My Grandma Set Me Up With a Fake Doctor Named Kyle

My grandmother set me up. That is the first thing you need to know, because it explains why I could not simply leave.

She met a woman at her water aerobics class whose grandson, Kyle, was a doctor, single, tall, a real catch. Grandma showed me a photo the woman had sent -- Kyle in scrubs, genuinely handsome, leaning against a hospital wall like a magazine ad. I was skeptical, because grandmothers grade on a curve, but the photo was undeniable. I agreed to one dinner. For her.

Kyle and I texted to arrange it and the texts were a little off -- stiff, oddly formal, a lot of "It will be my pleasure to make your acquaintance" -- but I told myself doctors are busy and maybe weird. We set a date at a nice steakhouse. I wore the dress. I curled my hair. I walked in and gave the host Kyle's name.

He led me to a table where a man was waiting who was, conservatively, seventy years old.

I assumed it was Kyle's father. Waiting to vet me, maybe, like some kind of medical dynasty. I said, "Oh, hi, is Kyle -- " and the man stood up, beaming, and said, "I am Kyle."

Reader. He was not thirty. He was not a doctor. The scrubs photo was, he later admitted, from a costume, for a party, years ago. Many years ago. The handsome hospital man was Kyle in the way that a yearbook photo is you -- technically, once, under good lighting, in another era entirely.

I should have walked out. But my grandmother. My grandmother would hear about it at water aerobics. Kyle's grandmother would report back. There were stakes. So I sat, and I ordered a very expensive steak out of pure spite, and I tried to understand what exactly had happened here.