IT’S A BIT like shopping the J.Crew catalog back in high school, Beck Macgruder thought as she finished posting information about who she was and then took a look at the men on the online-dating site she’d picked to try first. Some of the men were, well, she hated to be uncharitable, but they weren’t attractive at all.

Or, at least, she corrected in her own head as she scrolled past picture after picture, they hadn’t posted a flattering picture of themselves. Perhaps they didn’t have a flattering picture. Maybe they hadn’t known better. Maybe they didn’t have a friend to look at the pictures they posted and suggest something nicer.

There. That was a more charitable version of the story that had resulted in such a terrible picture posted on a dating website. It wasn’t that they were unattractive; it was that they hadn’t known it was a bad picture.

Picking a photo for a dating website was hard. Hard, of course, because there wasn’t a soul on earth who could look at a picture of themselves with anything like an objective eye. At least Beck had been able to get the opinion of her friend Marsie, who had found a man through online dating. Or, not exactly through online dating. Marsie’s fellow is a coworker of hers. They’d challenged each other to see who could find a partner first through an online-dating site, and then ended up deciding they were perfect for each other.

Right, Beck thought as she scrolled past another guy. Online dating wasn’t a guarantee of finding the perfect guy. As Beck figured it, online dating opened your mind to the possibility that there was someone out there for you, so long as you were looking for them. It was like tempting fate, but in a good way.

And it’s not like she was looking for one guy; she was looking for a lot of them. As she figured it, online dating was also a way to sample the merchandise before even deciding if she wanted to buy. Again.

Marriages weren’t returnable and you never got back what you’d paid out.

She clicked on a guy with potential and scanned the information he’d included about himself. Ah, yes, just like catalog shopping. This one looked good, but he wasn’t for her. This one was the male equivalent of spaghetti straps. Bandeau tops. He’d probably make someone else’s arms look good, but not hers.

Dampness bumped against her knee and she absently reached down to scratch the head of the boxer-pit-hound-and-probably-something-else dog she’d picked up at the animal shelter several months before. Seamus was a good-looking dog. All the pictures she’d taken of him in the months since he’d joined her household included a big grin, ears that could flop or perk depending on mood and a tail that looked more like the handle of a delicate teacup than anything that should belong on an animal with a room-clearing fart.

Of course, he was adorable in all of those pictures, so she’d included one of him by himself and one of them together in the photos she’d posted to the online-dating site. Best for men to know that she had a “manly” dog. He didn’t even eat vegetables, for God’s sake. Especially since the other information she put on the site included that she was a coordinator of events, mostly weddings. And she had wicker furniture on her porch.

With

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