FIND’M

The house sat at the end of a short curving driveway that was cut off from the street by a small thicket of trees. It hadn’t taken Bryan long to find it. The mailbox was decorated with an action figure and curling vines painted in green and blue on a chipped white undercoat. A promising sight, not the kind of thing a serial killer decorates his mailbox with.

Bryan had promised himself that if anything seemed weird he would bail. He stepped off his bike onto the loose gravel and walked it up to the side of the house, leaning the bike against the white painted siding.

He pulled his smart phone out of his pocket again. This must have easily been the third time in the last five minutes he’d checked the house number in the message, and the floating icon with Jake’s picture in the FIND’M app. This was definitely the right place. He wiped his glasses on his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath and walked up to the door.

This had been a long time coming. Finals had been hell, and it had totally killed his social life. Even worse, finals had been the final nail in the coffin for his budding romance with Nathan. That might not have been very serious, but it was something, and Bryan was sure it had been heating up. A few weeks with them both insane with stress had just killed it. Bryan could still feel the dull ache in his chest from the awkward way they’d said goodbye for the last time weeks before. He’d always imagined that relationships ended with a bang. With Nathan, it had just fizzled out into ill-fitting moments.

Bryan hadn’t gotten laid since then. He’d thought about checking someone out on FIND’M. He’d done it before… nearly. That time he’d arrived to the meet up but backed out. At first he told himself it was because there was something off about the bar they were meeting in, but if he was honest with himself, it was really because of the way he felt he looked naked. Scrawny, pale, a bit of a paunch forming from all the computer time. He knew he wasn’t fat, but he also knew he really needed to exercise more. Nathan had told him he had nothing to worry about, some guys just weren’t’ built, and Bryan wasn’t fat. He was just imagining it. That was the problem. The voice in his head sounded like his father, or like one of those gym ads that glared down at him from the billboards across from his room in town. Before and after shots of a pale, soft looking guy turning into a tan Adonis who actually looked happy. Bryan couldn’t help but slump a little when he looked at that.

This time though. He’d had enough to worry about with finals. Now that they were over a feeling of loneliness had started creeping in on him. A feeling of failure. The night before he’d contacted Jake, Bryan had lain in bed, unable to sleep for hours. The ache in his chest had filled into his throat, and hot tears had pricked at the corners of the eyes. He had felt this before. Bryan realized, while staring at his ceiling in the dark, that he could either take a risk or stay, as he was, unhappy and disappointed in himself. He’d taken a risk.