Debbie Roth’s Reviews > Accidentally Yours > Status Update

Jude rests his forearms on the table, clasping his hands together and grinning smugly. “Well.” “Well, indeed.” I reach for my water glass with a shaking hand, taking a sip, feeling overheated.

“Ronnie,” Clara says, leaning forward, “what about the time you didn’t call a guy back because of his pizza order?” “He ordered a cheese pizza with corn.” I throw my hands up. “I can’t live like that!” They both laugh. “Not shallow at all,” Clara murmurs into her drink.

I’m really bad at first dates? Like, I hate them. I hate the small talk cycle and that so many men I meet don’t do sarcasm or banter. It’s often like going on a date with a résumé—always so much sincere humblebragging—and no one gets my sense of humor. Someday I will find my banter king. I know he’s out there.

What’s your pet peeve?-Jude Oh, that’s simple: It’s the fact that I must get an entirely new set of cords and charging blocks and God knows what else every time I upgrade one of my devices. Like please don’t tell me that this specific USB is so much better than the old USB that you need to make me pay hundreds of dollars to have everything be able to simply charge a phone.-V

“Jordy, I can’t go back to this guy and be like, ‘1K an hour, sir.’” “No, that’s true,” Clara says, and I think she’s agreeing with me, but then she adds, “You can’t call him sir.” “A thousand dollars an hour is, like . . .” I shrug, thinking. “What a lawyer charges when their client asks the court if the jury takes Venmo...”

Blowing out a breath, I get up again and this time walk onto my balcony, needing a slap from the cold air outside. I’m only on the second floor, but I’m facing the Riverwalk in downtown Chicago and the view is always breathtaking…I listen to water, and birds, and people down below. I take ten deep breaths and realize my sister, Hailey, is right: It helps to just breathe sometimes.

The one time I saw him smile—he was checking the mail with one of his friends in tow—I caught a flash of two of the deepest dimples I’d ever seen and probably should have taken a pregnancy test a few days later.

My sister, Clara, says I could maybe have anticipated that a job with a marketing firm douchily named PitchSlapped would go south, but I swear it wasn’t terrible at first…Company retreats turned out to be full of coke and misogyny. Vacation time was granted but not expected to be taken. The game room had a pool table, a Grand Theft Auto arcade console, and a pinball machine called Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons.

I’ve been carrying so much pent-up frustration and bitterness about the terrible years I spent at my previous job and how they then ended my four years of employment: in a flaccid HR meeting with a representative expressing all the concern of a bot reading a script, which concluded with me sighing a defeated, “Thanks for the mehpathy, Chad.”