Chapter 6

Dakota

I only had two choices to answer Wyatt with when we matched. I either had to choose to move things to the next step or unmatch with him; it seemed like a very drastic choice for me to have to make so early in the matching process. But I didn’t want to unmatch with the guy, so I asked if he wanted to play the game.

“I don’t know what this stupid app means by ‘play the game,’ I can’t click on anything,” I yelled out to Emma from my vocal studio.

She was the one that put me on the stupid app; surely she would know what the game was and how to play it. I really wished she would have explained things more to me before I started matching with people. Now the app was frozen and all it said was:

---The Game Has Started---

I couldn’t click anywhere, and I had no other options to even play this game that the app was talking about. Maybe trying to find a man on a phone app wasn’t the best way for me to find someone?

I didn’t have that hard of a time finding men. I certainly could find one anytime we went out dancing. But I wanted a higher caliber of man. I wanted a guy that I couldn’t think about being anywhere else but my bed at night.

When I was young, I thought about the perfect man for me and knew that he would have to love helping others. It was something I loved to do and why I ended up finding vocal coaching as a career.

At first, I was giving free vocal lessons to people who I had met while I was a waitress. I would overhear them talking about their upcoming auditions, and I used my high school training to help them. I had taken vocal lessons for four years through a program at my high school, and some of my tips had been helpful for people.

Soon, I had customers coming in and telling me that my tips had helped them get a part. They were so enthusiastic and supportive that these clients started to refer their friends to me, and soon I had to start charging people because I was taking time off of my waitressing job to teach singing. Before long, I was in my studio at Emma’s dance studio, and I was able to start working full-time in my dream profession.

So I knew the power of volunteering and helping others, and it was something I strongly looked for in men. It was an easy question to ask but hard to ask while you were in a dance club. Often I didn’t get around to talking about charity work until I had already slept with a guy. Then I’d find out they hated volunteering or didn’t think they should have to since they weren’t making enough money. Inevitably, I had a very hard time finding a man in New York who was willing to volunteer.

“How would I know what this app is doing?” Emma said as she grabbed my phone.

“You mean you don’t know how this thing works? Why would you sign me up for a dating app that you didn’t know how to work?”

“I just heard it was really good. I wasn’t about to sign myself up as a test subject. It’s much better if you try it out first and let me know.”

That was exactly like Emma to do something like that to me. She was the wild and adventurous one of the two of us, yet she always made me try things out first; it made zero sense. Emma also knew that I wouldn’t have signed up for such a weird app on my own without her doing it for me.

“Well, it’s broken. I had a guy that was a one hundred percent match. It was that guy with the weird quote on his page. I didn’t see that he volunteered with the elderly helping them with their money. But the app only gave me the option to start a game, and then it froze on this page.”

Emma analyzed the phone like she knew what was going on, but I could tell that she had no idea. I restarted to app. I even tried deleting it and reinstalling it but nothing happened; it was perpetually stuck on that page.

“I think you broke it.” She laughed.

“Stop! This is serious, Emma; we were a one hundred percent match. What if he’s the one? What if I’m meant to find him, and we are going to fall in love.”

She dramatically rolled her eyes at me, and then we both started laughing. Even I knew I sounded like a lovesick teenager at the idea I would find true love from some silly dating app that matched me up with someone after only a few questions.

“What was that guy’s name that you matched up with?”

“I think it was Wyatt. Or Wayne or something like that. I’m not really sure.”

I lied. I knew his name was Wyatt. I had spent a good twenty minutes looking through his profile and reading all about him. He liked to run, volunteered with the elderly, and worked in the financial field. He was health conscious, politically aware, and seemed very well rounded. Although, nothing that I read on his profile made me fall in love with the guy. He seemed just like a lot of the men in New York that I met out in the bars, but he volunteered, and I loved that.

“Did you do all the question things?” Emma asked as she held onto my phone.

“Yeah, I did like a dozen of them. They were pretty intense. Hopefully, this app isn’t corrupted because a hacker sure could get a lot of personal information about the users.”

“Let’s Google the App and see what other people say about the Game.”

We both fell onto the couch in the lobby as she started the search for answers. It was weird, though; there wasn’t anything specifically saying what the game part of the dating app was. A lot of reviews were saying how great the app was, even YouTube videos that show people matching up with others and starting the Game part, but then the video ended with the same frozen screen that I had. No one seemed to have posted any videos with what happened after the frozen screen.

“This is really weird, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Yeah, in this day and age, everyone’s spoiling all the fun from these things. But no one has anything posted; it’s really odd.”

“I guess there’s nothing else you can do for now.”

“I’ve got to go see my grandmother and check in on her; I’m just going leave it, and maybe it will reset itself or something like that.”

“Are we going dancing tonight?”

“No, I need a break,” I said in total exhaustion.

It was true; I hadn’t slept much all weekend and had a full list of clients for vocal lessons during the week. I was going to have to stick to working and sleeping until the end of the week, and that was for sure. It was amazing to me how totally exhausted I felt from teaching all day. You wouldn’t think that I would get so tired from listening and helping others, but it took mental strength to listen so intently to singing. I was almost always totally exhausted when the week finally wrapped up.

“Friday then?”

“Sure, but just going to Sin. I don’t want to worry about the guys; I just want to dance.”

“Deal,” I’ll worry about the guys. Emma laughed. “I’ll keep them all for myself bwahaha.”

As I grabbed my coat and hugged Emma, I took a moment to hold onto her a little tighter than normal. She was a good friend. A very good friend to me. I didn’t take that for granted at all. In fact, I tried not to take anyone in my life for granted; that was why I was taking the train out to New Jersey to visit my grandmother in her nursing home.

My Grandma Lou was the only family I had left. Both my parents had passed away very young, and she had been the reason I felt comfortable moving out to New York when I turned 18-years-old. She couldn’t offer me a place to live or anything like that since she was in a nursing home, but I felt good knowing that she was nearby.

My father had passed away from liver disease when I was very young and my mother from a hiking accident only a few years after I moved to New York. I thought I wanted to move to New York to be on Broadway or some crazy dream like that but quickly learned that I just wanted to be part of New York.

To me, the city was more like an experience than it was just simply a place to live. And I loved my experience so far. My time had been tough in the beginning, but there was always work, and I always had a couch to sleep on from friends I worked with. Now, as I built my career up, I wasn’t financially secure by any means, but I had my own small apartment, and I could buy food each morning, so that was enough for me. I had never had the dream of being rich; it just wasn’t something that I aspired to be.

I aspired to be many other things in my life, but rich wasn’t one of them. My grandma Lou on the other hand, she had all the money in the world and lately seemed like she was trying to get rid of it. It made me so sad when she tried to hand me money when I came to visit her. I didn’t want her money. I didn’t come to see her for the gifts or for her to give me money; I came to see her because she was my family, and I loved her.

“Grandma Lou, I found this dress, and I just had to buy it. Doesn’t it remind you of my mother?” I said as I twirled around in the blue flower dress I found at the local thrift shop.

As I sat back in the comfort arm chair of my Grandmother’s room, I instantly knew why she loved her nursing home so much. It felt just as comfortable as her old house had for all the years that she had lived there.

“Oh, honey, you look so much like her. Yes, it’s beautiful.”

“I’ve missed you,” I said as I wrapped my arms tight around her.

It was true. I missed having her warm hugs, and whenever I could get out to see her, it was the first thing I wanted. Since losing my parents, Grandma Lou was the only person left in my family. She was the only person on earth that could hug me, and I felt like everything was going to be just fine.

“You too my dear, but I don’t want you coming out more than once a month. It’s just too long of a journey.”

Grandma Lou was the sweetest person I knew, and I always felt like I was recharging my batteries when I came to see her. It was like a little piece of my parents was still around. Even though Grandma Lou was from my mother’s side of the family, she knew my father very well and loved him like we all did. We often spent our time talking about my parents and what a great loss it was to the world that they were gone. But I didn’t want to talk about them on that day; I wanted to talk about love.

“Grandma, I’ll come out as often as I’d like, and you can’t stop me,” I teased her. “You are my family, and I like to spend time with you.”

“Very true. We are family, and I can’t stop you from coming. I just don’t want you taking time out of your busy life to be here with boring old me. Here, let me give you some money for your journey.”

I held my hand out and closed my eyes as I shook my head and protested what she was doing. As much as I didn’t want to take the money, I knew she would keep pushing the subject until I agreed. It was just easier to actually agree on some visits, so we didn’t have to fight about it. We couldn’t talk about anything else until she felt better and gave me some money.

“I’ll put it toward my rent when I get home. Thank you, but you know you don’t have to give me money, right. I come here to see you, not to get money.”

“I know dear.”

“Grandma, I wanted to ask you about Grandpa. How did you know he was the right guy?”

“Oh, have you met a boy. Oh, I’m so excited. Can you bring him here to meet me? I’d love to meet him. I was going to give your information to this nice boy who helped me with my investing, but if you’ve already found someone, I won’t tell him about you. I’m sure if you think he’s a nice man and you love him, he’s the right one. You’re a very smart lady,” she babbled on with excitement.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hadn’t actually met anyone, and I was no closer to finding love than I had been on the hundreds of previous visits to her. Grandma Lou wanted me to find the love like she had with my grandpa; I felt it and knew that was the kind of love I wanted too.

“Did you know Grandpa was the one right away when you met him?”

“Oh, no dear. I thought he was a pampas kid who didn’t respect his elders.” She laughed.

“What happened?”

“He was arguing with a teacher of mine in the local grocery store. I’m not sure what they were even arguing about, but I remember thinking that he was rude even to talk to a teacher in such a way.”

We laughed so much that my side started to hurt. That was what it was like every time I visited my Grandma.

“How did you two finally start going out?”

“Oh, he asked my girlfriend out, and she told him no.” Grandma Lou laughed as I saw the memories flood back to her.

“Wow that seems horrible.”

“No, I saw the whole thing. My friend was very mean to him, and I felt bad for him. I told him I would go see the film with him, and he agreed to the idea. We were just going to go as friends. I really didn’t feel that spark like what you young girls are always looking for. He was just a sad boy who had been turned down for a date, and I was just a girl who wanted to see a film.”

“Then one thing led to another, and you married the guy.”

She smiled from ear to ear at her memories of my grandpa. That was the look I was searching for. Those were the feelings I wanted to have when I was in a nursing home talking to my own granddaughter some day. I wanted to have such a romantic story about how I met my husband that even my own grandchildren would be impressed.

For the rest of the evening, we talked, played games, and laughed like we always did when we spent time together. My grandma was almost 90 years old; I knew I wasn’t going to have her for much longer. Every time I saw her, it could be the last time, and I hated that feeling. I hated leaving and knowing I might not see her again anytime soon. But it was dark out by then, and I needed to head home. As much as I loved New York, the subway alone at night still wasn’t a safe place for a young single woman to be.

“I’ll come back next week,” I promised, even though I knew she didn’t want me coming every week.

“Four weeks. You better listen to me,” she threatened. “Don’t you come back next week! It’s too expensive, and you need to have a life.”

“I love you.”

“I love you as far as my heart will stretch,” she said as we hugged one last time.

I wasn’t necessarily afraid of the subway at night I always made sure to travel the route that went to the financial district and then crossed back toward my apartment on foot. It probably wasn’t all that much safer, but I knew the area well, and I had taken that subway hundreds of times from my grandma’s nursing home, so it was the way I still liked to travel.

Luckily, there were at least a dozen people on my subway car as I headed into town. There was safety in numbers; that was how I looked at it. I didn’t like to have headphones in while on the subway because it made it hard to hear if someone was sneaking up on you, but once I got into the subway car I had full view of everyone around me, and I quickly put my headphones in to separate myself from everyone and not have to talk to people. It was the worst when people wanted you to chat with them on the subway.

Before I knew it, I was at my stop and quickly scurrying off the subway and toward the stairs that led up to the street where I felt more comfortable. The empty feeling of the station made the dirt and garbage stand out as I made my way up to the street. At least on the street I knew where all the hotels with doormen were; I knew the restaurants that were open late, and I had my walking path down to a science to get home safely.

But as I was walking out of the subway car, I noticed a man in a sweatshirt that turned and started to follow me. It was odd to me because he had looked like he was waiting to get on the subway and then turned to follow me instead of stepping into the car.

My pulse quickened at the idea something might be going wrong, but I kept myself calm and didn’t panic. There was no need to panic. My eyes focused on the door in front of me, and then the next one and the next one. The breeze gave me shivers as I felt it push me forward. I was simply walking out of the subway, and perhaps this guy forgot something and needed to go get it. There were times that I had been waiting for the subway and turned around to grab a coat or something like that from my house. It was fine. I was fine. Nothing was going to happen to me.

The problem as I saw it was that everyone else seemed to have walked faster than me and were already out of the subway and off on their own journey home. I was left hustling up the stairs with this hooded man shortly behind me. When I finally reached the street, I desperately looked around to see if there was anyone walking. There wasn’t.

My biggest fear about New York City was that I would be attacked by a man late at night. I had lived in New York for several years, but it was still a fear I held close, and it reemerged anytime I was alone on the streets, and there weren’t a lot of other people around.

Instead of going toward my house, I turned and walked toward the bar that was just two blocks away. I could see the lights and kept myself focused, there were people out front and that brought a calm to my unusually nervous stomach. But the man was still right there, I felt his footsteps getting closer. Would he have followed me if I had turned the other way toward my house? I wasn’t sure. But all I knew was that he was very close to me, only two steps behind me, and that was too close for my comfort. Usually, at night, men didn’t walk that close to women. Men knew it made us uncomfortable, so they either stayed farther back or hurried past us. But this guy seemed content to terrify me by keeping equal step with me and walking with me in the direction of the bar.

“Hey, do you know what time it is?” I said halfway out of breath as I walked up to the first man I saw standing in front of the club.

I playfully wrapped my arm around his like I knew him and waited for the man in the sweatshirt to pass me by. He did pass me by. He didn’t bother to look at me and didn’t seem to even care that I had stopped to talk to some complete stranger in front of a bar.

“It’s 11:15,” the man said with a grin as he looked down at my hand on his arm.

“Oh, sorry. Thanks,” I said as I took off in the other direction.

“That’s it?” I heard him say as I walked away.

Yep, that was it. I quickly walked to my apartment, up the stairs, and locked the door behind me. Since my nerves were on full alert, I took the time to look through each closet in my apartment just to make sure there wasn’t some stranger hiding there and ready to jump on me.

Normally I would have changed out of my clothes and put on some sweatpants, but my paranoia was still strong and I didn’t want to undress. As I finally put my head on my pillow, I was still very uncertain about sleeping. I had been scared, genuinely scared, but it had been nothing. The man had probably been walking back to his own apartment or something. I felt silly and scared all at the same time.

Out of pure boredom, and a total inability to sleep, I clicked on the Date Tonight app to see if it was still frozen. It wasn’t!

There were three new questionnaires waiting for me to fill out. I got to work clicking through them and finished them all within thirty minutes. It was weird some of the questions the app was asking, but it was weirder to me that the answers to those questions would have anything to do with a game I might or might not be playing on there.

I answered questions about my family, my favorite places to visit, my favorite coffee shop, and even the places I liked to go dancing. Whatever this game was, it sure did seem like a big waste of time. I made a mental note to dress super cute when Emma and I went dancing on Friday. If this app weren’t going to actually connect me with a decent guy, maybe I would start making a little more of an effort on my own.

Every time we went to Sin, I enjoyed it because we danced and didn’t look at the guys, but perhaps it was time that I looked around and saw who else enjoyed dancing. It seemed like a good first place to start. If I enjoyed dancing like a maniac, and so did he, then certainly we would at least have that in common.