‘Time to Waste’ by Maeve O’Lynn

As is now increasingly customary in today’s romance barren hinterlands, installing Tinder on her phone started off as a kind of joke, albeit of the hollow variety.

I have exhausted all the eligible men in my extended circle, Lisa decided: I either can’t stand the thought of them, or they of me, or there is just a tangible lack of chemistry. I’m thirty-four. I don’t have time to waste on Match.com.

Tinder it is.

So Lisa swiped. Diligently.

‘Not like that,’ said Tara. ‘You don’t pause and consider. It’s a yes or no thing. A snap judgement.’

‘And not that picture on your profile either,’ said Ger.

‘What’s wrong with my picture? And how can you make any sort of a judgement without considering the different factors in the balance?’

‘Factors,’ Tara snorted.

‘Cleavage,’ Ger advised.

So, Tinder was a joke, and Lisa was increasingly convinced she was the punchline. Opaque tights and vintage dresses, leather gloves and canvas bags, dead poets and Monday night films in the QFT. These were the types of things she thrived on. Cleavage and snap judgements, on the other hand, she was neither amply supplied with nor ideally equipped for.

But she practiced. Left. Left. Lip ring and Muse t-shirt. Left. Craft beer drinker. Left. Pit bull in the profile picture. Left again.

‘You’re not swiping right for anyone!’ said Tara.

‘That fella with the pit bull wasn’t the worst,’ Ger mused. ‘Great set of shoulders.’

Shoulders notwithstanding, Lisa had, however, essentially given up. Would it really be so bad if she just decided not to get over her last breakup? She could – mostly – ignore the couples holding hands in Botanic Gardens or gazing into each other’s eyes over cold press coffees and e-cigarettes in Clements and Established. She had more time for reading and she’d started growing veg in a window box. So there was no reasonable explanation for why she was, again, swiping her way through Belfast’s most eligible bachelors – and those within a 20-mile radius – on a Tuesday evening bus ride on the number 7, stuck in traffic going over the Ormeau Bridge, the fading evening light reflecting in dappled grey off the Lagan. But there she was.

And then, suddenly, there he was.

Gareth Sloan.

Of course.

Only the man who would be forever remembered as the trigger for her meltdown following the School of English graduation ball. She didn’t telekinetically seal the exits or blast anyone with a fire hose but there may have been a weeping recitation of Stevie Smith in their last tutorial and maybe also some self-harm that went a little bit far. Because Gareth had invited her as his date, after three years of friend-date lunches, movies, study sessions, even a road trip to Flatlake Literary Festival. And then, of course, proceeded to pick her up late, get eye wateringly drunk on arrival and spend the rest of the evening groping some first year who had somehow wangled an invitation, volubly reciting poetry to his new paramour as they disappeared off to an after-party with her half-propping him up, without so much as a backward glance in Lisa’s direction.

So maybe Gareth, now known, on Tinder at least, as SonoFsAM, couldn’t have known how deep Lisa’s attachment ran. And her reaction to the whole episode perhaps tended towards the histrionic. Lisa knew this. But she also couldn’t quite forget, either, the deep sense of shame of not quite being good enough, not being the type of girl men recited poetry to, for instead being the girl you borrowed lecture notes from and always allowed pay for her own coffees and cinema tickets.

And every last drop of those hot, bitter, black feelings were perfectly encapsulated in Gareth Sloan, a person Lisa had religiously and totally avoided in the intervening twelve years. So it was a shock to be confronted, now, by his face there on-screen; those wandering grey eyes, the arrogant curve of his top lip. She could feel the seal coming off the bottle where those feelings were kept.

Her thumb hovered above the screen. The better move would’ve been to turn her phone off or call Tara or get off the bus early and walk the last few stops home and tend to her window box lettuce.

She swiped right.

His profile was everything you would expect, and worse. Lisa was now off the bus and on her sofa, but she couldn’t quite seem to pry herself away and put the phone down. It was the shock of it all, surely. She took a hasty gulp of wine. This was not a good idea. But his profile pic was in front of shelves laden with books. Bloody Kerouac and Bukowski and all those other idiots. Of course it was. A shelfie. God, he was predictable.

Lisa was, at least, retrospectively grateful for Tara and Ger’s interference. They had vetoed Tinder handles such as ‘vintagegurl’ and ‘litlady’ as too awful. They had bullied her into using a pic from last summer’s trip to Greece, where she had an unlikely suntan and tortoise shell shades as camouflage. She barely recognised herself in the picture – just an impression of the wide, empty Aegean Sea behind her and a memory of the sun hazed narrow streets of Fira. Her profile was brief, revealed little of substance. Gareth in his smug, ongoing love affair with himself appeared to have no idea who she was, and in the messages they were now swapping back and forth, fortified with wine- addled courage, Lisa was careful to reveal nothing that might give her away. Yes, she liked reading. Oh just general things. Non-fiction mostly. Lisa cackled. She hated non-fiction.

Would she like to meet?

Oh she would like nothing more. How about tomorrow?

City centre?

Perfect. An after work coffee in the MAC?

Bait taken.

She topped her glass up and cackled again. Out loud this time. Careful, she thought. You’re losing it. But there was no more delicious thought than the karma of that vain, pompous vessel, sitting there, waiting on a Tinder date who would never show. And he’d have to wrestle with his ego, with the possibility that she had gotten a better offer and hadn’t bothered to let him know, so far down her list of priorities was he and his dreamy grey eyes. Or worse. Maybe she had shown up but she’d taken one look and turned on her heel.

Lisa knew as she lay in bed that night that perhaps this wasn’t entirely fair. Gareth was vile in his own way, but probably not to blame for the parade of bad choices she had made thereafter. Yet he was where the bad choices began, she reasoned. And a little petty justice wouldn’t hurt him. Not really.

She felt weird enough about it, though, not to mention anything to Tara or Ger. It’s just an ordinary day. She would get on a bus. She would go to work. She would go home. He would show up and sit there and send an angry message or two, which she would ignore. Or maybe she’d think of something just crushing enough to reply with, if the office was quiet and she could spend all afternoon working on a spiteful yet pithy comeback. And that would be that. Ghost of Gareth, laid to rest.

Honestly, she did believe that’s how the day would pan out. Even if spraying Pomegranate Noir on her neck and applying perfectly winged eyeliner weren’t a de rigeur part of her regular Tuesday routine. Nonetheless, she had every intention of just following through with the plan.

‘You want some tea, Lis?’

She started, then blushed and mumbled ‘please’ when Karen was making everyone in the office a cup at three. She had a momentary wobble as she finished her cup, only registering as she drained the last dregs that Karen had given her one with sugar and she never took sugar.

A no-show coffee date? Maybe she shouldn’t do this. These weren’t exactly the actions of someone calm or sane or in any way together. She could just send him a message and say something had come up and then delete the stupid app and try and get a space at a Pilates class. Or she could consult with Tara and Ger, tell them to talk her down. Her thumb hovered over her WhatsApp ‘Coven’ group. She took a deep breath, decided to forget Pilates and asked them to meet her at the John Hewitt at 6. Remembering it was a Tuesday she tacked on: Maybe we can get something to eat?

Ger replied: Eating? flamenco lady emoji #whoareyoukidding c u @ 6.

Nothing from Tara, whose marketing job seemed to entail something like actual work.

Less than three hours away. This would be fine.

And if she maybe took just a casual stroll through the MAC, just to peruse the Sunken Gallery, at, say, 5pm, what harm? If she was going to leave Gareth cooling his heels the least she could do was get a front row seat: see the humiliation in real time. This man just waiting on his own. Wondering if iamscorpion83 had taken one look at him and left the building. That guy right there? Yeah, he’s waiting for me. I caused this train wreck. I am Scorpion.

But maybe, say, when she got to the MAC he was just strolling through the doors himself, five or ten minutes late, but who’s counting, certainly not him, his gait a lazy saunter. And his easy way of finding a free booth and ordering a coffee set her teeth on edge a little and something inside her snapped or at least pinged and Lisa decided she was going on this date, if for no other reason than hell hath no fury.

And so, you know, before she could stop herself, before she really knew what she was doing, she was crossing the bar area and approaching his table.

‘Gareth! Long time no see, stranger!’

Easy. Breezy. Relaxed. Grinning with probably a little too much teeth.

And he looked up, an eyebrow just quirked, his laconic charm sort of skipping a beat.

‘Sorry, have we –? I’m Sam. And you must be Scorpion?’

He smiled. Just the right amount of teeth. Shiny, silvery grey eyes. He really had an actual coffee in front of him and not a pint of Snakebite. And a proper newspaper. He was probably doing the cryptic crossword or something.

‘Is that how we’re playing it? You’re Son of Sam and I’m Scorpion? Really? And is Son of Sam a serial killer thing or an Elliott Smith reference? I thought you hated him.’

‘Playing what? I mean, is this a kind of role play thing? Like, I mean, I guess I can do that. I’ve never really used Tinder before, so ... But yeah, no, I love Elliott Smith. Who doesn’t?’

‘Oh I don’t know ... maybe you? You always said he was the poor man’s Nick Drake.’

‘Well. This is a bit awkward. I’m pretty sure we’ve never talked about music. I think you’re mixing me up with someone else? But I love music. Do you want to get a coffee or a drink or something and tell me the top five gigs you’ve been to? At the Drive-In at the Empire had better be on your list. Is that cheesy? I’m actually a real music nerd. Maybe we’ve been to some of the same things.’

‘Yes, I’d say we have, though maybe your memory is a little cloudier than mine,’ Lisa replied, confused.

What the hell was going on. Was this a borderline personality disorder? An acquired brain injury? Or worse – had she imagined the three years they had been so close, and really he had just seen her as someone to help with his essays and had immediately completely forgotten on graduation? What the hell was she doing here, at this table, on this absolute car crash of a date, using smartphone technology to help her re-live feelings of shame and embarrassment from a pre-smartphone era?

‘Do you want to go on to a bar or somewhere instead? I know it’s Tuesday but I’d say somewhere round here might have live music – hold on till I check my phone.’

Lisa took the opportunity to pull hers out too. SOS, she wrote, sending it to Tara and Ger and sharing her location.

Gareth was still talking. ‘Oh I think there’s something on in Black Box – we could get some pizza. I don’t really drink, you know. Well, not any more. I hope that’s not weird or anything. I didn’t want to put that in my profile. But I’m straight edge for about the last six years.’

‘Oh, is that it?’ said Lisa.

‘Is that what?’

‘Well, look, this whole thing is a bit weird, Gareth. I know we haven’t seen each other in a long time. And maybe you feel like I catfished you a bit – I mean obviously I recognised you from your profile, but you’re acting like you really don’t know who I am, so is this a straight edge thing? A sobriety thing? What’s going on here?’

‘I’m sorry, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. Who’s Gareth? I’m Sam. I think you’re getting me confused with someone else. Look, maybe this isn’t a great idea after all.’

Gareth fished his wallet out of his pocket and got out a tenner. ‘Here, this will cover our drinks, okay? Get home safe.’

And he was gone. Like, disappeared.

Did that just happen?

Tara filled his vacant seat almost instantly. ‘Well, what’s the emergency?’

‘Did you not just see –? How could he have –?’

‘Who?’

‘Gareth –’

Are you okay?’

‘Gareth Sloan!’

‘Where?’

‘He was just here. He must have walked right past you on his way out.’ ‘Nobody did and it’s empty outside – it’s lashing out there now.’

Lisa finally took in her friend’s dripping and rapidly curling hair, the hammering sound of the rain against the glass doors.

‘Are you sure it was him?’ Tara sounded a little concerned now. ‘Were you talking to him? Did he say something to upset you? You’re very pale.’

‘I’m always pale.’

Lisa looked to his coffee cup for confirmation. But it had been cleared away. Ger, too, now appeared in the doorway, scanning the bar for the scene of the emergency.

The lacquered surface of the table, Lisa noticed, was coated in a sticky film of concentric coffee cup rings, past and present; ghosts of working lunches, historic pre-theatre and after work drinks. The only thing missing from this scenario, she realised, perhaps belatedly, was any hint of the future.

From issue #5: autumn/winter 2017

About the Author
Maeve O’Lynn completed her PhD on Gender and Genre in NI Fiction at Ulster University in 2011. She has published work in Fortnight, Estudios Irlandeses, The Honest Ulsterman and The Stinging Fly. She began collaborating on The Xenophon Project with visual artist Siobhan McGibbon in summer 2015.