A Little Bit Older

I was getting ready to go on a date at the local diner and if I could say I ready would be to severely understate the matter. All the girls were hoping this turned out perfect – they wanted Matt to be happy and I was the first person he’d agreed to go on a date with since the divorce had been finalized. Nothing had been overlooked and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d prepared this much for a date.

It wasn’t even in the normal things. Yes, Valarie had picked out my outfit for me – making sure that it included Matt’s favorite colors. And Meghan had curled my hair and tied it back in a ponytail to achieve what she called an effortlessly beautiful look. They even had Lacey help with my make-up following the same effortless goal. The icing on the cake though was when Michelle had reviewed with me repeatedly the best way to flirt during a dinner date. Flirting tricks ranging from smiling and laughing at his jokes to the perfect angle to hold my head while sipping my water to be as alluring as possible. I felt like I was a teenager again except it was worse because all of us were grown-ass women. I knew it was with good intents but I was starting to wonder what Meghan had told them about my dating history because they all seemed to think that I was quite incompetent.

When Matt did finally pick me up, I could completely understand why he felt such an overwhelming desire to go on a fake date with me to get them off his case. If I were to have to endure that again, I’d probably scream. Which is exactly what I was greeted with when I got into his car: two screaming children in the backseat.

“Sorry about them, they’ve both been in pissy moods all day.” He explained as we started down the road. He’d managed to get them to mostly quiet down but they were still crying. Just quietly crying.

“Any particular reason?”

“River decided he’s too old for naps so Cash wouldn’t take a nap either. They’re just tired.”

“Happy to be shipping them off to your parents for the night?”

“Yes. They're great and all, but damn, sometimes I just want silence.”

“How’s the custody work out? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I get them two weeks with the weekend between and holidays. Val gets them one week and the weekends that bookend and when I’m on tour. I get more time when I’m home because she gets them all the time when I’m gone.” He explained and I nodded at the fairness of the arrangement. It gave them both a surprising amount of time to spend alone also.

“That’s a good arrangement.”

“Yea, no. It works great. And Val and I are flexible with each other two. Even after everything she’s still one of my best friends which makes it super easy to coordinate with her. We just weren’t in love anymore, you know?” I nodded and we finished the first part of our drive in relative silence.

Once we arrived at his parents, I helped unload the two children and he took them in the house and let me hid away in the car. I wasn’t exactly ready to go through the whole ‘meet the parents’ ordeal and I don’t think he was either. It just worked out easier that way for both of us.
After a short distance more of driving, we arrived at the diner and I could hear my stomach growling. He didn’t seem phased by it though so it was either quieter than I noticed or he just was opting to ignore it.

“You look nice.” He told me as we walked into the diner and grabbed a booth in the back corner. “I like your shirt.”

“Thanks, Val thought you would.” I said with a light chuckle and he shook his head in amusement.

“Yea, Zack told me that they were torturing you.”

“I don’t know how you deal with them.”

“It’s probably easier since I’m a guy.”

I shrugged and we continued making light conversation until a waitress came and got our order. I ordered French Toast and a scrambled eggs and Matt ordered a burger which he swore was the best in town.

“I’m telling you, no burger is as good as this.” He exclaimed once our food actual was brought out.

“I’m sure you’re right. But nothing will ever beat breakfast in the evening.” I left out the part where I mentioned that I didn’t eat burgers that often anyways. I wasn’t entirely a vegetarian, but I normally opted for vegetarian dishes when given the option. It wasn’t even a moral thing which made it even harder to explain so, most of the time, I just didn’t explain.

“So, I don’t know if you’d thought much about how we were going to do this?” He asked diving headfirst into the reason behind our little rendezvous for the evening.

“Not really. Did you have anything planned?” I asked trying to keep the ball in his court.

“Well, I figure we have three options,” I laughed quickly when I realized the amount of thought he’d put into this. “Yes, I know I’ve thought about this too much. Shush. So, option one. We go on a few dates and then just tell them we’re not interested. Pros: quick and painless. Cons: they’ll jump back into matchmaking fast. I’ve tried plan one before and it didn’t work very well.”

“You’re hoping to get more long lasting effects?”

“Basically. Which leads to plans two and three. So, two: we fake date for a few months and pretend to be serious about it and then have an ‘awful’,” He said this with air quotes, “Break-up. I figure this will get us a decent bit of time after the break-up. My biggest worry with this plan is just how we go about handling the fallout.”

“We’d have to completely stop talking to make it believable at all.”

“Exactly and I don’t think that’d be good for the kids. They like you and I don’t want to make things weird for them.”

“Good point. Okay, plan three?”

“Plan three is the most complicated. We basically fake date for however long it takes for the one of us to find someone else. Then we do the bullshit ‘moving in different directions’ break-up and be done with it. No one will expect us to stop being friends after. It just gets weird with dating other people. But I don’t really want to date again for a year or two so it’d be at your pace.”

“I don’t really know how long I’ll need to adjust to the city but that could work. Even if we don’t break it off before one of us finds someone. Say we just agree that in a year we call it quits. That’s plenty of time for us to pretend to go through the honeymoon phase and then pretend to get bored with each other.

“That could work… We’re thinking of trying to do a tour before the end of next year. Let’s just plan to break up before the tour. It’d be a natural breaking point.”

“Sounds like a perfect plan to me. That’d be least awkward with the kids too, I think.”

“Oh no definitely. No one would question it at all.”

“Mr. Sanders, I’d say you have yourself a deal.” I held out my hand and we shook on it before going back to our food.

“Bigger questions: how many dates do we need before we announce that we’re dating?” He asked finishing off his burger.

“We’ll do two more fake dates. Then go to Meghan and ask her for help or something. She’ll love it.” I shrugged and he nodded in agreement.

“So how about next week we grab lunch together sometime with the boys for date two. And for date three we can do a movie night at my place next Sunday?”

“That’ll put us at knowing each other for three weeks. She’ll probably take two weeks after you ask for help. That’s a decent timeline. A month’s good enough for knowing each other before dating, right?”

“Eh it’s a little fast but they won’t question it.”

“Good point. I’m not a great liar though so you’ll have to cover my ass when we’re all together.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be just like acting. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“True. Now important question here, is it more seductive when I sip my water like this?” I asked turning my head to drink some water. “Or like this?” I asked dramatically while mimicking the flirting techniques that Michelle had tried to teach me earlier that evening.

“Oh definitely the second!” He laughed while picking up his own glass and mocking me.

We ordered desert after that and continued talking for a while on lighter conversations. He was surprisingly easy to talk to and, getting past the inevitable awkward of our fake relationship, I found that he was super easy to just hang out with. Now that we had our agreement and I didn’t think about the prospect of anything romantic with him, it was relaxing to just be in his company.