Page 12 of Fling

Colin checked his watched as he rode the lift to the second floor.

9.30 a.m. Like clockwork.

He worked as an actuary at McKenna & Co. Chartered Accountants, helping other companies assess risk and calculate potential reward. The work wasn’t gruelling but it didn’t exactly invigorate him every morning either. He sometimes felt like a cardboard cut-out of a man, a middle-class stereotype of a middle-aged accountant. Even the office building was depressingly nondescript. It looked like a stock photo search result for ‘dull, uninspiring office’. His twenty-year-old self would be ashamed if he could see him now. He had become the very antithesis of punk. Every day he woke up and did the same thing, a perpetual groundhog day, robbed of any excitement. He had once hoped to live for one hundred years. Now it seemed as if he was destined to live one year one hundred times. Like a hamster on a wheel, he had to just keep on keeping on.

Still, there were some perks that made his life easier. His childhood friend Rory McKenna was his boss and he had a laissez-faire approach to management, to say the least. When Colin opened the door to his office, he immediately saw Rory lying on his couch, wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses. It was clear from the mere sight of him that he was horrifically hungover.

‘Colin, I’m dying,’ Rory moaned, as if he was on his deathbed.

‘Wow, hungover on a Monday morning again are we?’ Colin laughed.

‘You know I have a reputation to live down to.’ Rory smirked.

Rory was eight years younger than Colin but held a superior position due to the fact that his father Michael McKenna owned the company. He was given the title of ‘executive accountant’, which didn’t have a clear job description but technically meant he was Colin’s boss, at least on paper.

The two had been neighbours growing up and always remained close despite their age difference. Rory was devilishly handsome and oozed a nefarious kind of charm. He had neatly styled jet-black hair, sun-kissed skin and bulging muscles that made his shirts look like they were spray-painted on. He was a provocateur with no filter whatsoever, a true relic of a bygone era. But that was exactly why Colin liked him.

To the untrained eye, Rory appeared to be a narcissistic, entitled menace to modernity, but Colin knew it was all an act. Rory was always playing up his character for his own entertainment. He was a parody of himself, the real-life equivalent of an internet troll. He didn’t believe half of what he said, he just loved winding people up and watching them go off. He considered life to be one big joke and he was more than happy to perform the part of the jester. It takes a very clever man to play the fool.

‘And why are you recovering in my office, exactly?’ Colin jeered, sitting down at his desk.

‘I don’t want Karen from HR to see me like this. She’ll make me sit through another one of her “Office Etiquette” presentations. I’ll have to avoid her all day,’ Rory said, sitting up and taking off his sunglasses. ‘Colin, man, you should have been there. I met these crazy girls from Amsterdam last night in town. Two gymnasts. You wouldn’t believe how flexible these girls were. I took them home and showed them my black belt in Kama Sutra.’

Colin smiled. He knew to take Rory’s wild stories with a grain, if not a barrel, of salt.

‘Wish you were there, man, I would have given one of them to you,’ Rory said. ‘Lord knows you’re not getting any at home.’

‘You can say that again,’ Colin said, his tone changing immediately, as if a cartoon rain cloud had just come over him.

‘That bad, huh? How long has it been since you two even had sex?’

‘Two hundred and ten days,’ Colin replied a little too quickly. ‘But who’s counting, right?’

‘Jesus, I don’t think I could even go two hundred and ten hours without sex. God, that’s over half a year. We should have done something for your six-month celibate anniversary,’ Rory teased.

‘Like a celibration?’

‘I’m not usually one for your dad jokes, but that was actually good,’ Rory laughed. ‘At least let me buy you a lap dance or something.’

‘So your solution for blue balls is more blue balls?’ Colin asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Good point. This is why I’ve always said marriage is unnatural. I’ve caught a lot of things over the years, Col, but thankfully I’ve never caught mono.’

‘Glandular fever?’

‘Monogamy.’

Colin laughed. ‘Never say never.’

‘All I know is when women talk about tying the knot, they forget to mention it’s a noose. It’s like that Richard Mulligan guy was saying about his cheating app on the radio. Eighty-six per cent of people would cheat if they could get away with it,’ Rory said.

‘Did you say a cheating app?’

‘Yeah, it’s this new app called Fling where married people can find the perfect stranger online to have an affair with . . . ’

Colin found himself intrigued by the idea. He was going to ask more about it but Rory was still talking.

‘. . . I’m actually thinking of downloading it,’ Rory continued.

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