Truth Or Date. Portia MacIntosh

turn on the shower, cranking up the hot water to make the bathroom nice and steamy while I brush my teeth. I’ve got that fuzzy mouth feeling you’re left with after too many sugary alcoholic drinks. Typically, I’m out of toothpaste, but that’s what flatmates are for, right? Borrowing things from.

      I can see from Nick’s toothpaste tube that he’s used approximately 1/8 so far, with the used 1/8 neatly folded over a few times, thus giving the appearance of a perfectly full, slightly smaller tool. Does he really have that much spare time on his hands? Really? In another act of defiance, I not only use his toothpaste, but I squeeze from the middle of the tube, leaving behind a big, fingertip-shaped dent in it.

      Finally stepping into the hot shower feels glorious, I can feel my bad date washing off me. Sure, I’m annoyed at how he behaved, but mostly I’m just annoyed to have another bad date on my romantic CV. Hardly seems worth putting Jonathan down, for a mere three weeks, but they always say it’s better to put jobs down that you didn’t have for long/got fired from, rather than have big, unaccounted-for gaps in your employment, right?

      I grab my delicious-smelling pina colada-scented shower gel and rub it all over my body. I love the smell of it because it reminds me of my two favourite things: cocktails and the beach. Which reminds me, I’m not only washing away Jonathan, I need to scrub myself clean of that sex dream about Nick. Nick Hall! I can’t believe it.

      I think to myself as I shampoo my hair. I’ll admit that the first time I met Nick right here in this very flat, the first thing I noticed about him was how sexy he was. A sexy doctor, no less – that’s like every girl’s fantasy. Sharing this small space didn’t suit us though, and it’s amazing how quickly you can go off a person when they start to grate on you. One thing I can definitely put on my CV is that I’m not shallow, because not even Nick’s chiselled good looks, bulging biceps or romance novel-worthy profession can sway how I feel about him.

      So why the hell did I dream that about him today? It can’t mean anything, can it? All that stuff about dreams meaning things has got to be a load of bollocks.

      I shut off the water, and shut my dream about Nick out of my mind.

      Once in the messy confines of my bedroom – where I am free to express my unorthodox organisational skills as I see fit – I grab a dress from the large pile of clothing on my bedroom floor – the division of my floordrobe which I have dubbed Mount Clothesmore – and search for my make-up bag because today my face is going to need everything it has to offer. If I don’t get a move on, I’m going to be late for work, but it’s better to be late than ugly, right?

       Chapter 2

      ‘So he took you to a wake and then dumped you? Fuck me, that’s as rough as you look,’ Millsy laughs as I meaningfully drain the takeaway coffee cup I filled with a double shot vanilla latte the second I arrived at work – fifteen minutes late, which isn’t too bad considering.

      ‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ I reply.

      ‘Erm, yeah I do,’ he replies, and he means it.

      Millsy leans over and looks at himself in the reflection of the shiny silver coffee machine. He checks his eyes for dark circles before securing the topknot they make him pull his dark brown hair into for work. He makes a noise of approval – the kind that most men would usually reserve for a topless calendar or a bird they fancied. Millsy mostly just fancies Millsy.

      Joe ‘Millsy’ Mills has been my best friend my whole life – my entire 27 years on this planet. Our parents lived next door to one another, and because he’s only three months older than me, we started playing together almost immediately and that was it, we became inseparable. We went to playgroup together, then school, and even now we’re supposedly grown-ups, we’re still best friends, still playing together – except our games have changed a little as we’ve become older.

      I credit/blame Millsy for the way I’ve turned out. Despite my girly-girl appearance (because who doesn’t love that girly shit? Even Millsy loves a face mask and a regular brow appointment) I’m a total tomboy on the inside. I grew up doing whatever Millsy wanted to do for fun because, as he always reminds me, he is the eldest, and so video games, football and then eventually ‘lads’ nights out have become my hobbies. It’s funny because, to look at me, you’d think I was your typical Sex and the City-loving, spa-visiting, wine-drinking lady, rather than this messy, unscrupulous, coffee-addicted, sailor-mouthed hot mess you see before you.

      ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I ask him.

      ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ Millsy pauses, thinking for a second. ‘Well, no, there are lots of things wrong with you, but none that twat would’ve thought of when he ditched you. It’s because you didn’t shag him, simple enough. I’ve ditched girls for that.’

      I can always count on my bestie for brutal honesty.

      Sadly, all of the men playing the dating game at the moment seem to be similar in their attitude. One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m always willing to give men the benefit of the doubt about things. So what if they’ve got a bit of grey hair and they’re only 26? So what if they’re not particularly stylish? So what if they could do with using a stronger deodorant? I give people a shot. Men, I am noticing, are not often like this. You can be too fat for them. You can be too frigid for them. You can text them too much. They don’t need much of a reason to ditch you and move on to the next bird.

      ‘What are your relationship goals?’ he asks me jokily, posing like the sassy girl emoji.

      ‘My relationship goals are: to have one. I’m sick of being single,’ I tell him.

      ‘So are all single birds, so you’re not alone,’ Millsy tells me, as though it’s going to be of comfort to me.

      ‘I am literally alone, that’s the point,’ I joke.

      ‘Man up. Plenty more fish in the sea.’

      ‘Which is why I’ve done something stupid,’ I start slowly.

      ‘Oh God, go on.’

      ‘I’ve agreed to go on a date tonight.’

      Millsy laughs.

      That’s the thing with dating apps, you meet all these seemingly lovely dudes and then you kick yourself when you date the wrong ones. You’ll be talking to a few people, and then you’ll have to pick just one to date and you can just guarantee I’ll pick the wrong one. I wind up with guys like Jonathan, who will leave me feeling annoyed I wasted so much time shaving my legs for dates that never worked out. It’s not like the men I meet in real life are much better; my last real-world boyfriend cheated on me, so it’s obviously just my taste that is the problem. Even in my dreams, I’m sleeping with the wrong people. I still can’t get over that I was dreaming about Nick. I know I’m going on about it, but it’s so weird. To dream about Millsy would be weird, because he’s like a brother to me, but Nick is like my sworn enemy and that’s much worse. Like, Batman and Robin getting it on would be weird, but Batman and The Joker shagging is just plain ridiculous because they hate each other so much, there isn’t enough Viagra in the world to facilitate that union. I consider telling Millsy about the dream, but he’ll probably freak out more than I did about it.

      Maybe it was stupid of me to make a date for this evening as I was walking to work, but I can’t think of a better way to get Jonathan and Nick out of my head. And no matter how bad things go with one guy, I’m always full of hope that the next one will be the one for me.

      Millsy glances towards the door. ‘Ruby would/Ruby wouldn’t?’ he asks.

      ‘Ruby wouldn’t,’ I tell him with certainty. He’s talking about the rocker-looking dude who just left the coffee shop. What it is, we play this game called Ruby would/Ruby wouldn’t – an obvious pun on my name: Ruby Wood. Whenever a man walks past us, Millsy poses the question and I reply with one or the other. It’s daft, but it keeps us amused during long shifts. Obviously Ruby has no intention of