Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
A s the morning sun smooched the pavement the following day, Finn and I went to our favourite independent sandwich outlet in a glowering mood.
The only thing that would raise our chins from the floor would be the best bacon and sausage baguette in South-West London that only ‘Donny’s’ could provide.
We stood quietly at the counter for a few minutes, waiting for the other customers to move, until Finn spoke.
“I dunno, man. I don't know whether to believe her. You know how protective of us she is. Even if she was dying, she’d never tell us. We’ll just have to go to the hospital with her for the chemo sessions and find out exactly what’s going on for ourselves.”
“Oh, for sure. She’s a sly old dog. She was touching my elbow as well, doing her NLP tricks on me so that I wouldn’t worry. I know her game,” I told Finn.
He jolted.
“Yes! She was pulling all that stuff on me too,” said Finn, weighing a hefty ‘Why I oughtta…’ fist.
“Eat in or takeaway?” asked the attractive, new barista, tucking a thick plaited strand of his curly blond hair behind his ear.
“Er… takeaway please,” I replied, picking up the delicious-smelling packages of bread and sizzled pig.
We went to sit down, and within seconds, the attractive new barista approached our table with a tight-lipped smile that seemed completely disinterested in connecting with his beautiful blue eyes.
“You can’t sit there, I’m afraid. You paid for takeaway.”
“So?” said Finn.
“So… it costs 40p more to eat in. Each.”
“Look, here's a whole pound. All right now?” said Finn, forcing the coin into his hand––no doubt too annoyed to comment how unexpectedly soft and marshmallow-like his palm was, judging from the look he gave me. He must moisturise.
“No. It’s too late. I can’t run that through the till now. You paid for takeaway, so I’m afraid you’ll have to take your sandwiches away.”
Finn was about to blow a mushroom cloud out of each ear, but I lovingly patted his arm to calm him down.
“Look, you seem like a lovely person… Pete,” I said in a semi-unintentionally patronising manner after clocking his name tag.
“We made a mistake. But the thing is, we are regulars. I’m sure if you go out the back and give either one of the Donnies a shout, they’d be mortified that you were gonna throw out two of his most valued customers over a measly 40p.”
“80p,” he corrected.
“Look, we buy so much pork from here that Donny One actually says he can smell bacon every time we come in.”
“Yeah, and he calls me his favourite piggy,” added Finn .
“Isn’t that because you’re a copper?” enquired Pete, nodding towards Finn.
Finn’s mouth dropped like a drawbridge, looking shocked at the revelation, despite how obvious the supposed affectation now seemed.
“That would make a lot more sense actually,” I said.
“It's actually against the law. You of all people should know,” said Pete, prodding the air just in front of Finn’s chest. He paused and looked towards the doorway that led to his manager.
Donny was probably busy out back making coronation chicken but today, for some reason, it was really twisting my melons, man.
It had been an obscene amount of time since I last had sex and this was a rut I was very keen to become unstuck in.
Also, after my chat with Mum last night, I thought that it was probably about time to step up my game. So, I fired up Kindred ––obviously.
I thought it was about time I spruced up the old profile, since I hadn’t updated it since my punctuation faux-pas.
Hmm. What about:
‘Click here for a 3-Day trial!’
Oh. Minimum 300 letters, you say? That’s insane. Who has the time to read that much in this day and age?
Okay. Concentrate, Danny, here goes:
I’m here looking for a partner in crime because I’m looking to rob a selection of petrol stations in the South London area. I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, mainly because I never think to ask for a tray when ordering a large round of drinks.
My weaknesses are:
I can be intimidating as I’m quite high up in MENSA (I work on the top floor doing admin stuff).
Money management, because my on-going charity work and generosity always leaves me out of pocket. But I don’t like to talk about what a great person I am, so I’ll shut up about that.
Humility.
453 characters without spaces. Eat that.
Now it was time for the all-important profile picture library.
As well as some candid festival shots and the obligatory ‘oh my god, I can’t believe I’ve accidentally taken a picture of myself in the mirror at the gym with my biceps bulging so perfectly’ pic, I uploaded a picture of an Airfix Spitfire with the caption:
‘A rare picture from my modelling days.’
Now that I was in business, I treated myself to a leisurely browse.
The first profile that caught my attention was Ben.
He looked like what I can only describe as dangerous––and in the greatest of ways.
You’d probably prick your finger touching him.
Dressed in leather, and a tight white T-shirt with tattoos crawling up his neck from underneath it, the one photo was enough to make me unbutton my jeans.
I couldn’t help but imagine being slammed up against the wall by this guy, forearm across my neck and then…
well. Let’s just see what he had to say for himself.
Before I could even find the button that changed my phone keyboard to the emoji one, a big, red, juicy notification popped up from someone I’d been messaging from another app I may or may not have been using.
‘Fancy meeting you in a place like this!’ read the message that had a somewhat timeless vibe about it.
I clicked on the photos immediately, (because I’m not at all shallow) and saw quite a fit-looking fella standing next to a giant statue of Gollum from the somewhat well-known Lord of the Rings franchise. Well, well, well… a chic geek. Good start.
Presuming that time was of the essence, I messaged ‘Rob’ straight away, saying:
‘ Heavy night last night, was it? Looks like you hit the sauce a bit too hard––you look dreadful ha-ha! And isn’t that Gollum to your right? ’
Rob answered the message with a deadpan and thankfully dismissive ‘Yes. Would you like to go out on a date with me next week?’
And that is exactly what we scheduled in. It seemed that I was finally about to break my virtual cherry by embarking on my first ever online date.