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Rolling my eyes, I push at his chest, not wanting his gyrating hips anywhere near me, thank you very much. “You watch too much porn, man,” I chastise, before explaining that if I’m not her boss, I can’t treat her like a bad babysitter.
He ignores me, like he never heard a word I said. “Okay, so you didn’t have sex, is what I’m hearing?”
I can’t help releasing a groan as I pull my fingers through my short jet black hair. This is what every failed date boils down to with him, and honestly, we are twenty-three years old, so I don’t fucking blame him. But still.
“Look, I’m not like you. I have to get to know them slightly before I fuck them. And every date I’ve been on lately has been so monumentally fucking bad that I just can’t get past their shit to even kiss them, let alone go for more,” I explain, trying to hold in the groan as I think back to all the horrendous dates I’ve had over the last few months since I joined that fucking awful dating website.
They say that it’s the men on there that are sex mad, and we’re all sending dick pics within the first few minutes, talking dirty instead of asking how they are. But, in my albeit very limited experience, the women on there are just as horny. I’ve had pics of nipples, cleavage, and pussies sent my way all before I’d even asked how they are. So, as much as men get a bad rep on those sites—and it’s probably well deserved—there are a few women that are just as bad.
I can feel my balls shrinking the more I talk about wanting to get to know a woman, and if I’m being honest, I’m not looking for a long-term relationship. I just don’t want to fuck around with someone who is fucking around with ten other people. I guess you could say I have standards. Or, as Craig would say, I have blue balls thanks to my standards.
“Okay, so what was wrong with the babysitter?” Craig asks, and I feel a shiver of disgust ripple down my thoughts as I tell him all about my evening.
“So, you know how she invited me over to her house last night?” I ask, and he nods, but says nothing, so I continue. “Well… it turns out it wasn’t actually her house. She was babysitting this young kid.”
“Ohhh my naughty nanny porn is coming to life before my very eyes,” Craig jokes, and I can’t help but laugh at his crazy antics.
“Nah, it was nothing like that. I was so self-conscious. I mean, she’s supposed to be watching the little kid, who thankfully was asleep the whole time, and yet she was more concerned with the joint she had with her.”
“Wait! So, not only did you have a bad babysitter situation going on, she also provided you with weed. I’m failing to see what was wrong with this girl. Did she have a third boob, because at this point, I might be on board with that?”
I flopped back so that I was lying on the bed as a loud groan escaped my lips, frustration over my best friend more than clear. “She didn’t have a third boob. It just felt weird. We were in a stranger’s house, and she was getting high while we were responsible for a little kid. Whenever things started getting interesting and we started making out on the couch, the baby monitor would go off, interrupting us. But that wasn’t even the worst part.”
“So far I’m failing to hear a worst part, but please continue.”
“She went to settle the kid down, and as she came back, she had some cash in her hand. I wondered what she had got it out for, and where from—since her jeans were so tightly plastered against her body, I would have noticed if she had a purse in her pockets. And I knew her bag was on the floor in front of me. That’s when she told me she found it in the parents’ bedroom, and sometimes she helps herself to stuff they won’t miss. Then, as she put the money in her bag, she also put what looked to be an ornamental dog in there, too. She informed me she had done some research, and it was worth a couple of hundred pounds. I said surely it wasn’t a good idea to steal from her employers, and she just said they’re so rich they probably won’t even know, and that they should have been paying her more. I hightailed it out of there and never looked back.”
Silence fills the room, which is very unlike Craig, so I sit up to look and see what he’s thinking. He’s stuffing his face with another chocolate bar, and replies with his mouth full, which makes my stomach roll as nausea takes hold. “Okay, so you probably did the right thing there. Who are we dating next? What happened to the naughty nurse?”
My mind flicks back to Emmaleigh—or Gertrude, as I jokingly call her. She’s the only person on the whole fucking app that knows how to hold a conversation. We had been talking every day for almost six weeks, until a couple of weeks ago. We had finally got to the point where we felt comfortable meeting, and if I’m being honest, I was actually very fucking excited about meeting her.
I dread the other dates now, wondering what fresh hell I will have to encounter, but there was just something different about her. I had a good feeling, but all that was long forgotten when she blew me off. It was the shittiest excuse, too. Something about breaking her foot by falling over a leaf. Yes, you heard that right—a leaf from a tree. I mean, she could have come up with something better. I was just sick of waiting. I didn’t want a relationship where we just text every day. I wanted to meet her, but obviously she didn’t want the same thing. So, I told her I was moving on, that I was seeing someone else. But it was her message a day later that broke me.
She told me she really had broken her foot, and that it was never an excuse. Apparently, she really wanted to date me and she was gutted that we couldn’t meet. She wished me happiness with the girl I was dating, but I could tell she didn’t fully mean it. It’s like one of those things you say just because it’s the right thing. You say one thing, but inside, everything is screaming the opposite. Don’t date someone else. Don’t be happy with someone else. What happened to giving us a chance? And you know what, I’ve been asking myself the same thing every day.
It’s only been around a week since I got that message from her and I already miss her. Not having her there at the end of the day to message, talk about our day together, and generally someone to have a laugh with. It’s actually been unbelievably lonely, which I know sounds absurd. How can you miss someone who has never really been part of your life? Particularly since I’ve never even laid eyes on her, but it’s true—I miss her. But, just like every other fucking thing in my life, I messed things up with her, too.
Craig clears his throat, dragging my attention back to him, and I see he’s still staring, waiting for me to answer him. Taking a deep breath, I try to push Emmaleigh from my mind, and tell him to do the same. “I already told you, I’ve moved on from her. She was making excuses not to meet, and so I started seeing the babysitter.”
“Ha, look how well that turned out. What do you mean by excuses?” I can practically feel him rolling his eyes at me, like it’s more about my excuses than hers.
“We had planned to meet, but then she said she broke her foot. I don’t know. I just got the feeling she was blowing me off so—”
Before I get the chance to finish my sentence, Craig interrupts me. “You would be fucking lucky if a girl blew you off. For fucks sake, Lee. You have got to stop making excuses. And more than that, decide what it is you really want. You say you want nothing serious, that you just want to fuck around, yet you are vetting these girls like you are looking for a wife. If you really just wanted a no strings fling, all you need to know about them is if they are hot, into you, and looking for sex. You keep going on dates, and then ditching these women because they aren’t right. You are giving me fucking whiplash, so I can only imagine what the girls are thinking.”
Shit, he’s right. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I just don’t have it in me to sleep around. But I sure as hell know I’m not looking for a girlfriend. I can barely deal with looking after myself without having the needs of someone else to think about. Besides, even at twenty-three, I already know that I never want to get married or have children. So, what’s the point in looking for a woman to settle down with when I can’t—or won’t—give them what they are looking for?
“Look,” Craig says, as he flops down onto the bed beside me, grabbing my attention from the darkness that was engulfing me. “Just give the girl a chance. I know you’ve already blown her off, but it’s fixable. Give her a week or two, tell her she’s been on your mind, but that you were waiting for her foot to heal. Then ask her out. If you don’t, you are always going to keep wondering. In the meantime, what about the swimmer you were talking to?”
He’s got a point, I don’t think I will be able to just forget about Emmaleigh as easily as I have the other girls. It’s only been a few days, and I can’t get her off my mind. Craig’s right—fuck, I hate saying that—I should give her foot some time to heal, then go for it.
* * *
It’s been a long couple of weeks, and I’m wondering why the hell I’m bothering going on dates. They are just one failure after the next. I really tried not to think about Emmaleigh. I tried telling myself that I broke things off with her and that I need to learn to live with that, but I just couldn’t. With each new person I spoke to on the dating app, I compared them to her. They didn’t ask me how my day had been like she always did. They didn’t get my humour the way she did. They didn’t make me laugh the way she did. So, in the end, I bit the bullet.
CARLOS AKA LEE
Hey, Gertrude. I hope you are well and your foot’s healed. I know you probably never thought you would hear from me again—maybe you never wanted to, in which case you can delete this message. But, I really hope you don’t. You see, I thought I could easily move on and forget about you, since you blew me off—or so I thought. But the truth is, I haven’t forgotten about you. I keep thinking about you, wondering what you are up to, and if you are thinking of me. If you’ve already moved on, then I completely understand that, but if you haven’t, I would love another chance. What do you say, will you go on our long-overdue date with me?
