He’s almost ten minutes late. Every time the door opens, my entire body tenses. I hope he doesn’t show. I’d rather be curled up on my couch alone with a bowl of popcorn, watching a good movie, than here waiting for him and wondering what he’s going to be like. Nico and I had spent more than five hours sitting beside each other, talking and rooting for the Red Sox, so I knew what I was getting on our first date. In college we had an unwritten rule that we would only wait fifteen minutes for late professors. I’m applying the same principle to online dating, staring at my watch eagerly. Doug has one minute and forty seconds. With less than twenty seconds to go, the door swings open and a man of about fifty steps inside. It doesn’t occur to me that he might be my date until he waves. He is at least a decade older than the man I saw in the picture. “Jillian?” he asks as he approaches my table. Sorry, no. The words are on the tip of my tongue. He extends his hand. “I’m Doug.
