Page 10 of Sparks
“What the hell?” I whispered. I needed to get rid of this annoying thing. I clicked it. To my shock and confusion, a picture of me came up on the screen with my name and age. Was I hacked? I looked at the top of the screen. This was not some kind of update. It was an app. My heart slowed and then gave a hard thump that got harder and faster. I fell into my chair.
“Sparks, huh?” Shawn asked.
“No,” I breathed. I’d never downloaded this app. Something was wrong.
“No shame in it,” he went on. “Most of these kids are on it, too.”
“No,” I said a little firmer and louder. “I’m not on Sparks. I’ve never done online dating.”
“Uh…” He pulled a face and glanced down at the app.
We both leaned in together as I clicked my picture and it opened a profile. I scrolled down and read the bio out loud. “Hey fellas. I’m a flight attendant from Virginia Beach. No kids, never married. Looking for some fun, and then the one.What the fuck?!”
“Wait, are you saying you didn’t do this?”
“No!” I raised my face but my eyes couldn’t focus. My head shook side-to-side and I suddenly remembered Holly on the phone earlier, asking me how mad I was at her.
“Oh, my God.” My eyes cleared as I looked at Shawn. “My friends did this. Holy shit. I’m going to kill them!”
His face lit up in a genuine smile and he laughed. “Are you kidding me? That’s fucking hilarious. Let’s look at it!”
“No!” Panic flared in my chest. “I need to delete it!”
But first I needed to see the damage. I scrolled down a bit further until it showed my life’s “theme song.”
“Fat Bottomed Girlsby Queen?”
“That’s a great song!” But he was totally laughing! I was so aghast at the horror of it all that I began to laugh too. This was beyond ridiculous.
Shawn reached down and clicked on a red dot with a conversation bubble. It was all the guys who had liked my profile and sent messages.
“Oh, wow,” he whispered. And that about summed it up. The first guy, or ratherman, was about fifty and wore a seventies shirt opened wide enough to see a rug of chest hair.
A prompt on the screen told me to swipe left if uninterested and right if I wanted to match. I swiped left, relieved to see him disappear. The next guy was even worse, the angle of his selfie taken from below. It was blurry, but he looked as if he was drunk and hadn’t showered for days.
I made an incoherent sound of disgust and swiped left again.
The third guy was twenty-five and looked sharp in a suit without being douchy.
“I notice you’re not sayingewabout him,” Shawn commented.
“You know what?” I clicked off the app, my cheeks heating. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
He grinned and sat back, putting his ankle on his knee, clearly enjoying the show. I dialed Holls.
“Hey!” she said. “Are you at a fucking club or something? Isn’t it snowing there?”
“Hotel party with a bunch of Marines,” I told her.
“Shut up. You lucky bish!”
“Hey, Holls?”
“Like, real Marines? Wait, are they playing Eminem? Why don’t I get jobs like that?”
“Holls.”
“What?”
