Chapter 10 Swiping
SWIPING
The apartment is louder after dark.
It’s like the city presses all its leftovers, every siren, every argument, every neighbor’s dumb laugh, into the thin drywall just to see if I’ll snap. I’m not special.
There’s a million of these shoebox studios stacked up the hill, each with its own bed, its own ghost, and at least one loser who can’t sleep.
What sets mine apart tonight, the bright red therapy receipt still glowering from the coffee table, the protein shake bottles crowding the sink, the empty bench where I used to keep a second chair for company.
I haven’t turned on a light.
It’s just the blue of my phone, the blinking from the old router, and whatever sodium vapor creeps in through the window blinds. If you were to break in right now, you’d think the place was abandoned.
You’d look for a body, maybe, or at least a note.
But there’s no note.
Just me, alive, on the floor in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I don’t remember putting on, back pressed to the fridge because the cold is better than thinking.
I’m supposed to be processing, is what Dr. Sharma says.
Instead, I keep replaying the moment the group chat lit up, the way Caleb’s name sat on my tongue like a pill I couldn’t swallow.
I think about the funeral, how I hugged him too hard, how I told him I was there for him, how I let my own brain convince me that people can only grieve in one direction.
I don’t even want to know what that says about me.
What I do want is to shut it off. All of it, the noise, the thinking, the shitty parade of “what comes next” that keeps lapping my brain.
So, I do what you do, I look for a button. The nuclear option.
The thing I can press and let the world move for a minute without me being part of it.
My phone’s already in my hand.
The thumbprint scanner is so worn it’s basically tattooed with my DNA. I scroll through my apps, past the ESPN and the banking and the camera roll full of pictures I never post.
I find the Tinder icon, half-buried on the second page, next to Grindr, which I have never, not once, opened sober.
I stare at the screen.
The last time I used Tinder was months ago. Even then, I never messaged, just matched and unmatched, like a nervous tic.
But tonight, I can’t shake the sense that I’m being watched, judged, by the three empty bottles on the counter and the city outside.
Fuck it.
I press and hold, wait for the logo to pop open, and immediately regret it.
The first thing I see is my own face, warped by the selfie cam, eyes so bloodshot it looks like I’ve been in a bare-knuckle fight.
Which I have, except the only thing punching is my own brain.
The old bio is still there, still the same lazy joke, “Hockey player, recovering pizza addict, fluent in sarcasm.”
I scroll through the photos.
There’s one of me at a team party, mid-smile, my arm slung around Raz (who I cropped out, because he’s hotter than me), and another of me holding my sister’s cat.
The rest are all variations on the theme of “hey, look, I’m a real person, not a bot.”
I start to edit, thumb shaking just a little as I delete the oldest photos, swap in a newer one from the gym, the one Maya said made me look “unexpectedly approachable.” I don’t want to seem desperate. I want to look like someone who is fine, or at least fine-adjacent.
Then there’s the line. The “about me.” I type, then erase, then type again.
- “Still alive. That counts for something.”
- “Trying to figure out what comes next.”
- “Just looking for someone to help me ignore the news for an hour.”
None of them are good. None of them sound like me, but I can’t remember what “me” even is at this point. I settle on: “Running on caffeine, bad decisions, and the world’s worst luck.”
I let it sit, thumb hovering over “save” like maybe someone from the League will audit my thoughts and fine me for excessive honesty.
The next step: the preferences.
I’ve always left it on “everyone,” not because I’m bi but because I’m terrified of what happens if I pick a side.
When you’re a benchwarmer your whole life, you learn to play every position. But tonight, the app wants me to update, to specify, to “define my interests” for the algorithm’s amusement.
The options glare back: “Men.” “Women.” “Everyone.”
My thumb hovers over “men.” Hovers longer over “women.”
Back and forth, like a flickering light.
It takes longer than it should, but I settle on “everyone.” The exhale is loud in my own ears, the sound of a secret leaving my body for the first time in writing.
“Congratulations,” the app says, or might as well. “You’ve been yourself for once.”
The thought makes me want to laugh and puke at the same time.
For a minute I do nothing, just stare at the “you’re all set!” screen. I close the app, open Grindr, and immediately close it again. My hands are shaking harder now, a fine tremor in my wrists that I blame on caffeine but know is fear.
It’s easier to go back to Tinder, to the parade of faces, most of them with the same empty eyes and forced smiles as me.
I swipe, right, left, right, left.
Every so often there’s a match, a little pop of “it’s a match!” that should feel like a win but really just feels like hitting the same bruise over and over.
I message no one. I don’t know what I’d even say. “Hey, wanna meet up and stare at each other until the existential dread eats us both?”
I scroll through my matches.
One of them is a grad student in marine biology. Her profile pic is her grinning, holding up a giant, angry-looking crab.
She’s cute, in a way I might have been into three years ago.
Another is a bartender with sleeve tattoos, the kind who looks like he could kill you or make you the best Old Fashioned of your life. He’s local.
His profile says, “Let’s get weird and talk about our worst mistakes.”
I almost message, then don’t.
Instead, I let the phone drop onto my lap and look around my apartment, try to see it the way someone else would.
The laundry is in a heap in the corner, the hockey gear stacked like a shrine to pain, the trash can overflowing with protein bar wrappers.
The only sign of human life is a photo on the fridge, one of Maya and me at her high school graduation, both of us pretending the world wasn’t about to fuck us over.
I think about calling her, about saying, “Hey, little sister, I finally did it. I picked everyone.” I wonder if she’d care, or just make a meme out of it and send it to Mom.
The idea actually makes me smile, which is more than I expected.
For a second, I think about texting Darius.
Not the real him, not the one who’s probably asleep or at the gym, but the one I keep in my head, the one who always knows what to say. “You ever feel like a crash test dummy for your own bad decisions?” I’d say. He’d reply: “Just make sure you get a good highlight reel out of it.”
I almost type it. Then I don’t.
I look back at my phone. New matches already, the app’s dopamine engine whirring in the background. I swipe, I swipe, I try to care.
But all I feel is the cold from the fridge, and the weird relief that comes from having done something irreversible.
Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll wake up and this will all be embarrassing.
Maybe I’ll delete the apps, or maybe I’ll meet one of the faces, or maybe I’ll just keep pretending until pretending is the only thing left.
But tonight, in the blue light of the screen, I’m honest, at least for a minute.
I’m everyone.
And it almost feels like enough.
———
Thirty minutes in and my thumb’s gone numb from the repetition. Swipe, tap, swipe, tap.
Every third face is a bot, or an ex, or a friend-of-a-friend who already knows my entire tragic history. The blue glow of the phone paints my hands like crime scene evidence.
I keep waiting for the dopamine hit, the “aha” moment where matching strangers is supposed to feel like something, but all it does is grind the surface off my patience.
The first ping is from the marine bio grad student, the one with the crab. “Hey! You ever been to the Aquarium? I have discount passes lol.”
I stare at her profile, read the words out loud, “discount passes,” then wonder how the hell anyone gets excited about aquatic vertebrates at this hour.
I thumb a reply, “Only if we can do the touch tank, I like to assert dominance over the sea cucumbers.”
It’s forced, but she replies instantly, “You sound like my advisor. Are you a closeted marine biologist or just a fan of invasive species?”
I smile, a real one, at the word “invasive.” For a second, I consider leaning in, making it weird, but instead I just say, “I’m just a fan of things with spikes, tbh.”
She sends back a meme, some overused Spongebob thing, and it’s so aggressively normal that I almost want to scream.
I look at her photos again.
She’s cute, yeah, but her eyes have the glassy shine of someone who spends too much time under fluorescent light.
I wonder if she ever gets mad, or if her whole life is just prepping for a three-minute thesis.
I reply, “If you had to be eaten by any marine animal, which would you pick?”
She answers, “Shark. Fast, no suffering. You?”
I type, then erase. “Giant squid. I like a challenge.”
I set the phone down. Wait for her next volley.
The second match is the bartender, “Aaron,” which is a name that sets off alarm bells in my head because the last Aaron I met ended up in county for grand theft and/or an unfortunate incident with a rotisserie chicken.
This Aaron’s profile is all black and white, tattoos on every inch of visible skin, beard so aggressive it’s practically a personality trait. His opener, “Is it true hockey players are secretly the biggest bottoms on earth?”
I spit water onto my own lap reading it. For a second, I just stare at the screen, wondering if it’s a joke or a dare.
I reply: “Only the ones who still have all their teeth.”
He writes back, “Hah. Let’s get a drink and find out. Or we could skip the small talk and you can show me your slapshot.”