Jennifer Lohmann - Dating By Numbers

She arched an eyebrow at him. “All the more reason to meet people online.”

“Ha,” he said, with the smile of his that she preferred of all of them. This smile widened his eyes and showed his teeth. Jason had straight, white, magazine-worthy teeth. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him. “You could...you know...go to the gym or join a hiking club or go to a bar.”

She gritted her teeth to suppress a shudder. She’d tried the bar scene a couple times. She’d gone alone, willing to be “picked up” if the right guy came along. The dresses she’d worn had been cute, summery and flirty. She’d ordered glasses of white wine and smiled at random people.

Her friend Beck said it wasn’t the dresses or the wine or the smiles that had failed her, but the fact that she’d brought books to the bar each time. Marsie’s excuse—sitting in a bar alone is boring—didn’t stop her friend from laughing until she cried. “It takes a lot of guts for a guy to approach a woman and, you know, not be a creep. Sit there with a book and the hurdle’s even bigger. And you probably brought something like Dataclysm or another book about statistics and math with you.”

She and Beck had been friends for a long time.

Marsie hadn’t gone back to bars after that. She could read and drink wine at home. It was quieter there, and the wine was both cheaper and better quality.

But her experience with dating—or trying to date—was cringeworthy, and only Beck knew the whole story. She repeated a different bland lie for Jason. “I do get out beyond these office walls. But if you want to meet people, it’s best to keep your options open. The machine-gun approach, rather than a rifle.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you knew much about guns.” He took a step into her office, and she moved her body to keep her computer screen covered. Just because he knew what site she was on didn’t mean she wanted him to read her profile. Or, God, see her profile pic. Beck had said the picture was cute, but Marsie thought it looked like a fake her. An online her. A her that looked like fun.

Marsie had been accused of many things in her life, but fun wasn’t one of them.

“Only what I read.” As a teenager, she’d done some target shooting with friends, but she hadn’t shot a gun since high school.

“Based on what I know about you, I think you’d be more of an assassin than a gunner.” He took another step closer. A couple more steps and he’d be parallel with the two chairs in her office. If he got in the room that far, he might sit down. And if Jason sat down, he would want to chat. And when Jason wanted to chat, he chatted for a long time.

She didn’t have time for that.

“You’re the type of woman who would pick a stakeout position and hold it until mission accomplished,” he said, too close to one of those chairs for her comfort. “I’ll bet you date the same way. The work before the pleasure.”

Instead of protesting, her mind caught on what he’d said. “You think dating is a pleasure?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“No.” Honesty raced ahead of sense in her mind to answer his question.

“No?” His shock sounded genuine as he pulled out a chair so that he could sit. “What about it isn’t fun?”

“Well, I haven’t had much experience with online dating. Maybe it will get fun.” That was only a half-lie. She didn’t have much experience with online dating, but more the dating part than the online. She’d signed up for the site over a year ago. Last New Year’s Day, to be exact. She’d paid for six months of use and gotten a grand total of one terrible date out of it. Of course, at the time she’d signed up, at Beck’s urging, she had been in the middle of a big project at work. Snapping a selfie and posting an edited version of her résumé had been all she had time for.

This go-round, Marsie was doing it right. She and Beck had done a couple of photo shoots. She’d crafted the perfect profile and A/B tested a couple versions on Beck’s husband and his friends. More importantly, she’d scheduled time in her week for the next six months to meet people. Not a rigid schedule—it would be too much to expect that all men were available for a drink on Wednesdays after work. She’d set aside some Sundays for coffee, some Wednesdays for a drink and even a couple Tuesday lunchtimes.

Flexibility was the name of the game.

He waved a hand through the air. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see. Even if you don’t meet someone you want to sleep with, the world is full of interesting people and most of the single ones are doing online dating these days.”

“Including you.”

“So you think I’m interesting.” He leaned forward, his bicep flexing against the soft-looking cotton of his shirt as he rested an elbow on the edge of her desk.

None of the men Marsie had dated, including Richard, who she’d dated and lived with for three years before they’d both realized they made better colleagues than lovers, had enticed her to lean into his space like she wanted to lean into Jason’s right now. She took a deep, calming breath instead, concentrating on the air as it soothed the suddenly alert nerve endings on her skin.

And she definitely wasn’t tilting toward him in her chair. She was folding her arms on her desk and resting on her forearms. There was a difference.

“Yes, you are interesting,” she said slowly. “And you do good work. I appreciate that.”

He laughed. “Well, I’ve been put in my place, haven’t I?”

“I didn’t...” She stumbled over her apology, retreating from the space with her body as well as with her words. What hadn’t she meant? And why was she apologizing? She and Jason worked at the same company; appreciating his work was a high compliment. What did she know about his hobbies or reading habits or anything else that would make him interesting?

Though her mind raced from wanting to know more about him to how she could learn such things. He’d said he recognized the colors of the online dating site, and he admitted to using it. She could find him on there. Then at least she’d know what interesting things he did outside of work.

No. She discarded that thought right away. One of the worst parts of online dating had been seeing all the people who’d looked at her profile and then not initiated a conversation. Of course, she’d looked at profiles and not initiated anything, too, so she knew she wasn’t supposed to take the silence personally, but knowing was not the same as doing.

“I respect you as a worker,” she said finally. Respect you as a worker. God, no wonder Richard had said she couldn’t be passionate about anything that didn’t involve equations.

Besides, Jason wasn’t shy. If he noticed that she’d looked at his profile, there was no way he would remain silent. He’d come in her office and sit in the chair, put his elbows on her desk...and she would want to lean right back into him.

Silly. He wasn’t what she was looking for. Too short for one. Maybe an inch taller than her five-ten, and she wanted kisses that gave her a kink in her neck.

“Worker, huh.” Disappointment came and went over his face, too quickly for Marsie to register why what she’d said was insulting. Then he smiled at her and the back of her neck tingled. “You’re right,” he said. “Coming from you, that is a high compliment. And I’m flattered. Thank you.”

She cocked her head, examining his face for the teasing she was used to seeing in his eyes. When she didn’t find any, she reached up and rubbed the spot on her hairline where she could feel him, even though he was sitting on the other side of her desk. “You’re welcome.”

“So, do I get to see your profile?” There was the teasing sparkle that she was used to.