Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Kennedy swiped right and matched with a handsome twenty-six-year-old named Cody. The tags on his dating profile claimed he worked out, looked for a relationship, had no kids but wanted them someday. He didn’t smoke, earned a college education, and even shared her political and spiritual affiliations. What’s more was that he lived five miles away in the next town over from her. He had to be the most local match she found so far who met enough of her personal criteria as well!

Kennedy didn’t hesitate to answer the dating app’s prompt encouraging her to start a chat, but she stared into the blank text box that followed, rallying herself to break the ice in a clever way. She skimmed over his bio and pictures again, looking for something interesting to build a conversation from.

“You clean up nice!” She started her message, referring to a photo he uploaded of himself in a suit. “What was the occasion?”

A few hours later, a banner across her phone indicated Cody sent her two messages!

“Why, thank you! The occasion was my friend’s wedding last year.” She read his response to her first move. “I was his best man. You look great too, by the way.”

 “Did you really live in Hawaii?” His second message asked, referring to the two-truths-and-a-lie prompt she answered on her profile.

She thanked him for the compliment, ending it with a smiling emoji, and followed up with confirming that her statement about living in Hawaii was true, explaining that her Dad was stationed at Pearl Harbor when she was a kid. Cody was impressed and added that he had relatives living in Hawaii. Their conversation continued with more travel stories and generalities about themselves and their family. Within a few hours, Cody seemed smitten with her humor, intelligence, and personality as it came through their messages and she liked that he seemed independent, stable, and ambitious. Deeper conversations came about what they were looking for on the dating app to which they both explained that the other had many of the qualities they wanted and admired in another person.

“Do you want to try meeting up tomorrow?” She asked. Kennedy was happy and hopeful in receiving Cody’s affirmation. Feeling little else to do than to test in the real world how much potential a relationship with him had, she thought she’d suggest meeting downtown. “Maybe get lunch and hang out at the park?”

“I love the city park!” He professed. They traded cell phone numbers so they could stay in touch more easily and solidify their plans for the next day. She would have to work for at least few hours and the weather forecast looked mostly cloudy at best, but she really wanted to take the time for him.

She messaged him good morning the following day, starting some small talk and flirty banter for a while before she logged onto her computer for work. She took a small break around ten-thirty to send him a text to confirm lunch plans.

“Do you want to go to Sonic or Dairy Queen?” A response wasn’t immediate but she was still expectant of meeting him today. She busied herself in more of her computer work and around a half-hour later, started primping for her possible date. She picked an outfit she hoped was a good mix of business casual and active styles. She loved dressing up but also wanted to be prepared for eating outside and walking in the park. She eventually decided on wearing a tank top blouse, blue jean capris, sneakers, and her hair in a ponytail. When Kennedy was satisfied with her look, she sent him another text.

“The weather looks even better for some time outside!” She observed, for during the last hour she watched the gray clouds of the morning break for blue skies through her window above her laptop screen, which only to her antsy attention on her last batch of computer work. “Do you still want to do lunch?” Again, nothing immediate.

She busied herself with a little more computer work. Finishing that, she moved on to pass time with some chores and playing on her phone. Hungry, she ate a light snack so she wouldn’t spoil lunch if she went out. Another couple hours drug by and Cody still hadn’t responded. He told her earlier that he had an appointment in the morning but was available the rest of the day. What happened?

The end of the workday came without any further correspondence from Cody. Kennedy quietly resigned to the only possibility of what happened: she was ghosted. She was actually no stranger to the receiving end of it, but they usually disappeared sometime after the first date. She was disappointed, but not overly distraught. She was actually a little amused. Cody was a first or even an odd personal record for her! Could she be ghosted any quicker? She couldn’t say she was stood up, but at the very least she was dressed up with nowhere to go.

As comfort though, she did two things: She ordered her a large ice cream for dinner and thought of those inspirational quotes from social media saying something to the effect of there always being someone prettier and better than you. She thought that for “ghosting” as the millennial’s version of being dumped (possibly on that basis), the culture so sensitive to respecting or hurting feelings doesn’t seem to offer a lot of proper closure on an ending relationship for those very same concerns. The intended silver linings to those quotes were that nobody is ever going to be you, or that everybody has something different, or you have to find the one guy that doesn’t care. Granted, Kennedy was already pretty content in her life without a romantic relationship. She just wanted to mingle. If a relationship that wasn’t ghosted out after a month came from it, that would just be miraculous icing on the cake. Deleting Cody’s number and messages, she would mingle more soon.