An hour before our first date, I finally heard from the man I was supposed to meet. He had fallen asleep, missed his alarm, and wanted to know if we could make it 7:30 instead of seven. I had an hour's drive ahead of me. The proposed adjustment was thirty minutes; the silence before it had taken considerably longer.
We'd been texting for two weeks. I was 26, he was 30, and the conversation had felt promising enough to arrange dinner at a restaurant midway between us. Nothing elaborate. Just the point where a good exchange of messages becomes two people sitting across a table, finding out whether any of it works in person.
Because of the drive, I'd sent a confirmation text a few hours beforehand. I wasn't asking him to submit a travel itinerary. I wanted to know whether I should start getting ready and leave. He didn't answer, so I stayed in that awkward space where the evening is technically booked but you can't actually begin it.
At first, there was still time. Then there was less time, and still no reply. By the time his apology arrived, I had spent part of the evening waiting for permission to start the evening. He said he'd completely knocked out and hadn't heard his alarm. Could we push dinner back half an hour?
I told him I was staying home. Once that was clear, he asked for a rain check. I didn't want one. Whatever interest had carried us through the previous two weeks wasn't carrying me toward another attempt at dinner, and I sent a brief message saying I was good and wishing him well.
His response was that I was something else. So we did, eventually, get to the part where you learn a little more about the person you've been texting. We just managed it without the restaurant.
I wasn't completely settled afterward. Part of me wished I'd left him an opening, something along the lines of making it up to me later. Falling asleep is hardly an exotic offense. I've taken naps. It was possible he'd done exactly what he said, and that I'd closed the door on someone over one badly timed sleep.
The other part of me kept coming back to the drive. A delay feels different when you're waiting to find out whether to commit an hour to getting there. He wasn't working long hours, and he had weekends off. That didn't prove his explanation was false, but it was why I hadn't immediately pictured someone collapsing after a punishing shift. I couldn't tell whether this was an ordinary mishap or an excuse. I did know I'd been left organizing my evening around an unanswered text.
I had wanted to meet him before all this. That was the irritating part: the date had seemed worth the trip. Now I was at home with his last message and the belated thought of a warmer reply I could have sent. There was no dinner to reconsider, only a first impression made entirely before we'd met.
