tip the table, and smash through the wall like the Incredible Hulk.

“It’s Tadhg. That’s my name. That’s all of it.”

“Really? Tige? That’s all of it? Weird! I’ve never heard that before.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have, would you? It’s another language.”

Shit. I was doing it. He was actually getting angrier.

“Ha ha! Yeah. I guess mostly.”

Mostly what? I’d actually said the words “ha ha,” but not sarcastically. And then I giggled a little for good measure. Just in case I wasn’t weird enough.

He looked away as if I were too painful to watch. I grabbed the rolled cutlery off the table and started ripping the napkin into confetti, just for something to do with my hands.

“So . . . you’re Irish?” I asked him, because maybe I wasn’t sure that he was Irish? Or because his accent hadn’t given the mystery away? Or maybe I’d just died on the flight over and this was hell. Just this date. Over and over again for all eternity.

With that, I saw the moment when his spirit broke. “I’m gonna need a drink. Can I get you something?”