Page 54 of The App Trap
I swiped my phone out of affair mode just to check if I’d received any texts from Harry. There were a couple of double vibrates. Sure enough, the first one was from Harry:
‘What ch’up to? I’m at some shit work do. Bored.’
Normally a simple enough text to deal with, but I had terrifying visions of texting him back some bullshit, then walking out of the toilets straight into my potential future life partner.
In fact: shit. There was a massive possibility that this could happen. What I needed right now was a disguise.Short of getting an Amazon Prime drone to hotfoot me a Groucho Marx glasses and moustache combo, I was screwed. Plus, it wasn’t 2067 yet.
I replied to Harry’s text with some utter bullshit about staying in and spending the evening trying to find something to watch on Netflix. Idiot.
I flicked to the next text, which was from an unknown number. Never a good sign at the best of times, more than likely some straggler’s number from yester-month that I’d deleted. In this case, however, it was something way more sinister than a guy bored of the London dating scene looking through his little black book.
This… was an angry husband. And without wanting to sound like a Marks & Spencer’s advert, this was no ordinary angry husband.
‘ANSWER MY FUCKING CALLS AND STOP FUCKING MY FELLA.’
Within seconds, my voicemail alert flashed up and I was almost too terrified to listen to it, but bit the bullet.
Right, you fucker. You’re in a lot of trouble. I’ve just got out of jail and found your fucking number on my husband’s phone, so I’m gonna hunt you down. You fucking go near my Harry again and I’ll find you. I’m gonna be watching him, so I’ll find you, boy [cue menacing laughter].
Harry? What? Well, this had become the perfect fuck-storm. I couldn't work out whether I was more terrified or angry. Actually, I could. I was more terrified.
This evening was becoming progressively worse by the second. First of all, I was petrified of bumping into Harry, and now I was even more scared of bumping into his husband. If he’d seen my dating profile, he’d know what I looked like. He must have followed him here, so if he saw me, I was toast––even if I was with another guy. Or maybehe’d beat me up twice for cheating on his husband with someone else. Oh, this was a right old Eton Mess.
On top of all this, I realised that I’d been in this toilet for a while, and Werner was bound to be getting twitchy. Well, at least I didn't have to worry about getting nabbed by Harry now. I’d clearly got way more on him.
Either way, I had to formulate a plan to get out of that bar. There was no way that Werner was going to want to go to another bar now, and I couldn't just walk out on him. There was only one thing for it… get him to the hotel room and try to avoid having sex with him until the morning. I purposely hadn’t brought out any condoms or lube, so that was half the battle won anyway.
I had an idea. I ran out of the toilet, climbed a flight of stairs, and gave Werner a call. He answered and made some lame joke about the fact I’d rung Domino’s, which annoyed me, because that’s totally my joke.
I pretended that I'd just seen my boss in the hotel and that I had to hide because I’d bunked off work today and if he saw me, I’d get the sack. He told me not to be stupid, and that if I got the sack, that’d be fine because I could hang out with him for the next few days. Not fine—awful. He just wasn't getting this.
“I’m not coming back out there,” I said, stubbornly, shaking my head like Chewbacca outside a recently disengaged trash-compactor.
He sternly told me not to be so stupid again, then eventually agreed to come and meet me. I waited for ages before I received another call from Werner asking where I was. It turns out that ‘first floor’ means ‘ground floor’ in German, and he was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me. I told him to come up the stairs, but he started acting confused and I ended up reluctantly going down to collect him.
The moment that my foot touched the bottom stair, of course Harry walked past.
“There you are, Danny!” shouted Werner as Harry’s head whooshed round.
Our eyes met.
“I’ll meet you upstairs,” I said, in a shaky voice, giving Harry some Grade ‘A’ Stink-Eye.
“What the fuck?” said Harry.
“Impossible. You don’t even know the room number,” said Werner.
“What the fuck? Room? Silly? Well, isn’t this very fucking cosy?” snapped Harry.
I ushered Werner up the stairs, maintaining the stink-eye on Harry. I was far too angry to even look at him, let alone say anything to him.
“Er…” said Harry, hands slapping on his hips, one by one.
I looked away and just hurried up the stairs until I heard Harry’s repeated exhalations of ‘WTFs’ fade out.
When we arrived in the room, I felt my phone vibrate twice. I hadn’t switched it back to affair mode as now there was no need. However, there was the risk of Harry’s husband hassling me, so I made a mental note to go and ‘use the toilet’ once we were inside so that I could do my last bit of Harry admin before I blocked the shit out of him.
Sure enough, the text was from Harry.
