Swipe Right

by Stephie Chapman

  ‘She means me, Fran.’

  I’m not going to say he doesn’t have to come. It’d be weird without him there. He’d be missed.

  ‘She said I spend too much time on my work stuff,’ he continues. ‘Because sometimes I do little bits and pieces from home, in the evenings, at weekends. When it comes to me, usually.’

  ‘Well, I think a lot of us do, no? Look at my blog. Can’t really constrain that to working hours, can I? Anyway, you don’t live with her so why does it matter what you do when she isn’t there?’

  ‘I think she’d prefer me to have a job I could just leave and not think too much about.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he shrugs, and it surprises me just how relieved I am to hear those four little words. I’m not going anywhere. ‘I wish she’d realise how much enjoyment I get out of what I do. I wasn’t kidding when I said we should do another collaboration.’

  My phone buzzes on the table. A Tinder notification. I don’t look at it but Ollie openly stares at it for a few seconds, until the screen fades back to black, and then he’s quieter for the rest of the meal. I don’t look at it until he goes to the toilet before we leave. Still, I hold on to those words he said on the walk back up to the studio, our arms linked again, our jackets warding off the breeze.

  ‘Always a pleasure, Fran,’ he says, as we get back to our desks.

  ‘Same time next week, then?’

  ‘Or sooner, perhaps,’ he says.

  ‘You’re always so buoyed up and happy after spending time with him,’ Mickey says, and Carlina makes a mmhmm sound in agreement.

  ‘Yeah, he’s a good buddy,’ I reply. ‘It’s nice to chat it out with him.’

  ‘Mmhmm,’ Carlina says again.

  ‘Eddie messaged again,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Sent me his number. Told me he’s in a band. Wants to meet up. Shall I?’

  ‘Well, he’s a keen bean. Yes, why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, three hours from matching to mooting a meet-up is a record for me so far. I don’t know whether it’s a bit too keen. Maybe he has no game at all.’

  ‘I hate this game bullshit. What’s wrong with just putting yourself out there?’ Mickey asks. Carlina stays quiet. Diplomatically so, which isn’t like her at all. She’s not usually shy about voicing her opinions and she isn’t a fence-sitter either, so I assume this is a peace-keeping exercise.

  ‘Okay, maybe I’ll arrange something for this weekend then.’

  ‘This weekend?’ Sinjin pipes up, from across the desk. ‘Now who has no game?’

  ‘Sinjin!’ Mickey gasps. ‘That’s enough!’

  Eddie and I make arrangements to meet on Saturday evening in Camden. There’s a band called Smoke Without Sirens playing at the Dublin Castle that he says he knows and I’ve never heard of them but I’m excited. Music is such an incredibly personal thing, so asking someone to a gig for your first date feels like a big deal. Like he’s letting me into a part of his life that means a lot to him. And at a small venue, as well. We’re not talking a soulless stadium where you’re surrounded by thousands of people, and the only way to see the band is by looking at the screens behind them, and the sound is all reverby and delayed. It’ll be dimmed lights and nice beer, revolting toilets and band posters on the walls. We’ll be able to see the whites of the drummer’s eyes. It’ll be intimate. I’m going to spend hours making myself look effortlessly hot. You’d better be ready, Eddie, because Fran’s coming for you.

  * * *

  Eddie and I arrive at Camden Town tube station at precisely the same time, and this, I believe, might just be fate. We stand opposite each other, and I drink him in. He’s just as lovely in real life as he is in his photos. Lovelier, even. He has the clearest skin, the longest eyelashes, the poutiest, most kissable lips. I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. He pushes some of his wavy hair behind his ear and offers to roll me a cigarette for the walk to the pub, and flicks open a beaten up Zippo lighter, and I, already deeply into him, think this is just about the most romantic gesture ever. All the way up the street he talks to me about his band, and music he loves and what his favourite albums are and he’s so enthusiastic about it and doesn’t seem at all judgemental when I have to admit I haven’t even heard of any of them.

  ‘Come over and listen to my vinyl collection some day,’ he offers. ‘You can meet the rest of the band, we all live together,’ and he delivers a lopsided, sort of goofy grin that makes me inwardly swoon. We head straight to the bar and he’s greeted like an old friend. The first round is on him and he whisks me away to a table where we spend the evening alternating between drinking inside and smoking outside, and despite the fact he turns me to mush, my witty flirting game is strong. On our third smoke break, he stubs his cigarette out on the wall and kisses me, and then, as quickly as it began, he’s gone back inside, leaving me following him, heady and breathless. Dear god. Who is this dude?

  By now Smoke Without Sirens are getting ready to play, and we leave our table in favour of a sweaty back room. There are a good number of people but it’s not heaving, and I was right about the dimmed lights and the cosy feel. Eddie slings an arm casually around my shoulders and he moves fluidly in time to the beat. They’re good but I spend the entire set a little bit distracted by the way his hip keeps bumping into mine. Every so often he leans in and points something out about the music or someone in the band, or something they just did involving something called a mode, and I don’t have a clue what that means, but the way his breath tickles my ear makes me shiver and I know, without a shadow of a doubt that I am going to sleep with him. Maybe not tonight, but soon.

  As soon as the encore is over I’m keen to get out of here and make out somewhere, but Eddie wants to stay and talk, so we loiter until most people have filed out and we hang out as they pack up their gear, me sitting on the edge of the stage nursing a pint, and them winding up leads and shutting guitars and drums into hard cases and Eddie flitting between us all. And then there’s one for the road back in the main bar, before the band head off in a van, and we’re left ambling back towards the station.

  ‘What did you think of SWS?’ he asks.

  ‘They were great,’ I say, and I’m all wide smiles and beaming eyes.

  ‘Do you wanna come back to mine then?’ he asks, and I’m absolutely sure I do, but absolutely adamant I shouldn’t. I know what will happen if I go back with him tonight. He’ll put on an obscure record we both know we’ll abandon for sex, and then I’ll never hear from him again, and that would be a real shame. This time, my head rules over my heart.

  ‘It’ll take more than a few drinks and a band to seduce me,’ I lie. ‘Take me out another time, then we’ll see.’

  ‘Sounds like…’ he says, and pauses, and I think he’s about to say ‘a challenge,’ and I’ll be disappointed because even though he’d better believe I’m an absolute prize, I’m also not something to be won, but instead he says ‘a plan,’ and that’s much better. We’re outside the station now, and I stand up on my tiptoes and kiss him again, and make sure to pull away first. Best to leave him wanting more.

  Back in Stratford I send a text to the WhatsApp group chat I’m in with Mickey and Carlina.

  Sweet days! Eddie the Rockstar

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ezra the Rockstar

  Ezra and I started out so well. There was instant chemistry from the moment I told him he looked like the love child of Jim Morrison (in that photo) and Michael Hutchence. Hair the colour of good dark chocolate. Eyes that I could drown in.

  Ezra the Rockstar, as the name suggests, is a musician, and who doesn’t love one of those? We chat for three hours before he casually suggests going to a gig and I am absolutely game for it. We meet, and in the back of my mind I’m concerned this blog will soon become redundant, because right there, outside Camden Town station, amongst buskers and people handing out fliers for money off drinks at the Electric Ballroom I decide I want to marry hi
m, and bear his children. Many, many of his children.

  We look good together, and we know it. I sleep with him the second time we meet and it is FIRE! He does things to me I never, ever thought I’d be down for. But turns out I am so, so down for them. He is filthy. I feel like I’ve won on the premium bonds.

  The next morning, he nips out to the supermarket and brings me back fresh coffee and pastries and a bunch of red and yellow tulips, and I sit there, coquettish and girly, in his living room, in one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxers, feeling generally bohemian whilst nibbling on a croissant and making small talk with the rest of his band. It’s not even eleven am, and they’re all stoned. One of them has a Canadian girlfriend who sits, curled up on the sofa, smoking a bong and talking about spiritual things. The sensible side of me knows she’s a little bit ludicrous, but my adulation of Ezra extends to all facets of his life, and that includes his bandmate flatmates and their stoner girlfriends, and the damp, slightly grotty flat they live in with the mucky bathroom and the intermittent Wi-Fi pinched from their neighbours.

  After a couple of weeks of spending almost every night there, watching them get high and write songs, he says he has a gig, and asks if I’d like to go. But of course I would. What girl doesn’t love the idea of turning up to a gig on the arm of the front man of an incredible up and coming indie outfit? I’ll be there with bells on. He assures me it’ll be packed to the rafters, and promises he’ll find me in the crowd, and I know I’ll feel smug that I get to go home with him. There’ll be more fire sex, and he’ll do that thing again, maybe this time in the shower, which I’m happier about now I’ve given it a good scrub. In the morning there’ll be cigarettes after more sex in bed. Black coffee. No breakfast. Just cigarettes after sex because that’s rock and roll, baby.

  So, gig night arrives and my flatmate and I go along, but it’s empty and it doesn’t fill up. There’s us, there’s the band, there’s the bar staff, and a couple of stragglers who have popped down from the pub upstairs to check out what’s going on. The Canadian girlfriend hasn’t even bothered. And I’m confused because he showed me fliers. He told me it was a sell-out show, but it clearly isn’t a sell-out show and frankly, it’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed, but mainly for him. He gets up on stage, and my flatmate and I are up at the back near the sound desk, but nothing, NOTHING can prepare me for what comes next. My beautiful, sexy, amazing-in-bed rockstar is abysmal live. He’s out of tune and out of time. It’s like he’s drunk, except he isn’t. He’s feeling up the mic stand, he’s grinding against his guitar. He sings a song I have never heard before about a girl with dyed red hair, and points at me and whispers ‘you’ into the microphone and I cringe into the centre of the earth because there is no getting away from that. I am the girl with the dyed red hair. I am who he is singing about, and all fifteen people in the room know it. Now I’m embarrassed for me. The rest of the band look absolutely wasted. The whole thing is a shitshow.

  At the end of the set, he jumps off stage like he’s Johnny Castle at the end of Dirty Dancing, swaggers over in his ripped skinny jeans and pointy shoes, slips a very sweaty arm around my neck and says, ‘Great set, babe.’

  And he’s serious, too. My flatmate chokes on her drink. The sound man looks baffled. I don’t know where to look.

  ‘Thought it was a sell-out show?’ I ask, quietly.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘sometimes people change their minds about going out.’

  And I say, ‘What, the whole venue?’

  And I know now that was very much the wrong thing to say, because after a week-long tantrum, he dumps me over text. Said I killed his vibe, and soon after he uploads a song to the internet which, if I am analysing the lyrics correctly, is a bitter ode to yours truly.

  The moral of this story is never ever tell a boy in a band he looks like Jim Morrison (in that photo). It can only ever end badly after that. Still, for the frankly amazing bedtime antics, and a story I will one day regale my children with, Ezra the Rockstar gets four aubergines