The Dating Experiment by Briar Prescott
Jamie
“So, you basically have an online boyfriend.” Anders huffs out a breath.
We’re running along the Charles, and I’ve just finished telling him everything about Seb. How we met. How we’ve been chatting almost nonstop for weeks now.
How I really like him.
“No,” I deny quickly. “It’s not…”
I let my voice drop off because I don’t really know how to describe what’s happening with Seb. Friends, probably, but I don’t want to say just friends. No offense to Max or Anders, but I’m not nearly as intrigued by my friends as I am with Seb.
I don’t flirt with them like I do with Seb either. Because that’s definitely a thing we do now. Technically friends probably could say things like thinking about you, too, but mine don’t, so I’m leaning heavily on the thought that we’re flirting.
“We’re…”
“Lovers,” Anders inserts with a serious nod and twitching lips.
“I’ve never even met the guy,” I grumble.
“Yeah, why is that? If you click so well, why not meet up for lunch? Or a sighting in the park if you’re afraid he’ll turn out to be crazy in real life and want to have the option of hiding in a tree.”
“What a sage suggestion.”
“I’ve got something for every occasion. I’m like a walking-talking advice column.”
We walk in silence for a few seconds.
“You could just ask him to meet you, you know?” Anders takes a drink from his water bottle.
“I don’t even know where he lives.”
“Ooh. That’s a tough one. You couldn’t possibly just, you know, ask,” Anders says with a mocking nod.
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
“What if he says no?”
“Then he’s illiterate. Where do you live? No.” He purses his lips thoughtfully. “Which would give you a pretty good opening, to be honest. You can offer to teach him.” He waggles his brows. “Maybe in more areas than one.”
I roll my eyes. “I mean, what if he doesn’t want to meet?”
“Then you won’t. I’m just saying, if you want to meet, then it doesn’t do any harm to just ask. Why are you so hesitant about this? You’re the one who usually jumps in, headfirst.”
I stare at my feet so that Anders wouldn’t notice the way my face is heating. He stops abruptly and pulls me to stop as well.
“Oh shit. You actually really like him? Like, like him, like him?” Anders asks with a frown.
“You sound like a frat boy. If there is more than one like in a conversation, you have to hand in your adult card. Congratulations, you’re a teenager again.”
“It’s those kids in the movie theatre. I’ve had to adapt to their behavior to fit in, or it’ll be full-on Lord of the Flies in there, and I’ll most likely be the poor sucker who gets offed. The trick is to pretend you’re one of them. Now stop deflecting.”
I huff out a breath. “We click. But people lie online all the time, so there’s a very good chance he’s lying, too. He might be a scammer. Or a bot.”
Anders hums thoughtfully. “Sure. But wouldn’t it be better to find out now and not a few months down the road?”
I make a face.
“You make a lot of sense. I don’t like that in a man. I should have gone to Max.”
“I can give you Max type of advice, too, if you want. I’m versatile like that. Give me a sec. I’ll channel my inner Max.” He takes a deep breath and squints his eyes. “You should… sleep with him. And then fall in head over heels, unrequited love with him.”
I have to hand it to him—that does seem like Max’s MO.
I start walking again, and Anders falls into step next to me.
My shoulders drop in resignation. “So… I should ask him to meet me. He’ll probably agree. I mean, unless he lives in Siberia or a monastery in the Tibetan Plateau or somewhere unreachable like that.”
“We have those newfangled devices called planes now. Besides, if this whole thing goes tits up, it’ll be a good thing if he lives in Tibet,” Anders muses. “Less chance of running into him in Trader Joe’s afterwards.”
Once home, I stare at my phone for the longest time before I take a deep breath.
“Now or never, Jamie. Don’t be a wimp.”
J: What do you see when you look out the window?
Seb: Are you looking for a weather report? It’s cloudy. Not sure about the temperature, but it was in the sixties this morning. I don’t think it’s going to rain today.
J: Great. Now, which part of the world does that report cover, exactly?
Seb: USA. Boston.
Seb: Why? Where are you?
Seb: I just assumed you were on the East Coast because Arthur said his whole family is in the area.
J: Yeah, I’m in Boston, too.
J: And here’s a thought, since we’re both in the same place, maybe we could go and have coffee together?
J: Or any type of food item if you’re into that sort of thing.
J: I have a soft spot for breakfast for dinner because I like breakfast foods, but I almost never get to eat them since I regularly oversleep and go hungry in the morning.
J: No pressure.
J: Umm… Are you still there?
Seb: I don’t think that’s a good idea.
J: Oh. Sure. We can forget I even said anything.
J: It’s fine.
J: I don’t really like food anyway.
J: I’m thinking about inventing a pill that covers all your nutrition needs for a month. That way all those pesky dinners and lunch meetings would disappear altogether.
J: Hahaha. Too bad I’m so slow, otherwise we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
J: We’d just meet up to pop our pills together.
J: I have to go now.
J: Talk later?
J: So… yeah. Great.
J: gonna go yemin
Seb: Is that some kind of a secret language or did you just butt-message me?
J: I finger messaged you. Phone upside down.
J: Oops. I’m a wee bit drink.
J: Fuck! Drunk.
Seb: Have a glass of water and an Ibuprofen.
Seb: J?
Seb: You still there?
J: Yip. Bed.
Seb: Sounds like a reasonably good plan. Exactly how drunk are you? Should I be worried?
J: Nah. I’ve got Max.
J: Was gonna jerk off.
J: Revenge wank.
Seb: Okay. You can definitely do that if you want to.
J: No, see. I think my dick is broken.
J: Check it out.
*image attached*
J: It won’t get up!
J: Rubbed it like it was a lamp, and I was Aladdin. Nothing.
Seb: Okay.
Seb: So that’s a…
Seb: Based on the, admittedly, blurry image and this conversation so far, I’m willing to diagnose this as whiskey dick. I’m sure it’ll pass.
Seb: J?
Seb: I’m officially getting worried now.
J: Hi. You can breathe easy. He’s okay.
J: I’m Max, by the way. Nice to meet you.
J: Don’t worry. I’ll look after him.
Elephants. Elephants have been dancing on my skull. There is no way anything else could have caused that level of pain inside my head. I’m relatively certain my brain is going to start leaking out of my ears soon, and I can’t wait for that moment. At least that way the torture will end.
Somebody snorts, and the sound reverberates in my head, making me ready to commit heinous crimes for some silence. I open one of my eyelids and almost scream as my retinas are burned with the brightest light in the world. Possibly in the Universe.
“You do know he’s going to murder you once he’s recovered?” Max’s voice comes from somewhere on my left.
“I’ll use you as a shield.” Anders sounds unconcerned.
“Nice. And here I thought we were friends.”
“Exactly. Which is why I’m frankly a bit offended you didn’t offer to save me and instead just stand there discussing my murder in such a cavalier way.”
“Hey, you brought this on yourself.”
There’s a beat of blessed silence.
“I think I can take him in a race, since he needs to stop and puke every once in a while. What do you think?”
“He could wait until he’s recovered a bit.”
“Maybe don’t give him ideas?” Anders says pointedly.
It seems there’s very little chance they’ll shut up and leave me alone, so gathering all my willpower, I pry my eyes open. The source of the disturbingly bright, retina-burning blaze becomes clear when I find Anders right next to my head with a flashlight.
“Morning, sleeping beauty.”
“If you don’t remove the flashlight, I’m guaranteed to vomit on you,” I mutter and push myself into a sitting position, agonizingly slowly. The throbbing in my head intensifies. The room swims in front of my eyes. The threat of vomiting is becoming more real by the second. I’d search for a bucket, but I don’t really care enough to save the floor.
“That’s not what you said last night. I believe your exact words were ‘best fucking friends on that round egg we call the world.’” Anders’s lips twitch, but whether because he really does fear murder or he’s just feeling sorry for me, he doesn’t outright laugh.
Fucking hell, my mouth tastes like somebody has died in there. I close my eyes and swallow down the bile.
There’s a sound of footsteps before the foulest smell known to mankind assaults my nostrils. I open my eyes to find Max standing in front of me, holding out a glass of mossy-green liquid that manages to smell both sickly sweet and pungent. I recoil.
“Get this thing out of my face.”
He grins. “So ungrateful. This is for you.”
I eye the glass and try not to gag.
“I feel sorry for the future love of your life if this is the kind of cooking he has to put up with,” I say.
Max rolls his eyes with a snort. “This is a hangover cure. It’s supposed to smell this way.”
“I’m not putting this vile creation in my body,” I inform him.
“It’s a bit late to be all high-and-mighty about treating your body as a temple after last night,” Anders says. This whole situation seems to give him way too much satisfaction.
I close my eyes and swallow, taking the glass from Max, but I do my best to hold it as far away from my nose and mouth as my arm can extend.
“What happened?” I croak. “How did I end up on your couch?”
“You were very exuberant,” Max says. “I figured it’d be better if you had some supervision. You kept talking about streaking and yelling YOLO at passers-by. And then you puked on the welcome mat of 4B.”
Christ on a bike.
I wince and avoid their gazes.
“Sorry.”
Max waves me off. “That guy’s a dick anyway.”
To prove how remorseful I really am, I take an experimental sip of Max’s hangover cure and promptly gag. Seems I should have scraped off my taste buds first. Then again, I suspect the first sip has taken care of that for me. I shall miss the taste of food.
“I’m still sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be,” Anders says. “If you hadn’t done that, we would have never gotten to witness you performing ‘Singing in the Rain’ in front of McGann’s.”
I glance at him pleadingly.
“Please tell me—”
“That we have video evidence?” Anders interrupts. “Ask and you shall receive.” His hand is practically shaking with excitement as he pushes his phone in front of my face.
Oh good. There I am. Hugging a lamppost and everything.
I can’t hold a tune at the best of times, so that performance… I don’t think the word “humiliating” does it justice. I turn my eyes away at the first twirl. The awfulness doesn’t end there, though. I can still hear myself. I’m relatively certain at one point during the song I try to burp the lyrics.
“Just out of curiosity, at any point during this, didn’t you have the urge to, I don’t know, stop me?” I ask in my calmest voice.
“What a glorious feeling,” the phone Jamie yells.
“The thought crossed my mind,” Anders says. “But I was too busy filming.”
“There will be no best-friend trophies handed out among you lot.” I close my eyes and lean my head back.
“I disagree,” Max says. “Some of us did pull our weight. I, for one, confiscated your phone, so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself any further.”
I slowly turn my eyes toward him as the words register.
“What do you mean by embarrass myself any further?”
Max considers me for a second before he goes and grabs my phone off the edge of the bookshelf.
“You should probably just read it yourself.”
I feel sick to my stomach, and this time it’s not just because of Max’s hangover cure.
At first glance, everything seems normal. There’s even a message from Seb.
Seb: How are you feeling? Headache?
That’s nice of him.
Only… how exactly does he know to ask that?
I frown as I scroll back a bit. And then a bit more.
I stare at the screen in horrified silence as I read through our conversation. Every word from the humiliating beginning to the horrifying end. All the way from the gibberish I was apparently trying to pass off as a greeting to the… blurry dick pic of my decidedly flaccid cock.
I swallow and put the phone down before I slowly get up and walk out of the room to the bathroom, where the last of the alcohol in my system makes its pathetic reappearance into Max’s toilet bowl.