1 The Call

January 2023

Cutting through the beach access pass, I could feel the late‑morning heat rising off the sand to welcome me back to my happy place.  I glanced at my phone, already anticipating his name lighting up the screen, already imagining the sound of his voice.

Instead, a long, jumbled number blinked back at me. My stomach dropped with that familiar mix of annoyance and resignation. Another consulting engagement. Always from some far‑off place where weekends don’t seem to exist, where people fire off requests without a second thought about time zones or personal boundaries.

I couldn’t take the gig even if I wanted to — my current role doesn’t exactly allow for moonlighting — but still, I answered with the same polite tone I always use. Someday, I tell myself, these quick little engagements will be mine to accept, mine to price, mine to enjoy. Someday the weekend won’t be something I have to defend.

But the voice on the other end wasn’t an analyst. It was faint, scrambled, almost underwater. And then I caught it — the shape of a name, the cadence of someone familiar. Ryan.

My heart kicked. This would be our first call. After weeks of messaging — not flirty nonsense, but real conversation, the kind where you feel someone leaning in, curious — I was finally going to hear him. I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, trying to make out the words, but the connection dissolved into static. He’d have to call back.

A second later, the phone rang again. This time the number was clean, recognizable, and the voice that followed was unmistakably his. Warm. Confident. A little amused, like he already knew he had my attention.

Ryan Smith‑Clancy.

We matched on Tinder — though honestly, I still don’t know how. I’m strict about my settings. Living in Omaha, working in Baltimore, I try not to open the app anywhere else. My life is a triangle of two homes and hotel rooms, and I’ve learned not to waste time on people who can’t handle that. My profile spells it out plainly: Live in Omaha. Work in Baltimore. Practice retirement in Naples. Maybe it’s blunt. Maybe it’s too much. But it’s true. I’m not a woman who stays in one place.

Ryan gets that. His dad lives in Punta Gorda, just north of Naples, so he knows my playground. I’m spending the weekend here with a friend, and while she’s stretched out in the sun working on her tan, I’m tucked under a wide‑brimmed hat, shielding my pasty Polish skin and trying not to let the smile in my voice give me away.

He sounds professional, grounded, but there’s an ease to him too — like he’s talking to someone he already knows. Our conversation is short, but it leaves an imprint in my chest, the kind that lingers long after the call ends. We agree to talk later.

For now, I’m heading to Stan’s Idle Hour. Naples is lovely, polished, predictable. But a country girl needs an outdoor dive bar with live music, a place where the floorboards are covered in sand and the beer comes in plastic cups. Not that I’d drink it.

There will be more calls. More of that steady pull. Enough, maybe, to earn us the next milestone in modern dating — the 2023 equivalent of meeting someone’s parents: a Zoom call.

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