Swipe Right

by Stephie Chapman

  Swipe Right

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One July

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine September

  Chapter Ten October

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve December

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen January

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two The One Who Cried After Sex

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five Patriotic Zac

  Chapter Twenty-Six April

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Ezra the Rockstar

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One July

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four September

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One April – Six Months Later

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  A Letter From Stephie

  Acknowledgements

  Books By Stephie Chapman

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Swipe Right

  Stephie Chapman

  For anyone who has looked at their best friend and realised, oh, hey, it’s you.

  Chapter One

  July

  ‘Fran, your phone just buzzed! Do you want me to bring it to you?’

  ‘Fangs. U’m jush bruffng aii teef,’ I say, thickly, through a mouthful of foamy toothpaste.

  ‘Huh?’

  The electric brush head stops and starts rhythmically, and I spit.

  ‘I said, “thanks, I’m just brushing my teeth”.’

  ‘How are you feeling about today?’

  Suze, my flatmate-cum-sort-of-landlady deposits my phone on the vanity unit and sits down on the side of the bath.

  ‘Excited and nervous,’ I say, now wiping toner over my face and dabbing moisturiser under my eyes.

  ‘You’re going to be great,’ she says, giving me an encouraging thumbs-up, and I grin at her through the mirror and pump some foundation onto the tips of my fingers. My phone buzzes again as I smear the make-up over my face, and I reach for it, leaving streaks on my cheeks.

  Dad

  Best of luck petal.

  Dad

  But don’t swear!

  Lydia

  So excited for you about today! I believe in you! Mind you don’t say fuck though x

  ‘Why do they both think I’m going to unleash the potty mouth?’ I ask. It’s rhetorical, but Suze answers anyway.

  ‘Because they know you,’ she laughs.

  ‘I’m not going to swear. I’m going to pretend I’m on the telly,’ I say, lining my eyes and cleaning off a smudge with a cotton pad.

  ‘Probably not a bad idea,’ Suze shrugs. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to say?’

  ‘I guess that depends on what they ask.’

  She nods slowly.

  ‘But assuming they go on all the stuff I’ve sent over, then, yes, I should be able to wow them. What do you reckon? Purple, nude or red?’ I ask, and I hold up my three favourite lipsticks.

  ‘Red. It’s a power colour. People never, ever mess with a woman wearing red lipstick.’

  ‘Done,’ I say.

  Suze gets up to leave.

  ‘I’m going to the gym now, so I’ll catch you later. Remember not to swear.’

  * * *

  I arrive in Fitzrovia a little bit early, and there’s a man loitering outside the building as I approach. He is very, very cool. I’m talking James Dean cool. Coiffed hair and Ray-Bans and a bomber jacket with varsity ribbing levels of cool. But it’s not even really just how he looks. There’s this vibe about him. An attitude. He’s radiating confidence, talking on his phone whilst leaning against the brickwork, and he doesn’t acknowledge me at all as I push open the glass door.

  ‘Fran Tatlin,’ I say in hushed tones, to the girl at the reception desk. ‘Here for—’

  She strikes through my name on a list.

  ‘Yep.’ She smiles warmly at me. ‘Take a seat,’ and she gestures to a pair of yellow and black striped sofas with four other people sitting on them. Someone budges up for me but no one is talking. Not one person says anything. I whisper my thanks and study everybody’s shoes.

  The phone rings and the receptionist answers through a headset. She talks cheerfully, taps at a keyboard and transfers the call. Then she sits back, stretches, sips from a can of Sprite, and focuses her attention back on her screen. Beyond her desk, people flit around an open-plan office. Someone throws a paper aeroplane across the room and it’s swiftly followed by a scrunched-up ball of paper from the opposite direction, and laughter. Someone else wanders around wearing giant, wireless headphones. There’s music playing and friendly, chatty conversation. But none of the fun, or lively atmosphere reaches the two stripy sofas.

  The five of us sit, steadfastly refusing to make eye contact, not engaging in a conversation of our own at all, friendly or otherwise. Instead, a girl absent-mindedly picks at her cuticles next to a boy who has clearly just graduated and thought it appropriate to turn up in a boxy grey suit, complete with nervous disposition and snazzy, jazzy tie which I can only assume belongs to his father. The guy sitting next to me keeps wriggling. His hip keeps bouncing against mine and I fleetingly wonder if he needs the toilet.

  And then, the door swings open and James Dean saunters in and even his gait exudes self-assurance. I’m fully expecting him to walk straight past us and into the midst of everything happening in the studio beyond, stop in the middle of it all and do something cool that commands everyone’s attention, like The Fonz or Danny from Grease, but he too checks in with the receptionist and takes the only available seat, directly opposite me. I don’t hear his name, and instead I amuse myself with guessing what it could be (Blake? Finley? Levi?) and finding ways to surreptitiously check him out. Pretty green eyes. Quite a sharp jawline. He’s wearing a white t-shirt under that bomber jacket and skinny jeans and Adidas trainers, and he’s dumped a record bag by his feet. He taps at his phone. Smirks. Taps some more. Leans back on the couch and shifts his feet about a bit and I can’t tear my eyes away. It’s fine; he hasn’t noticed. Unless he has, and that’s what he was smirking about. Unless he was texting someone about the girl opposite him at a group interview who keeps staring. God.

  A man and a woman approach from behind the sofa that Cool in Adidas is sitting on and even that doesn’t fluster him. The kid in the suit jumps a mile. We’re beckoned to follow into a large conference room and they look around the room at everyone until we’re all seated.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman says in a soft Irish lilt. ‘My name’s Maxine. Welcome to Viral Hive.’

  She and her colleague, Joe – another trendy thirty-something media type – bounce off each other, delivering a perfect pitch about the company. How it’s grown and expanded at lightning speed to become the biggest and the best viral content company in the world. About the family-style ethos, the weekly evening out at the pub and t
he catered lunches everyone eats together, the opportunities for secondments at the sister studios abroad and how individuality and creativity are both nurtured and encouraged. I’m immediately sold. I want this job.

  ‘So it’s time for a fun ice-breaker,’ Maxine says, and claps her hands. ‘Turn to the person next to you. You have five minutes to talk and then you’ll introduce each other to the group.’ She starts the timer on her phone. ‘Go!’

  I’m next to the girl who picked at her nails. She smiles at me shyly but says nothing.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘I feel sick,’ she whispers. Wonderful, I think.

  * * *

  ‘This is Tom,’ the wriggly guy who was sitting next to me in the foyer says about his partner. ‘Tom has a YouTube channel.’

  ‘I’m a YouTuber,’ Tom interrupts, eager to differentiate himself from people who merely use the platform to watch music videos or learn how to apply their eyeliner.

  ‘Yes, sorry. He’s a YouTuber. He makes videos about gaming. He once played Minecraft solidly for fourteen hours at a convention in Denver.’

  ‘Christ,’ Maxine gasps.

  ‘It was cool,’ Tom shrugs. ‘People brought me snacks. And someone asked me to sign their t-shirt. And I got to meet the voice actors from Teen Titans Go! Anyway, this is Matt. He’s been living in Canada for a while, working on a paper in Vancouver…’

  Maxine and Joe ask Tom and Matt a few questions and then it’s my turn.

  ‘This is Hannah,’ I say. ‘She writes a blog. And she sings in a rock choir, and they do a lovely rendition of “Anytime You Need A Friend”, which I was excited about as I love that song.’

  ‘Do you?’ Hannah asks, looking pleased.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ I say, and she pats me on the arm. ‘Anyway, there’s a video on the internet of them singing it, which is how I know it’s a lovely rendition.’

  Hannah looks thrilled. Cool in Adidas smirks again, which I take to mean he isn’t a Mariah Carey fan.

  ‘Your turn now, Hannah,’ I prompt.

  ‘Right, so this is Frances, but she goes by Fran. When she was at school, she wrote a poem that was published and got to meet Quentin Blake!’

  ‘Really?’ Cool in Adidas pipes up. It’s the first time he’s looked interested since we’ve been here. ‘How come?’

  ‘He was the Children’s Laureate,’ I say. ‘He was very nice. I was very shy.’

  ‘Did he draw you a picture?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bummer.’

  ‘He did illustrate the book my poem was in, though.’

  ‘Not the same.’

  I choose to ignore that.

  ‘What was your poem called?’ Joe asks. He leans back against the glass partition separating the conference room with the office behind it.

  ‘In The Sea,’ I say. ‘It was, unsurprisingly, about things that live in the sea.’

  Cool in Adidas raises an eyebrow and coughs.

  ‘Alright, can we hear your introduction now?’ I snap, and immediately regret it. I’ve momentarily forgotten I’m in a job interview and therefore need to be on my best behaviour and probably shouldn’t goad my pretty but also pretty arrogant rival, who definitely thinks he has this in the bag before he’s even really said a word.

  ‘I think James is meant to do that,’ he says, nodding at the kid in the boxy suit. James takes his cue.

  ‘This is Ollie,’ he says.

  Ollie. Cool in Adidas Ollie. James Dean Ollie. Nice-to-look-at Ollie. Is-almost-certainly-getting-this-job Ollie. ‘Ollie auditioned for The X Factor in 2007—’

  ‘No way,’ Hannah cuts in.

  ‘Way,’ Ollie says, in a self-satisfied sort of way, and he catches my eye. He reckons his fact has trumped mine, and to be honest, he might be right.

  ‘Did you get far?’ I ask, coolly.

  ‘Nah,’ he admits. ‘Didn’t even make it past the first round of auditions.’

  ‘No sob story?’ I quip, tipping my head to the side and wrinkling my nose, and he laughs. It’s authentic. I’ve made him laugh with my faux sympathy and schadenfreude. It’s a strange feeling. I don’t think I like him very much, but at the same time, I’m fascinated by him, and I’m definitely enjoying the feeling of having made him laugh.

  ‘No sob story,’ he agrees, and then shares James’ fact – that he’s really, really good at poker, so good, in fact, that he got invited to play at a tournament in Las Vegas – before sitting back in his chair and folding his arms.

  ‘Alright,’ Maxine says, clapping her hands. ‘Now we’re going to split you into pairs for the next task. We want to see what you can come up with for Viral Hive. What you think our visitors want to see. What makes them come back. What you envisage seeing on the home page.’ She hands us each a folded piece of paper, with a number on it, and explains we are to pair up with the member of the group with the same number. I have number three.

  So does Ollie. It’s thrilling and terrible all at once.

  We shuffle our chairs towards each other and he doodles on the notepad in front of us.

  ‘So, ideas for content?’ I prompt.

  He looks up at me and nods towards the window and the office.

  ‘What keeps you coming back to the site?’ he asks. ‘Is it the quizzes? Do you fall down a quiz rabbit hole and lose hours at a time? Do you like the ones about Friends?’

  ‘Not so much those,’ I say. ‘I like the features, actually. And the videos.’

  ‘The videos, you say?’ It’s piqued his interest.

  ‘Yeah. The food ones are good. Accessible. I like the way the quick recipes break everything down.’

  ‘Right! I like them, too. But the ones where people’s reactions are filmed when they eat weird stuff. Like, when Americans eat Marmite. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Okay, X Factor Ollie,’ I say, lowering my voice. ‘I have an idea.’ I take the pen out of his hand and pull the pad towards me.

  We’re last to present, and although I did think sitting through the other pitches would be nerve-racking, having seen them I’m quietly confident ours is the best. It also gives me time to consider what I’m going to say, because there’s no way I’m letting Ollie take the credit for what was, in essence, my idea. Shit’s about to get competitive.

  When it’s our turn, we stand at the front, and I pass him the brain-storming document we scribbled together. I’m not sure he likes being volunteered as paper-holder but, well, tough.

  ‘Our idea,’ I begin, ‘is a hybrid of two of the things that keep us visiting Viral Hi—’

  ‘Look, everyone likes to eat, right?’ Ollie interrupts with a shrug and a smile, as if it’s obvious. He hands me our sheet of paper and sits on the edge of the table. Oh. Hell. No.

  ‘I know I do,’ I cut in, American talkshow co-host style. Ollie stops and stares at me. We’ve gone off piste. This was not what we practised. YouTuber Tom notices and he sits forward and rests his chin on his fists with interest.

  ‘Right…’ Ollie trails off. I’ve thrown him with my chirpiness. The floor is, once again, mine.

  ‘So why not take super traditional, but also quite unusual recipes and challenge teams from around the world to video themselves cooking and then eating them?’

  I too can go in with a question.

  ‘Go on,’ Joe prompts and Ollie jumps right in again.

  ‘You’d get two teams from different locations, give them the bare bones recipe, and film it all, from the unveiling of the ingredients, and look of confusion, right through to actually sitting down and trying the end result.’

  ‘Sort of like the technical challenge in Bake Off,’ I chime in. It’s another thing we hadn’t said in our discussion, but I like it. ‘And the more obscure the recipe, the better.’

  Maxine jots something down on her pad.

  ‘You could make it a series,’ I continue. I want her to understand that we’ve got more than just the one video. ‘Follow it up with a written piece. Throw in gifs made from th
e footage. Ask for submissions from the community. Like, a call to action. It could be really cool.’

  Joe looks interested. He asks a few questions and seems happy with our answers, and finally, Maxine thanks us, signalling that we’re done. We return to our seats.

  Twenty minutes later, it’s all over and we’ve left the building, and I’m feeling alright about it as I walk towards the tube. The decision’s out of my hands now anyway, but I gave it my best shot, and you can’t ask for more than that.

  ‘Hey, nice work in there,’ someone says from behind me. Ollie. Fantastic.

  ‘We did okay, I reckon,’ I say, nonchalantly.

  ‘We did,’ he agrees. ‘Despite you treating me like some rookie paper-holder at the beginning and your bizarre comment about liking food.’

  ‘Mate. What? I do like food, and it worked. We did a good pitch.’

  ‘You knew what you were doing,’ he says, knowingly.

  ‘Yes, I was trying to get a job. As were you, right?’

  ‘You were trying to throw me off. Whatever. I feel like it will go to one of us,’ he says, and I think he’s sure it will be him. I reckon Ollie hasn’t heard ‘no’ much in his life.

  ‘Well, good luck. May the best person win.’

  He nods and walks next to me. I wish he wouldn’t, although I can’t stop glancing at him from the corner of my eye. We fall in step easily but neither of us says anything more until we get to a crossing and wait until the lights change. On the other side of the road it becomes apparent we’re turning off in opposite directions.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I say.

  ‘You, too.’ He holds out his hand and we shake. It’s very, very awkward. And yet, it doesn’t escape my notice that his hand is warm and feels nice and looks well taken care of. ‘Also, I can’t sing,’ he blurts.