Thank You, Next - Sophie Ranald Page 0,37

already two coffees down by the time Robbie arrived for work. He didn’t ask me how my date had gone – he didn’t need to, I suppose, because my face must have said it all.

As I worked, I imagined what it might be like to have sex like that all the time. If I was Seth’s girlfriend, would I wake up every morning feeling like this? Would people look at me in the street and guess that I was a woman who had multiple orgasms every night, because how else would I get that glow on my skin, that spring in my step, that secretive smile?

Would our friends say knowingly, ‘Of course, he’s a Scorpio, isn’t he?’

Or would it get old after a bit? Would I find myself turning away from him in bed and saying I was tired, or had a headache, or thought my period was about to start? I had no idea. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be his girlfriend. Nowhere near sure. But I did know that when he messaged me and suggested meeting up again, I wouldn’t be able to say no.

But he didn’t message me. As the day passed, I felt my elation draining away. When I checked my phone after my workout and there was still nothing, I felt suddenly weary in a way I hadn’t even when I’d been caning it on the rowing machine. It wasn’t surprising after barely any sleep, I told myself, and somehow I struggled through my evening shift, thinking that he was clearly a night owl and would message me later, even if I was asleep when he did.

But there were no messages from Seth that night, even though I waited up until two, restlessly hoping. And the next morning when I woke up, there were none either. And when I went onto Tinder to find him, I couldn’t. His profile wasn’t there. The messages – and the pictures – we’d exchanged weren’t there. I switched my phone on and off again, but nothing changed. I deleted the app and reinstalled it, but that didn’t work either.

I stared at my phone in bafflement for a while, and then I realised with a thud what had happened. He’d blocked me.

I wasn’t exactly a battle-hardened veteran of online dating, but I knew this stuff happened. I knew that there were people who were just there for sex – if I hadn’t, Robbie would have set me straight. I knew that online dating was fickle and cruel. But knowing all that stuff didn’t stop it hurting like a punch to the ribs when it happened to me. I remembered that night with Seth – how completely I’d let myself open to him, how I’d abandoned any thoughts of playing hard to get the second he’d walked into the bar, how I’d urged him to carry on and on and not stop ever. I cringed remembering how blithely I’d assumed that he would contact me again – why wouldn’t he, since it had been just as good for him as it had for me?

I didn’t feel a glow of remembered pleasure any more. I just felt disappointed and stupid. I felt like I’d been duped into something I wouldn’t have agreed to otherwise, even though I knew that wasn’t true at all. I picked it over and over in my mind, trying to figure out what had made him behave that way. I couldn’t talk to Dani about it, or even Robbie. Even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t my fault, I still felt strangely ashamed, like I’d been made a fool of somehow. I knew that Dani’s sympathy and understanding would make me feel a million times worse, and Robbie’s kindly but sharp advice to move on was advice I’d already given myself. But I remembered what Robbie had told me about his own online hook-ups – how sometimes, even most times, the whole point of it was that you could have sex with a new person every night if you wanted to.

I thought of Seth – just your average bloke, not that good-looking or wealthy or even interesting – suddenly finding himself with unlimited girls like me, there for the asking. I couldn’t blame him for it, not really. He was a Scorpio, after all. Every time I opened the Stargazer app, I expected to see a message saying, Don’t say I didn’t warn you, but the app clearly thought I could figure that out