It Started With A Tweet(11)

‘Right, well, thank you too,’ he says, grabbing hold of my wrist to give me a kiss. I lean down to him as his lips brush my cheeks and it causes me to full on shiver.

‘Thanks,’ I manage to mutter. I’m about to turn to get off when I hear him speak.

‘So I’ll see you again?’

I look at him in disbelief. Were we on the same date? He was the one swiping potential dates during his smoke breaks.

‘Um, I don’t think so .?.?.’ I’d usually leave it at that but the Martinis appear to have made me unusually feisty. ‘I don’t want another date, as I have to say that this was probably hands down the worst date I have ever been on.’

Oh good God. Why couldn’t I have just channelled those super polite British manners that made me stick through the whole of dinner? I could have just said I’d see him another time then ignored his phone calls.

‘What’s wrong with me, then?’ he says so loudly that not even the people in the carriage with noise-cancelling headphones fail to look up. ‘Let me guess, you’re too tall for me?’

‘No, of course not,’ I say, shaking my head as if the thought had never entered my mind. ‘It’s just that I don’t think we’ve got any chemistry, do you?’

‘Oh I see. What you’re saying is, “it’s not you, it’s me”,’ he says rolling his eyes.

‘Um, I never said that it’s not you.’

I deliver the news still walking but looking at him, desperate to get off the train and bring this awful evening to a close. When I finish speaking I snap my head forward and go to get off the train, only to find that the doors have already closed and I smack straight into them.

‘Wait,’ I say, clutching my nose and jabbing at the doors, hoping they’ll hear me and magically and swing open. Of course they don’t, and the train lurches away. I grab on to a pole before I fall over. I’m well and truly trapped here with Dominic until the next stop.

*

By the time I make it home, I’ve got a raging headache. It might have only been a minute to the next underground station, but it felt as if the train I was on went all the way out to zone six and back, before we pulled into Sloane Square. I’m desperate to charge my phone up and tell Erica all about it, but even that is too much effort. Instead, I walk into my bedroom and collapse onto my bed fully clothed, pretty sure that the combination of the cocktails, headache and work exhaustion will knock me out any second .?.?.





Chapter Four

Time Since Last Internet Usage: 14 hours and 25 minutes

I sit down at my desk, careful to remove my sunglasses slowly to allow my eyes to adjust to the harsh fluorescent light. I take a deep breath and exhale.

My phone and its flat battery meant I missed my alarm this morning; I woke up in a panic with a blinding hangover. I had to scramble around trying to find some clean clothes to wear, and ended up raiding Erica’s wardrobe. But I’m slightly impressed that I managed to make it to work only half an hour late, which I think is pretty good going considering. Short of hiring a Boris bike and riding like Chris Froome, there’s no way I could have got here any quicker. I even sprinted from the Tube, so that’s taken care of my weekly exercise too – bonus!

I reach under my desk, plug my phone into a charger and visibly relax as the charging symbol appears, knowing that my baby and I are about to be reunited. I can’t remember the last time I went so long without my phone. I switch on my computer while I wait.

Sara strides across the office with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand and does a double take as she sees me.

‘You’re here,’ she says, sitting down at her desk.

‘Ha, I know what you’re thinking, you don’t recognise the clothes, but they’re Erica’s. I didn’t run off with Dominic last night. He was definitely not the one.’

I bang my head on the desk as I stand up. If I weren’t so late, I’d have filled her in on the details of the doomed date, but we’ll have to wait until we have a natural lull in the afternoon.

‘No, it’s just .?.?.’ she starts and then opens and closes her mouth.

‘I’d better do some tweeting in the hope that Andrea won’t notice what time I got in,’ I say, thinking that my all-seeing, all-knowing boss probably isn’t so easily fooled.

‘You’re going to do some tweeting,’ says Sara, looking at me as if I’ve said I’m going to attempt brain surgery.

I generally tweet a few trivial things throughout the day to make it look like we’re a young, dynamic company; it’s no big deal, so why is she turning it into one?

‘What?’ I ask, narrowing my eyes.

‘Um, I’ve got to, um .?.?.’ She gets up from her desk and abandons the coffee. I’m not sure where she’s off to in such a hurry, and as I watch her dart around the office, I’m not sure she does either.

‘Weird,’ I say, shrugging it off and loading up Twitter. I gasp as I see that we’ve got 2,879 notifications. Wowsers! One of our clients must have tagged us in something and they’re having a really good day.

I click on the tab to see what’s going on and instantly see the tweet I wrote last night about Dickhead Dominic, and I laugh at how I could ever have thought I’d want to sleep with him. I can’t believe that I’d forgotten to log out of my personal twitter at work. I’m a little proud that so many people have liked and retweeted my tweet, and I seem to have loads of new followers, but I really shouldn’t be looking at this at work. I go to click the profile picture to log out and I freeze. Our company logo is where my slutty photo from the hen do should be.