Chapter Three
Aideen
“Gross,” I said, rolling over the next morning. That was the first word that came to mind. My muscles were sore, even though I’d done nothing to earn it. My mouth was dry. My head pounded so hard, I barely heard the word come out.
This was why I didn’t drink.
I rolled over and checked the time. Oh, right, it was New Year’s Day. Good thing I didn’t have to go to work.
If only I had someone here, who cared about me, to bring me water and painkillers. Stumbling out of bed, I walked to the bathroom, using the wall for support. How many glasses of champagne did I have?
After a long, hot shower where I begged my head to stop hurting, I got dressed in my comfiest sweatshirt and pants, found the painkillers, and downed a whole bottle of water.
My stomach revolted against the water. I needed to eat.
During my shower and while rummaging the fridge, I kept hearing the most annoying beep from my phone. It wasn’t a tone from any app that I knew of, and none of my alarms were on.
I put up with it for exactly three more minutes before I left the eggs sizzling in the pan and went to retrieve my phone and end the torture of that sound.
“What are you doing?” I asked it, pulling the menu down so I could see what in the hell was going on.
Mail-Order Matings? What in the heck was…oh.
The events of the night, though patched and blurry, came flooding back to me. Maria telling me about the app. That was how she found her dragon. Ugh, Tate. Those memories came back as well.
I was sure I’d told my Uber driver all about it.
All of it, in fact.
Barely skimming over the notifications, I hovered my finger over the app to delete it, when I remembered I was still cooking.
Shoot! The eggs and bacon turned out perfect, thankfully.
I thought about the app while I ate. Yes, I wanted a partner, a husband, a mate but finding one on an app seemed…
artificial? Almost detached from reality.
Find someone online who you think you might like and then they are a different person when you meet them?
This was the reason I’d shunned the idea of getting on the app when Maria told me about it before.
I pulled down the notifications again out of pure curiosity before I deleted the app.
I had a match? Already? I’d only filled out some of the questions, leaving the more intimate ones blank. Maria had taken the picture of me at the party. Red cheeks. Goofy, drunk smile.
But I had to admit, tight as it was, that dress was a hit.
I clicked on the match, needing to know who this app thought was a good fit for me, and as the profile came up, I nearly toppled right off the chair.
Not one man. Not one shifter.
Three. Three, tall, hot, and gorgeous men.
They were all in some pictures together, but the linked profiles had their individual pictures and profiles as well.
I searched, but it never said what kind of shifters they were.
All of them wore sweaters; that had to mean they lived somewhere cold, like me.
They loved to read and hike and camp.
They owned a toy factory? Interesting.
They were well-traveled, and I couldn’t name a country not on their list of places they’d been. Their ages varied, but all were near mine.
Did I mention they were some of the most handsome men I’d ever seen?
Oh, there it was. They were reindeer shifters. I didn’t even know reindeer shifters existed. Nothing about that bothered me. Instead, I found it interesting.
I needed to think about this. I forced myself to get up and do some chores and not touch the app for the rest of the day.
I’d wanted to delete the memories of last night and that app as soon as I got up, but now, seeing those men, well, maybe I was being too hasty.
If the app worked for Maria, maybe this was my chance at love.
I had a lot of thinking to do.
Something had to change. I felt like a flat, blank piece of paper lately. Nothing happening in my life. I moved through a cycle of work and boredom, always wishing for and hoping something would come along and snap me into the life I’d imagined I would have by now.
In the meantime, I was lonely and empty. Not because I expected someone else to fulfill me but because I craved friendship and companionship, the kind that came with the intimacy of having a lover. A best friend. Someone who saw all of me.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to find all of that on an app, not with the first match the algorithm put me with, right?