Everybody loves a bad date.

It’s a blast being single, right? 82% of me really does mean that. I enjoy the feeling of possibility in interactions with other singles. There's room for something to happen or for feelings to be reciprocated and the risk that they won’t. There’s the challenge of reading signals and deciphering body language.

As a single woman, I try to keep in mind that at one point in my life, I won't have the moral freedom to flirt on a whim anymore. I might have a signifier on my finger one day warding off push and pull, salty sweet social interactions that I can no longer, in good conscious, engage in.  

Another thing I won't have the freedom to do one day is have stressful coffee dates with strangers, but lucky me, one day is not today.

The meet-cute I have to tell you about is actually a very Nora Ephron, rom-com situation that has been fun to tell friends.

I head into Barnes and Noble on a Wednesday morning at opening to pick up a book for my grandma—so wholesome, no GMO's here, my heart is 100% organic.

I peel into the poetry section to peek through Rupi Kaur's new book, “Homebody.” I don't plan on actually buying it there because Barnes and Noble is outrageously priced, and I take the whole "shop local" and "support small business" thing as seriously as I can. I wouldn't have even been smelling the intoxicating wafts of fresh binding in this big box store if the local place I usually buy my pre-loved texts from wasn't actively discouraging customers from physically browsing in their shop. I’ve become very prone to lecturing, shame-filled Instagram posts amidst the pandemic, but I needed a book for grandma before I saw her that weekend so there I was, wincing at barcodes.  

I look up “Homebody” on Amazon and find it $7 cheaper than the copy I was holding. $7 could buy me a new jumbo jar of creamy Skippy peanut butter, a really nice circle of Brie cheese, or most of a burrito bowl from Chipotle that I could split into two meals if I passed on the guac.  

With that benefit cost analysis, I obviously put the pricy copy back on the shelf and began scanning the section for Hafiz for fun.

 I am an insufferable browser. I can spend upwards of an hour in a store, reading every label, scanning every shelf, going down every aisle all to leave empty-handed. I will talk myself in to buying a dozen things that I will inevitably talk myself into putting back. I am one of those people that need to fully contemplate every single option I have before I make a grand decision and it’s not just big-ticket items. You’ll find me in the dollar store running numbers in my head for an entire afternoon. Ironically, nine times out of ten, that decision boils down to: “Oh my God, what are you doing? You don’t need this, you crazy lady. Put it back.”

I hung out in the poetry aisle for maybe a minute before a guy rounds the corner sharply and stands next to me, striking up a conversation out of thin air with "what are you reading?" facing the books.

Because of the nature of how I spend 30+ hours of my week, talking to strangers and pouring their coffee, it isn't hard for me to engage in conversation with random people. I responded as if we'd already been in the midst of talking replying with, "well, I was looking at this, but I'm thinking I'll get it somewhere else” pointing at Kaur’s book.

He reads the title.

"So are you a homebody?"

"I don't know," I say back. "I guess I have to read the book to find out."

He pulls it off the shelf and informs me that he'll be buying it for me today. Surprised, I say no. It doesn’t faze him. He puts the book in his own collection he’s carrying under his arm. He insists, but I tell him that I already found it somewhere else for cheaper.

Walking backwards towards the checkout, he says: "well, you're wasting your time because I'm getting it for you right now."

I have an uncomfortable moment of not knowing if I should follow him or not. Do I stand in line? Do I watch him make the transaction for all his books and awkwardly stand to the side? Why do I suddenly feel like a child on an errand with their parent?

I stay in the poetry section out of confusion.

I start to fake browse while I hear him say to the cashier over aisles of bookcases: "I gotta get out of here before I buy more. This is for that girl with the black mask and curly hair." I figure I'll get the book when I checkout? I don't know. Do I go to the door and thank him before he leaves? Has he already left?

A good amount of time goes by and I'm in the fiction section now, looking for something for grandma. He comes back around the corner, bag in-hand. I say, "You didn't really just buy that for me, did you?" still kind of in disbelief and confusion and trying to cover it with a collected air of cool.

He hands me the bag, book and Godiva chocolates inside, and says his name is Evan (may or may not be his real name, you decide). He tells me he wrote it down inside if I ever want to talk about books. A small back and forth more and I say, "thanks Evan" to which he asks my name. I tell him and he comes back with: "Oh, Princess Cheyanna?"

LOL, ew no, but also kind of yes? Either way, uhhh.

While I really didn't feel any psychotic red flags from the situation in the moment, and as I concluded with a friend, engaging in these happenstance occurrences is part of the fun of being single, I went through a few days of being cautious in that this was a perfect stranger. I knew nothing about him and while that's how many a connection starts, this is also how many a woman gets murdered.

I've watched enough Dateline to know that Ted Bundy and the Night Stalker were known as charming and confident guys—all of which this fool was in the poetry aisle that morning.

My thoughts were this:

On one hand, if this guy is normal, boy am I impressed.

On the other, if this guy is a sociopath, boy am I impressed.

Either way, the entire ask out was pulled off so fluidly that it made me think that maybe this was this guy’s routine. Perhaps every time he waltzes into a bookstore, he finds a bookworm to lasso with a little flattery and covers the price of whatever she’s eyeing to seal the deal and sneak the number.

If so, that’s actually a pretty smooth strategy that if used with genuine, respectful interest and without homicidal intent, is pretty sexy.

Nonetheless, it’s safe to assume every stranger is out to kill you until they prove otherwise.

My intuition was saying he wasn’t, my gut was saying he wasn’t, and my logic was wondering how many of my coworkers would attend my funeral.

I had to know if this could ever be anything. It was too cute of a way to meet to not see it through and if I had to risk pulling out my Taekwondo green belt skills from when I was in seventh grade to find out, I was confidently willing to do so.

I put my free book on my coffee table, took the plunge, and reached out to him, opening the ominous door to a texting conversation.

Thankfully, book boy (as was his contact in my phone) was relatively restrained on the messaging front and wasn’t blasting me with notifications. A big, fat relief. Plus, one thing I can say about him is that he can spell and spell well—a common romantic litmus test though now that I think about it, what does it say about the dire state of modern dating if the fact that a guy can type English successfully gets him points?

We set up a day to have coffee at Peets Coffee and Tea—a very generic and very public location.

The afternoon of the date, I'm already looking forward to it ending. I do this. I force myself to say yes to things that I’d normally say no to and fight the growing pains of expanding my comfort zone every step of the way. 

If I’d only known the fun awaiting me. Thirty minutes before, he texts me asking to reschedule because he hasn’t had a chance to shower today. Ummm, first: ew. Second: LOL. Mind you, it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I think you’ve had enough daylight in your Friday to get this task done.

I essentially come back with, “Sorry, today’s the only day I have. We’re having this coffee.” I wasn’t trying to carve out an additional afternoon for this guy. I had naps to inadvertently take on my couch.

So add irritation to my dread and you're there with me.

I consciously chose to bring my big, insulated YETI water bottle in case I needed to swing it full force at his head. If things approached the first five minutes of any Law and Order SVU episode, I wanted to be prepared. Little did I know that if such were to have been required of me during this encounter, I wouldn't have been able to reach his head. Or his elbows for that matter.

 We show up and I didn’t realize just how tall he was when we met. I registered that he was taller than me, but at my size, it's not hard achieving that and we were a bit a ways away from one another standing next to Rumi and Robert Frost that morning in Barnes and Noble. But today with Peet, I found that Evan’s hip bone started where my shoulder ended. Truly. The man was 6’8” (2.03 m)—an absolute giant. We looked like a circus couple standing beside one another. Nature was against this match.

It was startling standing beside someone that much larger than me knowing full well that an accidental bump could send me into the next dimension. I was immediately aware of the fact that if I needed to put up some sort of fight, I would have zero chance. I’m not familiar with the feeling of defeat before even beginning, but Goliath could’ve grabbed me by the arm with one hand, lifted me up, and easily held my body in the air until I exhausted myself and ceased struggling, falling limp like a rag doll.

On another note, the behemoth was actually more attractive than I was able to see that day meeting mid-pandemic, a mask covering half his face. Crystal blue eyes and decent bone structure—not that I could take in the full view from my craning neck’s angle.

We got coffee and if I had a nickel for the number of coffee dates I've been on where the guy has gotten the most disgusting drink on the menu.

We sat down and over the course of the next forty-five minutes Evan talked nearly the entire time. On top of that, I think I talk “California quick,” but this guy was mediating a bidding war from thought to thought. The speed of speech was bad enough that some of my follow up questions to things he was sharing went utterly unacknowledged. He talked over my comments and questions without registering that my mouth was moving and perhaps, I don't know, forming words.

 He wasn’t unkind, he paid for the coffee, and he opened doors for me, but here's something I'm developing a theory about in today's modern dating situation and tell me if I’m alone in experiencing this: usually the guys that make a big deal about opening the door for you—bolting in front of you to reach the handle or apologizing profusely if they miss the opportunity to accomplish this particular task—seem like they’re trying a little too hard to blot some flesh-colored concealer over the shadow of something unsavory. Sure, make an effort to do the gentlemanly things on a date, but don't act like you're a hero for doing something minuscule and rudely cutting in front of my stride to make sure I see you do it.

Am I terrible? If so, please tell me.

As soon as he made me guess how many siblings he has and it was revealed he was an only child and called his mom multiple times a day, that was enough for me to check the time.

When he started going off about his deep belief in aliens and his pregnant praying mantis that he kept in the van he was currently living in, I began to plan my exit.

This was all before his recent story of how he got kicked out of his apartment when he playfully threatened to cut off his pinkie if one of his housemates didn’t come out of his room. As the story went from what my ears could physically follow, he in fact cut off his pinkie which ended up in a bloody mess with his roommates calling 911 to which he got arrested and spent a night in jail.

How sweet this meet-cute all began and look where we were now.

Regardless, I was proud of myself for seeing it through. I would’ve always wondered. It’s good to not have to wonder even if it means a missed afternoon nap.

But hey, I got a free book out of it. Still haven’t read it.