SWNOVELS Caught on Camera: Chapter 5
“WHAT THE HELL am I supposed to wear?” I ask Maggie. I toss a dress onto my bed, then a sweater and a stack of scarves. “It’s literally freezing outside. There’s snow in the forecast, and I’m going on a date. This is hopeless.”
“Okay, it’s not hopeless,” Maggie says, and she rifles through a row of hangers with a determined look on her face. “What about—no, that’s not practical. Neither is that. Okay. This.” She pulls down a navy-blue cashmere sweater and hands it to me. “With leggings, your big puffy jacket, and a beanie.”
“I’m going to look like a blueberry.”
“At least you’ll be a cute blueberry who is warm.” She pats my head affectionately and tugs me to my feet. “We have to leave in twenty minutes. Is Matthew meeting us there?”
“Yeah.” I grab a pair of fleece-lined leggings and high socks. “I don’t want him to know where I live in case he turns out to be a psychopath.”
“Sweetie, you need to stop watching those true crime shows. One day you’re not going to want to go outside anymore, and I’ll be sad. Who will I eat lunch with?”
“Your adoring boyfriend. What do we think? Sports bra or sexy bra?”
“Sports bra. You don’t want to give it all away on the first date.”
I fling a pair of underwear at her head, and the purple thong whizzes past her ear. “You literally slept with Aiden four hours after meeting him.”
“I’m not sure we even made it that long.” Maggie bites her bottom lip and grins. Color splashes on her cheeks. “I think it was only two and a half hours.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you? I’m going with sexy. Even if he is a dud, we can go back to his place after and have a little fun,” I say.
“There’s my sex-positive girl,” she says, walking out of the closet and knocking her knuckles against the door. “Get changed.”
I pull off my sweatpants and T-shirt, changing them out with my winter weather outfit. I braid my hair in two long pigtails and throw a beanie on my head, remembering to grab my mittens and clear fanny pack.
I’m excited to meet Matthew in person and get to know him better. We’ve spent the last two weeks talking, and he seems like a good guy. He lives a couple blocks away and has a golden retriever, Daisy, he walks up to the National Mall when the weather is nice. He told me he’s not sure what he’s looking for, but he enjoys talking to me.
A cheesy line, but it’s not fair to judge him; I’m not sure what I’m looking for either.
Something serious, maybe? Someone to have fun with without any labels? I’m standing on a tightrope, awkwardly teetering between the desire to commit to someone, just someone, and enjoying what life can be like as a single woman.
I have a good job and a good set of friends. I know what I like and I have my fun. I also know I’m young and I don’t need to decide anything about the future right now, but the nights I spend in my apartment alone have shifted from empowering self-fulfillment to loneliness. There’s an ache in my chest when I imagine the thousands of people out there happy, living with their person and content as a clam. I’m not sure how to combat that longing of missing out on something important that everyone else around me seems to have.
I guess by putting myself out there and going on dates to football games with men I meet online.
“Ready,” I call out. I grab the lucky pair of white sneakers I wear on game days and hustle down the hall. “I just need to find my jacket. Where’s Aiden?”
“He got tied up at the hospital and is meeting us there.” Maggie grins and tugs on my hair. “You look hot, Lace.”
“Like a hot blueberry.” I tie my shoes and grab my keys. “I feel like today is going to be a good day.”
“Do you think the Titans are going to win?”
“No. I mean, yes, I do. I can’t explain it, but it feels like something big is going to happen.”
“Sounds like someone is excited about their date. Maybe Matthew is going to be the love of your life,” she says.
I don’t have the heart to tell her I don’t think it has to do with Matthew at all.
“LOOK.” Maggie points at the pixelated screen across the field from us. “It’s kiss cam time. Oh, I love when they do this. It’s so cute to see so many people who love each other.”
“What if the camera people get it wrong?” I ask. “What if the couple they show are brother and sister? Second cousins? What if someone is getting dumped at the game? Things could get weird.”
She laughs and turns to Aiden, no doubt asking him to do something that will get them on the big screen. Maybe he’ll hold up his shirt and flash the stadium. Do a stupid dance where everyone points and laughs. There’s nothing Maggie could ask for that he wouldn’t give her.
I glance over at Matthew, my date, who’s standing next to me. His hands are shoved in the pockets of his jeans and his eyes are narrowed on the railing in front of us. He looks miserable.
“Hey,” I say. I nudge his shoulder with mine in an act of single people solidarity. “Are you having a good time?”
“Yeah,” he answers, but it doesn’t sound convincing. “It’s just colder than I thought it was going to be.”
“The winter games can be brutal. Do you want my jacket? That drink warmed me up.”
The mulled wine we grabbed in between the first and second quarter at the bar in the lounge downstairs soaked into my bloodstream and gradually heated me from the inside out. It’s a liquid protectant to the frigid bite of cold in the air, and it feels like I’ve stepped into a furnace. Transported myself to someplace tropical, with a mountain of blankets resting on my chest.
“Nah.” He rocks back on his feet and exhales. I see his breath, and he shivers. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” I shrug and look up at the jumbotron, smiling as the camera pans to an older couple with matching tracksuits underneath their down coats. They wave, their hands clasped together and wrinkles on their skin. “Look how cute they are.”
“Kiss cams are so fucking stupid,” Matthew declares. “Half the PDA is probably fake. Orchestrated by a P.R. team to give someone good press. And almost all of these relationships will end in a breakup.”
I’ve never met someone with so much disdain for in-game entertainment before, and I frown.
“They’re just average people, Matthew. I like it. It’s fun to see so many generations and so many kinds of love. Look.” I gesture to the screen. “Those kids are probably on a first date, too. Oh. And there’s a dad with his daughter.”
I smile at the man holding up his little girl Lion King style, joy clear on her face as he peppers her rosy cheeks with kisses. I’m about to mention the group of fraternity guys who are shown next, the men who lift their beer as a protest to love and chug back their drinks, when my own face appears.
I squint, and I wonder if I’m staring in a very large, very confusing mirror. I lift my hand and the me on the screen—the one that’s two stories high and large enough to see from Dulles Airport nearly thirty miles away—lifts their hand as well.
“Lacey.” Maggie shakes my shoulders. “That’s you.”
“Oh,” I say, and I wave. “Cool.”
There’s an awkward pause where I glance at Matthew. He looks at me like he just ate a lemon, and, if I blinked, I would’ve missed the way he inches not closer, but away from me, as if begging for distance between us.
Hurt barrels into me. I know this man isn’t my soulmate. I’m never going to see him again after today, but a kiss is harmless. It doesn’t mean anything, a quick peck to appease the guy behind the camera who’s in apparent control of our destiny.
“Fucking weird,” Matthew grumbles again, unaffected by the growing sound of boos around us. “Conformist pawns.”
I want the ground to swallow me whole.
I shake my head and try to convey to the cameraman there’s clearly not going to be any kissing happening in section 101, row A, but he doesn’t get the hint. The lens lingers on us and magnifies us for seventy thousand people to see.
To see and make fun of.
Sad violin music starts, and I’m close to catapulting myself onto the field with an imaginary medical event just to get away from here. If I clutch my chest and hold my breath, they’ll be forced to put me on a stretcher, right? Maybe I can slip someone a fifty-dollar bill to push me to the ground.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, and I grab Maggie’s hand. “What is going on?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers back. “Do you want me to kiss you? Hell, Aiden could. We can share him.”
“You’re a good friend,” I say, and my voice wobbles and cracks around the edges the longer I stare at my pathetic face. “This is embarrassing. It’s like those dreams you have where you show up to school with no clothes on and everyone makes fun of you.”
“They’re not making fun of you, Lace. They’re making fun of Matthew.”
I look at him again, with his set jaw and the wrinkles on his forehead. He’s firm in his anti-kiss cam stance, and I have to hand it to him: I’ve never seen someone so hellbent to rebel against a stadium game.
It feels like hours pass before the camera finally leaves us alone, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of seconds. It flashes through the crowd and finds another couple to show. This pair makes up for the enthusiasm we were lacking.
They use their tongues and hands, a generous display of public affection that turns so raunchy so quickly, whoever is in charge of the entertainment pulls the cord on the camera entirely, and a blank screen winks back at us.
“Thank god,” I mumble. I turn to face my date and I put my hands on my hips. “Uh, that was awkward.”
“I told you I think they’re dumb. Why would I kiss you in front of all these people?” he says. “Just because everyone else did?”
“I don’t know, Matthew, because it’s a joke? Because clearly the more you antagonize the person running this game, the more they’re going to poke fun at you? Because that was mortifying? You could’ve kissed my cheek. Or my hand. Outright rejecting me on national television hurts.”
“I’m not rejecting you,” Matthew argues. He sighs and steps toward me. His hands cup my cheeks and his palms are ice cold on my skin. When he smiles, hope bubbles inside me. Maybe we can salvage this, a first date that’s not a total disaster. “I just don’t like to be told what to do. Especially by someone getting paid minimum wage to hold a camera. What a stupid fucking job. Imagine doing that for a living.”
“Oh.” I nod, as if that’s a perfectly logical explanation for humiliating me. A fuck you to the working class from the finance bro. “Okay.”
A fresh wave of boos work their way through the stadium. I pry his hands off my face and glance at the field, expecting to find a Titans player hurt, but the timeout is still going. The team is huddled in a tight circle with their heads bowed and their arms draped around each other’s shoulders.
Instead, I see us projected on the screen again, my mouth popped open and Matthew holding up his middle fingers. His hands are so red, I’m afraid he might be starting to get frostbite.
“Just kiss her, bro,” someone calls out.
“You suck,” a kid eight rows back yells.
“She deserves better,” a woman two sections over hollers.
“Dump his ass!” a girl shrieks, and there’s a round of applause at her drunken battle cry.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I need to use the restroom.”
I weave through the row of people, ignoring their apologies and the embarrassment of the last five minutes. I run up the stairs and out onto the stadium concourse. I fly past the snack stand that makes delicious cinnamon sugar pretzels. I dodge a beer cart and a tower of cotton candy. I don’t stop running until I lock myself in a bathroom stall and bury my face in my hands.