Page 3 of All I Want for Christmas

Darcy stopped on a profile.Aksel. Vet. 29.Rubik’s Cube PB 13 seconds. She smiled slightly at the boast. It was ridiculous and silly, and hopefully intentionally self-deprecating.

‘Oooh,’ Freja said in an approving tone. ‘He’s cute.’

‘Yeah. And he looks surprisingly normal. Like I might actually be able to talk to him.’ He had shaggy dark brown hair and rich brown eyes, a seemingly shy grin. She flicked through his other pictures: on a park bench with two friends, seemingly post-run (good legs); at a bar drinking something suspiciously pink; on a sofa with a Bernese Mountain dog twice his size (might be his dog; he was a vet, after all). He seemed genuine enough, but she made herself focus only on what she knew to be true: he was attractive and 1.2 miles away. She swiped right.

‘You want totalkto them?’ Freja teased.

Milas, 30, graphic designer; 6' 2'', it said – but he was standing in a door-frame and clearly not that tall. She swiped left – not because he was short, but because he was a liar.

Calvin, 27, broker: he was playing to type, holding up a couple of magnums of Cristal in a club. She swiped left.

Darcy stopped at the profile of a guy staring straight to camera, not quite smiling but notnotsmiling either. He looked mildly bemused, as if suspicious of the intentions of the persontaking the photograph.Max, 32; Copenhagen. Lawyer. Likes skiing, wine, winning. No time for dating.

To the point, she thought, turned off by the intimation of what he only had time for. It wasn’t exactly the charming, witty bio of the other profiles, but her attention snagged on ‘winning’, and she looked back at his photo again and that direct stare. She could see now there was an arrogance there, bordering almost on contempt. His hair was dirty blond, blue eyes, a chiselled bone structure that suggested his poor mother had had to carve him. He was handsome, but in a cold way, and there was only that one photograph of him – a tight headshot, no backdrop, no narrative, no other moods or angles. Nothing by which to assess him other than that gaze.

‘Hm. No, definitely not,’ Freja frowned. ‘Too hot for his own good.’

‘But I thought talking was overrated?’ Light sarcasm frilled Darcy’s words this time.

‘It is – but he looks like he needs to be humbled.’

‘True,’ Darcy agreed. He had the aura of someone to whom no one had ever said no. She wondered if he regarded every swipe right as one of his precious wins, and she was tempted to swipe left just on principle. Shewantedto do it on principle, but her finger hovered, unable to commit to the rejection...He really was very sexy. Did she need to like him? She certainly didn’t need to talk to him. He was good-looking and at least he was honest, which was more than could be said for almost every other guy on here. He wasn’t pretending to be nicer than he was and he wasn’t offering fairy tales or happy endings. No woman in her right mind would ever trust a man like him, but at least they’d know what they were getting.

She stared into those cold blue eyes, then against her better judgement, swiped right.

Freja gasped at her recklessness. ‘Why did you waste a go on him?’

‘Because he’s a ten and I really am that shallow,’ Darcy winked. ‘What I see is what I’ll get, I know that.’

Liam, 28, professional polo player. In Copenhagen? A marine city? No.

Ben, 27, architect. The second picture was of him playing the piano with a little girl. She had to hope it was his niece and not his daughter, but she wasn’t prepared to take the risk. She wanted no complications. None at all. She swiped left.

Erik, 29, property developer. Deep tan, whitened teeth, swept-back hair, no socks in the summer. He looked like he spent his summers in Mykonos and winters in Courchevel. His other photographs showed him jet-skiing on water, kite surfing, standing on the grid at an F1 track somewhere...Wait – was that Lando Norris?

What the hell. She swiped right.

‘But you hate the Eurotrash vibe,’ Freja said in confusion.

‘Yeah, but I have a crush on Charles Leclerc and he might be one degree removed from him,’ Darcy said, tapping the screen.

‘Or he might not be! You’re really wasting another of your goes for that vain hope?’

Darcy dropped her phone to the table with a smile and a sigh. ‘They’realla waste of goes, Frey.’

‘Wow, Lars really knocked the stuffing out of you, didn’t he?’

‘No, he just pulled out the last remaining bit of stuffing. I can already tell you exactly how these guys are going to pan out, assuming they match with me: the vet will be soulful and cute, but not looking for commitment, the arrogant lawyer will be a fuckboy, and Mr Eurotrash will spend longer doing his hair than he spends doing me.’

Freja sat back with a loud laugh, pulling her frizzy blonde hair up into a chaotic bun, before letting it fall free again in a wild mane.

‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ Darcy grinned.

‘Oh God, I wish I could,’ Freja chuckled. ‘IwishI could.’

‘Yeah,’ Darcy sighed, watching a figure skater spin in a pirouette. ‘We’ve seen this one before. We already know the ending.’

‘Maybe – but remember, the fun’s in how you get there. And with Christmas coming, you can’t stay holed up in the apartment on your own.’

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