Chapter 13

Wyatt

She had a kid with her. It was a bit of a shock to me, but that wasn’t why I took off so quickly. I had been looking for the woman from the app for almost twenty minutes and just as I ran into the blonde from the club, I realized there was a woman standing by the escalator who was looking around like she was meeting someone.

But when I got to the escalator, the woman had gone. It was a relief that we got to talk to each other on the app because I really did want to meet her. Even if it was just for curiosity, and we never took things any further, I just had to meet her and talk to her.

Then just as quickly as the messaging app had opened up, it seemed to crash. I saw the notification that Dakota was typing a message, but then the app went blank and froze again. I hoped she hadn’t sent a message suggesting where to meet up or something like that.

“Ren, you’re app is stupid,” I said before he had time to say anything.

“Hey, I’m working on fixing the errors with your account. It’s just taking time.”

“I was able to message her a little bit, but then the whole thing crashed again,” I said with a large amount of frustration in my voice.

“I’m working as fast as I can.”

“Fix it, Ren. I’m about a day away from just throwing my damn phone in the water and giving up on this whole thing. What I don’t get is how the app has so many positive reviews?”

“Oh, we bought most of those.” Ren laughed nervously.

“What? You’re kidding me!”

“Yes, I’m kidding. Lighten up there, Wyatt. Your program is just messed up because you and the girl had so many things that you matched up on.”

Speaking of matching up on everything, I had been wondering a lot about that. It seemed odd to me that we could be a 100% match. Some of the questions were geared toward men, and I assumed some were toward women. How exactly was the match percentage figured if the questions weren’t the same?

“How does the program figure out the match percentage? Does it mean she answered her questions the same as I did? I’m not sure I want to date a woman who is exactly like me.” I laughed, but it was totally the truth.

“It’s a complex algorithm. It’s not based on your specific answers being the same. The program looks at the meaning of each answer and pairs it up with the ideal meanings in the matching person.”

“So you can program all that complex stuff, but you can’t figure out how to let me talk to this girl?”

It seemed ridiculous that his app prevented most communication between the two people. I hardly knew anything about this girl, but she was getting built up in my head as the perfect woman. I wanted to meet her so bad that I had been rude to the real life woman that I was supposed to have a date with the next day.

“It’s artificial intelligence; it’s complex.”

“So you don’t know?” I laughed and goaded him on.

“I know how it works; it’s just hard to explain to someone else who doesn’t even know how to change a spark plug in a vehicle.”

“Oh, that was low!”

Ren had brought up the story I told in our investment club a few weeks before. I had a rental car and drove to Pennsylvania, but while on the interstate, the car broke down. The tow service was taking forever, so I decided to take a look at the car and see if there was anything particular that I could tell was wrong. When I opened the hood, there seemed to be a screw sticking out of the engine, and I thought it must have gotten lodged in there. So I pulled it.

The screw turned out to be a spark plug, and I looked like a total idiot when the roadside assistance guy showed up. I was telling the story to our group to show the importance of pulling in specialists when you were thinking of buying heavily into a new market. Someone who specializes in a market can explain the important aspects to you in much less time than it would take you to research it.

“Sorry.” He laughed unapologetically. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got some news on everything.”

I still wasn’t convinced that the dating app was going to take over my bank accounts if I didn’t keep following its directions, but there was a small piece of me that worried it would. I resigned myself to going with the flow and seeing what the next direction was. I’d just follow it and go from there.

When sleep finally came that night, it wasn’t peaceful. There was way too much going on in my life, and I needed some calmness. I also really needed to get laid. Luckily, Merrick and I had that date the next day with the cute girls from the club. I needed a stress reliever and spending some time with that blonde was the perfect solution. I was a little worried that she had a kid, though, but I assumed she’d have a sitter, and we could still enjoy our night out on the town.

The next day, I arrived at Merrick’s house right at 7:00 p.m. I knew he wouldn’t be ready, and I wasn’t going to risk being late for our date. Merrick was on time and responsible when we were at work, but going out on dates wasn’t his strong suit, or at least, it wasn’t when we were together.

“Let’s get you looking handsome, so you can sweep that redhead off her feet,” I joked.

“Come on; it doesn’t matter. She’s going to fall for this the second she’s got her eyes on me.”

He slid his hands up and down his body, and I had to laugh. Merrick was a decent looking guy, but it was his high level of confidence that seemed to attract the women. Sometimes, I thought they actually enjoyed his piggish nature. He knew how to give a compliment, though, and even the toughest of women would succumb to his flattery. I wasn’t exactly sure how he was going about his date with the redhead, though since she had been pretty tough with him on the times I had seen the two of them together.

“You know I can wear anything. This doesn’t have to be a big thing,” Merrick said.

I grabbed a pair of jeans for him, black shoes, and a black polo shirt. He actually had a very nice wardrobe although even his jeans were extraordinarily expensive. I had on a similar pair of jeans that were about 1/10th the price and a blue button up shirt.

To my surprise, I felt the rumbling of being nervous. I knew we had great chemistry, and I couldn’t wait to get a chance to talk to her again but couldn’t figure out why the hell I was actually feeling nervous. It wasn’t like me at all. But it also wasn’t normal for me to be seeing a woman for the third time and just now going on a date. The whole situation was different, and I figured that was probably why I was nervous.

“You look like you’re sweating,” I said to Merrick as the taxi pulled up to the dance studio.

“I think that’s you who are sweating. You better keep your jacket on; I bet you already have pit stains.” He laughed.

It was me who was sweating. I couldn’t stop myself. The more I tried to calm myself down, the more I felt like a teenage boy who was about to meet his prom date. None of this was normal for me. I didn’t sweat before a date and didn’t get nervous before a date. I was the laid back guy who the girls loved. I was the guy with a hilarious sense of humor, and that was what got me through my nights like this, but I didn’t feel like myself at all.

We climbed the stairs which didn’t help my sweating at all. I made Merrick wait for a minute while I caught my breath before we went into the dance studio. It was unusual to pick girls up from a place of work, but then again the redhead did seem pretty unusual.

“You made it,” the redhead said as she opened the door and hugged Merrick.

All his uptight attitude melted away pretty quickly, and a smile flashed across his face. There was something going on with him too, not just me; I could tell by the permanent smile that crossed his face the second we stepping into the dance studio.

“Emma, this is my friend Wyatt. Wyatt, this is Emma and her friend …” Merrick pointed toward the blonde for her to speak up and say her name.

“I’m Dakota,” she said, looking at me suspiciously.

“Like Dakota from the Date tonight App?” I asked in total confusion.

“Are you Wyatt from the Date tonight app? she asked with a similar look of puzzlement on her face.

What the hell was going on? I felt like two worlds had collided, and I couldn’t make sense of it all. I stood there looking at this woman and trying to resolve my internal distress over the idea that she wasn’t just the woman from the club, she was the woman from the dating app as well.

“Yes,” I barely muttered as I stood there in my shock. “And you’re Dakota?”

“Yes.”

I realized I was actually shaking my head back and forth as I looked at her. How had this all happened? How had she become the Dating App girl? It was too much to figure out all at one time while we were standing in the entryway to the dance studio, so I just followed everyone else as we went down the stairs and on our way for our date.

Dakota and I didn’t talk. I assumed she was going through a similar state of denial and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. But maybe she knew? Maybe the app had told her who I was and all of our running into each other had been part of what the app was telling her to do?

Did the app tell her to come grab my arm on that late night outside the bar? Did the app tell her to come up to me at the dance club and flirt with me? Was it the app that told her not to call me when I gave her my card? And what about the boy she had with her at FAO Schwartz. She didn’t say she had a son at all in her profile, had she lied about that?

My brain was naturally a skeptical part of me. The skeptical side of me was what got me through my day to day work life. By analyzing stocks and companies, I made better decisions than my peers when it came to new investments. On the other hand, I wasn’t always skeptical of women; this was a new feeling for me.

It seemed beyond absurd that the woman I had met in the club was the same one from the Dating App. My mind was spinning with how on earth this had been possible. Was it just a set of extremely random coincidences? I had no idea.

“Are you freaking out as much as I am?” Dakota asked as we climbed into the back of a cab.

“Confused more than freaking out.”

“I know. I’m just playing everything over and over in my head. Either that app is really, really good, or this was some sort of dating once in a lifetime thing.” She laughed.

“Or maybe you were stalking me the whole time,” I said with a smirk.

It was the wrong thing to say. I could tell almost instantly after the words left my mouth that I shouldn’t have said them. Her expression went from fun and light-hearted to totally serious, and it made my heart sink into my stomach.

. Dakota had on a stunning red dress with red hi-heels. Her legs were demurely crossed and leaning toward me up until I uttered those words. Then she turned toward the window, and although she laughed the comment off, I could tell I had changed the mood for the night.

When our taxi pulled up to the restaurant, it was clear that Merrick and Emma were getting along just fine. He already had his arm wrapped around her waist as they walked into the entrance of the high-priced joint. I, on the other hand, simply held the door open and watched as Dakota’s beautifully round ass walked right past me and into the restaurant. She didn’t wait for me, and she didn’t look back at me; she had become uninterested in me.

“Can I take your jacket?” I offered as we waited for our table.

“Sure, unless you’re afraid my surveillance equipment might fall out.”

I helped her with her jacket and stood in silence as I replayed the last few weeks of activities. When had I first seen her? I thought back to that night at Elite when Merrick went to flirt with Emma, and she yelled at him. Dakota had been there. I didn’t know her at all, and she didn’t know me, but I remember her seductive curves as she stood next to Emma.

There was no way she was a stalker. Merrick had randomly come up to Emma and that hadn’t even gone very well at all. I didn’t even talk to Dakota that night, and she certainly hadn’t tried to talk to me. I concluded that she could not have been stalking me all along, at least not at that point.

“Should we just start from this moment and not worry about how we got here?” I whispered into her ear as I pulled her chair out to sit down.

“I guess,” she said sternly.

“Because to be honest, I don’t care how we got here. I’m just damn happy I’ve got the chance to take you on a date.”

My lips didn’t touch her next, but they were close enough that I felt her energy. Her body paused at my words, and I watched her open her neck to give me a better view of the delicate skin in that area. I would have kissed her had we known each other better.

“I guess we can try,” she said with a little less edge.

I took my seat next to her, and everything else in the restaurant went blank. All I cared about was her and getting to know her. All I wanted to do was sit there and talk to her. Touch her. Kiss her. My desire to be near her was more overpowering than my skepticism, and that turned out to be just fine.

“You two look so serious,” Merrick said as he leaned in and kissed Emma.

She was laughing, and it was clear the two of them had natural connections, despite their initial arguing. I had felt like Dakota and I had a similar connection when we first met, but that stupid game and the stories Ren had told me had utterly confused my perspective of the situation.

Ren, that was it; I needed to talk with him. He would be able to calm my concerns about this whole thing. Only he would know if this had been some sort of dating hack by a woman who was trying to get to my money or a glitched out dating game.

“I’ll be right back,” I said as I excused myself to make my quick phone call.

My head was confused with all the information I was trying to analyze. I just needed some clarity. A sign, something that could help me focus and actually enjoy my date.

“Ren, I’m on a date with the girl from the app,” I said as soon as his phone picked up.

“Okay.”

“No, you don’t get it. The game was still playing. I didn’t meet her because it connected us. I met her on a date with Merrick.”

Ren started to laugh, and I wasn’t sure he had actually heard what I said. It didn’t seem all that funny to me at the moment.

“The Date Tonight app connected you. It doesn’t overtly tell you to call her up and set up a date. It connects you like you would normally connect with a woman.”

“But, I ran into her at a club before I even joined the app.”

“Okay, so you were even more destined to meet.”

“So you’re sure she didn’t hack the game and set this all up. You know I’ve had women try to pretend they were pregnant to get to my money. Anything is possible.”

Ren continued to laugh at my paranoia.

“No, I don’t think that’s what happened. What does she say about it?”

“I haven’t really talked to her yet.”

“For Christ Sake, maybe actually talk to the woman of your dreams if you have her sitting there and stop worrying about how it happened.”

“Okay.” I laughed.” I guess this was what I wanted.

“Wyatt, the app isn’t evil. I’m sorry if I made it sound like that. It’s flawed for sure, and I’m working to fix it. But if the app connected you two with one hundred percent certainty, I’d go with it. This girl might be the one. You know, the one woman who you’ll match up with perfectly. If I found that, I damn well wouldn’t be on the phone with you talking about it. I’d be talking to the girl.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m going back in there right now.”

Ren was right. I had to just spend time with Dakota, and that would help me figure out what the truth was. I had always been good at reading people, and this situation was no different. I’d just treat her like I did any new woman in my life and see how things unfolded.

“Did you get clearance to talk to me from the secret service or something?” Dakota joked as I came back to the table.

“I’m cleared to proceed.” I laughed.

It was a relief that she had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I cringed at how I had treated her when we first met.

“Good, because I have people clearing your house out of all your belongings right now as we sit here,” she said with a playful smile.

“You’re a feisty one. I like that.”

“Oh, I’m serious.”

“It’s okay; we can just go back to your place after dinner then,” I joked.