“Sounds like you need Marlow snuggles, so be my guest.” Logan watched her head across the bar and couldn’t help but feel jealous of his cat. A nice cuddle on the sofa with Harriet would be a perfect end to his night.
Harriet
The Following Week…
Nooo, I am so over Tinder.” Harriet tried to snatch her phone back from Katie, but the woman held it out of reach.
“No, you can’t give up so easily. You have to try again. Reece was a loser, I admit, but that can be fixed, and next time we will do more stalking.”
Harriet folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her bottom lip. “I don’t know, Katie, it’s so… jeez, it feels like when I’m at one of those automated sushi bars. I’m staring at all the dishes going around that conveyor belt, and they all look delicious, but I know one of them contains puffer fish or some weird inedible stuff that might give me hives or make me throw up, so I let them all go past. Then I panic, snatch one, and, yup, I end up with the jellyfish eyeballs roll.”
RoryLynn burst out laughing, and carrot cake sprayed all over the table.
“I don’t think jellyfish have eyeballs.” Lori frowned at Harriet.
“Perhaps not, but you know what I mean. Tinder is just too intimidating, and I’m beginning to think that every man on there must be into weird stuff.” Harriet took her phone back from Katie and scrolled through the latest guys who’d liked her picture, or that she had been matched with. “See.” She stopped on one guy who’d taken his profile pic in a bathroom, and behind him, you could clearly see someone else’s feet by the toilet, their pants around their ankles.
“Ew! And what was he thinking? Swipe left.” RoryLynn was giggling, her hand over her mouth to stop more food from coming out.
“Or this one.” This guy had porn running on the TV behind him. Harriet swiped through a dozen others. “Some of these profile pics look more like mugshots!” She stopped on one that was an actual mug shot. “Oh Lord! What type of man am I attracting? Is there something about my face that says only weirdos need apply?” She swiped away the guy in the jumpsuit.
“Oh, but he’s cute.” Katie grabbed Harriet’s phone off her and showed the other girls the side profile of a guy in a beanie. “What do we all think of L.J.?”
“Nice,” Tashia’s eyes widened. “Very nice.”
“What sort of name is L.J.?” Harriet wondered if the guy was deliberately being coy, and if so, what was he hiding.
“You know, like my brother, R.J.” Tashia leaned back in her chair and took another mouthful of cake.
“But R.J. is named after his dad, Rick Junior… oh, yeah, I suppose.” Harriet realized that would make sense. “What do you think the L stands for?”
“Lee?” Lori shouted out, “or Levi.”
“Or Lenny,” RoryLynn added.
“Lewis, maybe? But whatever it is, he is one hot hunk.” Katie sighed.
Hmm, he is. Harriet stared at the man. “Well, you can’t really see his face. It makes me wonder why he is hiding in the shadows.”
“You’re too cynical. He is clearly gorgeous. Look at that profile.”
“He may have only one eye. He could be a cyclops!”
Lori studied the picture again. “Nope, I see two sets of eyelashes. Definitely not a cyclops, as he’d only have one set coming out of his forehead.”
Katie used her fingers to zoom in. “Did you check out his arms? This guy has serious muscles.”
“Mmm, he does, doesn’t he?” Harriet chewed on her thumbnail. There was something familiar about this guy that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
RoryLynn took the phone and closed it. “Nope, I think Harriet is right. Tinder is not going to find her a match. This needs to be more… scientific. You need to try a dating site. One where you have to put in all your details, and they match you according to your interests and goals.”
Harriet groaned. “Not MatchMate dot com.”
“Yes!” RoryLynn clapped her hands together. “Me and Rob met on there, so you know it works!”
“I don’t know, RoryLynn. How many guys did you go on a date with off there before you found Rob?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Oh, God. I don’t think I can try twenty-seven.”
“Well, at first, I wasn’t sure what qualities I was looking for, so I had to play around with my answers to the questions, but once I figured it out, I met Rob and the rest is history.”
Harriet wrinkled her nose. “Huh, I don’t know.” She opened up her phone again and stared at the new guy that had appeared on Tinder. There was something about him that attracted and intrigued her. “Maybe I should just try this again.” She swiped right on the guy, liking him, and immediately her tummy got full of butterflies.
“No, it’s my turn.” RoryLynn blurted out, and the other girls all scowled at her.
“What do you mean it’s your turn?” Harriet rounded on her. “Wait, are you lot up to something?”
“No.” Lori said, far too quickly.
“Yes,” RoryLynn put her hand up at the other women’s protests. “It doesn’t matter if she knows. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Okay, someone needs to tell me what’s going on.” Harriet folded her arms in front of her chest. She had a sneaking suspicion her friends were playing with her.
“Well, we all wanted to help you find a man,” Tashia began, “but we couldn’t decide what was the best way to do it. See, RoryLynn is obsessed with MatchMate…”
“Because it works, look at me and Rob.” RoryLynn threw her hand into the circle of friends and wriggled her ring finger flashing the shiny engagement ring. “I mean hands up, who thought Tashia’s idea would work?”
“It could have. I just selected the wrong guy from my book. I’m sorry, Harriet. I shouldn’t have set you up with Malcolm, I should have vetted my list
