Chapter Three
Sofia
I tap my foot anxiously as I wait for Josie to pick up the phone. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’d actually agreed to do this, that I was on my first date in five years. Now, apparently, I had two dates for the evening?
“Hey, Sophia, I thought you were supposed to be on your date, is everything okay?” Josie asks immediately upon answering.
“Not exactly.”
“What, has he not shown up yet? Don’t worry, Sofia, he’s probably just running late, I saw something on the news about an accident on Main-”
“Oh, no, that’s not the issue. I definitely did not get stood up.”
“So what’s going on? Did the guy use a fake picture or something? Or-”
“Guys,” I interrupt her.
“What?”
“Not guy. Guys,” I emphasize the s in the word, “As in plural.”
“Um…wait, what do you mean?”
“I mean that the guy I’m supposed to be meeting, Russell, thinks he is supposed to be going on a date with a guy named Marco, who is also here and thinks that I am his date for the evening,” I explain.
“That…that shouldn’t be possible,” she says, sounding baffled, “Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker so I can log in and look at your profile.”
There’s a moment of shuffling, and I can hear the aggressive taps of her fingernails hitting her touchscreen. “No, this shouldn’t be possible,” she repeats, “All three of you got the same match percentage, but there’s supposed to be a failsafe to prevent the system from matching you more than once. It’s supposed to send you a follow-up survey, you didn’t get that?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
“Fuck, maybe one of the programmers didn’t…wait, hang on, you said Russell matched with Marco, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what he showed us.”
“Let me look at his profile,” she murmurs, then I hear a few more taps, “Fuck, I didn’t think about this. They didn’t just match with you, they also matched with each other, so it didn’t trigger the failsafe. I didn’t really factor in the whole bisexual aspect…”
“Okay, that explains how we got here, but like…what the hell do I do now?” I ask her, glancing over my shoulder at the two men, who thankfully don’t seem to be paying much attention to me while they converse.
There’s silence over the line. “Hello? Josie?”
“I literally have no idea,” Josie says, sounding apologetic, “I mean…maybe just pick one?”
“Josie!”
“What? I don’t know, I was sure I’d planned for every possible scenario, but apparently, I was very, very wrong.”
“Well, you know what? Maybe this was just meant to happen. They matched with each other, right? And I didn’t really want to date in the first place. So maybe this works out perfect, I just leave the two of them on their date, you got some clearly very important feedback, and I can go home and have a bubble bath. Everyone wins.”
Josie sighs. “I guess you’ve got a point. If that’s what you want to do, I understand. And you’re right, you brought a big-ass bug to my attention, so you really have done me a huge favor, Sof. I’m sorry it put you in such a weird position.”
I smile to myself. For the most part, I’m relieved. It really does feel like the perfect solution. I helped my friend like I set out to, with none of the actual date part.
But admittedly, there’s a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty part of me that’s a little disappointed. The part of me that’s been reminding me over and over again that I have to use both hands to count the number of years it’s been since I last got laid.
I am only human after all, and both Russell and Marco are exactly the kind of tasty eye candy I would have gone googly-eyed over back when I was still dating.
Both of them are tall, over six feet I’m sure, with the kind of rippling muscles that look like they belong in skintight spandex on a movie screen saving all of humanity from Nazis or aliens or something.
Marco’s glasses add a sexy little sprinkling of “geek” on top, like Superman in disguise as Clark Kent. And I would be a liar if I said I didn’t wonder what Russell’s dark beard might feel like against my skin.
But it doesn’t matter how jaw-droppingly attractive they both are. I’m a third wheel here, and they’re waiting for answers. So I say goodbye to Josie and hang up, taking a moment to collect myself before I make my way back over to the guys.
“Hey, what did you find out?” Russell asks.