Page 37 of Courting Clemson

“Down, girl.” I laughed. “I got this.”

“Hey,” she teased. “I’m just being supportive.”

We both giggled, and I clicked into the first message.

The man introduced himself, and said he noticed I was new. He told me a bit about himself, asked a few basic questions, and said he hoped he would hear back from me soon. He included two pictures of himself, and he was an average-looking guy. He wasn’t pushy or demanding.

I was relieved. I didn’t want to feel like I was dodging and weaving around a bunch of creeps all the time, so I felt more confident to click on the second message.

And then the third, and fourth, and so on down the list. Most were very similar, with a few standouts in the bunch. I let Grace read each one after I did, and in under two hours, we had gone through them all.

“How are you going to decide?” she asked, looked a bit bewildered.

“I think there’s going to have to be some sort of elimination process. Especially if this many come in every day,” I said, motioning to the screen. “If they hit certain red flags, no response. Everyone else gets at least a courtesy reply. The few that I’m interested in should get individualized messages back,” I said with a nod, feeling good about the system I came up with on the fly.

“Oh, good idea. Do you have a list of red flags? That way I can help you weed through these.”

“No, but that might be a good thing to have on hand.”

She agreed and scooted to her room for a notebook.

Together we made a list of eight things that were complete turn-offs. If there was a warning flag anywhere in the message, the guy was gone. We also agreed to keep a separate list of guys who were automatically disqualified so I didn’t waste my time reading future messages from them.

Solei had said that if worse came to worst—if a guy began harassing me, for example—I could block him completely. She advised me to use that feature only in those extreme circumstances and assured me that it was rare a client behaved that way.

I hoped she was telling the truth, because something like that would set my anxiety on high alert.

After applying the newly devised elimination process to the messages in my inbox, I had four candidates to write personal responses back to, three got polite replies with no indication that I wanted things to proceed, and only one went on the blacklist.

That guy openly asked too many questions about my sexual preferences, and it felt really sleezy. The tone of his messages was completely different from the others. Grace and I both agreed about the vibe coming off the man, and she wrote his username in her notebook.

“Okay, all in all, that wasn’t too bad,” I said, looking at my friend.

“Except one thing,” she replied while waving her hand toward the monitor. “Six more have come in while we were going through those.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered and stared at the screen.

“It’s your own fault, you know.” She grinned so I knew she was teasing. “If you weren’t so freaking hot, I’m sure your inbox wouldn’t be this active. You hit all the marks for a man’s wet dream.”

“Yuck,” I grumbled. “Did you have to use that word combo?” I asked with my face scrunched up. I didn’t want to think about guys, my photos, and semen all in the same thought.

Grace clapped her hands together. “Okay, let’s get these responses sent out so you can line up some dates.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“It feels like a challenge now. And I love a good challenge,” she replied in a sing-song voice.

“Maybe you should give this a try too?”

“Nah. I like guys my own age. For the most part, anyway. I’ll just live vicariously through you.” She was quiet for a moment or two, reading through a new email that came in. “Are you excited to see what they offer?” she asked carefully.

“I just need money for school, Grace. That’s it. I’ve never been interested in fancy things. I just need the basics. But I need a large sum of money, and I need it fast. So here we are.” That pretty much summed up this whole adventure in a couple of sentences.

Then I remembered that Luke had messaged last night. I wanted to get to know him better, and I didn’t want him to think I was playing games by waiting so long between messages.

“Who are you messaging? I thought they want you to use the app?” Grace asked, looking at my laptop.

“I’m texting Luke. He sent something last night after we crashed on the sofa, and I never got to it.”

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