Chapter 2

Linda Clarkson sat on the bare ground in her ranch-styled home. She had only just moved in a few weeks ago, but she was bored to her marrow with having to wake up to this insane loneliness. “Why am I just the odd one out?” She commented, flipping over from one page on her Gramsville account to the other.

All of the time that she spent on her respective social media accounts was spent admiring the pictures that many of her friends uploaded. I don’t know why life has been so unfair to me? Did I do something wrong? She thought to herself. She had been trying so hard to find a man of her own since her previous relationship with Smith. Smith was Linda’s nursing school sweetheart. Only that she had caught him in bed with a girl whom he claimed was his sister.

“What kind of bastard would treat a girl like me in that manner?” She barked out aloud. This was in her moment of deep thinking and seeing that her friend, Matilda from way back nursing college a few years ago, was already married. She walked over to the mirror in the corridor of her well-furnished home. It was a full-length mirror that showed every detail of her finesse. It was her own way of telling herself that she was still as beautiful as she used to be while she was in college.

She used the palms of her hands to rub over her peach-sized burst. Linda turned sideways, and the push of her rears made her think of herself as a body of work that anyone would love. The curve on her rather slim body gave her a rare aura that she would find love again. Her round face with red-looking hair complemented her light skin. She was definitely an epitome of beauty that would always make willing heads sway when she walked by.

While Linda was still busy admiring herself, her smartphone notified her with the message tone. When she gets messages in that manner, the first thing that comes to Linda’s mind is that she probably has a message from work. “Who could that be again? My shift today is at night. This is just 11:30 am, Mr. Kent.” She commented, walking reluctantly towards the center of her sitting room where she had left her cell phone on the ground.

She unlocked her phone and checked in on the message that was sent. It was a message from Katherine Ferguson. Katherine used to be one of Linda’s favorite people while she was in college. They used to be a clique of five beautiful ladies. Linda was the prettiest of them all. Surprisingly, before they all graduated from college, the other four girls separated from Linda because she had the sort of beauty that makes their respective boyfriends leave them- or so they thought.

Of all of the other girls, it hurt Linda that Matilda would let go of the friendship that they shared with each other. While she saw the pop-up of Matilda’s message, fresh memories of how they were once roommates rushed through her memory. She thought about how she shared her secrets with Matilda, and they had a bond that the other girls were jealous of. “Oh well, what does she have to say this time?” Linda said as she shrugged out of her retrospective thoughts.

Hey Linda, it has been a while. I was at Angela’s wedding a few weeks back. The girls miss you. Well, should you be having issues with love as you are yet to show us any man? I would suggest you try out Mingles. It’s a dating platform, and that is where we all found the love of our lives.

Linda got infuriated with the message that Matilda had shared. For a moment, a lot of reasons for that message roamed around the walls of her mind. “Could it be that the girls have been stalking me all along?” Her mind spoke to her body. She smiled, knowing that she still meant something to her friends. This way, the anger in her subsided in a matter of seconds.

“So, what’s this new site these ladies are talking about?” Linda reluctantly recounted. Mingles. Let’s see what’s going on with the site. Who knows, I just might be lucky with my prince charming. If it worked for my girls, then I might just be luckier than them, Linda bragged.

Linda spent the rest of that day creating a profile on the dating website. She didn’t believe in finding love on a dating site, but she was getting really old at 27. “If you keep this same attitude till you are 30 years old, you might never find a man again!” Her mum’s words replayed in her head. She definitely wanted to be married before the age of 30, but her relationship with her last boyfriend had kept her scarred. She recalled how she had wanted to try out a love affair with colleagues at the hospital where she worked as a local nurse. Most of them didn’t quite work out because she was scared of being hurt again. She wiped off two ripples of tears that garnered around her eyebrows as she thought about her love life. “You can do this, baby girl!” She inspired herself with those words while punching in the name of the website on her cellphone’s browser.

The first page that she saw on the website got her really interested in the website. She saw pictures of some handsome-looking young men that gave her instant thrills about the site. Most of them had muscles and abs that they displayed. She wondered how she was going to end up with one of them at the end of the day. Her first dilemma on that day was what sort of picture would attract her dream man to her. She instantly began to scamper through her cell phone’s gallery. Linda had so many appealing pictures. Most of them were the revealing type. Quite funnily, those that she worked with at the local hospital in Houston had thought that she was the Churchillian sort because she was mostly guarded in clothing and in words. If only they had the time to skim through her gallery.

“Oh! There. I would use this one as my profile picture,” she finally confirmed after many minutes of checking in on her gallery. The picture that she chose was a red-looking skimpy bandage dress. She was wearing heavy makeup while being in that dress. In a way, the fact that the picture displayed a little more than her normal cleavage made her feel that she was going to end up attracting numerous handsome men, and she could select one for herself.

***

At 6 pm on that day, when Linda had retired from creating an account on Mingles, she went into her bedroom to prepare for her night shift at the hospital. While she was busy, messages kept pouring in on her account. There was no way that she could see at the time, but she definitely was thinking about snapping more pictures for her account.

She finally decided to check in on her messages when she was stepping out of her home, and she saw that all of the messages that she was getting from Mingles were from her friends. “I see you have been busy setting up an account here. Go girl!” Katherine commented. At first, Linda didn’t know that it was her friend chatting her up. She was a little bothered about the sudden message, but on a second look at the pictures on the account. She couldn’t help the giggle.

Linda sighed repeatedly while driving to work. For some strange reason, she felt fulfilled with all that she did for most of that day. She also thought it awkward that the first few messages that she got from the dating account were from her crazy college friends. Phew! She sighed, finally retiring from her overthought, and the silence within her car sunk in as she accelerated at full speed.