The First Date Prophecy

by Kate Tamberelli, Danny Tamberelli

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Brooklyn-based aspiring writer Lucy Minninger has no trouble putting the comedy in her rom-coms. It's the romance part of the equation that's the problem. But even as the rejection slips pile up, and her second dates dwindle, Lucy refuses to give up hope—or her HeartThrobs™ dating profile . . .



Former child star Rudy Riziero made his mark on some of the most popular kids' shows of the '90s. But that early success has pigeonholed him into a stand-up routine riffing on his past work, while the slick single life he envisioned was clearly a fantasy. He's actually ready for a relationship, if he could just find someone uninterested in who he used to be . . .



When Lucy and Rudy match online, they're eager to meet. But after their first date ends in a psychic's prophecy that is equal parts great fortune and certain doom, their flirty quips end and their search for answers to some of life's big questions begins: Is there really one person for everyone? Do destinies really intertwine? Where can you find the best tacos in Brooklyn?



And when it matters most, will they throw caution—and fate—to the wind, trust their instincts—and write their own futures?

Release date: June 27, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

“I once ate nothing but chocolate candy for an entire week,” I say, smiling in a toothy, bright-eyed, chipper kind of way that I’m hoping just adds to my allure, a heady blend of coquettish oddball charm that whisper-screams Aren’t I so different than every other girl you’ve dated in this city, so refreshing and unexpected and unabashedly original?

I am nothing if not mostly unabashed.

It’s a fairly tricky, razor-thin line, though, between oddball charm and alarmingly oddball, and I’ve found myself squarely on both sides before. It’s a risk I’m willing to take to end up on the right side, the memorable side, the side that means I am not just a throwaway one-off round of overpriced Brooklyn dive bar cocktails.

“Hershey dark chocolate bars for breakfast,” I press forth, raising my highball glass of whiskey in the air, “Butterfingers for lunch, Snickers for dinner, and Ferrero Rocher for dessert the nights I was feeling peckish. And milk. Dear God, so much fucking milk.”

I deliver this particular anecdote while cruising smoothly on automatic, my timing and inflection the same as it always is, quietly marveling at my ability to make it sound shiny and new, like it has just now occurred to me to share this rarely revealed and coveted piece of myself. Chocolate Week, however, is a Lucy Minninger first-date classic. One of a select, carefully curated list of stories that show my Truest Self. Or at least the Truest Self I’m comfortable revealing to a first date. I often intersperse these performances with absurd hypotheticals—what ifs and would you rathers—designed to start colorful, surprising dialogue.

Sometimes Chocolate Week gets a good laugh. Other times—like this slightly unfortunate moment right now—my date stares silently, sipping his drink faster, ice clinking as the glass drains, not sure what is expected of him next in our conversational volley.

Shit.

Next time, I’ll wait until the third round of drinks, minimum. Or maybe I’ll scrap it altogether. Find a new sparkly tidbit for future suitors. My set could do with some stiff housekeeping, considering how few second dates I’ve had in the past year.

Five years, if I’m being honest.

My entire post-college adult life, if I’m being more honest.

I would backtrack, but I’m not sure what we’d been talking about before I decided to hurl myself so wholeheartedly down this particular path. The weather, ten degrees too hot for October? How every drink on this predictable menu is at least five dollars too expensive for any self-proclaimed—per the unmissable neon pink sign in the window—dive? Did I mull over those topics quietly, or say them out loud? I down the precious last droplets of my nine-year-rum-barrel-aged-ginger-and-lavender-infused Brooklyn Rye and push boldly on, because there’s no other way forward but straight through: “You wouldn’t believe how angry my body was by the end. Completely enraged.”

He puts his glass down, eyes roaming above my head, searching out the waitress. For a refill or for a check, it remains to be seen.

I study him while I have the chance. He’s even more handsome than suggested by his profile on HeartThrobs—the online dating app that brought us together, a fateful flip up for yes, please—which is about as rare as a full lunar eclipse on Christmas Eve. He’d only had one picture on his profile, always a risk. But a risk I was willing to take in this case, based on both the exceptional cut of his cheekbones and unparalleled depth of his dimples. His bronze tan that only made him appear more statuesque. I usually set my age parameters at a respectable thirty to forty, but I’d taken a temporary hiatus from my senses after too many pinot noirs while crying my way through my one billionth viewing of You’ve Got Mail.

Twenty-three. He is twenty-three.

I was seven years old when his mother was changing his first soggy yellow diaper.

“I swear, I was backed up for at least a week.”

I gasp. Did I say that? I did. I said that. That detail, while admittedly true, is not an established part of the routine. I’m rarely thrown so easily, at least not after one drink. It must be his age. The unfortunate mental image of those poo-filled diapers.

I was not designed to be a cougar.

He turns his focus back to me, cocks that perfectly coiffed curly head of his as he levels me with dark-lashed minty blue eyes. I’m tempted to ask if he dyes those impossibly black lashes (and if so, would he recommend the salon?), but any thought of comparing lash notes is effectively squashed as he says: “Why would you do that? It sounds . . . disgusting.”

“It started as a friendly competition with a college roommate,” I say enthusiastically, relieved he’s given me the opportunity to elaborate on something other than my bowels. “We’d been drinking chocolate White Russians one Saturday night, watching the new and old Willy Wonka movies back-to-back, and we started debating how long we could survive on chocolate alone. We decided then and there we’d put it to the test. She quit after one day, said her teeth were too sore, but I’d made such a big deal about how easy it would be, I kept at it. Seven days and seventeen hours. Then I caved and started licking the salt from a bag of stale pretzels.”

“Wait. You were in college when you did this? Having Willy Wonka marathons on a Saturday night and living off candy bars?” It’s hard to say if the incredulity in his tone is awe precisely, but at the very least, I have his full attention.

“Senior year,” I confirm.

“I would have assumed you were, I don’t know, seven. My senior year was all about Pabst and parties on a Saturday night. Every night, really. That’s when I started DJing.” His whole demeanor changes with this last word, DJing. He is suddenly a peacock roosting at the rickety bar seat across from me, resplendent and dazzling, so pleased with himself you might mistakenly assume he’s the only peacock in Brooklyn. I won’t be the one to point out that every other man is behind a turntable on HeartThrobs. There are as many peacocks as pigeons in this city of ours. Maybe more.

“Well, D-D-Da—” I stutter and stop, my brain frantically flipping through D names, because that much I’m sure of—Danny, Darren, Derek, Doug, yes, Doug, I’m certain that’s how I entered his contact information into my phone—“Doug, I have to say—”

“Hashtag,” he says, cutting me off. And as if I’m perhaps in an age bracket not familiar with the term hashtag, a Luddite at the elevated age of thirty, he raises both hands and crosses his index and middle fingers to give me a visual aid.

“Hashtag?” I ask, because maybe I do actually need a definition in order to understand why hashtag relates to his name. Or any name. Outside of, you know, a social media post.

He nods, those lashes drooping down as if he might be pitying me for needing to ask such an obvious question. “HeartThrobs wouldn’t let me add a character in my name line. I had it in my bio, though. Didn’t you see that? It was the first sentence. Call me Hashtag Disco Douggy, please and thank you in advance.”

Had I read that? I vaguely recall a string of Greek flag emojis. But I’d remember a detail like this, surely. It’s not every day you meet someone who goes by Hashtag. Or has such a great appreciation for disco. But there was the pinot noir. And those dimples. The cheekbones.

“Yes,” I lie. “Of course. I always read the bios,” I lie again. “I just thought it was a . . . joke?” In hindsight, this feels like the wrong thing to say. At least to someone who introduces himself as Hashtag Disco Douggy with a straight face. It’s maybe one of the more sincere moments I’ve had on a date recently. (A low bar. But still.)

“It’s not a joke.” Hashtag shakes his head, lips pursed. Those lips are far too attractive for anyone who insists on being called a pound sign in casual conversation. It’s unfair, really.

The waitress appears in my peripheral, orbiting us slowly, taking our temperature. Is this date over? Just getting started?

I’m more pleased than I’d like to be when he uses those hashtagging fingers to signal two more drinks.

“Hashtag Disco Douggy is my brand,” he continues matter-of-factly, “a lifestyle, an inspiration, a calling. It’s more than just my DJ handle. It’s who I am.”

“Huh,” I say, at a loss for intelligent words.

My phone chooses this prime moment to vibrate in my pocket, and I seize the blessing. “I need to make sure it’s not a work emergency,” I say, hoping he doesn’t ask me to go into more detail about what a work emergency might look like for my particular career path. What does my profile say again? Renaissance Woman and self-made entrepreneur with a specialty in writing and publishing. Translation: professional Craigslister who does odd jobs to get by, with a part-time gig assisting a demanding YA author who’s sold more book copies than Danielle Steel. Perhaps a slight exaggeration. But she’s twenty-five and has written three bestsellers, which seems unfair if you ask me. She’s cornered the market on her own special brand of quirky, spec-fic rom-coms. I’ve only written five rom-com manuscripts that haven’t sold, but who’s counting? (Me. The answer is me. I’m definitely counting.)

The phone vibrates again. I check the screen, and it is, in fact, partly work. There’s one missed call from my mother that I must have missed while en route to the bar, her weekly check-in to make sure I’m surviving and “thriving.” But then there are three new texts from Clementine, my author boss—whose real name is Colleen, though I took an oath my first day never to refer to her as such. An oath I happen to forget on her most demanding days.

I click through to Clementine’s messages:

Did Pinky eat anything weird on your walk this morning?

Pinky is Clementine’s very small, very ugly affenpinscher.

She just puked all over the sofa, and you saw the price tag on that!!! You didn’t let her eat any of your chocolate muffin did you? I saw your wrapper in the trash this morning. (Could you maybe get something besides chocolate next time?)

And lastly:

Can you research a good cleaner for the sofa and pick some up on your way in tomorrow thx

Somehow, the most infuriating bit is the lack of punctuation to go with thx, considering those three bestsellers. There’s also the triplicate exclamation points, as if I need the emphasis to remember exactly how much money she spent on the couch that I not only ordered, but arranged delivery for, spending an hour on the phone with customer service, and then helped move around her obscenely large living room seven times to achieve her “perfect feng shui” (mispronounced, of course), despite it weighing approximately five tons. I absolutely did not give Pinky a crumb of that muffin—for what a muffin costs in Park Slope, I’m eating every last crusty bit.

“So is it?” Doug asks. Hashtag Disco Douggy, I mentally correct myself.

“Is it what?” I ask, looking up from my phone, so angry about Clementine that I’ve forgotten what we were talking about again.

“A work emergency?”

“Oh. Yes. Kind of.”

The way his brow wrinkles—or at least, as wrinkled as anything can be on a pristine twenty-three-year-old face—he almost looks concerned. Or maybe just curious, trying to figure out what it means to be a professional Renaissance Woman, assuming he, unlike me, actually read the profile before flipping up.

“What is it?” he asks. “The emergency?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. It’s a private matter with a client.” That sounds impressively weighty and sophisticated, not at liberty to say, and I’m quite pleased with the overall effect. Only someone dabbling in wildly important things lacks that kind of liberty. And technically, I am not at liberty to reveal my boss’s real name.

The waitress reappears with our drinks, and I stuff my phone in my pocket. Clementine is not the only twenty-something who requires my attention this evening, thank you. Even if my date likes to be called a keyboard character and fancies himself a proper DJ, he does have those delicious dimples. And lips. Etcetera and so forth. And while his black curls are more styled than my hair has ever been outside of senior prom, molded with some kind of shiny product into a perfect tousled sculpture, the overall effect is rather nice in the dim light of the industrial pipe lamp hanging above our heads.

“I didn’t mention it in my profile, but I’m thinking about doing a little acting on the side. Just got my mom to take some headshots last week. We’ll see, could be cool. People say I have the face for it.” He shrugs, smiling in a way that says, I do have the face, don’t I?

“Oh? Is that so?” I take a long swig of my whiskey. Very long.

Maybe his hair is too shiny after all, unnaturally so.

“Yeah,” he continues, not requiring any additional response, thankfully. “She’s not a professional photographer, but I think my pics could make a killer portfolio. She could be going places, thanks to me.”

“Ah.”

I finish my drink as Hashtag Douggy Doodle or Dandy or whatever the hell he likes to be called waxes on about how he’s also been told he has perfect fingers for hand modeling, and did I know there’s huge demand for foot models, too?

Just as I’m debating my exit strategy, he’s flagged the waitress for another round, and even though there’s very little of substance that’s appealing about him on paper or otherwise, I sip my whiskey and laugh and try again with another Lucy Classic: standing in line during a snowstorm for the red-carpeted grand opening of a fancy new Dairy Queen, and lighting a pineapple on fire because the grocer next door happened to have a good sale, and because the glove warmers I’d brought along were doing nothing helpful. I was the most popular girl in the line that day, carrying my pineapple around to spread warmth to my fellow Blizzard lovers. This time, as I’m delivering my lines, there’s actual laughter—because of the whiskey or my charm, it’s impossible to say.

When the waitress comes back again, I have the brilliant idea to request the special they’ve listed at the top of their vintage typewriter-styled (again, not a dive) menu: The Flaming Zombie. I have no idea what it is, or why it’s flaming, but it’s an appropriate follow-up to my story, and it will surely be a memorable bonding activity with this twenty-three-year-old boy-slash-DJ-slash-social-media-character whom I really shouldn’t care about bonding with. Not only because we’ll likely never see each other again, but because I’m thirty and this is not a productive way to find a future partner.

Unfortunately, tragically, I do care.

I care more than I should, and more than I’d ever admit out loud. But I seem to have a chronic, debilitating condition when it comes to romance: I’m most attracted to the people who least deserve it, and am biologically repelled from all the rest. My brain registers nice or easygoing and converts to fake or—perhaps the worst dating sin of all—boring.

Where are the men who are equal parts authentically kind and interesting?

Surely there are at least a few of them in a city of more than eight million.

“Oh, wow,” I say, my mouth dropping open as the waitress makes her way to us with what turns out to be a literally flaming drink, a tall tiki cup topped with a purple haze of fire. “I thought maybe flaming meant heat, like Tabasco sauce. Prairie Fire style.”

The waitress carefully sets the goblet down, and Hashtag and I stare, wondering what comes next. Presumably, the flame dies out, leaving a highly potent beverage in its wake.

I think back to my story, holding that glorious pineapple, and—inspired and buoyed by his laughter, his approval—I grab for the drink, holding it up as I yell out, “Free warmth for all!” Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm, I’ve lifted the glass a smidge too high, the flame licking the tip of one of those highly glossed curls. It lights for a second, just barely, but enough. Any spark lighting any part of your head is enough.

Hashtag screams, a shrill, dolphin-like noise that cuts through the crowded bar, standing up as he smacks his hands frantically against his head.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I scream back, nearly as shrilly and dolphin-like, dropping the glass on the table, the contents spilling everywhere as I pick up my cup of water and hurl it at Hashtag’s face.

Shit, shit, shit, I think, remorsefully, watching as the water drips down his smooth forehead. The flame is gone, thank God. Only a teeny smidge of burnt hair scent lingers in the air.

Hashtag shakes his head, scowling at me. He’s running his fingers along his hairline over and over, as if to convince himself it’s all still there, it’s okay, he has not tarnished his prized locks. That illustrious acting career, courtesy of Mommy’s glamour shots, is still within grasp of his “masculine yet elegant” hands.

And then, without a word, he turns and walks away. Out the door.

The waitress hands me the check. I gasp audibly when I see the total.

This truly is the worst dive ever.

The lights are off in the brownstone, so the Myrtles—Estelle and Frank—must already be asleep, or at least up in bed watching reruns of CSI on the television that takes up nearly their entire bedroom wall. I’m tempted to call them to avoid being alone, because I’d much rather sit on their cushy velvet couch drinking Frank’s latest gin experiment, dissecting the date from beginning to end, making it all feel like one lovely, silly joke, oh what a ridiculous date to add to my collection! He was twenty-three! A DJ! Called himself Hashtag Disco Douggy! I set his hair on fire!

Frank and Estelle will adore this story.

It’s exactly the kind of juicy entertainment they crave on a daily basis, and probably the reason they charge me pennies (by Brooklyn’s standards) to live in their basement apartment. Money I insist on paying each month, on principle, because I’m an adult, even if they’d be happy to let it slide. We’ve become good friends—yes, best friends even—at least from our mutual slim pickings in this city. Partly by choice, partly by convenience.

I give them color. Eternal youth, as Estelle likes to say.

And they give me a home. They are home, really. Or at least as much so as the house in Greendale, Pennsylvania where I grew up. If there’s something I’ve learned in the last almost-decade, a true home in New York City is no easy thing to come by.

I check my phone. Eleven o’clock. Frank is enough of a curmudgeon, albeit a mostly loveable one, even after a perfect night of sleep. I’ll tell them all the gory details tomorrow morning over Frank’s homemade espresso, spit out of a machine that costs more than my monthly rent, and we’ll laugh, and I’ll undoubtedly feel better than I do right now.

Because tonight, I feel lots of things, none of them good.

Mortified.

Miserable.

Hopeless.

I desperately want to find the spin, the carefree, ha-ha narrative that’s my standard mode of processing and transforming shit into gold. I excel at shaking things off, moving onward and upward. But . . . the spin isn’t coming to me this time.

It shouldn’t feel this bad, should it?

He was a joke, really and truly, and even if things hadn’t ended so terribly, I might have come to my senses in the morning. Not initiated any further conversations. But it would be nice to have that decision for myself. To feel like I’m the one with the good judgment.

I slip my key into the garden-level door, double-lock it behind me as I flick on the too-yellow overhead light. It’s my mopey substitute sunshine, given I only have two tiny windows in the front, and the rest of my home is burrowed underground. My Spinster Cave, as I don’t actually like to say, but do anyway for laughs. Frank and Estelle do what they can to add small shreds of cheer—including hanging a handmade SPINSTER CAVE sign from Etsy above the front door—and have invested far more in renovations and appliances than they’ll ever recoup in rent. Though no amount of money seems to get rid of the mice that perpetually choose to nest behind my stove, city mice that are too clever for traps or poison. (On the plus side, I suppose I’m never truly alone.)

As I change into pajamas and trek the ten steps from my bedroom to the kitchen to put on a kettle for tea, I hear the scribble-scrabble of tiny mouse feet somewhere behind the sink. I sigh and switch on my old radio clock, turn the volume up to drown out the sound.

In the old days, I would immediately fire off every bad date story to Susie and Grace, my best friends from home. We’d been riding on the same life track from Greendale Elementary through Penn State, into the early days of our twenties, when Susie and Grace would steamroll into the big city to visit more weekends than not—duffel bags stuffed with plenty of wardrobe options to accommodate for brunches and museums, dinners and clubs. I had a collection of shiny new city friends then, too, who would join us, other assistants and big dreamers I’d met on various jobs. But New York City is a revolving door. Those friends drifted. And Susie and Grace are both married now, one with a husband, one with a wife, living in expansive homes they actually own, two children and a dog each. We text every few weeks about them bringing the kids up for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, but it seems their schedules are overwhelmingly busy. I visit them when I see my parents, and we try to have a monthly wine and cheese FaceTime, but dinners and baths and bedtime routines, oh my!

I don’t text them about the Hashtags anymore. I’m selective about what tidbits I share. A carefully curated list of dates. Funny, but not pathetic. It’s a narrow border between the two.

Hashtag feels too close to pathetic territory.

The kettle whistles, and I make my tea.

Mug in hand, slippers on, music still blaring, I settle in on my love seat for what, besides a dish session with the Myrtles, is the best distraction on a night like this: HeartThrobs. Hours of flipping up for yes, down for no, waiting and hoping for a good match, for some sense, any kind of sign, that there is more than this for me. More than a string of failed jobs and failed dates, and the constant challenge to make every one of those failures more comedic and less heartbreaking.

I flip for so long, the profiles blur. The movement itself is calming, a rhythmic pattern. More flips down than up, because I refuse to find myself sitting across from an Exclamation Point or a Parentheses or, God forbid, a Question Mark. I have enough of those on my own.

Flip, flip, flip, a long strand of no thanks.

And then: Rudy, 34. Long auburn hair, pale (extra pale, with a smattering of freckles on top) white skin, big brown eyes, bass guitar in hand as he sings into a mic. I pause, squinting at the screen. He looks vaguely familiar. Have we had a first date? Has he served me a latte? Delivered me bagels?

I swipe through his other photos, all fairly standard HeartThrobs fare—action shots at bars, some wanderlust pics that look to be from Thailand and Italy, a shot of him in a tux with an ex clearly cropped out based on the sliver of cheek pressed against his. There’s no bio, just some emojis: Irish and Italian flags, a meatball, and a frothy beer glass. A bro who plays bass and travels and is seemingly very proud of his heritage.

I’m about to flip down, when it strikes me. The familiarity.

Rudy.

Rudy Riziero.

I saw that face on my television screen growing up.

Every Saturday night.

First on Black Hole Sons, a weird, trippy show about twin brother aliens who dropped down in their pod into a suburban Jersey yard. Then a kid’s comedy variety show, The Whiz of Riz. He starred in both with his older brother Rocco—twins on Black Hole Sons, but that was fake, a funny shtick because they looked nothing alike. Rudy was redheaded and freckled and stocky; Rocco was dark-haired and tan and gangly—like, when their parents’ DNA was doled out, they received the literal opposite genes on offer.

I was just reading about Rocco on the E! website—he was picked to play the hero in a new billion-dollar-budget Space Blasters movie. And I’m pretty sure he was determined to be 2014’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in People last year, which is about as illustrious as it gets in Hollywood. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything anywhere about Rudy in over a decade. Huh.

I’m more than mildly curious at this point, as I am about most celebrities, A- through D-list, even F, G, etcetera. (As most New Yorkers are, though we’ll take that secret to our graves.) I’m not sure where to place Rudy, given both his nineties and early aughts stardom and his connection to the great Rocco Riziero. Who, shit, come to think of it, stole Rudy’s co-star girlfriend at some point. Piper Bell. The brothers’ quirky neighbor on Black Hole Sons, and also an A-lister now. That tabloid hit was probably the last time I thought about Rudy’s existence.

I grab my laptop from the coffee table and search for Rudy online. The top links are all about recent Brooklyn comedy shows. I scan a few event photos, holding my phone up to the computer screen for comparison.

Definitely the same person.

This 2015 version of Rudy looks like . . . he did as a tween/ teen in the nineties, but with long hair that’s more burnt cinnamon than flaming carrot, and a few more inches added both vertically and horizontally. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans in literally every photo I see, and his overall vibe suggests he’s been living out of a rock-and-roll tour van for the last fifteen years. But he’s got those gigantic, puddly brown eyes that transport me straight back to my parents’ paisley-smothered living room—Saturday nights in pajamas eating Hungry-Man fried chicken, watching Rudy on their little TV screen, us. . .