Back On The Dating Game
By: Reija Sillanpaa
Tags: Short Story, Short Stories And Poems, Fiction, Short Fiction, Short Read

Back On The Dating Game

Photo by Haydn Golden on Unsplash

“An active, young at heart, theatre and wine loving widower…” Lennard paused, read what he had typed and pressed delete. “Utter rubbish.” He took a sip of whisky and then downed the whole glass.

For days he had been perusing the profiles of singles on Silver Singles, practising what to write for his own profile. But now everything he wrote felt rubbish and forced. He filled his whisky glass again — he needed some Dutch courage if he was going to get this done.

This was all his kids’ fault. They had ambushed him when they had taken him out for a Father’s Day meal. It had clearly been a planned intervention. He had noticed Peter and Sarah exchanging significant looks. Finally, Peter had plucked up the courage to approach the subject.

“Dad, isn’t it about time you put yourself back out there?” Peter had said.

“What do you mean ‘put myself out there’?” he had asked. He hadn’t had the faintest idea what Peter meant.

“You know,” Peter glanced over at his sister for support but she kept her eyes fixed on her plate. Peter cleared his throat and continued, “I, we… we think that you should get out there, you know get back into the game… and find yourself some company.”

“Why should I?” he asked, furious, “It has only been…”

“Five years since mum died,” Sarah completed the sentence looking up from her plate at last. She stopped pushing the peas around her plate. Lennard had never seen her look so serious. “We know you still miss mum but she wouldn’t want you to spent the rest of your life alone.”

“You don’t know what she would have wanted. You know nothing about relationships. You are too dedicated to your work to find someone, and you” he waved his fork at Peter, “change women more often that most people change their underpants. Neither of you know what it is like to lose someone. Someone you spent almost 40 years with.”

He had banged his fork on the table and stormed to the toilets. The lump in his throat blocked the free airflow and his eyes burnt. He had hid in the toilets until his breath had flown unobstructed again. He had apologised to his kids when he returned to the table. Neither of them had mentioned him ‘putting himself out there again.’

But the idea had lodged itself in his brain. First, he had laughed at the idea. He was alone, but he wasn’t lonely. Or so he had thought until the lockdown began. A virus had spread from country to country, and now governments around the globe had told vulnerable people to stay at home for twelve weeks. He fell into that category because of his diabetes. It had already been several weeks since he had seen another living person. Unless he counted the food delivery man who dropped the food at the gate and waved to Lennard from his van. It wasn’t until the isolation began that he admitted he was lonely.

But how could he reach out to someone new when the memory of Leila still opened the floodgates? He gulped down the whisky and poured another one. He realised he’d nearly had half a bottle already. He shrugged. What did it matter? He was alone with no one to judge. Leila wouldn’t have judged. She would have understood.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked her picture that he kept on his desk. He reached out for it and ran his fingers gently over her smiling face. He remembered that smile so well. She had smiled exactly like that when they first met. He had just started work as a graphic designer for an advertising agency and met her at the company Christmas party. The memory still made him cringe.

He had spotted her soon after arriving. She was talking with a small group of people and Lennard observed her as he drank his beer and pretended to listen to the conversation about best fonts to catch attention. She wore a sparkling silver mini dress and dangerously high heels, which didn’t mask the fact that she was tiny. Even with the suicidal heals, she was inches shorter than the others. Lennard imagined how easy it would be to pick her up and carry her out of the restaurant.

That’s when she caught him staring. She smiled. He blushed. She noticed it and waved at him, laughing. Embarrassed, he gulped his beer down only for it to go down the wrong way and send him into a coughing fit. When he had recovered enough, he noticed that she had disappeared. He hadn’t seen her again until much later in the evening.

“I’d be careful drinking that if I were you,” a voice behind him said. “I don’t know much first aid.”

He turned around and found her queuing for a drink. Her voice trickled with suppressed laughter and her eyes glittered with mischief. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder and he caught himself thinking how light she would feel in his arms if he were to scoop her up. The heat began to spread from the neck up and his mouth went dry.

Say something, he berated himself. She brushed past him to the bar and ordered a drink. He was still digging for something witty to say when she turned around with a fresh drink in her hand. He had to say something quick.

“What’s your name?” he blurted out. He could think of dozens of clever comments when writing adverts and now, faced with a beautiful woman, the best thing he could come up with was to ask her name.

“Leila,” she said, “And you are?”

“Lennard, my name’s Lennard.” What’s wrong with me? I sound like a total idiot. He needed to say something, quick before she left. “I’ve not seen you before.”

Still nothing witty, but at least it was better than repeating your name.

“I work at the head office.” Her eyes became a deeper shade of blue as she smiled. “You must be based at the new Soho office.”

“Yeah, I just joined the graphic design team last week. Are you a secretary or…?” he noticed straight away that he had said something wrong. Her smiled faded from her eyes, changing their shade again. Before Lennard could say anything else, Alan from the graphic team pushed himself between them.

“You got to come, the boss wants everyone from the team in a picture,” he said pulling Lennard away.

He hadn’t seen Leila again that evening, and it wasn’t until after Christmas holidays that he learnt his mistake.

The first Monday back they had a meeting for everyone in the ad team from both offices, and as Lennard walked into the conference room, he saw Leila. And she wasn’t there to make coffee or to take notes. She was there leading the ad team from the head office. Lennard opened his briefcase on the table and wished he could disappear inside it. He didn’t get to speak to her until lunch break, when he mustered his courage and approached her at the buffet table.

“Hi, we don’t normally get lunch here,” he opened the conversation. Honestly, what was it about this woman that made him lose his wits? She cocked her head slightly and raised her eyebrows. The shade of blue in her eyes changed again. Lennard learnt over the years that the shade adapted to her motions. He collected himself and continued, “I wanted to apologise for…”

“No need, I’m used to it,” she said, the smile and the deeper shade he had first encountered at the Christmas party had returned to her eyes. “I’m used to it. Most men still have a hard time understanding that women can do more than write shorthand notes and serve coffee.”

“But I never…” Lennard faltered. He didn’t want Leila to think he was one of those old-fashioned men. “Is there any way I can make up for my stereotyping?”

He tinkled all over as Leila cocked her head again, pursing her lips, considering.

“You can take me for a dinner,” she said and Lennard insides looped. “I might be a progressive woman at the work place but I’m still happy to let a man buy me dinner.” She had laughed and her eyes turned such a deep shade of blue that they seemed almost as black as her irises. Lennard had laughed with her and they had arranged a dinner date for Friday.

That had been 39 years ago. They had married two years later and five years later they had had the twins, Peter and Sarah. And, apart from the normal occasional arguments, they had been happy until seven years ago when Leila had found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with cancer.

“But at least it is a good type of cancer. Breast cancer has an 85% survival rate when caught early,” the young doctor had told them. Two years later Lennard had wanted to strangle the doctor with his good cancer diagnosis when they learnt that the cancer had metastasised to the bones.

The following six months had been the hardest in Lennard’s life. To watch the woman he loved waste away. To see her become weaker and suffer excruciating pain day after day. He would have done anything to swap places with her.

“Why could it not have been me?” he now asked her picture. He had asked that question countless times. When she first got sick, when the cancer spread to her bones, when she lay on her bed during her last moments, when they buried her. And again and again during the years he had spent adjusting to a life without her.

All those years Lennard had insisted he was not lonely. But now, isolated on his own, he realised he missed company. He missed Leila more than anything, but also he had to admit he missed waking up next to someone, he missed seeing another plate on the dinner table, he missed discussing what to watch on the TV and sharing a glass of wine in the garden. Most of all, he missed the touch of another human being.

“What do you think? Should I do this Silver Singles thing?” he asked Leila’s picture. He knew what she would say. In fact, she had insisted talking about it during one of their last conversations.

“When I am gone…” Her breathing had been so laboured by then that she could only utter a few words at a time. “… I don’t want you to become cocooned in the house,” she had said. Lennard could almost hear her now, urging him to write his bio for the dating website.

“Fine, how can I say no when you and the kids are ganging up on me?” he said and typed: ‘An active, wine and theatre-loving widowed man in his mid-sixties, looking for the right person to spend his time with’.

Not letting doubts to creep in, he pressed send. “Are you happy now?” he asked Leila’s picture.

He imagined her cocking her head and raising her eyebrows, teasing. But then she would smile and the shade of her eyes deepen in approval. He pressed his lips on Leila’s. The pain would never go away, but he was ready to end the self-imposed isolation of his heart.

His computer binged to indicate he had a message. Someone had responded to his profile. He placed Leila’s picture back on the desk and smiled at her. He could have sworn that her eyes sparkled deeper blue.

Who knew, perhaps by the time they lifted this lockdown he might have a few dates lined up. He picked up the whisky glass, saluted and clicked open the message.