So I was fucking around on that
LickToLike app, the one where you swipe right to lick and left to like. Dumbest shit ever but it is better than Tinder at this point. Swiping through endless profiles of basic bitches and then I see her.Some chick, 22. One pic. Grainy as hell, looks like a party pic. She is laughing, head back, has these little stars tattooed around her eye. Bio just says "Figure me out."
Fuck it. I swipe right. Match. Instantly.
She messages me first. "First thing you would wanna lick?"
I stare at that for a minute. My brain goes like, fifty places at once. Finally just type "The rim of a martini glass after a good one."
She hits back "Martini snob. Points. First thing you would wanna like?"
"The sound of rain on a tin roof."
"Poetic. You are not just trying to fuck, are you?"
"I did not say I was not."
"Fair. Drinks tomorrow? Place downtown with tin ceilings."
So we go. She is nothing like I expected but exactly what her profile said. Total contradiction. Talks about some deep political shit in some movie I never heard of, then tries to out-belch me in the middle of a bar. Smart as hell but got this broken look in her eye she tries to hide.
Dates were just a blur. Diners at 3am, making out in alleys, talking about everything and nothing. She was like a drug.
First time I fucked her was a Wednesday. Her place was a wreck. Books everywhere, clothes on the floor, painting of a flamingo with a crown in the corner. Smelled like vanilla and something else, something wild.
She just hands me a bottle of cheap whiskey when I walk in. "To the LickToLike algorithm," she says. "May it pair the broken with the bizarre."
We drank on her fire escape. She told me about her parents, her band, her dream of a bookstore for old books. I told her my shit. Felt more real than anything in years.
Went back inside and the kissing was just... hungry. Not romantic. Like we were trying to get inside each other's skin. The sex was like that too. Just raw, messy, perfect. She was not just some 22 year old chick. She was a fucking force.
After, she is tracing the scars on my chest. "This one?"
"Bike accident when I was a kid."
"This one?"
"Bar fight. I won but he had a ring."
She laughs. "You are a disaster."
"So are you." Pulled her closer.
Woke up before her. Watched the sun come through her dirty window. First time in a long time I did not feel like total shit. Felt something else. Hope, I guess.
Snuck out. Left a note on her counter. "Thanks for the whiskey and the other thing. - The Martini Snob."
Hour later the app pings. It is her. "First thing you would wanna lick now?"
I am smiling like an idiot. "The coffee ring on that note I left."
"First thing you would wanna like?"
"Waking up next to you again."
She just says "Good."
Swiped right on her profile again. Match. Some algorithms are not so stupid after all. And some 22 year olds are not just a story. They are a whole fucking book.