“Why not the millionaire from the site?” Mattie asked firmly. “He’s a decent guy, right?”
“Sure, he seemed nice enough. But let’s be realistic here: if he’s a rich, good-looking guy, the last thing he’s going to be looking for is a woman with the kind of baggage I have. He could get any hot, young thing on our site to go out with him. I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“He’s rich, right? He messaged you, right? I think that’s a pretty good sign he was interested in you.”
“You know money isn’t important to me. I’d date a poor man if we got along well. And, I think he was only interested in that bikini photo. Anyways, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve got the account private and he can’t message me. End of story.”
“Okay, so then if this guy asks you out, promise you’ll go with him.”
“I just shut out of our conversation and made my profile invisible. I doubt he’s going to be asking me out, since he has no way of reaching me,” I shrugged. “Plus, technically he did ask me out, right before I closed the conversation and blocked my account.”
“Del!”
“Sorry, it was an impulse move. How about I make you a compromise: I’ll go out with the next decent guy who asks me out. Does that sound like a deal?”
“I guess, but you really should make your profile live again and let that guy ask you out. There’s no reason you need to date some loser like Markus when you’ve got guys like him hitting on you.”
“Did you and Markus talk about last night?” I asked nervously.
It really was sad how many problems Mattie and Markus had in their relationship. It was even sadder that they both chose to stay together. If they really weren’t happy, why bother pushing through an unhappy relationship? It seemed much better for both people to just move on and find what it was they were looking for.
I really didn’t understand why Mattie refused to leave Markus. She said she loved him, but it seemed more like she was afraid she wouldn’t find another man if she got rid of him.
“We didn’t talk about it.”
“Really? Your man was clearly flirting with the bartender and probably even got her phone number, yet you didn’t want to talk to him about it? Mattie, you’re better than this. You deserve so much more.”
“I don’t like arguing with him. I’m not his keeper, and I can’t go around patrolling everything he does. We have talked about it before and he’s not sleeping with her; he’s just a naturally flirty guy.”
I rolled my eyes at the utter stupidity of her words. It sounded exactly like something Markus had probably said in order to convince her he was not the type of guy who would cheat on her again. Yet everything he did showed he was exactly that type of guy.
I didn’t care what his excuse was – he wasn’t being respectful of my friend and that pissed me off. The problem I had was that I was her friend and it seemed to upset her when I brought up what an ass her boyfriend was. I clearly didn’t want to get her upset and didn’t want to make her feel bad for staying with the guy; I just couldn’t understand why she continued to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Mattie, come on.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but I love him and that’s the end of it. I trust him. Well, I mostly trust him. I’m not going to break up with him, so just leave it alone.”
“Fine, but just be careful, please. I really don’t want you to get a broken heart.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she answered a call and got back to work.
I went back to looking for my error and my computer flashed blue and then went totally black and shut down. I jumped back at the sudden noise of the computer shutting down and then glanced around the office to see if anyone else was having problems.
Everyone else seemed hard at work and were clearly not having the same issue I was. When my computer was unable to turn back on, I had no other choice but to call our main IT help desk. It was like the ultimate defeat when a computer person had to call on another computer person to help them. It was even worse when you were a female in a field that was predominately male. I absolutely despised having to call anyone for computer help.
“Hey, Tom, my whole system shut down and won’t turn back on.”
“Hi, Delilah. How are you today?” Tom said cheerfully into the phone. “That computer of yours has been causing you a lot of problems lately. Maybe it’s time we think about replacing it.”
My computer had been a pain in the butt for months. It constantly required rebooting and finagling to get it to operate even close to how it was supposed to work. The problem was I never wanted to deal with setting up a new computer. I knew how to get this one running, so I always just fixed the errors and moved on. But this time the poor old thing might have given me its last hurrah.
“I was doing well until I lost my computer. I’m trying to figure out a coding error, though; it’s a little frustrating. The damn thing normally just reboots, but this time I can’t seem to get it going again.”
“I’ll come right down and see what I can do,” he replied and hung up before I could protest.
Tom was standing next to my desk in less than two minutes. His glasses pressed deep into his nose as he leaned down near my legs to look at the computer. I tried to roll my chair away, but he had his hand on the arm rest to support himself while he looked for the serial number.
“I can get the number for you, Tom,” I offered, as his close proximity to my legs started to make me nervous.