Cat Jacobi

Short Story by Catherine Jacobi

His name was Liam.
He said it like it meant something. Like he was someone important. Or going to be. He definitely picked the wrong girl to say it to. I’m ashamed to say he had me fooled for a little bit, but it didn’t take me long to see through the act. 

We met in the spring, the kind of New York spring that feels more like an apology than a season. The air is just warm enough to make you believe in second chances. He liked me first. On Hinge, of all places. Some call it the “jungle of singles”, I just like to call it my personal hellscape of questionable men. 

He worked “in finance,” which, I would later learn, meant he sat at home in New Jersey trading imaginary money with his father’s real money. I thought he was charming in a way that suggested confidence. Later, I realized it was just volume. Overcompensating.

The first date wasn’t awful. That’s what made it so dangerous.

He took me somewhere dimly lit and expensive enough to make me feel chosen, though I knew deep down that I wasn’t, not really. It’s the kind of hole in the wall guys like him take girls (not like me) in New York City to impress them. 

I was impressed.

He said he went to NYU, proudly enough to almost convince you that he’s not one among a million douchebags at Stern. He talked about the market, about trends, about stocks and tariffs and other things he decided not to explain because (he also decided) I was too stupid to understand. He said he liked a woman who “takes care of herself,” then looked me up and down like I was a portfolio.

Well, he didn’t say that exactly, but it was heavily implied.

When I told him I liked the gym, he lit up. Too much.
“You? Really? Wow, that’s good.” he said, as if fitness were a privilege he hadn’t expected me to afford.
I laughed because it’s easier than explaining why that’s insulting.

He didn’t ask many questions, but he listened just enough to make it feel like he did. I know sometimes I talk about myself too much, enough to not make me realize the guy standing across from me doesn’t see me as someone worth listening to.

When we parted ways, he walked me home, he texted that he’d had a good time. I had a good time, too. I knew we weren’t a match made in heaven, but I thought maybe we could be one someday. And I told myself that was enough.

On the second date, I offered to choose the place.
Central Park. I wanted to take him to Shakespeare’s Garden.

He was really excited to go there. In retrospect, I know it’s probably because he knew he wouldn’t have to spend more than $10 on a pretzel for me. Low-effort, low-risk date, that could yield high-quality results. 

I bet he calculated that in his head.

But I thought it might tell him something about me. It’s quiet there, peaceful; all soft greenery and quotes cited in tiny plaques around the bushes, the kind of place that makes you remember beauty is still a choice people can make. Literature is a choice. Culture. Love.

Liam didn’t seem impressed.
He looked at the flowers like they’d flatlined for him at best, and inconvenienced him at worst. When I pointed out the plaques, explained which lines belonged to which plays, he called me a “dork.”

The first time, it was teasing. It was fun. I know I’m a dork. Fork found in kitchen. It’s funny to say it once, even twice, depending on your tone.
By the third, it was a label. And by the fifth, it wasn’t a label I liked.

I started noticing how flat his eyes were. Blue, but dull, the color of dishwater or tired sky, like something that should’ve been bright once but got worn down from misuse. His shoes were some vintage Adidas-adjacent model — the kind that apparently inspired the Samba, according to him — and he talked about them the way salesmen talk about investments, as if I might suddenly ask for a link for his ugly shoes. He mentioned his sisters often, dropping the fact like a moral credential, as though proximity to women had granted him lifelong immunity from being cruel to them.

At one point, he laughed at something I said, not because it was funny, but because he didn’t understand it. “You really are such a dork,” he said again, louder this time, like he wanted the trees to hear. I tried to explain the joke (bad mistake), and he said “I’m not laughing at what you’re saying, by the way, I’m laughing at something else I saw.” 

Ouch. Unnecessary. 

I smiled tightly and watched a bee land on a wilted daffodil. It buzzed around aimlessly, then left. I wished I could too.

He made a joke about Jewish people, something stupid and right out of a bad South Park episode. Right when we passed a synagogue. I felt my stomach twist. He laughed, said, “Relax, it’s just a joke.”

I know it’s a joke. I know it’s not that serious. I know because I’m not the fucking idiot men seem to think I am. But I also know that if he’s comfortable saying something like that on a second date, it makes you wonder about a person’s true colors.

The light shifted then.
I swear it did.

The park, once so alive, started to dim. Colors thinning like watercolor left in the rain. The air grew heavier. The hum of insects fell away. I looked at him and saw, for the first time, how small he was. Not just in height — though he was 5’4” at best — but in presence, in generosity, in soul.

He asked if I was “always this weird.”
I said, “Only when I’m awake.”
He didn’t get it.

Dinner afterward was worse.

We went to a hand roll bar near Union Square. I liked the precision of it. The ritual of rolling and cutting, the small talk with the chef behind the counter. Liam didn’t seem to notice any of it. He talked about crypto again, about “market dips” and “buying the fear.” I looked at him and thought, I’m sitting across from a man who has never read a novel and never will.

When the bill came, I said, “I’ll get this one,” meaning we’ll split it.
He smiled and said, “Thanks,” and let me.

Eighty dollars.
He didn’t blink.

On the walk home, I replayed the moment over and over. How natural it seemed for him to take. The first date he’d paid for, yes, but afterward he’d sent me Reels about men paying and “not getting anything.” He laughed them off as jokes, but I knew they weren’t. I’ve questioned him about the weird memes he sent me. All jokes. Not that deep.

Later that night, he sent me another one:
A video of a man laughing at a girl who’d “got her hopes up.”
The caption read: Temporary shyt.

A cunning play on fine shyt (fine shit), a coloquial internet slang term men use to describe attractive women they are pursuing. You can piece together what the temporary means.

“Why would you send me this?” I asked.

“It’s funny?😂”

I stared at it until my phone dimmed, the screen’s reflection carving my face into something I didn’t recognize.

I dreamt of Shakespeare’s Garden that night.

The flowers were gray. The benches splintered. The plaques had been stripped bare, their words gone, no longer was the quote about a rose by any other name just smelling as sweet. Liam was standing where the sunlight used to fall, saying something I couldn’t hear. I moved closer and realized he was mouthing my own words back at me, every detail I’d told him, empty and echoing.

He texted me to thank me for dinner. Duh, I paid for it. I thanked him for the day. Not because I was grateful for his mediocre conversation, that wasn’t mentally stimulating in the slightest. His discourse, like him, was vapid. It made sense when he said he didn’t like books. 

As a people-pleaser, I tried a last-ditch effort. I sent him a link to a Renee Magritte exhibition I wanted to go see. Any romantic would’ve asked for availability and booked tickets. Or at least shown a little enthusiasm.

He just said “That’s cool,” and didn’t send any more messages.

And neither did I.

When I woke up, I thought of the moment he’d called me a dork. Not the first time. Maybe the fifth or sixth. The way it had stung not because it was cruel, but because it was true. I’d wanted to share something sincere, and sincerity is always embarrassing to people like him.

I think that’s why it’s so hard to be genuine. To meet someone. To be single and vulnerable. Sharing things about yourself you know you used to hide when you were twelve, but at twenty, you’d expect enough maturity for people to be upfront about who they are. No one is fucking genuine anymore. Or at least, Liam isn’t.

The next day, I went back to the park alone. The color was still gone. Maybe it had never been there to begin with. Maybe I was looking at life — and at him — with rose-colored glasses. I sat on one of the benches and watched the wind stir through the dead leaves. A couple walked by, laughing, holding hands. The man stopped to read a plaque aloud, one of the cheesy Shakespeare quotes in the garden. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and for a moment I hated them both for it. But it also reminded me that I wasn’t actually asking for much.

I was just asking to be noticed. Listened to. But not everyone is this sentimental.

The sun set early that night.

I didn’t text again. He didn’t notice. Or, at least didn’t mention it.
Men like him never do.

Because seeming interested, to them, is seeming desperate. Being willing to bet on someone — to take that gamble on another human being and believing that you can have something great.

A true love story.

Something worth living, worth writing about, worth reading.

But he said it himself, he didn’t like books. That revelation alone was probably my disappointment of the year.

Pretty naive of me to believe I’d find something like that on Hinge.

Sometimes I see his type around: very short, sharp, always smirking, always holding their phones like weapons, airpods in their ears because their red-pill bullshit podcast is “infinitely smarter” than any real conversation. I can recognize them now by the way they talk, the way they look at women like they’re scanning for weak spots. For proof of their sentimentality and, ipso facto, inferiority. 

If I ever dream of him again, I think the garden will be gone entirely.
Just dirt. Just the faint smell of something that used to bloom. That little shred of hope I had after that first date, and the smell of disappointment on the second.

I thought of the moment at dinner when I caught my reflection in the restaurant window, realizing I was almost taller than him in heels and that I didn’t care. Not until he opened his mouth and reminded me that height doesn’t measure smallness — ego does. And his outgrew him in every direction, like mold creeping over bread.

I realized then what a narrow escape it had been. How close I’d come to confusing arrogance for depth, entitlement for charm. There was no heartbreak, only relief. A quiet, exhausted relief.

But there’s still hope, I think. Hope in the men who book exhibition tickets when you mention the love for an artist. Men who listen. Who care. Who reach out without expecting you to text first. Generationally this has been a problem for women everywhere. Quietly begging to receive flowers after investing so much time on mediocre-looking men they’re willing to invest on. 

But that investment sometimes doesn’t bring you good fruit. Only something you bite into before you find out it’s rotten.