{"id":1805,"date":"2025-09-03T01:40:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/?p=1805"},"modified":"2025-09-03T01:40:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:40:01","slug":"full-story-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/?p=1805","title":{"rendered":"Full story."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I went on a date with a guy my friend set me up with. He showed up with flowers \u2014 not a cheap grocery store bunch, but actual roses. Right away, I thought, wow, this guy put in effort.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dinner was perfect. He was charming, funny, opened doors, pulled out my chair, even complimented the waiter. He made me laugh so hard I forgot to check my phone all night, which says a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the check came, I reached for my wallet. Big mistake.
\u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he said, sliding his card down before I could even touch mine. \u201cA man pays on the first date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I smiled. I won\u2019t lie \u2014 I was impressed. After so many awkward Tinder dinners where I ended up splitting the bill or covering it myself, this felt different. I walked away thinking it was one of the best first dates I\u2019d ever had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I woke up the next morning still smiling, replaying little moments from the night before. Then I checked my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There it was. A Venmo request. From him. For half the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first I thought it was a joke. But nope. The note attached said: \u201cJust being fair \ud83d\ude42.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the charm, the flowers, the gentleman act \u2014 it evaporated in a second. I just sat there, staring at my phone, realizing that the guy who made such a big deal about paying last night couldn\u2019t even make it to breakfast before backpedaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, I declined the request. And when he texted later asking when we could go out again, I simply replied: \u201cI think you already got your answer.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went on a date with a guy my friend set me up with. He showed up with flowers \u2014 not a cheap grocery store bunch, but… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyzone24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}