Ready or Not

Chapter 12

You finally make it to Friday. Last time you saw Namjoon was on Tuesday morning, and the rest of the week has been quite uneventful; days filled with school, and afternoons and evenings filled with work. the two of you have plans to see each other Saturday afternoon. Walking out of your second and last class for the day, you decide to go and get yourself a cup of coffee. You don't have any students to tutor on Fridays, so you have the entire afternoon to yourself. With no clear plans, you decide that you'll figure it out as you go. The coffee shop is half empty, so you order your light and sweet vanilla latte and grab your favorite spot to sit, and people watch. To your delight, things on all fronts have been silent.

The last time you had any interaction with Warren was Monday night and he has been strangely quiet. You are not complaining about it though. All you can do is hope that he will come to his senses and move on, instead of trying to tempt you at every turn. When you finally start to wind down some, you feel your cellphone buzz on the table. When you pick it up to see who it is, you are surprised that it's Austin texting you.

Austin:
Hey, how are you?

You:
Hi Austin.
I'm well and you?

Austin:
I was just thinking about our broken date for tomorrow and thought I would see if your circumstances were still the same.

You:
It is.
But I'm still glad to hear from you.
Has there been anyone interesting from the dating app?

Austin:
I reached out to some people, but it's not great.
Remember what I told you about faith in humanity?
I mean zero offense, but some women are unstable.
I don't know if it's me or them.
All I know is when I reach out, they either don't reply at all, or when they do, I immediately regret sending them a message at all.
There was this one woman that actually reached out to me first.
Because that almost never happens.
Anyway, it didn't go anywhere.
So, hence me trying to see if you are back to being single.

You:
Yikes, sounds treacherous out there.
I'm surprised you are not getting too many people replying back to you.
I gotta tell you, most of the messages I get are copy and paste jobs.
One of the reasons I replied to your message in the first place was because your message seemed so genuine.
Like you gave it some thought.
I mean, I recently got a message that just said,
"Hey Gorgeous, DTF?"
I had no idea what the acronym meant and had to ask my friends.
That's the kind of stuff women on the app are dealing with.
How about meeting people outside of the app?
Work perhaps?

Austin:
I work with a bunch of men.
There are handful of women in the company, but not really my cup of tea, or I don't have the right equipment.

You:
Oh, darn...
I was single for a long time.
It's when I started grad school that I met some new people.
And I work with high school students and if I dated them I would be looking at federal prison time.
So, meeting people more organically, I guess, is easier said than done.

Austin:
Well, maybe you shouldn't count those high school boys out completely.
If you get caught and go to prison, maybe you can start a small business selling some of your homemade weapons to your peers.

After reading the last message, you bark out a laugh that makes other patrons turn to look at your direction.

You:
Your last message made me literally LOL.
Yes. Always the silver lining.
Glass half full type, are you?