Nick interrupts before Heather has a chance to reply. ‘We’ve planned a night that doesn’t involve you.’
‘Mate, as much as I’d love to stick around for a Friday night of cardboard stew and the missionary position, I’m still going, I’ll just be too early if I leave now. But you know what that means.’ I adopt a faux enthusiastic tone to my voice. ‘I get to make small talk with you guys for even longer.’
‘Oh joy,’ Heather says, with an equal amount of sarcasm.
Heather Johnson is exactly the kind of girl I would have expected Nick to wind up with, in fact, she’s perfect for him. They both have sensible jobs (Heather is a primary school teacher), they both watch what they eat and, most importantly, they’re both so, so incredibly boring.
Heather takes a seat on the sofa next to me. Nick, whose crap stew clearly doesn’t require any attention at the moment, wanders over and sits in the chair next to us.
‘So you’re going out like that?’ Heather asks me.
‘I am,’ I reply, all smiles. Heather likes me about as much as I like her, which is not at all. She never really gave me a chance, I think she just dislikes me because Nick dislikes me – she’s also a monumental bitch, which also has an effect on her people skills. Still, if she thinks she can upset me, she’s wrong. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘I can see your bra,’ she tells me.
‘Good,’ I reply. ‘It was expensive.’
We sit quietly for a moment before I decide on a silence-breaker.
‘I actually heard a vegan joke the other day, would you like to hear it?’ I ask her.
‘Oh, go on then,’ Heather replies, scooting to the edge of her seat, ready to laugh.
‘How do know if someone is vegan?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know, how?’
‘They tell you,’ I reply, slapping my thigh. ‘Funny, right?’
‘So what you meant is that you heard a joke about vegans, not a vegan joke,’ she corrects me.
‘Same diff., right, miss? I can’t imagine vegan-friendly jokes are a thing – vegan-friendly food is barely a thing. And vegans aren’t known for their sense of humour, are they?’
‘Well, I won’t be telling that one at Vegan Club,’ she says with a frown.
‘Holy shit, Vegan Club is a thing?’
‘Of course it is,’ she replies. ‘We meet every Sunday at Baa Bar Blacks. All welcome.’
‘Wow. So I’m going to guess the first rule of Vegan Club is the opposite of the first rule of Fight Club,’ I joke.
I’m not sure if Heather doesn’t get the reference or just doesn’t find me funny, but she ignores me, turning to Nick.
‘Darling, what do vegan zombies eat?’
‘What?’ he asks, without much enthusiasm. I can tell he’s just enduring the seconds until I leave, so they can get on with their boring night.
‘Graaaaaains,’ she replies, laughing her head off. ‘And you said vegans didn’t have a sense of humour, Ruby.’
‘I did say that, didn’t?’ I reply, pulling myself to my feet. ‘But it was still nice to have you confirm it to be true. I’m going to get going, enjoy your night, you crazy kids.’
Neither of them say goodbye to me, but as I head out through the door, in the seconds before I close it I overhear a snippet of their conversation.
‘How long do you think this bloke will stick around?’ Heather asks Nick.
‘Not long,’ he replies. ‘They never stick around for long.’
‘Hey, babe,’ the large, muscular blond-haired dude towering in front of me says as he pulls me close, planting a kiss on either side of my face.
‘Hello,’ I reply, my voice sounding funny thanks to his exceptionally tight embrace. He’s got that sort of Lenny from Of Mice and Men strength going on, where I don’t think he realises just how tightly he’s hugging me. One of my many Matcher rules (Matcher is my dating app of choice/force because I’m oh-so single) is to never go on dates with dudes who look like they could/would strangle me, and Lenny here could choke the life out of me with ease if he so chose. I’m hoping that he won’t though, because this guy is kind of a celebrity around here. His real name is Deano Gamble, and he plays for the Leeds Lions rugby team. He’s a hooker, apparently. No idea what that means but I laughed for way longer than was cute when he told me during our first phone call. I started talking to Deano on Matcher and we’ve been 21st century flirting ever since; Whatsapp-ing, Snapchat-ing and FaceTime-ing. That was until three weeks ago when I started dating Jonathan and went cold on him. Luckily when I reached out to him again, he still wanted to go on that date we’d been talking about.
Satisfied we were both who we said we were, we’ve arranged to go for dinner - tonight is our first date. Our conversations haven’t really been too in-depth and I think he was drunk during our brief FaceTime, but if I have learned anything during my Matcher-ing, it’s that if you spend too long chatting beforehand, you have nothing to talk about on your first date and it’s super awkward.
I didn’t know what Matcher was until I discovered that my boyfriend was on there. It’s weird, because he kept making comments to me about online dating, joking around with me about seeing what was out there… I assumed he was kidding as he chatted about it with me on the walk back to his after a night out. I was listening, of course I was, but I didn’t really care because I had a boyfriend, what did I need to know about dating apps for? David, my then boyfriend, was perfect on paper. He had a good job, his own flat, a nice car, a handsome face – all the things you’re supposed to look for in a partner if you’re shallow, but I didn’t care about any of that stuff. I felt so safe with him and when he would lie in bed with me at night, cuddled up in the dark, and he would tell me how all he wanted was for us to get our own place.
That night we got back to his and had sex, but that’s about all I could tell you about it: that we did it. It wasn’t special or memorable in any way, and when he was done he rolled over, checked his phone and then went to sleep. I climbed over him to go to the bathroom, sat down on the loo and thought about things. About how cold he was, about his new fixation with dating apps – did he tilt his phone away from me when he checked it? I was sure he did. And when I started really thinking about it, he’d changed the passcode on his phone a matter of days ago, because ‘someone at work’ had learned it, and was on a one-man quest to ‘frape’ him – get into his Facebook account and post something embarrassing on his behalf. He never did tell me the new code…alarm bells were ringing so loud they were deafening, and it was making me dizzy.
I walked back to the bedroom where David was fast asleep, his phone on the bed next to him. That’s when I realised he’d fallen asleep with it unlocked and then I did something I’ve never done before and I’ve never done since – I looked on his phone. I felt sick with myself for looking but that’s nothing compared with how I felt when I looked through
