Page 5 of Experiments in Offline Dating

Simone: I honestly can’t wait.

Maya: Me neither.

Simone: Do you think we’ll be able to understand their accents?

Maya: Here’s hopin’!

Simone: Okay, so now that we’ve got all of that straight, and we’re all geared up about the next episodes, why don’t you introduce this episode?

Maya: Oh yeah. So, stay tuned to hear about my triple-date dinner with Derryl the Disgusted.

Simone: Oh no.

Maya: Yeah. Unfortunately, Derryl learned a lot more than he bargained for about cats with enlarged “megacolons.”

Simone: What? Why! I thought it was a dinner date.

Maya: It was.

Simone: Why the hell didn’t your parents stop you?

Maya: Well, all the adults left the room to get dessert for fifteen minutes, in what I suspect was a ploy to leave us alone together, and I got nervous. Anyway, stay tuned to hear more about Derryl’s horrifying journey after these messages from Dragon Hoard book box. Have I mentioned how obsessed I am?

Simone: Maya, please. You never shut up about it.

Maya: Yeah, Derryl wasn’t a big fan either. Turns out steamy dragon rider smut isn’t for everyone.

Simone: Your loss, Derryl.

Maya: We’ll be back in sixty seconds, and in the meantime, start writing in with your dating advice. We love to get it, and we may read it out, or even ask you to join us on the show.

Simone: Yeah. Please. Maya needs all the help she can get.

Maya: I’ll take anything at this point.

Simone: Those rescue cats are going to eat you alive one day.

Maya: It would be a mercy.

Chapter 2 An Experiment in Flirting with Brad Pitt

“Mom. Please don’t cry. I’m only going for a month. And I’ll call all the time. It’ll be okay.” I grabbed my mom’s hand and pulled her into a rare hug. It had been years since we were truly apart for any real length of time. Maybe I hadn’t thought enough about how my parents would cope without me.

“Oh, get a hold of yourself, Maya. I’m not crying, for goodness’ sake. I got hair spray in my eye this morning. Did you hear that, Morty? Unbelievable.”

“Love you too, Mom. Okay, so you have my instructions and feeding charts, right? And you have all of Ursula’s meds? Be careful—she’s a biter. Don’t forget to make sure the electric litter boxes are cleaning themselves daily, otherwise Azriel will poop in your shoes. And in the junk drawer is a box of those gooey liver treat things, just in case—”

“All right, all right. We’ve got it, pumpkin. Don’t worry. All the cats will be perfectly fine.” Dad pulled me in for yet another hug. “You just go and have fun. And who knows—maybe next time we see you, you’ll be bringing a nice young man home to meet us.”

“You hear that, God?” Mom held her hands out and looked up to the neon lights.

“Guys, this is about the show, not the matchmaking. You do remember that I do this for a living, don’t you? Because if you’re too senile to remember Kingfisher’s nose drops, then I’m canceling everything and going straight home.”

“Oh, hush. We’re just saying . . . you know . . . be open to it, that’s all.”

“Ma, the statistical likelihood of a random matchmaker finding me a life partner in only four weeks at thirty-eight years old after three hundred and twenty-two unsuccessful first dates is less than six-point-four percent. That’s out of a hundred. I already showed you the figures.”

“Not everything in life can be understood with charts and graphs, cupcake.”