She opened her phone to a familiar routine.
Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe right.
Then: a match!
Dawson was smarter, funnier, and more sensible than any other man she had met in New York, and he held her heart long after the two stopped talking. Dawson was nothing like the others before him — his job was stable and his teeth were straight and his wardrobe was not horrendous. All this, and he was kind to Esme.
For the entire summer, he made her smile. Warm and bright days in Central Park. Crowded, cobblestone afternoons in SoHo. Abrupt stops in Brooklyn bookstores where the employees wore colored hair dye and tie-die shirts and mustaches.
Over expensive dinners with strong wine and white tablecloths, the two talked, excitedly like schoolchildren, about the future — imposing and abstract but inviting — and one another’s role in it. Esme told Dawson about astrology and her parents and sad memories from elementary school and the friends she ostracized. Dawson told Esme about working in banks and the whims of his ex-girlfriends and how, after college, he had taught English for a year in France but his French was still rubbish.
Esme was slated to return to California before Christmas, but she wanted to abort those plans. New York City was where she wanted a future not because she liked city life but because she loved Dawson. Esme did not want to tell Dawson she loved him because she feared he’d run off, but eventually her feelings overwhelmed her and she just had to tell him.
But her first instinct was right. Dawson didn’t like the L-word.
As summer turned to fall and the temperature cooled, things became less amusing. The romance turned stale and Dawson’s charm soured. Everything signalled that this was a fling and nothing more. You and I, we’re getting too serious, Dawson said, and it’s ruining all the fun. Esme said okay not because she agreed but because she was so willing to relinquish her desires if it meant appeasing the smart and funny and sensible man. She wondered if she would ever meet someone like him again — a genuinely unique man; a paragon of individuality.
I’ll pump the brakes a bit so I don’t scare him off, Esme thought to herself. We’ll keep dating and that’ll be that. We’re so young — we can have a more serious relationship later, way down the line.
Then one day, when sunshine camouflaged a cold city wind, a text message: “It was nice to meet you, Esme. Let’s leave it be.”
In an instant, the future shattered. Startled and mouth agape, Esme replied: “Okay. It was nice to meet you too, Dawson.”
“See ya.”
“Okay.”
Esme booked a ticket back to California and Dawson didn’t call her. He made a reservation for dinner with a stranger before Esme’s first breath of west coast air.
Later, Esme opened her phone to a familiar routine.
Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe right.
Then: a match!
Xavier was different from the other boys Esme knew in California.
Xavier was taller, hunkier, and more patient than any other men she knew in California, and he held her heart long after the two stopped talking. Xavier was nothing like the others before him…
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