Page 34 of Swiping Right (and other disasters)

Kiera struggled with her phone, trying to take a picture of herself without looking like she was taking a picture of herself and also without it being angled directly up her nose. She’d never met Abi, and she’d not done this before, but she was fairly certain that up-nostril pics were out.

After about five minutes of failed attempts, she managed to get one that took in the side of her face along with a strip light above her head. It was as good as she was going to get, especially as one or two colleagues had begun to give her strange looks. Before she could change her mind she hit send and then plopped her phone into her pocket. She should at least try and look as if she was paying attention.

She resolved not to look at her phone again until the meeting was over. Her resolve was weak. Twenty minutes later she slid her phone back out of her pocket for a glance. “Nice specs, very sexy… ??” came the response. It had been sent just three minutes after the photo would have arrived.

“Kiera, can you fill us in on the data for the last quarter?” came a voice from the other end of the table. Kiera’s face was already bright red from being called sexy, and she now felt she had been caught out by senior manager Rick.

“Er, yes, of course.” They’d clearly missed a slot on the agenda, so she was being called up sooner than she had expected. “So, um, as you can see here, once I have my slide on the screen, there are some figures here.” She frowned as she tried to get herself in order. This was not the face of professionalism that she hoped to present.

Kiera muddled through the presentation and then sat down, studiously ignoring her phone and resolving to be a better human for the rest of the day.

“Kiera,” said Rick from behind her. The meeting was finally over, and she was desperate to get away.

“Oh, hi, yes, how are you?” she said, turning towards him.

“Are you ok?” he asked. He was the manager that always went on about wellbeing in the workplace. “You seemed a little panicked earlier. Everything alright with you?”

Kiera laughed in a way that she hoped sounded confident but probably made her sound even more nervous and panicked than she really was. “Oh yes, sorry about that. I had a terrible night’s sleep last night, and then the slides didn’t work properly to start with. I’m all good.” She tried to give a winning, devil-may-care smile.

“Right you are, then. But remember, my door is always open,” said Rick, his head tilted to one side, his face earnest. Kiera’s smile had become rictus-like as she nodded at him, working out how long she had to stay there before she could run away and think about what she’d done.

“Thanks. Well, must dash,” she said and scarpered.

Later in the evening Kiera settled down on the sofa with a glass of wine. She opened her phone. “Come on then,” she wrote, “you’ve seen me in my sexy bespectacled glory; it’s your turn…”

She waited nervously, fully expecting nothing to come back. But within a minute or two there was a picture in front of her: Abi’s smiling face and a bare shoulder, not looking at all shy or awkward about sending a photo to a stranger on the internet. This was clearly a thing.

“Nice,” she typed. Then deleted the word. Nice? She needed to do better than that. “Hot,” she typed instead. She had a few mouthfuls of wine while she waited for her inner prude to calm down. Three dots appeared.

“Why thank you. So, tell me about what you like…” wrote Abi.

“Well, I think we’ve established I like bourbons.”

“I wasn’t talking about that kind of thing you like. I mean, what do you *like*?”

Kiera was going to need more wine.

“Tell me what you like first,” she said, buying time.

“Tease,” typed Abi. Three dots. More wine for Kiera. “I like to be wined and dined and passionately kissed. I like being undressed slowly and then teased until I can’t bear it any more…”

The wine had gone entirely to Kiera’s head. She knew she was blushing, but there was no one to see her this time, so it didn’t matter.

“I like the sound of that,” wrote Kiera. And she did. She mused idly about Victorian ladies and their romantic friendships conducted by letter. Was this the modern equivalent?

“Your turn!”

Kiera sighed. She knew she had to write back. Putting these things into words wasn’t something she was used to. The wine helped, though. “I like being pushed up against things and kissed,” she typed, then cringed at herself and deleted again. Instead she plumped for “Confidence is really sexy and I love someone who knows what they want.”

“Oh, I definitely know what I want,” wrote Abi, with a devil emoji for good measure.

Kiera smiled. This was actually beginning to feel like fun. They continued to flirt and exchange messages for the next hour. It was funny and sexy and made Kiera feel good. She liked the safety of being on the other side of an online divide. But she also liked the potential of it, and the sense that this might be the beginning of something.

Mr Chips was restless. It was time for his supper so Kiera got up and sashayed around the kitchen, the radio on in the background. She felt lighter than she had done for a while.

Soon it was time to go to bed, so Kiera made her excuses. “Goodnight, you. I think we should do this in person sometime soon.” She closed her eyes tight once she’d pressed send. By the time she had opened her eyes again, the answer had come back.

“You bet,” said Abi.

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