There, on the screen, staring back at me, were three little – though not entirely insignificant – words…
I glanced back at the receiver’s name at the top of the text – an all-caps warning not to proceed further: ‘DO NOT MSG UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’. Well, yes, I’d renamed this contact for a reason.
He was a bonafide f*ckboy who I had almost zero will power around on account of the fact he was arguably one of the most attractive men I’d ever laid eyeballs on.
So, who WAS this mystery douchebag, I hear you asking? Well, his real name was James. But, like every other f*ckboy before him, I assigned him a new title in my head; Country Boy, because he was, by every sense of the term, a country boy.
I met CB not long after my first dalliance with Stalker Guy (if you missed the part where I got face-mauled by the world’s worst kisser, who then proceeded to stalk me, you can catch up here).
He was a 29-year-old tradie from Armidale who’d relocated to Sydney to install commercial air-conditioning systems for a living and was house-sharing a trendy flat in Coogee with a mate. It had been two years since he’d been in a “real relationship” (his words, not mine) and he was ready to meet someone new. I learned all this over small talk on Bumble, before he finally bit the bullet and asked to see me in person.
We met under the pornish red lights of Uncle Mings bar in the city – an Asian-inspired cocktail haunt for hipsters and the after-work crowd.