Page 13 of Fling

‘You just said it’s for married people,’ Colin said, confused.

‘Yeah, but think about it. There must be all these sexually frustrated housewives out there not getting any satisfaction from their husbands. Supposedly a quarter million people have downloaded it already. I could just pretend I’m married and suddenly my options are doubled. Think of the MILFs, Colin,’ Rory said, excited by the idea.

‘This reminds me of when you were thirteen and you asked me if those porn ads about meeting local MILFs in your area were real,’ Colin laughed.

‘Well, maybe my fantasy is finally coming true! Actually wait, no . . .’ Rory said, bursting his own bubble. ‘It’s all anonymous on the app. So you don’t know if the girl is hot or not. That could be a recipe for disaster.’

‘I know, imagine if you actually had to get to know a woman,’ Colin said sarcastically.

‘God, can you imagine?’ Rory said, the sarcasm flying right over his head. ‘Anyway, I’ll be dying all day with a hangover so I’ll be doing less work than usual.’

‘What’s less than nothing?’ Colin said playfully.

‘You tell me, you’re the whizz accountant.’

‘Technically you’re the accountant. I’m an actuary.’

‘Are you actuary?’ Rory joked. He could never resist the low-hanging fruit.

‘I think that qualifies as a dad joke,’ Colin teased.

Rory peeked out of Colin’s office door to see if Karen was lurking. ‘OK, I think the coast is clear,’ he said, putting back on his sunglasses. ‘Should I get a stick and pretend I’m blind to Karen?’

‘That would lead to about ten other etiquette presentations. Just keep the head down,’ Colin said.

‘Fair point,’ Rory said, dashing across the hall.

Colin laughed to himself as Rory left. There was never a dull moment with him. The two complimented each other well as a result of their opposite personalities.

Colin was the angel on Rory’s shoulder and Rory was the devil on his.

Chapter 5

By 11 a.m., Tara was still obsessing over what Emily had said. To compare Tara to that Mary woman was downright ridiculous. OK, maybe Tara hadn’t had sex in over six months and maybe she hadn’t had an orgasm in a lot longer, but to be compared to Mary? MARY?

Tara wasn’t some holier-than-thou puritan. She was a modern woman. Wasn’t she? It wasn’t her fault her desires weren’t being fulfilled. Granted, she had been brought up in Catholic Ireland and educated in a convent. The only sex education class she had ever been given was by a nun who managed to get through the entire talk without once using the word sex. Maybe she was a little repressed but she was not a prude.

She liked to think she didn’t suffer from Catholic guilt but her late father had been a religious man and she had a recurring dream of him appearing in the form of a robin and saying, ‘How long has it been since you went to mass?’

She tried to put the Mary comparison out of her mind. Emily was probably just winding her up. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Tara headed into Insight’s break room to make herself her third coffee of the day. She was the only one who called it the break room. It was officially called the ‘Games Room’ and its various pool tables, arcade games and TV screens were supposed to help employees overcome ‘creative blocks’. When she walked in, she saw the Lads – Tommy, Mark and Rob – playing a game of table soccer, or foosball, as they called it. Tara didn’t have anything against the three of them but they had the same energy as men on a stag party. Each of them was smart individually, but collectively their IQ seemed to plummet.

Tommy was without a doubt the best marketer of the three. He knew what sold well and he could schmooze his way to any deal with buzz words that didn’t actually mean anything. His favourite go-to phrase was ‘It’s time to stop collecting the dots . . . and start connecting the dots’. For the life of her, Tara couldn’t figure out what it meant.

Mark was decent enough at his job but he only spoke in sports metaphors and had enough grease on his head to fry chips. Tara had once ordered a café au lait in his company and, after misinterpreting her, he began the football chant ‘OLÉ OLÉ OLÉ OLÉ!’.

Rob was the youngest of the three but he had a set of teeth that could eat an apple through a tennis racket and made wearing a lanyard his entire personality. To Tara, he was the human incarnation of the Comic Sans font.

As she approached them playing table soccer, they seemed to be in the middle of some kind of dirty joke.

‘Well, lads,’ she said, being polite.

The three of them paused their game and began to collect themselves. They were behaving like she was their teacher, catching them misbehaving. Tara hated when they did that.

‘Hi Tara,’ Tommy said apologetically, as if trying to avoid detention.

‘What’s so funny?’ Tara asked, genuinely trying to join in on the banter.

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