Swipe Right

by Tagan Shepard

  “Exactly,” Pen said, flopping down on the couch beside me. She looked tired. “She’s just…”

  “Why do you…Never mind. None of my business.”

  “You’re my best friend. Everything is your business. But no, I’m not going to explain my relationship with Ashley to you.” She grinned that wicked cat grin of hers. “And I’m definitely not going to explain my relationship with Ashley and her wife to you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “It isn’t because I don’t trust you or because I’m ashamed, because I’m not.” She reached across me to grab my phone from the arm of the couch. “I can’t really explain it to myself. I don’t examine the things I do. I just do them.”

  I didn’t want to examine them either. My stomach squirmed at the thought of her and Ashley together. I know Pen was a welcome addition to their marriage, but my ex-husband’s infidelity still stung too much for me to understand open relationships.

  “Let’s get to this, shall we?” Pen handed the phone back to me, the camera app open and in selfie mode. The awkward angle of my chin and nostrils made me flip the screen over. “That’s not how you take a selfie, Kieran.”

  “I know. I just…I hate this.”

  Pen wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close. It felt so good to be held by someone—anyone—that I melted into the feeling. I dropped my cheek onto Pen’s shoulder, the soft cotton of her T-shirt as welcoming as an embrace. Why couldn’t I find this in someone who loved me? Was it too much to ask to date someone who knew me as well as my best friend? I didn’t think I’d ever dated anyone like that. Someone I loved and trusted at the same time. I’d trusted Nick and he’d shown me I was wrong. I loved Alex and they hadn’t loved me back. It had never been easy with my lovers, but everything with Pen was easy.

  As much as I wanted to wallow, I knew I couldn’t. If I stayed like this, thinking too much, I’d start crying, and I’d already done too much of that over the years. I sat up, clearing my throat and flipping my phone back over.

  “You okay?” Pen asked, her voice soft and almost husky. She must’ve been really tired. We should make this quick so she could get back home to bed.

  “Yep. Let’s do this.”

  I threw my arm up and snapped a quick shot. It actually wasn’t that bad. My hair was down and wavy from a full day in a ponytail. It fell to my shoulders, highlighting the length of my neck and broadening my chest. My brunette curls almost looked bouncy. I hadn’t worn much makeup to work and what I had worn had faded to a natural look. I’d swapped my slacks for yoga pants and my spaghetti-strap tank showed off the cleavage Ashley had deemed so crucial. Most importantly, my smile looked genuine. Probably because it was genuine for once.

  “Not bad,” Pen said, peering over my shoulder. “Except the eyesore in the background.”

  I squinted at the screen, sure I’d see a pile of forgotten laundry. “What eyesore?”

  “Me. You can’t put up a thirst trap with someone else in the background.”

  “Thirst trap?”

  Pen reached over and scooped the phone out of my hand. “A sexy selfie. You catch someone’s eye and make them salivate over how hot you are.”

  She tapped a button on the phone, adding a filter to the camera and aiming it at me. While she fiddled, I teased, “You’ve probably broken half these women’s hearts anyway. I don’t want them hating me on your account.”

  Pen swiped across the screen, her tongue wedged between her teeth as she tested different filters. “I assure you, I don’t break hearts. That’s what the disclaimer is for, remember?”

  She was so adorable, with the tip of her tongue poking out like a kitten falling asleep, that I seriously doubted none of her conquests caught feelings.

  It ended up being pretty fun taking pictures. Having someone else present while I took selfies seemed counterintuitive, but apparently there is a specific appeal to a selfie that can’t be achieved with someone else taking the picture. Pen explained it, but I didn’t really get it. I just trusted her judgement. Good thing that I did, too. We got some cute pics, very flattering thanks to Pen. How had I never noticed how nice my lips were before?

  Pen left after we uploaded the best one to Swingle. She looked dead on her feet, but she promised to be careful on the drive home. I didn’t press her because she hated people being overly protective, but I prowled my living room until she texted to say she was home safely.

  Chloe messaged while I was crawling into bed.

  I like the new pic. Did you take that tonight?

  Yeah. I was feeling cute.

  You’re looking cute, too. Are you going to bed? Is it too late to talk?

  I checked the time, biting my lower lip. It was late, but tomorrow was Saturday. I could be tired for one day.

  Not too late for me. What about you?

  I have tomorrow off. I’m all yours.

  I liked the sound of that. We’d only chatted a little that afternoon and there was so much more I wanted to know. I asked about her dogs and confessed I was pet-free at the moment.

  My ex took our cat and I can’t bring myself to get another yet.

  You don’t get to see the kitty? No joint custody agreement?

  Things didn’t end on the best terms. I miss Max, but I don’t want to see Alex ever again.

  I knew I shouldn’t be talking about my exes this early, but Chloe made me feel comfortable enough to share. Besides, if I was going to scare her off with my baggage, might as well do it now.

  I know what that feels like.

  I found out more about Blair during our divorce than in all our years of marriage.

  Fortunately I got the boys after they left.

  I noted the gender-neutral pronoun and my heart rate picked up. My hands shook a little when I sent the next message, I was so excited to get the words out.

  Your partner was nonbinary?

  Yeah. Does that freak you out?

  Not at all. Alex was nonbinary, too.

  So you understand how hard it can be for the partner of a person struggling with their gender.

  Absolutely.

  No need to go into anything more than that this early.

  And here I thought you couldn’t be any more perfect.

  That made my racing heart skip a beat. This was my kind of flirting. I pulled over the extra pillow and propped it behind me. I wouldn’t be going to sleep any time soon.

  Chapter Nine

  I’ve always loved a dull Friday night. Even when I was a teenager, I went out on Thursdays instead. Of course, I missed the wild partying times I was supposed to have in my twenties because I got married at eighteen. When you don’t have a frame of reference for something it’s tough to miss it, even if all your friends say it’s great.

  My idea of the perfect Friday night is getting home early, making breakfast for dinner and curling up in my pajamas with a trashy ‘80s movie and a cup of herbal tea. I was spreading a fistful of cheddar cheese over my Denver omelet when my phone buzzed. Chloe’s message flashed into view long enough to make me grin, but I decided to wait until after dinner to read and respond.

  We’d been up far too late last Friday and Saturday had been a complete loss to exhaustion. She’d had several long workdays, keeping us from talking much, but I’d spent most of Thursday dead on my feet from another late-night conversation. The more I thought about our conversations, the more I realized I’d made myself a little too available. Work was important to me and I’m never at my best when I’m exhausted. I should have set firm boundaries with Chloe from the start, for myself as much as for her, so tonight I’d eat my dinner and at least let Molly Ringwald’s entire family forget her sixteenth birthday before I started the conversation again.

  The omelet was really good, but I had a hard time appreciating it. I sat at my two-seater dinette in the open-plan living room and mechanically moved egg from plate to mouth, my mind fixed on the cell phone I’d left on the kitchen counter. I blamed the dinner choice. If I’d gone with my
first instinct—blueberry pancakes with tons of butter and no syrup—I wouldn’t be replaying every sentence from our two conversations in my head. I was thinking about how she’d called me perfect when my fork smashed into bare porcelain. Looking down, I saw that I’d cleaned my plate like a good girl.

  “I guess that means you get dessert,” I mumbled through my smile.

  I paused the movie and took my lemon verbena tea to the couch along with my phone. Chloe’s message was a simple question about what I was doing on a Friday night and I grinned at the television before answering.

  Checking out Molly Ringwald’s polka dotted underpants.

  It took so long for Chloe to answer I thought I’d scared her off. My humor could sometimes be unnecessarily provocative. Maybe I took a step too far this time. Or maybe it was a stupid joke. I was grabbing my phone to apologize and explain when she responded.

  I hope you paid your dollar like everyone else.

  It was worth it.

  I haven’t watched Sixteen Candles in ages.

  Does it hold up?

  It’s problematic to say the least.

  Racism, misogyny, homophobia and the threat of sexual assault.

  Sounds like the 80s to me. Or are you too young to remember them?

  I’m only five years younger than you!

  Answer the question Clarice.

  Silence of the Lambs was the 90s.

  An era I’ll admit I remember better than the 80s.

  Same for me. Blair was a few years older and they always teased me for being a 90s kid rather than an 80s kid.

  How long were you two together?

  Shit. Why’d I ask that question? No more talk about exes, remember?

  Twelve years. What about you and Alex?

  Five. I was married once before them.

  When did they reject the binary?

  About a year before we split.

  Blair came out as genderqueer on our anniversary four years ago.

  The idea of being nonbinary was new then.

  At least it was new to me and we didn’t know anyone else who went through that.

  It was sorta us against the world for a long time.

  This was exactly what I was worried about. I wanted to know more about Chloe, not her ex. It was hard to think of a happy future when we were talking so much about our sad pasts. I waited so long, chewing my lip and thinking about how to steer the conversation away from this topic, that Chloe continued before I could respond.

  The timing stung. Blair basically said “Happy Anniversary! You aren’t a lesbian anymore!”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I’m pan, so it didn’t affect me in that way.

  But you know that your sexuality doesn’t change with your partner’s gender, right?

  Yeah, I know.

  It was selfish of me to feel that way.

  But being a lesbian is one of my favorite things about me.

  I love Blair but I didn’t want to lose myself in loving them.

  In the end it wasn’t right for either of us to be together.

  I’m selfish, too, because I like you and I’m excited to get to know you

  I’m excited, too.

  Finally I thought of a way to steer this conversation in a new direction. It would be so much easier to do this in person, so it was time for me to make a move. This wasn’t how I normally worked. I liked partners to ask me out, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Besides, what I’d done in the past hadn’t worked out for me, so it was time to try something new.

  Excited enough to meet me for a drink?

  I shuffled around the living room, waiting for a reply. After exactly one second, I decided I’d made a terrible mistake. The people I dated usually liked to be in charge and I was totally fine with that. After three seconds, I wished I could take my message back. Maybe I’d turned Chloe off by asking her out? Had I blown any chance with her by being too forward? My mind was going a million miles a minute and it had only been five seconds since I’d sent my message. Was this what it felt like for people who did the asking? This was terrible.

  Absolutely. When are you free?

  All that pent-up fear and embarrassment ripped out of me in a burst of laughter. I’d asked a woman out and she’d said yes! It felt good. Really, really good. Now I know why they like doing this so much. The rush of a yes was well worth the fear of a no.

  Tomorrow night?

  That was too soon. Why had I said that? I sounded desperate. I sounded pathetic. She was going to say no. This was awful. This was the last time I ever asked anyone out.

  I can’t.

  I knew it.

  I work late this weekend. How about Monday? I get off at seven.

  I was on cloud nine. I took a screenshot and fired it off to Pen with a promise she didn’t have to respond, but I wanted her to be the first to know I had a date.

  Perfect. Meet at eight?

  Can’t wait.

  We signed off for the night right as Pen’s response came back. It was a crude joke about when Chloe would really be getting off. If only she’d been there to see my epic eye roll. She followed it up with a congratulations for successfully asking someone out for the first time. I hadn’t even mentioned that. She just knew. Between Chloe and Pen, I was feeling great about the people in my life.

  Chapter Ten

  Monday night didn’t work out after all. Chloe texted me after lunch to say she couldn’t get away from the hospital on time and didn’t want to make me wait. She was super sweet about cancelling, but I worried it was more about me than work. We’d only chatted three times and then I went straight into asking her out. In the real world that wouldn’t be fast, but online dating seemed to have a whole different rule book. One that I had trouble translating.

  When she asked to reschedule for Tuesday, I lied and said I was busy. It was silly and petty, but I had two very good reasons for doing it. Mostly I didn’t want to be too available, which was ridiculous for a thirty-seven-year-old woman, but there it was. There was also the fear it would be another disaster à la Carla and I wanted to have Pen on standby in case it imploded. I had already selfishly taken her out of her house for one Tuesday rest day, I wouldn’t do it again. When I suggested Wednesday instead, Chloe agreed so quickly I felt guilty for the lie.

  We made plans to meet at eight at a bar in Woodbridge and I frantically texted Pen. My first date with someone new in five years had been a disaster and my second had been cancelled. I wasn’t exactly feeling good about this. I liked Chloe, but now I was so afraid it wouldn’t go well that I couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing her. I shot off a second text to Pen, announcing that I was going to cancel with Chloe.

  “Absolutely not.” She came storming into my office instead of texting me back. “You’re going on that date.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I couldn’t help feeling better with her in the room. “It’s too embarrassing. She cancelled.”

  “And immediately rescheduled. She’s a nurse, isn’t she? That sort of thing happens with medical people.”

  “That’s just it! Do I want to get into something serious with a woman who’s going to flake out on me all the time?”

  Pen settled into her usual chair and dropped her loafer-clad feet onto my ink blotter. “Better she flake out on you than on her patients, don’t you think?”

  “No,” I replied grumpily. “Yes. I don’t know. I don’t think I can go through with it.”

  “You can and you will.”

  “What if it’s a train wreck?”

  “What if it’s the best date you’ve ever been on?”

  “It won’t be.”

  “How do you know?”

  Pen did this to me all the time. She spent so much time issuing logical rebuttals that I forgot to freak out. It wasn’t working this time. “Because I would know if she was the one, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that how it happens? You meet them and something clicks.”

  “You haven’t met Chloe.” She laughed
low and warm when I stuck my tongue out at her. “Besides, you’re kinda oblivious, Kieran. The perfect person probably served you coffee this morning and you were too busy freaking out to notice.”

  I tossed a balled-up sheet of paper at her but missed by a mile. “You brought me my first cup of coffee this morning. Why were you in the office so early anyway?”

  “Had a lot of work to get through.” She jumped up as her phone buzzed. “You’re going to meet me at Riveter’s before the date and I’ll keep you focused.”

  It wasn’t a request so much as a demand, and I’d never been good at denying Pen anything. So I showed up at Riveter’s at seven on Wednesday night, nervous but looking pretty good. Pen was already there and already working. She had a woman in a neat business suit and flowing silver hair leaning in close. When Pen saw me, she tapped a finger to the woman’s chin in a provocative gesture that nonetheless sent the woman back to the dance floor alone.

  I slid into the newly empty seat and tucked my shaking hands under my thighs.

  “Looking good, Kieran,” Abby said, rose-pink wig skimming her jawline. “Martini?”

  “Not tonight. I’m meeting someone for drinks later and I don’t want to show up drunk.”

  “She’s two-timing you, Penelope?”

  “I’m not nearly good enough for her,” Pen responded with a wink.

  “I met someone on Swingle,” I blurted out, wanting to get Abby’s warning out of the way.

  “Aw, that’s sweet,” Abby said as she made me a club soda. “I met my baby on Swingle.”

  “You did?” My voice only trembled a little.

  “Yeah. I went on like a million dates before we met.” Abby’s smile was so genuine. I tried one of my own but my lips weren’t cooperating. “It was fun, though. I met some great folks. You won’t be compatible with everyone, but that’s okay. Try to have fun.”