I Need ToTo SeeSee Fred Again

I run from my killer, manoeuvring around bodies of people on the streets of London. At this point, I’m unsure what street I’m on.

But there is one thing I’m sure about, and it’s the date I’ve just been ruining my life. He’s the type to take the breath from my lungs. Spear open my heart.

Take my fucking life.

When somebody looks like that, there’s no way he wouldn’t.

I’m talking out of my league. By far. Heartbreakingly blue eyes. Dark curls of hair cropped around his face in the most perfect way. Contoured cheekbones. A prominent brow bone. We met on Hinge several days before, but I had no idea what I was getting into. Pictures are 2D – don’t represent real life, and his were shit. Terrible quality. Taken on some Nokia smartphone that pixelated everything. He was tall. Had dark hair.

So he must’ve been handsome.

But handsome isn’t the right adjective for Fred. It’s more than that. It’s like sitting opposite someone on the cover of Vogue, but the airbrushed skin is real life. He’s a walking, Photoshopper’s dream. AI would probably identify him as their own.

In this technological age, I consider him being a robot – it’s only a matter of time before they crawl their way into the dating apps – but he’s charismatic. Anything but boring. Bots don’t have personalities.

And Fred has a big one.

He has this high pitched laugh (the better my joke, the higher the pitch) and told me some story from his backpacking days around Southeast Asia when, in Thailand, he started the night wearing a leopard-print linen shirt and trousers, and ended it with the linen shirt tied around his waist, no trousers, cuddling a de-juiced orange on the floor of a five star hotel lobby, with juice from the orange in a plastic cup next to him.

AI couldn’t make that shit up even if they tried.

And me? What funny stories could I recount to him? The time I accidentally sent an email reply to the two-thousand something thread of people in the message, meaning to contact just one? Falling asleep on the tube and waking up in Brixton?

No.

We’re worlds apart. Him some hot, Vogue-looking nomad with endless stories up his sleeves and a smile that could light up the world in a power cut, and me an office girl that went from university straight into work. I get six hours sleep if I’m lucky from the workload I have to take home, and barely make it out of the country anymore.

“Please mind the gap between the train and the platform,” says the tube woman as I enter the station.

Let’s hope I don’t make it to Brixton this time.

I comb my hair through my fingertips. What a day. My Friday started at 6 AM and is ending – I glimpse my watch – at 7. I’m getting old. Jesus. Feels like a century ago since I was last in bed.

A millennium since I last had a guy in there with me.

Escaping out of the bathroom window isn’t the nicest way to end a date, but what Fred needs is a taste of his own medicine. He probably pulls this shit all the time, and if not (because he actually sounds like a decent human being) needs bringing back down to reality like the rest of us, because in London, hopping out of a bathroom window pretty much sums up the city’s dating experience. At least for me.

It’s a case of who can get there first.

The train roars through the tunnel. Carriages rattle to a stop, and I locate the quietest one.

The doors open.

I step in, minding the gap.

And then feel a force drag me back onto the platform.

I turn around. Wish i could say it’s a sight for sore eyes, but it’s not.

It’s Fred.