Kohr’s Older Brother

As I mentioned in my last post, my friend and I were on Tinder looking for a double date while we were at the beach.

Luckily for us the Serial Killer that was supposed to meet up with us didn’t end up working out, so we moved on to the next one. We ended up chatting with someone in the police academy who was actually really polite and said he would be respectful of our wish to just meet up for ice cream. We sent him the same address we were going to meet the last guy at since both of us were dying for a Kohrs cone at that point. He said he could be there at 11:20, but once again his friend “canceled” at the last second. It’s cool, we thought, we just want to make one new friend by the end of the trip.

This guy seemed like he’d have some good stories for us, so we threw on our matching sweatshirts in true bestie style and headed to the boardwalk.

We waited a few extra minutes for the guy and began to get grumpy. He was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago — maybe he was standing us up!

“I can’t wait any longer,” I promptly exclaimed. “I’m just going to get my ice cream now and we can just sit and visit with him while he eats his dessert when he gets here.”

Audrey agreed with me and we purchased our cones on our joint credit card. That was when hilarity ensued. There weren’t any seats at the Kohr’s, so we walked across the street to the benches by the Hilton hotel that was about 70 feet from the shop. We had a direct view of the cashier, so we could see when our date showed up.

We people-watched and chatted until Audrey suddenly exclaimed “IT’S HIM!!!”

I whipped my head back to look at the shop and saw a bald man with a scruffy brown beard charge angrily up to the cashier. Before I could even analyze the situation a bus stopped in my line of vision.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I didn’t get a good look, but that guy looked like he was quite a bit older than us.”

“No, but I don’t have my glasses on,” she replied. “It looked a lot like our guy, though.”

We waited anxiously for the bus to get a move-on. By the time it pulled out of the stop the man had finished his purchase and was strutting out of the shop with his cup. He seemed to have a new spring in his step, and hurried happily across the street with his ice cream. He was coming for us.

We squealed nervously as he approached. There were a million thoughts running through my mind at this point.

How did he see us from all the way across the street? Why is a 50-something man on Tinder pretending to be 25? Why didn’t he wait for us? Why didn’t he message us that he was here?

He turned the corner into the pavilion area where we were hidden. Audrey and I froze.

I parted my lips to say hello, but he continued to walk toward the hotel doors. He did a double take on his way into the lobby, and to this day I am not sure whether it was because he was actually the man from Tinder or just thinking, “What the heck is wrong with this girl?” because of the startled look I had on my face.

Audrey looked over at me with her spoon in her mouth, floored. “Was that…?”

I shrugged, stunned. He was at least a vague shadow of the man in the pictures. What were the odds someone else who looked like that just happened to get a midnight snack at the same custard shop as us?

What do you think? Did we see the same guy we matched with on Tinder or was he just an older doppelganger? We sent our match a message and never heard back from him — I suppose he will always remain a mystery to us.