There was a dull pain at the front of Mitch’s head, the
legacy of drinking more of the bottle of wine than he’d planned to last night.
By more of he meant all of, and he’d always known he’d drink the lot so why was
he kidding himself that he’d only planned to drink half of it. The train was
crowded, Mitch longed to sit down but that was never going to happen. Those
people who had seats had buried their heads in their phones avoiding contact
with the outside world, just in case someone infirm or elderly needed their
seat. Mitch was neither, he was just tired and a bit fragile and a bit well meh
but everyone was probably feeling a bit Monday morning meh and people didn’t
usually stand up for meh sufferers.
So Mitch clung on to the strap that a million other
commuters had handled over the years and stooped over those who were seated
below him. He could see their screens, one was reading Wuthering Heights, one
the Telegraph, somebody was playing Angry Birds really badly but the rather
beautiful woman in front of him was idly swiping her way through Tinder.
He smiled, he was on Tinder, fat load of use it did him. The
idea was you swiped right if you liked the face and left if you didn’t. When someone
who you'd liked, liked you back, you were connected. But the only people Mitch
seemed to get connected to were SpamBots who sent him links to naughty websites
and real girls who unmatched him just as soon as he sent them a message. So
he’d given up and resigned himself to a life of never meeting anyone new.
But it was fun watching this girl play, even in his hungover
state he was beginning to be able to guess what she’d do before she did it. She
was a bit shallow to be honest; going for the perfect faces instead of the
interesting ones. Mind you, calling a Tinder user shallow is a bit like calling
a politician a self-interested bigot. The whole point of Tinder is that you
judge people on how they look.
Mitch looked at the girl who was ‘playing’. He would
certainly swipe right if she came up on his screen; maybe she had already. She
was a stunning girl, all cheekbones and lips. Mitch returned his attention to
the screen, not like, like, like, like, not like, not like, he was doing well at
guessing. Maybe he could become her Tinder manager if she didn’t have time to
play.
But then he saw his own face. Her finger hovered. Was that a
good sign? He knew he wasn’t a One Direction lookalikee but he had a certain
charm. Her mind clunked and whirred, she’d not discarding him immediately like
she had so many others, but would she let him through to the next round or
would she send him home. Mitch was saying like, like, like, like over and over
in his mind willing her to like him. How good would he feel all day knowing
he’d been liked by this beautiful girl. Her thumb twitched, she’d made up her
mind. The girl obviously wasn’t tuned into his wavelength. She swiped left
condemning Mitch to obscurity.
‘Bitch’ he said. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud but he had, he immediately blushed. The girl looked up from her phone
at the slightly hung over man staring at her. It took her a moment to realise
that she was looking at a complete stranger that she had just rejected.
‘Sorry,’ she said, with a shrug 'just not my type,' and turned her attention back
to the phone.
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