It was the coldest day of the year. The temperature dropped to -10° F that night. This was a second date, which I was only going on because I couldn’t get a read if I liked the guy or not.
On the first date, the conversation was good, drinks turned into dinner, then we stayed out to play pool at a local bar. The kiss at the end was awkward, but sometimes that’s just how they are. He followed up and asked me out again, so why not?
The day of our second date, he told me that he went out to get lunch and it was so cold that he couldn’t feel his hands. I suggested he find gloves before that night. The plan was to meet at the train, but I saw him walking past my house as I was letting my dog out and invited him inside for a minute. This guy showed up wearing a North Face fleece and a scarf. On the coldest day of the year!
We took the train downtown to a speakeasy and sat near the fire. We had a drink, warmed up a bit, then he apologized and said he couldn’t even think when we met because he was so cold. There wasn’t much food at the speakeasy, so I suggested we go somewhere else for dinner. He said he looked up two Mexican restaurants in the area; one being over the bridge (that I was not going to walk across in these freezing temperatures), so I agreed to go with the other one. He walked us back to the train station only to find a closed Mexican restaurant.
I had originally suggested a pub that was next to the speakeasy, so we trekked through the cold back to where we came from. Somehow this date continues to get worse. At the pub, you ordered via a QR code on the table. We each took out our phones and ordered what we wanted. When it came time to pay he said he couldn’t place his order because he didn’t have Apple Pay. Guess it was time to set it up! He tried and failed, so I ended up paying for him as well. We ate, walked back to the station, and boarded the train.
It was so cold that only a few people were on the train that night. It starts moving and stalls in the middle of nowhere. Then there’s an announcement that they’re sorry for the delay, but we’ll be on our way shortly. We get going again and the power is lost. My date suggests that we’ll have to get off the train and walk back. I said there’s no way that’s happening, it’s freezing outside and dark. The conductor comes by to tell us we’re stuck and that they’re sending an engineer to fix the problem. Again, my date says it’s time to walk back to the station, but the conductor confirms that’s not an option because this is a live railroad: the T, Amtrak, and commuter rail all run that way. An engineer boards the train and sends us back to the station where we came from.
At this point I’m just sitting on my phone as my date banters with the conductor. They said when we got back to the station they’d have another train on standby to drop us off at our stop. Since there were only six passengers on board, it would go directly to the stops we requested. My date suggested that we take an Uber, but I said I would rather not wait in the cold again. We took the train home, he walked me to my house, and after a quick hug, I ran inside and he ran home. There was no third date.
Single at 30 