The Date Auction

Chapter 4: Fallout

"So, you've got a date next weekend, then." Jake said, carefully neutral.

I blushed with embarrassment. I still couldn't believe a mysterious, cute boy quantified my worth, and made it higher than every other woman. This really was a romantic dream come true... but! I reminded myself, I didn't even know Blaise. He probably thought he could impress me with money, which I don't care about at all. For all I knew, he might just be upper middle class and a spendthrift. He might be... so many things, and I'm stuck here in the present, with a whole week to wait before I know anything.

"I guess we'll have to have our date another day. Like, maybe tonight?" I suggested.

Jake bowed. "Come this way, milady," and lead me to his car.

In the end, I was too tired to do much of anything, so Jake and I made it a night in at his apartment. We watched some mediocre movie with a few laughably terrible bits, and mostly failed at throwing popcorn into each other's mouths. When we were ready to pass out, I snuggled up behind him in his king bed and kissed his cheek.

"Mads!" he giggled, "My grandparents would be scandalized!"

Jake's granddad (on his dad's side) was one of those evangelicals that held very strongly in pre-marriage monogamy. Like, the kind where if you play kissing games when you're fifteen, you're cheating on some hypothetical wife-to-be. Granddad married the mother of his first and third children and together they successfully managed the family's moral track with extreme conditions on who was getting what in the will.

All this meant that Jake and I had never, um, been too physical together. I blushed at the thought that Jake might have genitals and adjusted my nightgown.

"Wass wrong babe?" Jake mumbled sleepily, "You thinking about genitals again?"

I went to rub his back but he was several feet away on the sprawling mattress, so instead I simply drifted off.

My phone woke me up. Courtney was calling me, despite the fact that we're both millenials.

"Heyyy Maddie! Come and get mi-mo-sas!"

Oh no! I'd forgotten about brunch! There was always brunch the morning after the date auction. I stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping over the copy of Jane Eyre I left over at Jake's for reading. Curse my literary clumsiness! It was such a flaw.

By the time I'd arrived at the local BYOPC (bring your own personal chef) brunch place, Courtney was several drinks ahead and welcoming me enthusiastically.

"Maddie! How was your night? Still maintaining your sexual innocence and purity because that's what the Readers find weirdly important?"

I covered my face. I regretted every telling Courtney about Jake's grandparents, Horace and Prudence Reader. She never let me hear the end of it. Whatever. I didn't mind. I swear.

"So, you planned your date with Blaise yet?" she continued.

"No, I, um," Were my cheeks getting red? Why was I suddenly so nervous? Why couldn't I talk right? "I wanted to..." What did I want?

"You didn't want to seem desperate!" Courtney concluded. I swallowed and nodded along. All my other faceless background friends who were also there nodded in support.

"Well, rumor has it you're the only girl he's ever been interested in, so don't blow it! Now have a mimosa!"

I took the offered glass. Mimosas always reminded me of my dad. He'd take us all out to brunch and have five or six when he wasn't busy with his duties as the foremost expert on ancient mysteries. The last person who saw him before his mysterious disappearance was the waitress at the Grand Canyon Brunchery. He'd been scheduled to trek to the bottom of canyon shortly afterwards, but searchers looked all over the winding, windy slope without finding a trace of him. I remember a colleague of his, Dr. Goodresearch, telling us, "Your father solved so many ancient mysteries, but now his disappearance is a modern mystery. Makes you think, huh."

"Maddie!" Courtney interrupted my reverie, "At least have a seat before you zone out! Were you thinking about genitals again?"

Before I could protest, a familiar buzzing went up my leg. A call? Who could it be? The caller ID read: Blaise, from the Date Auction. I raised the phone, trembling, to my ear.

"H-hello?"

"It's me." he said, brusquely. "We have a date."

"Yes!" I agreed, "Saturday!"

"I'll pick you up. Seven. Be ready." And with that, Blaise hung up.

Courtney looked at me curiously.

"I think... I have a date?"