“I’m just imagining her wandering sadly around Singapore waiting for you. Taking sad, lonely outfit-of-the-day pics at the Marina Bay Sands rooftop pool because her Instagram boyfriend wasn’t there to take them for her.”
“Don’t feel bad for her,” he said with a scoff. “By the time she got there, she already had plans to meet up with some other influencer. They’re together now, I’m pretty sure.”
“Oh my god, the GigaChad pop star wannabe she’s still with?? I didn’t know they’d been together that long.”
He nodded. “As far as I know. But to be fair, I haven’t checked in a while. Here, give me your phone and I can see.” He reached out his hand, but I shook my head.
“Can’t. I blocked her. Both of them, actually.”
He squinted at me, his head cocked to the side. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m team Jack,” I said, smiling softly.
“There’s no teams,” he said, but his grin grew, and I knew I’d done the right thing. “But thank you.”
He was opening up,finally, and I wanted to see how far I could push it. “Who have you dated since then?” I asked. “I know you said you don’t date, but I assume there have been at least some encounters?”
“Oh you do, do you?”
“Um, absolutely,” I said. “You don’t go around looking like that”—I gestured vaguely at him—“without drumming up at least a little interest.”
“Well, it’s been a pretty uneventful few years in that department,” he said with a shrug.
“No girlfriends? Or boyfriends?”
He shook his head. “It would be girlfriends, but even if I’d wanted to date, it’s pretty slim pickings around these parts.”
“What, you’re not on the apps?”
He looked at me pointedly. “Why, are you on the apps?”
“Ew, no,” I said, curling my lip in disgust. “Tried that.”
“And why did you stop?”
“Because it was mostly students and creeps. But I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near as bad for men as it is for women. Cara always told me men had much better options.”
“There just aren’t many options to begin with,” he said. “It’s like seventy per cent men on those apps. And when you take the rest, remove anyone who’s too young or too old, and anyone I’ve known since I was a kid, you’re not left with much.”
“You don’t want to give a second chance to some primary school outcast? See the glow-ups for yourself?” It felt weird, essentially pushing him to date, after what had happened on the hike. But I figured it sent a strong message that I wasn’t holding out hope that something would happen between us.
“I did try for a while, actually,” he admitted, and I cocked my head, my eyes going wide, like I couldn’t believe he’d been holding out on me. “I went on dozens of first dates from those apps once I’d finished my house. But there was never anyone I was interested in spending more time with.”
He cleared his throat, signalling that we were done talking about him, and turned his attention to me.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I haven’t been on since right after uni,” I said.
“Fair enough. But surely you’ve dated?”
I shook my head. “I never went out with anyone from the apps. It was a war zone on there. Cara tried to set me up a few times, but usually just with the friend of whatever guy she was dating so she wouldn’t feel bad for me all alone. But they never made it past one night.”
I didn’t tell Jack about how hard those nights had been – to always feel like nights out with Cara or the house parties she threw were acute reminders of the fact that she was the only real friend I’d had. She’d be bouncing around between friends, and I’d be dawdling along behind her like a lost duckling. And when she got sick of babysitting me, she’d try to fob me off on whatever single guy passed her very lax screening. As long as he was single, into women, and not an incel, she would make me his problem until I either gave up and went home or settled for a sub-par hookup to keep things ticking over. I’d never seen a single one of them past the first night.
“I find that so hard to believe,” Jack said. “Not about the war zone apps; even the way Phil behaves on those is morally reprehensible. But that no one has scooped you up.”
“Oh lovely, I see we’re doing the ‘I can’t believe you’re still single’ thing,” I said, rolling my eyes. He laughed and dropped the line of questioning, which was a relief. I didn’t really want to think about how much I’d missed out on all these years; how different my life might have been if I’d lived somewhere else, or worked somewhere else, or anything that wasn’t just doodling and clinging to my best friend.
