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The moment I walk through the gym door, Sam, the owner, looks from me to the squat racks in the back corner. His eyes are wide and his customary ‘Good morning’ grunt is seemingly forgotten.
“It wasn’t me,” he says.
“It wasn’t you what?” I ask, realizing this is the first time I’ve used my voice since waking and it’s a bit rough from the chill air outside.
Sam slides a phone across the counter. My phone. I was wondering where it had gone, but I was never that dependent on technology, so I just chalked it up to having dropped it somewhere. I was planning to stop by a shop to get a new one today or tomorrow, but I guess there’s no need now.
“I must have left it here yesterday,” I say more to myself than to Sam.
“Well, it wasn’t me who found it. And it wasn’t me who messed with it.”
“Messed with it?”
When the screen lights up, I notice there’s a notification from an app I’ve never seen. Its icon depicts a pink heart with a pair of red lips in the center. “What the hell?”
Sam shifts his head to point towards the squat racks once more. “It seems your spotting buddies are trying to help you hit a new PR.”
It takes me a moment to process what he’s just said and synthesize it with the notification in front of me. But when I finally figure it out, my eyes go wide. “Those little shits.”
Sam holds his hands up. “Remember. I’m just the messenger.”
Daniel and Donnie have apparently lived next to each other all their lives. First they were neighbors, but now they’re roommates and as inseparable as new lovers. They’ve been trying to set me up with one of the ‘Pilates panthers’, as they call them, ever since we started spotting for each other six months ago.
From the new app on my phone, it would seem that they’ve grown tired of waiting for me to take the initiative.
“What the fuck, man?”
Daniel and Donnie are all smiles. They’re not physically intimidated by me, that’s for sure. While I’m perfectly happy with the way I’ve managed to sculpt my body after years of weight lifting, I’ve never touched gear. But these two are so obviously on steroids that there’s no point in denying it.
“Just trying to give a fellow swole bro a push,” Daniel says.
At closer inspection, I discover that the app is called Love at First Swipe. I’ve heard of it, and scoffed at the irony in its name, because it was never intended to foster love. This is an app for fucking and little else. The reason I never downloaded it isn’t that I’m some conservative guy who believes that love is sacred and all that. I’m not against the idea of one-night stands if that’s what both parties are looking for. But I just can’t even imagine working a girl into my already complicated life. Not until I figure out what I’m going to do about other matters.
Before I can lunge at Daniel and Donnie, I can’t help but flick through the app and see what they’ve written on my profile.
It’s even worse than I expected.
“You guys used the photo of me from the brochure?”
The only reason I ever gave Greg permission to use the picture his aspiring son snapped of me when he snuck into the gym one day was that I liked the old guy. He used to be a body builder, and he never cared that my last name was Harding when he found out upon my sign-up. He didn’t care about what kind of car I drove. He liked me because I came here with the sole purpose of lifting weights. I never hit on the girls. Never broke gym etiquette. Greg was just a down-to-earth guy who never treated me differently. So how could I say no when he wanted to use a picture of me leaned against the water cooler, dripping in sweat and wearing nothing but my tattered gym shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt with the words, ‘Welcome to the Gun Show’ and two arrows pointing to my arms? A shirt that was, by the way, a gag gift from Greg.
I thought the picture made me look like a douche, and I’m even surer of this assessment when I see the picture on what is meant to be a dating profile.
“You guys are asswipes. You know that, right?”
Daniel takes another chug of his protein shake. “Maybe so. But at least our asses are chiseled out of marble, man. You look like you could do with some more squats.”
I ignore this jab and move to delete the app. All I want is to begin my routine, but Donnie leaps forward and grabs the phone from my hand before I can get rid of their pesky interference in my life.
“Whoa, bro! You can’t delete it before seeing the hottie who swiped right on you.”
He dangles it in front of my face, the screen now lit up with a picture I didn’t expect at all. I think I was expecting to see some photo with one of those stupid filters on it. Or maybe a girl who has a standing monthly Botox appointment. Instead of some artificial girl who looks to spend her days shopping and her nights at clubs, I’m face-to-face with something else entirely.
The picture was probably taken by a friend while they were working. She’s wearing jeans and a shirt that says, ‘Omie Yoga’. She’s holding a cardboard box and is clearly reaching for the phone to stop this very photo from being taken. I can almost hear her laugh as she argues with her friend, begging her to delete this very picture.
I finally manage to snag my phone back from Daniel. Donnie says between snickers, “Can you believe it? That’s the best your pretty face could muster up. We swiped right on dozens of other girls, but she’s the only one that responded.”
“I’m pathetic, I get it.” I take one last look at the screen. Then I slide the phone into my pocket. “Now if you jackasses would stop hogging the squat rack, I have some reps to get in.”
