Don’t mourn the man you thought you knew. Remember the man he really was.
“Fine,” I conceded, shaking Carlo from my thoughts.
Belle did a little hop for joy, but I held up one finger to stop her celebration.
“But, it has to be in a way I can control. If I want to stop, if I never want to see the guy again or I feel icky at any point, I get to pull out. Deal?”
“Deal,” she agreed, still doing grabby-hands for my phone. “And make sure he pulls out, too. AYOOO!”
I rolled my eyes.
Belle was still smiling at her brilliance, fingers wiggling and waiting for my phone. “It’s perfect. Just only talk to them through the app, that way if you hate them after your date — er, after the game,” she corrected. “You can just delete them. Then, they can’t talk to you anymore. And, honestly, I think you should just take a new guy every time.”
I handed her my phone, making my way inside the bar as she followed behind, still bouncing like a little girl who was just given twenty bucks to go wild in the toy store with.
“Oh, a new guy every game,” I echoed. “Okay, now that I could get down with. Then it’s more of like a… hangout. A game with a friend.”
“A friend who could, potentially, rail you into next year with his hammer cock.”
The bartender’s brows shot up at Belle’s comment as we slid into two blessedly empty stools at the corner end of the bar. I laughed, shaking my head to signal that he shouldn’t even ask.
“Titos and water with lime,” I told him. “Two, please.” Then, I turned back to my best friend, who was feverishly typing away on my phone. “I’m serious, Belle. If at any point I decide I hate this, I get to pull the plug. And,” I said, pointing at her. “If that happens, then you’re suckered into going to every remaining game with me. And you can’t complain. Even if it’s below fifty outside.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” she said, waving me off quickly before clicking through my phone more.
The bartender slid our drinks in front of us, and I smiled his way, handing him my card. When he smiled back, I faltered, eyes lingering on him a little longer than they should have. He turned so quickly, I didn’t have time to stare the way I wanted to, but that brief smile alone had me clenching my thighs together under the bar.
Belle grabbed her drink and immediately started sipping from the straw, fingers still flying over my phone, but I just stared at the man with my card in his hand as he crossed to the other side of the bar to help the next person. His shoulders were broad and rounded, his waist narrow, t-shirt sitting on the belt of his jeans in a way that made my next swallow harder to accomplish. And when my eyes fell to his ass, perfectly rounded in a pair of dark denim jeans that fell in just the right way off his hips, well…
Let’s just say I wanted a better look at the front. And the side. And all angles.
Maybe I am ready to get laid.
“There!” Belle exclaimed proudly, holding my phone out a few inches as if to study her masterpiece. “Your bio is all set. I picked the best pictures, although we do need to get some updated ones where you’re actually smiling,” she said pointedly, her eyes flicking up to mine before landing on the phone again. “Wanna hear what I put?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Belle ignored me. “Hot Italian chick who loves checking off to-do lists almost as much as watching football. Go Bears!”
I laughed. “Oh, my God, Belle.”
Again, she ignored me.
“Season ticket holder looking for a cool, DTF guy to use my other ticket at a home game,” she continued. “If you love football, beer, and good conversation, I’m your girl. Send me a message, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll be sitting next to me at kick-off.”
“That’s actually only fifty-percent cheesy and awful,” I said, knowing there was little point in arguing any edits. I glanced at the photos she’d picked for me, staring at my phone over her shoulder. The default was a selfie I’d snapped just two weeks ago at the first home preseason game. I had my burnt-orange Bears jersey on, my long, dark brown hair pulled over one shoulder, and a sideways grin. My eyes looked even more intensely green than normal in the lighting I’d caught in my condo that afternoon, the sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Reading over the bio she’d written for me again, I frowned. “What does DTF mean?”
Belle sucked a large drink through her straw. “Oh, it means… dark, tall, and fun. Kind of like tall, dark, and handsome. All the kids are saying it, kind of like how we used A/S/L back in the good ol’ days of AOL messaging.”
“Oh…” I thought over her words, wondering when I’d missed that little piece of lingo. I was approaching thirty, but it wasn’t like I was ancient. I still kept up with social media, after all.
“Gotta pee!” Belle said quickly, hopping down off her barstool. She popped my phone into my hand. “Here, start swiping. Right means you think they’re hot, left means they don’t have a chance in hell.”
I laughed. “This is absurd.”
She just shrugged. “Welcome to dating in the twenty-first century. Be right back.”
Once Belle was gone, I crinkled my nose at my phone, placing it on the bar with the app still up on the screen. I turned my attention to the television behind the bar, instead, watching the game that had just started in California. The San Francisco 49ers were up on the Denver Broncos by three, and I watched the next play, tossing my hands up with a dramatic groan when offsides was called on Denver’s offense.
“Oh, come on, ref.” I sighed, sipping my vodka. “Idiots.”
“They’ve been calling shit this whole quarter,” an older guy huffed at me from down the bar. “You a Broncos fan, too?”
“Bears girl,” I answered, eyes still on the screen. “But that was just a terrible call, no matter which team you’re rooting for.”
“Let’s hope our refs just let the boys play this year,” the man’s friend chimed in, and I noted he was wearing a Bears shirt.
“I’m more concerned about our O line. If we can’t keep the quarterback safe, it won’t matter what the refs call.”
They both grumbled and raised their beers to me at that, and I cheersed their direction, taking another sip before my eyes flashed over my phone.
I sighed, finally picking it up.
For a solid minute, I just stared at the first face on my screen. It was a blond guy with glasses, his face a little round, eyes soft. The photo he’d chosen for his default was him sitting in a lawn chair at what appeared to be a barbecue, a dog in his lap, beer in one hand. He looked fun, like a friend I could watch football with.
But I didn’t want to have sex with him.
I swiped left.
Once that first decision was made, I filtered through the next ones a bit quicker. In all honesty, it felt like a game — like some sort of soft-core porn site that no one had to know I enjoyed browsing. The more I swiped, the more I smiled.
Hot lawyer with a cat? Swipe right.
Boating captain with a gaggle of girls in every single photo of his? No, thanks. Swipe left.
Self-proclaimed “rich stud” with a photo of him holding a stack of cash? Hard left.