AITA for not playing dumb on a double date?

This happened years ago but I told the story recently and some of my friends acted like I was an asshole.

I used to work with this girl, Chelsey, who would tell me that she always thought I would be a good fit for her friend Nicole. Each time she said this it felt like she had no idea we have had this conversation before and I was actively getting better at navigating the conversation. For example, I had gone from "Is she cute?" to "What do we have in common?", and she had gone from rolling her eyes to telling me that we’re both tall. Chelsey is very attractive, and her friends match, including this stereotypically very attractive tall blonde named Nicole – and I really wanted Chelsey to follow through with setting us up, but she never did while we worked together.

Fast Forward a few years and I run into her again, Chelsey is working at this high-end liquor store near my office and I see her from time to time. She mentions Nicole again, says we would be a great fit, and this time I really push for the setup. She tells me the same spiel about how Nicole is also tall, we have the same sense of humour, she’s a waitress at a nice restaurant near by, as well as other interests. Chelsey even tells me that she remembers one day I chatted her up about the Walking dead at work and after work she was hanging out with Nicole who basically repeated everything I had said earlier. We exchange numbers and later that day she tells me a time and place, the plan is for Chelsey, her fiancé, Nicole, and myself. I creep her social medias and it’s pretty obvious it’s the wildly out of my league Nicole.

The morning of she tells me we need to postpone, it sucks but it happens, and we schedule it for the following week. Same place. I come prepared – new haircut, new outfit, studied the menu, everything I could think of to put my best foot forward, and I am introduced to a very different Nicole. This Nicole is short, fairly overweight, works at a daycare. I can tell from everyone’s reaction that I am visibly disappointed. I decide to go through with the date, but I just keep bringing the conversation back to what I "knew" about her. Asking questions like, "When did you get bored of the walking dead?", "How long have you been a waitress", and "Oh, Chelsey mentioned you have been friends since you were kids!?".

Chelsey was trying her best to talk her way around it, but Nicole was visibly upset. The girls went to the bathroom and the fiancé asked me WTF I was doing and I told him that Chelsey obviously meant to set me up with someone else. He said she did, but Nicole kept asking to postpone and clearly wasn’t interested, so she found someone else "more in my league". I gave him a sharp look, and he followed with, "Okay, she found another Nicole".