‘The one thing I would advise you not to say,’ Molly finished her last mouthful of Gordon’s and tonic, then continued, ‘is that. But I think I can help. On a few conditions, if you’re up for it. I’ve got to get a new business going, like yesterday. And I’m going to need some great IT support.’ Molly raised her eyebrows.
‘I could help you!’ Kurt beamed. ‘I could put together a really good website, help you get going with digital marketing too. All that stuff. I do it as a sideline sometimes, for mates, as well as fixing their laptops for them. So it would be like an exchange of services? Your dating wisdom for my computer know-how. Works for me!’
Molly leant back and smiled slowly. Kurt had definite potential and with his skills on side for free, this new business idea might really have some legs. She didn’t want to share it with Rach or Cleo just yet, not while it was still all up in the air like a wispy cloud. But it really looked like it could go somewhere. And so could Kurt.
Over their empty glasses, Molly and Kurt shook hands.
* * *
‘Hey roomie!’ Molly bounced into the kitchen with a silly grin.
‘Hey, Cooper. What’s the dealio?’ John was at the sink, scrubbing new potatoes. Since he’d turned a corner in clean living and had been forced to spend a lot more time in the kitchen, he’d remembered just how much he used to enjoy cooking, before Melissa would storm at him for using every pot and pan they had to produce one small jug of Hollandaise sauce. No matter how good she had to concede the sauce was. John now saw her point, of course. Tonight he was making grilled lamb, vine tomatoes and feta on a bed of crushed potatoes, seasoned with rosemary. Molly’s mouth watered.
‘That smells absolutely divine. You can put “excellent cook” in your profile.’
‘What profile?’
‘Your online dating profile.’ Molly continued to grin.
John turned around with a potato in one hand and a scrubbing brush in another, his face clouding with suspicion. ‘Wha—’
‘Don’t move! That would make a great picture for the site – really natural. How could they not love you in that pinny?’ Molly dashed to her room to get her digital camera, returned and snapped John before he had time to object. ‘Smile and I’ll do another one.’
John held up both hands in front of his face, blocking Molly’s attempts to pap him. ‘Wait, did I sleep talk or something and ask you to put me on a dating site?’
‘No, but sleep talking is a nice anecdote to use. You need those little details that make you seem both approachable and memorable. I just thought that, you know, as you’ve been single for going on six months, it might be good idea to get back out there. Dip a toe in the water. See what’s biting.’
‘I think you’re confusing your metaphors, Mols. I don’t want anyone to bite my toes. Plus, I’m not ready for a new relationship,’ John said gruffly as he turned back to his bowl of Jersey Royals.
‘No one said anything about relationships. This is just a great way to flirt, meet some new people, stretch out the dating muscles, get a bit cheeky.’ She punched him playfully on the shoulder to win back his attention from the spuds. ‘Besides, I’m helping one of Sam’s mates – Kurt – put a profile up, and I thought it would be fun if we did it all together, had a few drinks, compared notes over dinner. You’ve got enough for three, right?’ Molly winked and bounced out of the kitchen again. ‘I’ll go and get the beers in!’ With the slam of the front door, John realised his mind had been made up for him.
* * *
‘Nooo, nooooo!’ Molly slurred slightly, popping a deliciously salty bit of feta into her mouth with half a little, sweet tomato. ‘Never say you’re “fun-loving” unless you want a shag, pure and simple. Here,’ she took over from Kurt on the laptop, clicked a few times on her mousepad until she found what she was looking for and then turned the whole thing round on the dining table so they could all see. Kurt had a stool next to John. They had long ago finished the beers and were onto the aged rum. ‘Look at this guy – two profile pictures, both with his T-shirt off on the beach. Nice abs, I will give him that. But his profile just says “Fun-loving, likes to party. Get in touch if you think we’d hit it off.” I mean, no one pitches themselves in twenty words or less if they’re looking for true and lasting love. He wants naughty times.’ Molly leaned back on her stool at the table, a tad unsteadily, with an innuendo riddled leer.
‘All right,’ Kurt turned the computer back to face him. ‘I’ll take that bit out. Anything else I should avoid like the Norovirus?’
‘Hang on, let me think,’ Molly said, pouring a few more fingers of rum into her glass, as if this was vital to her thought process.
‘Is it OK to say you’ve just come out of a relationship?’ John asked, his eyelids lowering a fraction with every extra glass of rum. After all that prepping and cooking, he was feeling quite the sleepy sausage.
‘S’OK to say that your last relationship was so-many months ago, because that implies you intend to have another one. But definitely don’t use the phrase “ex-girlfriend”. At all. AT ALL. It just sets mental alarm bells ringing. If you’re complimentary, if you’re angry, if you’re completely ambivalent: it doesn’t matter, the woman reading it will instantly assume you’re not over your ex.’
John looked down into his treacle-coloured liquid.
‘Kurt, which site are you going on?’ Molly asked, scrapping up the last bits of potato on her plate. Mmmm. Happy John was turning into Gastro John pretty quickly.
‘MySingleFriend.com. Kathy at work recommended it to me – she’s going to be the friend who talks me up.’ Kurt continued to type with lightning speed, despite the very many units of alcohol he’d consumed.
‘Whoa there, Casanova!’ Molly jabbed a finger in the air. ‘That is perhaps the biggest nooooo of all. If you get a female “friend” to big you up, all the single ladies out there will assume there’s a bit of a connection between you, an unresolved one which will just flare up down the line.’
‘But Kathy is forty-seven. And married.’
‘They’re not going to know that!’ Molly did a little wiggly chair dance as she sang ‘All the Single Ladies’ in her head. ‘It happened to Rach, so ask her if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t know Rachel,’ Kurt interjected.
‘Well, you will, so you should pay attention and stop interrupting. Anyway, she met this guy online whose old school friend Sarah described him as the best bloke ever. So Rach thought, “Well, she’s known him a long time, so she must be a good judge.” Too good a judge it turns out. This Sarah even turned up on their second date. Said she just “happened” to be passing by the bar with some of their other friends and popped in to say hello. Once Rach saw the chemistry between them, she put two and two together and felt she had to point out four to the guy. She did. He hooked up with Sarah. It all ended well. But not for Rach. Hey – it’s like that episode of Dawson’s Creek where Joey goes out with the nerdy college student guy, who’s this amazing writer, but it turns out he didn’t know he was in love with his girl best friend all along. Which, of course, in itself had echoes of the whole Joey-Dawson-Pacey thing. Huh. Never realised that before. I was, like, always on Team Pacey, weren’t you?’
Two blank faces looked back at Molly.
‘Anyway, always get a same-sex friend to write you up. Unless they’re in love with you, because that still might complicate things. Who’s for puds? I think I have some vanilla ice cream and strawberry Treat sauce in the back of my cupboard.’ Molly let out a big laugh. ‘Not that the ice cream’s in the cupboard! Psssh, that would just be silly.’ She cleared the plates and tottered down to the kitchen.
Two bemused faces looked at each other.
‘Read it out then,’ John prompted.
‘Right,’ Kurt scrolled back up to the top of the page. ‘Kurt is a laid back kind of guy who enjoys staying in or going out, playing video games and cooking up a mean chicken bhoona. He’s looking for a girl who likes a laugh and is an outd
oorsy sort of person. Drop me a line if you want to meet.’
Molly stood in the doorway with two mismatched bowls, each with two thin slivers of ice cream drowned in strawberry sauce. She could never wait for the ice cream to get soft enough to scoop at the best of times, let alone when rather squiffy. She had seven bent spoons in the back of the cutlery drawer to prove it. ‘Have I taught you nothing, Kurt? Your lame words wound me, young man.’
John rolled his eyes at his fellow captive. ‘This is where she tries to explain why women read twelve things from one word. Follow my lead, K-dog, become celibate and leave the minefields far behind for the other chumps who are happy to wander in and get their hearts blown out.’ John stared moodily into his near-empty ice cream bowl and scrapped his spoon around the bottom.
‘Riiight.’ Kurt looked to Molly for help.
She shrugged and went back to the kitchen for her pudding.
‘You think you’ve found the one, you think someone understands you, then you leave two pizza boxes under the bed for a week by mistake and apparently it’s the final straw – even though I apologised for wiping my hands on the sofa. I could have changed, after a while. With help. Maybe. My mum always said I was a tryer. Melissa just said I was trying her sanity.’
Molly ambled back in and slumped down onto her stool. She leant across to Kurt and whispered, ‘Do you think he knows we’re still here?’
‘I think John’s in a bad place,’ Kurt whispered back.
‘You’d be in a bad place if the queen of your heart took her CSI DVDs and moved out of your flat, taking all your hope and dignity and happiness with her. And the bottle opener. Nothing is as miserable as being alone in a flat with a bottle of Co-op wine you can’t get into to numb the pain and an unresolved need to find out what happens between Danny and Lindsay in CSI New York. This website will just help you find someone who will ultimately crush your spirit, Kurt. Hold on to the manhood you have and just keep holding.’
‘Um, that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing, to be honest.’ Kurt knocked back another mouthful of rum as Molly grimaced.
‘You’re not celibate, John. You just haven’t had any for a while: there is a difference. I haven’t done it in … ooh, quite a while, but that’s because I haven’t actually gone on a date. If I went on one, I’d get some. Simples. Doesn’t mean I’m a nun in the meantime.’
‘So why don’t you, Sister Molly of the Sacred Treat Sauce?’ John’s voice was teetering between wry humour and gravelly cynicism.
‘Too busy with my career, obviously. Just as soon as that light bulb switches on, I will be on my way!’ Molly raised her glass in a toast to her future, imagined revenue streams.
‘Yes, good luck with that.’ Fortunately Molly’s alcohol blood content shielded her from John’s deadpan sarcasm.
‘But this isn’t about me – it’s about you guys playing the field a bit more. The big, crazy cyber field of the internet. Thing. Let me see that, Kurt.’ Molly swivelled the laptop towards her and squinted her eyes a little. She knew she should wear her glasses more but she’d been a bit rash with her choice of frames and looked like a female Jarvis Cocker impersonator. A bad one. ‘Hmm, it’s not quite there at the moment. You’ve got some of the basics, so well done on that, but it definitely needs some tarting up to make it girl-friendly. That video games bit is like a huge beacon of geekness at the moment. No offence.’
Kurt tried not to take any.
Molly steadily typed out some changes on two fingers, her tongue held between her teeth in tipsy concentration. ‘There you are. See that and read what you think. Wait, reverse that. You’ve got to be concise and clear with your advertising copy. Know your market, hit that demographic. There are certain key words that women will like to hear, trust me. Just like management bods love hearing that you’ll “get on board the synergy action train” or that you can “take the valued added to the bank”. There are a few little hidden words that are the modern equivalent to open sesame in getting a woman to open up and take a chance on you. Check it out.’
Kurt’s eyes skimmed the page. Now and then he dipped his head in a small nod.
‘I’ve got to see this.’ John came and stood behind Kurt’s stool. ‘What’s so different about it? It sounds pretty much the same to me: Kurt is a laid back, confident guy who’s happy chilling at the pub with friends or getting comfy on the sofa with a DVD. Especially when he’s just made his famously good chicken bhoona and opened some wine. He loves girls who can make him laugh, who can put away a lot of curry and who can give him a run for his money on Mario Kart. Drop him an email and get chatting – he’s a first-class bloke. It’s the same.’
‘To an untrained male brain, which is to say all male brains, yes, it could look similar. But trust me: the devil is in the detail. I wish I could get that lasered onto your eyelids so you’d be reminded every second. Women read into things, then they read into things that were lurking behind those original things. Then they look into their friend’s things and compare. One simple word or phrase can have a pyramid of connotations.’
‘A myriad,’ Kurt supplied.
‘That’s what I said. I’m just going to talk you through the first draft but with female interpretations switched on, so you can have a little insight into our twisted but very advanced way of thinking. Kurt is a lazy oaf who watches too much sport, either at home or at the pub. He gets rancidly drunk every weekend. He plays video games for hours on end against twelve-year-olds in Canada and puts a macho amount of chilli in all his food. He’s looking for an easy lay who won’t mind standing and watching him play rubbish football in the freezing cold, and he’ll probably go off you if you put on some extra weight. He won’t make the first move so you’ll have to do all the running around.’ Molly squirted some Treat sauce on her finger and stuck it into her mouth with a flash of a smile.
‘No way,’ John shook his head, ‘Shut. Up. No one thinks like that.’
‘Oh, really? And you’re better placed to say how women think, are you? You always know what they’re thinking?’
John looked up to the ceiling and raised his shoulders. ‘Well, I didn’t say—’
‘No, no, you’re probably right. I mean, I only actually am a woman and you’re Mr Hot Shot Casanova who’s declared himself celibate, so of course you should be the judge.’
‘There’s no need to get bitchy about it.’ John’s face clouded.
‘Hey, hey! Guys, don’t make me the Tyra Banks here, OK?’ Kurt waded in. ‘Because, like Tyra, I’m just going to turn any spat between people back to being about me. And this is about my profile. If Molly says her version is the best way to appeal to the single ladies of cyber space, then I’ll take her word for it. Look at the hard facts, John, mate. After Molly’s intervention, Sam is now lazying on an Antipodean beach with a smoking hot girl who has agreed to hang out with him for ever. I’m going to do whatever Mols says if that’s what it’ll get me.’
John grumbled something like, ‘I suppose. Sorry.’
Molly chewed the corner of her thumbnail, feeling a bit guilty. ‘I’m sorry. I went a bit too far. Rum makes me aggressive and ice cream gets me over excited.’ She patted John’s hand. ‘Don’t get back out there till you’re ready, but remember you are a great catch. And when you do decide to move on, you’re going to show the world your very best side and hook The One.’
John shrugged his shoulders and scraped around in his bowl again. ‘I’m getting more ice cream. Anyone want some?’ After two shakes of two heads, John trundled out of the room.
‘Let’s post this baby!’ Molly grinned at Kurt. ‘Then we’ll draft an opening email for you to send to women you like the look of. We’ve got a good few hours before I run out of steam. Let’s get cracking!’
Kurt slapped himself on both cheeks and straightened his posture. ‘Yes, sir!’
Chapter Fifteen
A Lycra-hugged bottom hit the bar stool, not an ounce of untoned flesh anywhere inside the tight red leggings.
‘OK, cowboy, steady there. I see you’ve hit the cocktails already.’ Josie nodded to the long glass with just a smidge of lime green liquid and some pineapple cubes at the bottom.
‘Yes!’ Molly exclaimed, not toning down the bubbly enthusiasm at all. ‘They’re great, have one! And guess what! It’s karaoke night! I didn’t even realise, but it’s going to be so fun. I love a good cheese fest.’ Molly flung a hand behind her at the small stage in the corner, thankfully dimly lit and with just one wobbly mic stand. ‘I’m so glad you’re here!’ Molly lunged forward for another hug and Josie had no choice but to sit through it.
‘You said that, Mols. Well, I usually don’t go out on a Friday because bootcamp starts so early on Saturdays. If I was green around the gills, I could hardly expect my soldiers to hold onto their stomach contents, huh? But you sounded like you really wanted to celebrate. So, what’s the big occasion? Why did we have to get dressed up and hit the bars all of a sudden?’
‘Not yet, not yet. Rachel’s not here. I need you together.’ Molly swigged back the final centimetre of tropical green punch. ‘Mmm, and I need another one of these! What will you have?’
Josie studied the menu. ‘A Long Island Iced Tea, please.’
Molly caught the barman’s eye and ordered two Long Islands and two June Bugs.
‘Hello! Someone’s decided to go all-out. This isn’t going to be one of those UK binge drinking things I read about, is it?’ Josie narrowed her eyes at Molly.
‘Nah. Happy hour ends in twelve minutes – just wanted to make the most of it. I’m not that drunk – I’m just high on life. You’ll see. Rach!’ Molly squealed loudly, causing Josie to bring her hands up to her ears and show off a very flamboyant costume cocktail ring in the process.
‘Hi, guys!’ Rachel waved and dumped her bag on the next available stool. ‘Oooh, love the emerald, Josie. You can never go wrong with an oversized statement ring. And it contrasts so well with those red leggings. I could just eat you up. If I didn’t think you’d be mostly muscle.’ Rach picked up the bar menu from where Josie had left it. ‘Have I missed happy hour? Two Mojitos for me!’
The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp Page 11