WHO: Ariadne and Dionysus WHEN: Thursday evening WHERE: A casual restaurant/bar WHAT: Swooping husbands swooping in WARNINGS: TBA
Dating was hard. Ariadne knew this, and at university she'd told almost every one of her friends this as they'd struggled, and she told her clients this, when they struggled. But oh, it was so much easier to tell other people truths about the world than it was to accept them herself, sometimes.
She shouldn't have slept with him on the second date, maybe. Ariadne rolled her wine glass against the table and thought about last Saturday, and Charlie drawing her in for a kiss, how she'd melting into it. Maybe she shouldn't have, but if she had a do-over, she knew she would have slept with him again. It was so nice to be kissed, to be touched, to feel wanted.
It was nicer to be loved, but the kind of love she wanted was so hard to find, and a girl took what she could get in this noisy, hectic, desperate, lonely, horny old world. Ariadne had powered through quite a lot of Tinder since she'd arrived in New York. There'd been some good sex, and quite a lot of average sex, and some very disappointing sex, and a couple of attempts at relationships that, looking back, were probably just attempts on both their parts to have someone warm to curl up to through the winter.
She'd like Charlie though. Even though he was a bit selfish, she had to cut him some slack - a lot of mortals were. He was young! Men in their twenties were self involved! There wasn't anything necessarily wrong with that and oh for the sake of all things good and proper, listen to her! Ariadne downed a rather large mouthful of merlot (she'd ordered wine while waiting for him to show up, and was very glad that she had) and gave herself a serious telling off.
Stop mooning over selfish young men with dreams in their eyes, girl.
If she'd been talking to a friend, she might have said you're worth more than that. But the thing was, Ariadne didn't date this type of man because she thought that was all she was worth, it was nothing so deep as that. She knew her worth. There was just something... irresistible about a man who promised way more than he could ever deliver.
Charlie definitely wasn't coming. She thought about it for a few moments, and then: You're definitely not coming, are you? she messaged him.
She was down to her last mouthful of wine when he messaged back. sorry..... just don't see us happening.
Ariadne had to admit she was surprised. She was fully expecting to be ghosted.
That was life, eh? She set her phone face down on the table and tipped her head back, draining the last of her glass, eyes closed. If nothing else came from tonight (she supposed) at least she'd had a nice glass of merlot.