Page 26 of Fling

So . . . what are we?

Colin quickly unmatched with clingy Sandra. There was another message from a profile called MAGGIE, 43 – DUBLIN with whom he received a 62 per cent match with.

Maggie: Hi Jack. I’ve always wanted to have sex in a graveyard. Would you be into that?

Colin was horrified. He didn’t want to be judgemental but sex in a graveyard just seemed bonkers. He considered replying with a dad joke to be polite, but he couldn’t decide between ‘I hear people are dying to get in there’ or ‘Can’t we start with a graveyard shift?’ He eventually decided not to bother replying and hit the unmatch button once again.

After getting a 100 per cent match with Claire, it was hard to think about anyone else. He was an actuary, after all, and 100 per cent was the magic number in terms of probability, reporting, everything. But why hadn’t she replied to him? It was like he’d hit the lucky jackpot but was then thrown out of the casino. Wasn’t Claire at least curious about what made them a perfect match? Her silence was driving him crazy. Colin sighed and looked at the time.

11.06 p.m.

Time to call it. Claire obviously thought his opening line was stupid, or else maybe she just wasn’t taking Fling too seriously. Either way, Colin couldn’t help but feel his ego deflated by the lack of response. He got up and put his phone charging in the corner of the room. It was time to forget about Fling and get some sleep.

In the master bedroom, Tara was getting ready to put the day behind her. She wondered if tonight’s fight was a once-off or if it was the first nail in the coffin of her marriage. With Colin not in the bed beside her, she felt the emptiness now more than ever. Being alone was one thing but feeling alone within a marriage was a much deeper kind of isolation. She and Colin had been a couple for eighteen years. Was the youth of their relationship coming to an end? Was it normal for what began as a sexual awakening to evolve into sexual anaesthesia? These questions tormented her.

After applying some Sudocrem on a spot she felt lingering under her skin, she got into bed. As she lay there, she thought about the things Richard Mulligan had said on the radio. Over two hundred and fifty thousand people had downloaded Fling, so maybe lots of people felt the same unhappiness she did.

Maybe she wasn’t alone.

Tara realized she hadn’t deleted the app from her phone earlier. For a moment she considered keeping it for market research, but she figured there was no point. The Lads had already poached the account anyway, and now that she knew the quality of men on it, she didn’t want anything to do with it. She reached over to the bedside locker and grabbed her phone, eager to wipe all traces of Fling.

Just as her finger was hovering over the delete button, however, she paused for a moment and remembered some of the harsh things Colin had said. The cheek of him. The sheer audacity. Where did he get the nerve to treat her like that? She looked at the time on her phone.

11.11 p.m.

Although it was late and she was exhausted, she decided to spite him and have one last browse, as a secret act of defiance.

But when Tara opened Fling, she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She looked in disbelief at the on-screen animation that read: 100% PERFECT MATCH.

JACK – 36, DUBLIN

That’s when it happened.

Something that made Tara feel more awake than she had been in years. Something that Tara had experienced only twice before. Something that Tara did not see coming.

Tara experienced a synchronicity.

She felt butterflies in her stomach, goosebumps appeared all over her arms, the back of her neck began to tingle and she felt that familiar feeling of déjà vu. It was the gut feeling that had always given her the inexplicable knowledge that she was in the right place at the right time with the right person. The spiritual compass that she had believed to be broken.

Until now.

She felt her heart palpitating as she clicked on his profile to read more. She read Jack’s bio and was immediately excited. He sounded like the man of her dreams, the kind of man she fantasized about. Then, she saw that Jack had sent her a message earlier that day.

Jack: Hey there, stranger

Tara’s heart started going ninety as she became completely flustered. What would she reply? It wasn’t just that Tara was out of the game, she had never actually been in the game in the first place. Colin had been her first everything, and she was terrified of saying the wrong thing. She rattled her brain and eventually decided to keep it simple. Jack would probably be asleep anyway.

Claire: A stranger’s just someone you haven’t met yet x

In the living room, Colin’s phone beeped. He got up off the couch and walked over to where his phone was charging. To his shock, the notification on his phone was from Fling and he immediately opened the app. He hoped more than anything that it would be Claire. He needed it to be her. Colin’s face lit up when he saw the message.

Not only had Claire replied to him but she had texted back in a flirtatious way. He looked at her profile again which now had the illuminated green light that he had desperately craved to see all day. She had sent the message less than a minute ago so he knew he had to reply immediately, before she went offline again. Colin got back on the couch and began to type his response, or rather, his new alter ego Jack’s response.

Jack: True I’m new to all this but I’m guessing a 100% match is a good place to start?

Claire: I know, 100% on a cheating test. There’s a joke in there somewhere . . .

Jack: I guess we’re good at being bad . . .

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