“Just order one of those hot Russian brides and get married. Your dad would have to see you as responsible, if you were married and shit,” Mathew said jokingly.
“I know you’re joking, Matt. But seriously, Chase. If you want to show commitment and that you can be responsible, getting married might be a good idea. But I wouldn’t tell him you bought her over the internet,” Carlos said seriously.
We all laughed at the idea, except Mathew seemed a little serious when he started to pull his phone out and show us an app.
“You don’t buy them. It’s an actual dating website. You just meet nice girls who live in the middle of nowhere and really want to have a different life.”
“Mathew, you seem to know an awful lot about these mail-order brides,” I said as I punched him in the arm.
“I was on a few of those dating websites before I met my girlfriend. There are a lot of really nice women there. At least, the ones I talked to. You have to avoid the ones who are asking for your money and want you to send it over to them. But other than that, you should totally check out OK Love. I bet you’d find some smoking hot women on there.”
I punched the website into my phone to check it out. What would it hurt to take a look at it? I really had nothing to lose.
For the next hour, we continued to drink and set up my profile in search for the perfect woman. Well, the perfect woman that three drunk guys could describe. I made a mental note to go back into the website in the morning when I wasn’t drunk and re-read everything we put in.
“You might just find the ideal woman in Russia. Those girls are quiet and love to listen to their men. She’ll be at home making dinner for you. Ready to fuck you every night. Maybe I should exchange my wife,” Carlos joked.
“I don’t think I need a Stepford wife. I’d just take a nice, cute girl, though. We could get married and put on a little show for a bit, then, divorce in a year or two down the road. She’d have her green card, and I’d have my company.”
“This actually seems like a really good plan,” Carlos said.
“Yeah, sometimes I come up with good ideas,” Mathew added.
In our drunken stupor, we added a ton of women to my favorite list. There were some seriously smoking hot women on that website. I’d be happy with most any of them. But there were a couple who stood out for me.
“Are you sure none of these are fake profiles?” I asked. “This girl says she lives in Liechtenstein. I don’t even think that’s a real country.” We all laughed.
“It’s somewhere by Switzerland, I think. Really small, like the size of Washington, D.C.,” Mathew added.
“Well, I might send her a message later or something. She seems halfway interesting, but fake.”
“Send them all messages and see who can speak English. That was my biggest issue when I was on there. I saw a lot of super-hot chicks, but not too many of them could speak English well enough to communicate,” Mathew added.
“Well, if you’re just wanting to bone them, I guess that wouldn’t matter,” Carlos said.
“The problem is, with them being so far away, you really do need to be able to talk to them. You can’t even see if you get along if they don’t speak at least a little bit of English.”
“Give it a go. Send her a message,” Carlos said as he grabbed my phone and started to type a message into the phone.
“No! I’ll do it.”
I grabbed my phone back and typed in the most ridiculously short message: Hi, I’m Chase. I’d love to talk.
Meeting women online had never been a necessity for me, so I just didn’t know what to do or say. Part of my appeal was the in-person conversation and flirting. I wasn’t sure that would be able to portray who I was over the limited capacity of the internet.
Chapter Six
Jordan
The morning after Ana left was one of the loneliest I had ever had. Without work to keep me busy, I just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. My whole life had changed in the last couple of weeks, and I felt like I was on the edge of a big change to a new life. The problem was I knew that new life couldn’t possibly happen if I stayed in Liechtenstein.
Most of my day was spent doing absolutely nothing. I lounged around in the emptiness of my apartment. It felt emptier than it ever had before. I had even been home for a week without my mother before, but I always knew she was coming home soon. This time, it was different.
I lay in bed for the first few hours. Then, I got up and cleaned my tiny apartment and made some lunch. There was no motivation at all inside of me. I hated my apartment; I hated my life without Mom and Ana around.
Before they left, I thought of myself as a confident and outgoing woman. But that day spent alone in my apartment, I suddenly realized I wasn’t the person I thought I was. A confident woman would be ready to move forward, even if she was alone. For me, that confidence had totally disappeared, and all I could think about was finding someone to keep me company.
Reluctantly, I logged back into OK Love and looked through my messages. I groaned at some of the guys and how hideous they looked. Of course, looks aren’t everything, and I was totally willing to give a nice guy a chance, but a 300-pound, sweaty guy who didn’t even clean himself up for a picture – that was just not going to happen.