Thin Aire is a rooftop bar overlooking the River Aire. It sits unbelievably pretty at the top of an eighty-metre-tall office block, and it’s almost entirely made of glass. The floor-to-ceiling, wrap-around glass windows allow for a panoramic view of the city. In fact, I can literally see my house from here.
‘Hello,’ a hostess greets me cheerily. I thought my contour was severe, but the hostess has me beat. I suppose it’s just what is trendy at the moment, isn’t it? My mum often runs a thumb over one of my eyebrows and laughs to herself about how big eyebrows are these days, but she’s from a different time, a time when it was cool to pluck your eyebrows into non-existence. After years of painful plucking, my mum couldn’t have big brows if she wanted to, not without getting them tattooed on. At least by embracing the trend I have lots to play with but, should smaller brows come back into fashion, I’ll be in trouble. I’m too lazy to keep on top of the plucking as it is. I am so lazy, in fact, that when I was getting ready for this date tonight, I realised I was cutting it fine and abandoned shaving my legs. The problem was I’d already done a third of the job. That’s why I’m wearing tights, even though it’s summer. Thankfully it’s a little cooler this evening.
‘Are you meeting someone for drinks?’ the hostess asks me.
‘Erm, yes, but I think I might be the first one here,’ I reply.
‘Table for two?’
She gives me a knowing smile. She must see people on dates all the time. Can she tell by my nervous disposition that that’s why I’m here?
‘Yes,’ I confirm, this time with a little more confidence. I’m not really a shy person but this just feels so awkward.
‘OK, come with me. I have a table for two free on the terrace.’
I follow the hostess out onto the wrap-around roof terrace. As soon as I step out onto the fake-grass flooring I feel the cool breeze creep over my skin and it feels glorious. I take a seat at my table and order myself a cocktail – something called a War of the Roses, picked in a bit of a hurry without really looking at the ingredients. A waitress brings it out to me and I still can’t tell you what is in it, but it’s delicious. Now all I need to do is wait.
I can’t help but think about my disastrous date with Matt the other night. You know, it might be my worst date yet. Maybe. The competition is stiff. Sure, turning up to a first date and finding out it’s actually a babysitting gig isn’t ideal, but is it as bad as Aaron, who was a solid decade older than the photo he was using on his Matcher profile? Or what about Felix, who seemed great at first, looking pretty dapper in a sharp black suit… but then it turned out that he was only wearing a suit because he’d met me immediately after his dad’s wake, at which he got absolutely hammered…
I’m not saying that there is something wrong with all men, and that I am absolutely perfect on a date, far from it. My first date with a guy called Chris took a horrible turn when I jokily mentioned that ‘coffee was my crack’ – my fun way of saying that I’m low-key addicted to it. When I asked what Chris’s crack was, he told me that until recently it was, well, crack. Crack-crack. Needless to say, Chris wasn’t impressed with my joke, which meant that I felt obliged to spend the rest of the night listening to him talk about being a recovering drug addict. I sure do know how to pick them.
I’d be tempted to say I have high hopes for Chad though, except while I’ve been thinking about my recent dating history, aimlessly scrolling through my phone and sipping away at my second anonymous drink, I’ve realised that Chad is forty-five minutes late. I thought it kind of poor form when I realised he was fifteen minutes late. By thirty minutes I started to panic but now that we’re at forty-five…
‘How’s it going?’ a man asks me.
‘Erm… Chad?’ I ask, although it certainly doesn’t look like Chad. From what I could gather from his photos, Chad was a skinny dude. There is no way this guy standing in front of me is the guy I saw in Chad’s photos. This guy is tall… really tall, like 6’ 2” or 6’ 3”. He’s wearing black trousers and a white shirt with, not one, but two buttons undone. He looks impossibly cool in that way you can't replicate. Some people are cool, some people are trying to be cool, and some people are just uncool. That’s it. And I'm in the third category. As far as I can tell, his chest doesn’t have a hair on it – unless he shaves it as I do my legs, which is only as far as the eye can see. He’s alarmingly buff – the kind of buff you only get from spending too much time in the gym. Gyms are these things I’ve seen in Instagram photos where people go to exercise. This guy must practically live there.
‘Not Chad,’ he says with a friendly but awkward laugh. He runs a hand through his longish, messy brown hair, which hangs down behind his ears. I can see his dimples as he smiles, through his stubbly beard. His brown eyes are almost impossibly dark, although that could just be because it’s so dimly lit here. He’s got a real Jason Momoa vibe about him. He’s also definitely not Chad, so God knows why he’s talking to me.
‘I just thought I’d come over and say hi,’ he explains. ‘Can I sit?’
He places a hand on the back of the chair next to me as he waits for the go-ahead to join me.
‘Look, no offence,’ I start, wracking my brain for the right words, because I’m not used to having to tell men to take a hike. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not interested. I’m waiting for my date, so…’
The last thing I need is for Chad, the last man on Matcher, to arrive and find me being chatted up by another man.
‘Look… he’s stood you up,’ the man tells me bluntly.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I reply. ‘If this is some kind of excuse to talk to me…’
‘Whoa, OK, hang on a minute,’ the man starts, chuckling to himself as he pulls out the chair next to me and sits down. ‘Do you think this is a chat-up line?’
I glance down at the seat I had asked him not to sit in, then back up to meet his gaze.
‘I’m not trying to pull you,’ he insists. ‘I… I felt sorry for you.’
I feel my face tighten with confusion.
‘You’ve been here a while now, you keep looking at the door, you look anxious as hell. You’re waiting for someone – probably a date.’
Right on cue, I notice the door open in my peripheral vision so I snap my neck in its direction, to see if it’s Chad walking through it. It’s just a gaggle of girls on a night out.
‘He’s not coming,’ the man tells me softly. ‘Has he messaged you?’
I’ve been keeping a keen eye on my phone and nothing has come through. I thought about messaging him, to see if he had been held up, but it’s drummed into us not to seem too keen, lest we spook the men, so I decided to wait a little longer.
‘Well, no,’ I say. ‘But—’
‘So, unless the dude is dead in a ditch somewhere, he could have messaged you, right?’
I frown. This is stupid. And I’m not about to listen to some bloke who has been spying on me and has just stuck his nose into my business.
‘I haven’t been stood up,’ I insist as I load up Matcher. I’m a grown adult, not a game-playing teenager. I’ll just send Chad a message, make sure everything is OK. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for him not showing up.