Single in Philly: Are You There, Waffles? Its Me, Christy
I tell her that I think if I was doing all this for myself, and not as an assignment, I might be beaten down by all the hard work. I can hear her breathe for a second over the line before she says, almost guiltily, “You know, I suppose I’m lucky to have met your father when I did, to have had him through all those years.” As she talks, I picture her at the kitchen table, flipping through the part of the Sunday paper that my father isn’t reading, and agree that, yeah, that is pretty lucky.
As for the long-awaited Waffles date: When we meet at Good Dog, I have a beer, and he has a whiskey. We talk about music and our jobs and our families, and we laugh a lot. We order burgers, and more drinks, and I think a few times when he laughs how his smile is even nicer in person than it was on the screen. It is a good night, and at the end, there is a number exchange, and the next day, we send messages saying we’ll do it again.
And you know, I would. (What a great end to my story.) But 15 days later, I have yet to hear from Waffles again. And it is with little to no objectivity that I wonder what the deal-breaker might have been.
As I sign off of Match.com for good, the screen tells me that Match.com is truly sorry to see me go, and also, it wishes me good luck in love — a sort of luck that I suddenly have a much deeper appreciation for.
