Chapter 1: Easy To Read
There’s no graceful way to enter a booth in a restaurant. You only really have two options: you can squat-walk through three side lunges or you can immediately introduce your thighs to the vinyl before scooching to your designated spot like a child on a church pew. I opted for the latter, but my dress was so short that my skin formed some kind of suction against the upholstery that required an audible squeak sound to remove. Great. Hot.
When I looked up, Rylo had his hands folded on the shiny hardwood like a choir boy in the aforementioned metaphor, already waiting with direct eye contact. There were only two of us, of course, but the hostess seated us at a table that could fit a small family because it was eleven-thirty on a Thursday and they’d given up hope that any such customer would fill that place.
“So,” he said.
I paused, waiting for more, but that appeared to be both the beginning and end of his thought. Encapsulated within that single syllable was the confirmation that, yes, after weeks of idly messaging each other on Hinge, we were finally meeting at the Chili’s off I-75 for the $14 Lunch Special. Perhaps there is no eloquent way to put such a monumental realization into words, or perhaps a chain restaurant before noon is too holy a temple to shatter with sound.
“So,” I repeated. Not in the smirking, effortlessly-flirty way, but in the straight-faced, unimpressed way. Normally I excelled in small talk, but one of my pre-requisites was that I needed to care. With Rylo, I had known this wasn't going to work out from the minute he showed up. It didn’t help that he was thirty minutes early, announced with a text that started with, “hiii” and ended with “I can circle the block if you aren’t ready yet…”
At the time, I’d been halfway through straightening my hair, which meant that all the parts you couldn’t see looked perfect and all the parts you could see looked horrible. Which sucked, because I had really wanted to look cute. And not even for him, but for me. For fun. For the sake of having somewhere to go. I hadn’t had a reason to put makeup on in six months. It felt like a personal affront that Rylo wasn’t giving me enough time to get ready, even though he had no idea that he was interrupting my reconciliation with my flat iron. I might have taken him up on the “circle the block” offer if I hadn’t heard the front door swing open.
“Who might this be?” My dad’s voice boomed. I heard his voice in two layers: a crisp half from downstairs, and the same words, more faraway, through the window.
“Dad!” I set the hair straightener down so quickly that I heard it hiss against the countertop. I yanked the cord from the outlet. My phone screen was still lit on the counter, open to my texts. I’ll come out — hold on, I typed frantically. Stay in the car.
Claire had picked out my outfit on Facetime with all the ambition of a friend who doesn’t have to wear the clothes. She had selected a low-cut gingham dress — 1950s housewife by way of Urban Outfitters. There was no time to change. I did, however, swap the recommended wedge sandals for sneakers, just in case I had to make a run for it. But Rylo — was that even his real name? — must not have gotten my text, because when I reached the bottom of the staircase, I heard two voices in the driveway, and one of them was new.
I paused before the door. Deep breath. You can go on ONE date. And then I stepped into the doorway like a daughter revealing herself at prom.
“What’s his deal?” The new voice was asking. He stood beside an orange Subaru.
“Oh, that’s Kelvin. It’s been, uh, a bit of a mess around here since Dorian,” My dad replied. He gestured to the life-size styrofoam camel in the front yard as if it had nothing to do with us and the hurricane had simply deposited him there. I decided to interrupt before this went any further.
“Hi. Rylo?”
It was immediately apparent I would not need to be running anywhere. The guy's right leg was encased, knee to toe, in a plastic boot.
“Georgia! Hi,” Rylo said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
The first thing I noticed about him — after the boot — was that he had delicate bones: a small skull with deep-set eyes; a narrow neck around which slung a shell necklace; one knobby hand hooked around the car door like a claw. His hair fell in annoyingly healthy coils across a dark forehead.
My eyes darted between the two of them. “Hopefully my dad didn’t bore you with the camel backstory.”
“Oh, I asked him to,” Rylo said. Every time he opened his mouth, he created a ripple of lines along the sides of his lips, which lent a sense of age to an otherwise-boyish face.
“I would never,” My dad replied. But thankfully, he had the social awareness to retreat.
Rylo opened the car door for me. Then I spent a painful ten seconds watching him limp around the front of the car to the driver’s side, boot dragging through gravel.
“Nice guy, your dad,” He said, throwing himself into the seat with obvious relief.
“He loves to talk about the house.” I watched him manually pick up his leg and put it on the brake pedal to start the car. “Can you, uh, drive with that thing?”
He looked down at the boot, shyly, like I’d wounded him enough to need it.
“Well, I made it here.”
“Just a bit early.”
“I thought it would be harder to operate a motor vehicle with a stress fracture but, alas, the trip was somehow twice as fast. I think I turned into Ironman from the knee down.”
He was the kind of guy that said alas.
“It's a stress fracture? How'd that happen?"
As he backed out of my driveway, he smiled enthusiastically into the rearview mirror. If he detected my lack of enthusiasm, he didn’t care. “It’s a crazy story. So I’m a photographer, and I fell out of a tree.”
When people say stuff like that, they know it makes no sense. They have given you a start point and an endpoint, and they are begging you to ask for the connecting information. I couldn’t bring myself to play along with it.
“Oh, cool,” I said. “When’s it coming off?”
“Three weeks. I’m going to throw a little party. I’m thinking of calling it A Funeral To Boot.”
“Naturally.” I had only known this man for a couple minutes, but it did make sense that he would rearrange his life around the fulfillment of a pun.
“You can come if you want,” He said. “Save me from just hanging out with my parents’ friends.”
Was he serious? Did he think we’d still be talking three whole enormous weeks from now? And that I’d be interested in meeting his mom’s coworker’s husband or whoever? I smirked. “Do you always invite your first dates to personal family events happening in the far future?”
To his credit, he only paused for a moment. “I wasn’t going to lead with this, but when you show up at the party, it’s just going to be a circle of girls I met on the internet.”
“Well, and your parents’ friends.”
“I’ve dated all of them too.”
“Glad we’re learning these things about each other at minute four.”
“Usually I wait until at least minute seven, but there’s just something about you.”
Through the whole thing, he’d kept up a remarkably bright smile. It unnerved me. The rest of the ride to Chili’s continued in a similar manner: Rylo being overly-upbeat; me hiding my annoyance behind light insults that could be construed as banter. We parked in a sort of strip mall and made our way down a charmingly pointless stone path that served as the hypotenuse of the sidewalk.
Standing, I noticed Rylo was tall. He was somehow just as long in his face as in his limbs, like a normal dude who had been stretched on Photoshop. Had he been this tall in the driveway? I’d been too stressed to notice. I suppose I should have remembered his height from Hinge, given that it is one of the few stats that they give you, but I hadn’t spent that much time reviewing his profile. I told Claire that I didn’t like knowing too much about a person before meeting them in real life. But I was starting to realize why it might have been helpful to send a couple more messages. For example, I could have come into this knowing he was an Alas guy, and shown up in the appropriate corset and puff-sleeves.
There were a few things that I had noticed before I swiped right, of course — age twenty, no college education, no drugs or alcohol, liberal, favorite book Project Hail Mary — but it would be embarrassing to admit I remembered these things, so I struggled to think of a conversation starter. After the anticlimactic exchange of smalltalk regarding the general atmosphere and ambiance of an empty Chili’s franchise, I launched into the only question I could think of.
“Is your name really Rylo?” I asked.
“Well, Ryan Lopez. But Rylo is shorter. And it sounds like a Sci Fi character.”
“It sounds like a gentrified neighborhood.”
“Culture erasure and everything,” He agreed. When I didn’t laugh, he added, “I’m Mexican, but I suck at Spanish.”
It was a generous answer. I didn’t really deserve it. He had been doing quite a good job of taking my snide comments and turning them into a banter, like a movie hero who just catches your fist when you punch. I was too envious of his wit to find it attractive.
“So, what’s the story behind your name?”
“I get that question a lot,” I said, which doesn’t answer it.
“Should I try to guess?”
“You won’t be able to.”
“Is it your parents’ favorite state?”
“No.”
“Your parents’ least favorite state.”
“If only.”
“Grandma’s name.”
“No.”
“Feminine version of George?”
“I told you, you won’t be able to guess it.”
“Is your family, by any chance, in the peach business?”
“I’m named after the font.” I said. “Georgia.”
“No shit.”
“My dad’s a typographer.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “You know, somebody who makes fonts.”
“That’s his actual job? He makes fonts? For a living?”
Well, not entirely. But I had always felt it was my duty to convince people that that was a real career. “Yeah.”
“And your mom allowed him to name you after a font?”
“She’s not around right now,” I blurted, even though it was not a logical addition to the exchange. I regretted it immediately. If a conversation carried a score, I immediately saw my lead drain away. Up until the Mom bomb, I’d been the cooler person at this sticky table. But suddenly we were both weird, sitting in our elevated booth, and neither of our feet touched the ground.
I knew the pity would take over his face. I’d seen it so many times in the past few months that I could even predict the way people would react: eyebrows raising, lips pinching, eyes widening. I had to look at the table to avoid seeing what it did to Rylo. I quickly added something lighter. “But no, she was fully on-board with the name. She’s a font person too. It’s a whole font family…”
When I looked up, he was still smiling, albeit dimmer. Absolutely bulletproof.
“Damn,” He said. “Georgia, the font girl. That’s super cool.”
It made sense that Rylo would genuinely appreciate that my parents had picked my name from a drop-down menu on Word. I smoothed my dress under my hands. II didn’t want to be here, but I shouldn’t be punishing him for that. It's probably only another ninety minutes. I focused, then, on filling the time before the waiter gave us our $28 check and let me escape our cayenne-dusted purgatory.
“Do you like the font?” He said. “Do you think it describes you?”
“Those are two very different questions.”
“Well, give me two answers, then.”
“I do like the font. It’s hard not to. It’s a classic. Like The Beatles. Or To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I feel like you’re giving the font a lot of credit, here.”
“I don’t think you can over-credit Georgia,” I said. “It’s one of the most instrumental typefaces in modern history.”
“Well, you probably have an objective view on this situation.”
“Do you know what it looks like?”
“I’m sitting right in front of it.”
I noticed that, when he smiled, I could see a hole between his top and bottom rows of teeth, where the canines tapered to a point. I had to stop myself from sticking one of the table’s complimentary toothpicks through it.
“You’ve probably seen it a thousand times and had no idea,” I continued, almost as punishment for him. “That’s the paradox of a good font: it works in so many places that it will never belong uniquely to anything or anyone. It’s emotionless. When you’re reading it, it becomes invisible. You’re not thinking about what it looks like. All you see are the words.”
He was quiet for a moment, and all that existed between us was the hum of Bruno Mars on KIISS FM crooning from speakers on the ceiling.
“The paradox of a good font,” He repeated, finally. Then, he flourished one hand and lowered his voice in faux-sincerity. “Do you see yourself like that? Emotionless? Invisible?”
It was only minute twenty-one. I felt my cheeks grow warm and I tapped them with my fingers, cold from the glass.
“No, obviously. But that was only one of your questions. To answer the other one: Yes, I do like it. I especially like it in italics.”
“Like, slanted?”
“Yeah. It’s one of the rare typefaces where the italic form is even more beautiful than the normal one. Which you’d never know from the selection menu! It’s such a surprise. Like cutting into a cake and finding that there’s filling.”
He gave me another toothpick smile, drumming his fingers against the table without sound. There was a lightness to all of his words, all of his movements. He reminded me of a bird.
“Okay, where would I have seen it?”
“Open any book. Nine times out of ten it’ll be printed in Georgia.”
“Oh yeah?” He opened the Chili’s menu and held it up before me.
“That’s, like, the opposite of a book.”
“I beg to differ. There’s a binding on this.” He pointed to GUILTLESS GRILL: All the flavor for 630 calories or less! “Is this it?”
“That’s Steelfish.”
“What about this one?” This time his finger hovered over Santa Fe Crispers Salad.
“Kalam.”
“Are those the font names? Are you naming the fonts? Or are those your siblings?”
“I’m an only child.”
“Do you seriously just know… every font?” He gestured to the wall beside us, which was printed with a mural that looked like the result of asking a European to build Florida on Photoshop. Two pixelated palm trees framed an archival photo of Daytona Beach while a dolphin jumped over a 3D model of the strip mall in which we currently sat. All of it was accented with random floating peppers, all of it clearly on different layers with shadows going different directions.
“What’s this one?” He pointed to a street sign.
“Highway Gothic.”
“And this one?” This time, he pointed to the Chili’s logo itself.
“Barmeno.”
“I know you could just be making up vaguely dystopian-sounding words to fool me, but I’m impressed.”
When the waiter appeared to ask if we’d had time to look at the menu, I lied and said that we were ready. I didn’t want her to look at us and think that we were having such an engaging conversation that we hadn’t had time to browse the fourteen laminated pages of vibrantly-photographed Tex Mex (beyond, of course, noting how many different typefaces it included). Luckily, the lunch special only had five different options, so choosing a spur-of-the-moment entree did not induce a panic on either side of the table. We rattled off our orders and she held out one hand for the menus.
“Actually, we’ll hold onto them,” Rylo said, smiling. “Thank you.”
“We can give her one, at least,” I said, raising mine.
He slapped my hand down. “No, keep it. You’ll need it.”
I waited until she’d walked away to raise my eyebrow at him.
“So, I may have lied about the circumstances of this date,” Rylo said, leaning across the table. “Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“Our mission.”
I must have wrinkled my nose.
“Wow, you’re perfect for it. Your expressions are stellar.”
“Excuse me?”
“You look so confused right now.”
“Yeah, because I am confused. This is authentic confusion.”
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a massive DSLR camera, the kind I used to use when I was in high school yearbook. Judging by the fact that the button labels had mostly worn off, it was just as old as the ones I’d used too.
“Hold up that napkin. Gotta set the white balance.”
“We’re taking pictures?” I did it anyway, for some reason, and I heard the shutter snap. “And we need the menus for that?”
“Dang, it’s yellow in here.” He fiddled with the buttons with an ease I’d never developed, even in my three years of shooting swim meets. “Okay, grab your menu and peek at me over the top of it with wide eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I picked up the menu to shield my face. This—whatever this was—would be over quicker if I cooperated. Probably.
“Halfway there. Just reveal your eyes.”
“Fine.” I widened my eyes cartoonishly for a moment.
I dropped the menu only when Rylo had pulled the camera away from his face. He swiveled the screen around, giving me a glimpse of the image. It had been a while since I’d seen a picture of myself from a high-quality camera. Even on the small screen greased with the smudge of his nose, I recognized the restaurant with sharper edges and tenfold saturation. There was an artful clutter in the chaos of Chili’s, when you were looking at such a small fraction of it. And half my face was hidden, so I looked decent.
“Not bad.”
“Here’s the game,” He said, smiling more from the compliment than I would have liked. “I have a list of six Getty image searches with a high search traffic and low image volume, all relating to restaurant interiors. In return for your permission to let me take pictures of you, I can post them on Getty, and I’ll give you all the profits.”
“Hold up, you’re a stock image photographer?” I was not one to belittle someone’s career in the creative field—after all, both of my parents worked niche jobs within it—but something about this knowledge cast the rest of Rylo into clarity. Of course this guy wasn’t going around taking images of weddings and graduations. He was taking pictures of women laughing with salads and dogs wearing party hats. And, somehow, falling out of trees while doing so.
“Indeed I am. And pretty big, too. Look up RyloPhoto on Getty later.”
“I don’t want to see myself on some random billboard two years from now.”
“On the contrary, I think you would look great up there.”
“Let’s see this list.”
He pulled up a sheet on his phone’s notes app.
Beautiful woman peeking over restaurant menu
Beautiful woman laughing in restaurant booth
Beautiful woman biting into mozzarella stick
Long cheese pull from mozzarella stick
Beautiful woman looking angrily at plate of mozzarella sticks
Mozzarella sticks forming a replica of Stonehenge
“Interesting,” I said, pushing it back to him. “So you think I’m beautiful.”
“‘Beautiful woman’ is one of the most popular stock image searches every single day.”
“I… wish I did not know that.”
“Are you not going to comment on the fact that this world is clearly in a mozzarella stick drought? There’s a huge demand for mozzarella stick pictures and a very low supply. The Stonehenge one? Gets thirty searches per year, average, but there are zero matches. That means guaranteed business, if we can fill that void. This is a gold mine. I’m telling you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“7 cents for every 100 downloads. Big money.”
I snorted into my drink, then surprised myself by actually laughing. I heard the snap of his shutter again—when had he even picked up the camera?—and a second later, he was showing me another picture behind the rule-of-thirds grid of his DSLR preview.
“Beautiful woman laughing in restaurant booth,” He said, smiling. “Another one off the list.”
This time, the image showed my eyes shut and mouth open in laughter, hair coated in a red sheen from the fluorescent chili pepper hanging above me. If I cast aside the fact that it looked like I was in a Chili’s commercial, it was one of the best pictures I’d ever seen of myself.
The waitress came back, then, with our food: I had ordered a quesadilla and he’d ordered two plates of mozzarella sticks. (How had I not noticed that that was weird before?) I reached my hand out for one, since I would inevitably need a prop. But his narrow hand sprang up to block me with surprising speed.
“Just so you know, these are all for me. I’ll let you pose with my mozzarella sticks, but no eating.”
“I thought we needed a cheese pull.”
“I will bite the mozzarella stick and hand it over to you to do the cheese pull.”
“Ew.”
He took a picture of me looking angry at him, which made me angrier, which prompted another picture.
“Your expressions are so good, girl.”
The end of that sentence sounded weird to me—was it too flirty? Was it forced? Or weirdly possessive? And I think Rylo noticed, because he quickly took it back.
“Sorry, I should say, font girl.”
“Don’t call—”
“Okay, good, look angry, but look angry in the direction of the mozzarella sticks. Just for, like, five seconds. And maybe push your hair over your shoulder. And move the salt and pepper away. And let me pour some of my water into your water so you don’t look like you drank all of it.”
“Ew, again.” I let him take the mandatory shot of Woman, looking angrily at plate of mozzarella sticks before I took a bite out of one.
“Hey—HEY! That is against the rules.”
“You better take pics of this cheese pull, then, or I’ll eat another one.”
He ducked behind the camera again, but I saw his smile underneath. He closed the eye that wasn’t behind the viewfinder, which meant I could see neither of his eyes. Leaving the beam of his eye contact made me feel oddly comfortable. I found it hard to look directly at him.
I was debating stealing another mozzarella stick when the waitress returned, creating a dark shadow over the sticky table.
“Excuse me, I’m going to have to ask you two to leave,” She said, removing any hint of the politeness that had seasoned our earlier interactions. “Taking professional images in this establishment is against the rules. I brought the check, and styrofoam containers, but you are going to have to leave immediately.”
I expected Rylo to look surprised, even angry, but he did not. “What a strange rule! I had no idea. Thank you for bringing these styrofoam containers.”
I stared at him, watching his easy smile. His words sounded too chipper for someone whose absurd plan had been foiled. Had he known this would happen? Had he planned to get kicked out of his own date?
I slid my quesadilla into one of the containers. It was 11:45 a.m. It wasn’t even a time of day that normal people eat lunch and we were already getting kicked out of a Chili’s. I didn’t even offer my debit card to Rylo, letting him pay for the $28 lunch deal on his own. Small price to pay for Getty content.
He chuckled as he packed his camera away. When we got up, I was reminded that he was wearing a boot, which somehow made the entire interaction more pathetic. He took quick steps with one foot and long, dragging steps with the other, and I had to carry the styrofoam containers because I was afraid he’d jostle them into a pulp. The entire staff of Chili’s watched us do it. As we passed the host stand, nobody even told us to have a nice day, which seemed difficult for them, as if they were holding it in their chests, straining with effort.
“That was incredible timing,” He laughed, ducking out of the dim vestibule and into the bright light of the parking lot. “We got all six images on the list before they caught on!”
“You knew they’d kick us out?”
“I figured they would eventually. There’s a sign on the door that says ‘no cameras allowed.’”
“Then why did we come here?”
“Because they have a great lunch deal!” He glanced at my frown as we made it to the car. “Don’t worry, I have a backup plan ready. I have a picnic blanket in the backseat. Let’s spread this out in the grass over there and eat our food while it’s still warm. If we sit close enough to the restaurant, we might even be able to hear the faint croon of overplayed pop hits.”
I glanced over to the grass he was referring to, which was less of a lawn and more of a green patch between the Chili’s parking lot and the freeway exit, the whole thing at a twenty degree incline. It was so ridiculously unglamorous. Rylo struck me as the kind of person who would find enjoyment in any situation. It reminded me of my mother. In fact, a lot of parts of his personality reminded me of my mother — notably the fact that he seemed so perceptive to my facial expressions. Georgia was widely known as the world’s most legible typeface. And my mom had suggested it as my name because, even as a baby, I’d been easy to read. I never told people that story, but Rylo hadn’t needed it. He had the same gift as my mother for seeing right through me. And just like that, I felt a ball roll off a table somewhere into freefall. I had mentioned her before, but I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking of her now.
“You know what,” I said. “I think I might just want to go home.”
His face fell into genuine disappointment for the first time. “Wait, is everything okay?”
Well, yeah. But that was it. It was just okay. I hadn’t gone on a date in over a year and I’d expected it to be romantic. I’d expected to feel beautiful, and not just because people were looking for it on iStock. I’d expected to feel like I was living someone else’s life, momentarily, like for ninety minutes I could leave Fort Lauderdale and fonts and be this hot, mysterious stranger. But instead, here I was, overdressed, uncomfortable, saying all the wrong things, holding moist styrofoam and thinking about my family anyway. And if my expressions were so visible, Rylo would be able to see on my face that I was upset. And then I’d have to explain that I hadn’t really wanted to go on this date at all, that I was never really going to give him a chance, and that I was only here because I was pushing myself to get out of the house even though I knew that nobody could force me to have fun these days, not even myself, and I couldn’t even be nice because I was too jealous of the effortless way he could smile and laugh in the midst of everything that felt so wrong about this and the entire ordeal only reminded me of the massive chasm between us.
Out loud, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize,” He said, his voice quieter. He opened the backseat of the car and put his food and camera in the back on top of a fluffy plaid picnic blanket I hadn’t noticed before. “Your loss, though. I was going to let you have another bite of mozzarella stick.”
I tried to force a laugh but it sounded so strained and weak that I promised myself I wouldn’t try again.
For the entire ride, we talked about pointless things—it’s going to be so hot next week, I also went to school in the area, isn’t this new Madame Saturn song kind of annoying? While the whole time I was wishing that I lived in a major city with public transit so that we could have left the date and gone our separate ways instead of having to be shut in a car together. But finally, he pulled into my driveway.
“Well, thank you for joining me on a bargain-priced adventure of a lifetime.”
All in all, we had been together for forty-two minutes.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Thanks for driving. Let me know if I can pay you for the food.”
“No, no. It’s all on me. Business expense.”
“Great, then.”
He pushed the car into park. “Well, Font Girl, thanks for helping complete my mission. Next time, you get to pick what we do.”
Next time? My face fell before I could stop it. I wanted to tell myself to be less of a bitch, to stop making this poor weirdo think he’d ruined the date. But I was exhausted of pretending. I just wanted it to be over.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to waste your time. I don’t think I’m looking for anything right now. But it was nice meeting you.”
I didn't wait to see his reaction. I was halfway out the door. I turned on my sneaker heel and took three strides across the gravel, each step closer to freedom and air conditioning. I prayed that my dad wasn’t waiting by the door for a date recap — and thank God, he wasn’t. I shut the door with a breath of relief. In the blissful cool, I collapsed on the living room couch and covered my face with my sticky hands, which smelled a little bit too much like the table at Chili’s. I wanted so badly to tell someone how strange the date had been. I wanted to dissect every little moment and hear them crack dumb jokes until the ice melted and I laughed. But the only person I wanted to talk to was gone. I rubbed at my eyes, not caring if my mascara bled all the way into my hairline.
The doorbell rang. My nose had started running.
“You forgot your quesadilla,” Rylo’s voice arrived, muffled and somehow higher-pitched through the door.
I darted to the other end of the couch, hoping he didn’t see me. He could assume I went upstairs. Please leave please leave please leave.
There was an awkwardly long pause. “I don’t know if you can hear this but… I’m… just gonna leave it on the step.”
And then: a creak, a scream, and a deep, shattering crash.