Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dating apps are new, and they should be exciting, but there's something about finding a man online that feels inauthentic to Jennifer. What happened to flirting with your barista? Or even bonding at a work function? What happened to natural, karmic, connection?

She sees it when she leaves the house. There’s a new girl in her theater troupe, and all the guys fawn over her charm and quick wit. There's a regular at The Grand’s hotel bar that flirts with the day bartender every time he’s in town, not even giving Jennifer a second glance come shift change. Even at the nail salon, the nail tech gets a little too handsy with Jennifer’s friend as he asks her which nail shape she wants. Couples, kinship, and connection surround her, and yet…

She tries to ignore it. She tells herself the right man will come. Maybe it won’t be from across a crowded room, but he’ll still see her. And he’ll want her for who she is. Even if who she is is a down-on-her-luck aspiring actress who works part-time at a hotel bar to make ends meet. 

Even in her fantasies, it’s hard to believe. 

Meanwhile, her mother’s getting married for a fourth time. Somehow a pretty face is enough to offset the baggage of three divorces and a history of alleged check fraud. She supposes her mother is charming when she needs to be. 

Jennifer just wishes it was genetic.

When she’d gotten the invite to the wedding, she’d been seeing someone. A guy from work– a concierge. It wasn’t serious, and she was honestly kidding herself when she marked yes for a plus one on the invite. And the wedding was the last thing on her mind when things ended before they had the chance to start.

But now, two days before the wedding, staying in her childhood bedroom, with her mom nagging her about her nonexistent boyfriend, it’s the only thing on her mind. 

She supposes– just this once she could download a dating app.

She means, what’s the harm in it?

Her breath hitches as she goes to the appstore on her phone, sort of hating how nervous she actually is. It’s just an app, she tells herself. There's no inherent commitment there; it’s just exploring her options.

When it downloads, she opens it almost instantly. It asks for her name, and she puts in Jenn, scared that someone, somehow, could use her full first name against her. Then, it asks for her age, and it’s just another reminder of why she should have given into this app months ago. Twenty-eight. Only a year and a half away from the big three-oh.

As for pictures, she takes a selfie on the spot, mussing her hair out of her face and reapplying a layer of lip gloss. Then, she scrolls back in her camera roll and picks out a picture of herself backstage of one of the many productions she’s done, this one with her hair curled and make-up well done for the role of an off-broadway Glinda. It was the most herself she felt in any of the roles and it’s fitting for first impressions.  After that, she selects a photo from the last time she was in town, of her with her childhood cat, Whiskers, on a harness and leash as she walks him down the street in the golden light of the setting sun. And for one final shot, she takes a picture of her maid-of-honor dress hanging on the door of her childhood bedroom, almost to emphasize to herself that this was just for the wedding weekend.

In her bio, she settles for a simple, “Looking for a date for my mom’s fourth wedding on Saturday. Tattoos/long hair not required but will help me with my goal of pissing her off lol.”

Then, she starts swiping. 

Left, on Liam, whose every picture was in a three piece suit somewhere. Even on what looked like a hike in picture #4.

Right, on Travis, who had tattoos and  long hair. 

Left, on Jesse, who only had two pictures, one being of a sunset and the other being a professional photo with him and what, by the shape of the blob, looked to be a pregnant woman scribbled out.

Left, on Hunter, who held up a dead fish in his first photo.

Right, on Benjamin, whose bio made her laugh and was easy to look at in all of his photos.

Left, on Ethan, who’s generous use of snapchat filters as a twenty seven year old was off-putting, at best. 

And finally, left on Lionel, who only had pictures of cats and one self-deprecating comic selected for his photos.

She feels a little better after swiping and seeing that she truly wasn’t missing out on much. And this way– at least she can say she tried.

There's a little number at the bottom of her screen, slowly rising as she stares at it. First at one, then two, then seven, and then seventeen. She taps on it. Apparently, twenty-three people have swiped right on her. It almost makes her want to keep swiping but then–

It’s a match!

Travis, with his flannel shirts and chain around his neck, has swiped right on her. She quickly messages him, asking if he really wants to be her date to this thing, and shockingly, he says yes.

She switches things over to text and deletes the app, not realizing until she re-downloads the app months later, back home, in New York, that she’s matched with Benjamin as well.

 The date with Travis was okay. He looked nice and it definitely got her mom off her back, but the conversation was almost non-existent. And at the end, when Travis offered to take things back to his place, it was an obvious no.

She briefly wonders what it would have been like to have taken Benjamin instead of Travis. He probably would have made her laugh, if his bio was any indication. And he would have looked nicer in a suit than Travis did. 

And then, in a fleeting thought, she thinks that just maybe, she would have even taken things back up to Benjamin’s place. But the thought leaves as fast as it came, and all Jennifer’s left with is 2,000 miles of distance between her and a man that never was, and never will be.

Chapter Text

Tinder, in all its swiping glory, continues to make intermittent reappearances in Jennifer’s life. First it’s just for fun, then it’s for the ego boost, and then it bores her.

 And the cycle repeats. 

The thing is, the straight men of New York City have never even pretended to offer her the things she’s asking for in the dim alleyway of Tinder’s hook-up culture. She doesn’t know why she keeps crawling back, but she does. For every time she decides she’s done and over it, there's another time, weeks, or even months later she decides she’ll hop back up on that horse.

It’s vicious, but not something she thinks she has the strength to end.

She’s on her way home from yet another failed date when she gets the call. Her mother– back home in Salt Lake City– is calling her at 9 PM at night– her mother’s time–  with what she hopes is a poorly-timed check-in.

She picks up the phone, and is straight away met with hysterical sobbing.

“What happened?” She asks, immediately on high alert. “Are you okay?”

Her mother stops sobbing for a second, sniffling and stammering before the cries break out again. Her heart races, wondering what could possibly be urgent enough that she couldn’t take fifteen minutes to calm down before she called.

“Mom,” She says, steadying her voice and hoping her tone is enough to make her mother realize how this looks from her end. She means, seriously, who died?

She heaves and then spits out a sentence so unintelligible that the only words Jennifer can make out are “Whiskers” and “Car.”

Even without the rest of the sentence, it’s easy to figure out what all happened. Whiskers, the beloved cat she got in seventh grade, must have gotten out and got hit by a car. 

“Is he okay?” She asks, but she knows he isn’t. He was nineteen years old and wouldn’t have survived a strong breeze, let alone a car. 

Her mom blubbers on the other end of the phone, and Jennifer sighs. “Deep breaths, Mom,” She reminds, and for the millionth time, she’s left to soothe her mother’s melodrama.

Three staggered, snotty breaths sound from the other side of the line, and in a clearer yet not quite clear tone, she says, “You need to come home.”

It’s really, truly, not that big of a deal. Whiskers had been sitting with one paw in the grave for years now. It’s honestly just surprising that it wasn’t natural causes that did it. But Jennifer knew that when the time came, it’d be up to her to “fix” this in her mother’s eyes.

“We need to hold a funeral.”

Jennifer inhales. “Is that really necessary?”

Her mom starts wailing again, and Jennifer has to pull the phone a couple inches away from her ear. 

“Alright. – Alright. I’ll come home.”

The sobs cease, leaving only hiccuping and sniffling. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

Jennifer rolls her eyes. She loves– loved– that cat. Dearly. But she can’t imagine a world where he knew what a funeral was, let alone wanted one for himself. But if her mom needed it to feel better about accidentally leaving the door open, then Jennifer would come and save the day. Like always.

–

It’s a small service, expectedly, consisting of one Jennifer Hastings, her mother, and mother’s fourth husband. Jennifer’s been assigned the eulogy, for some reason, and despite the clear difference in value her and her mother have allotted to a cat's life, she’s set on utilizing her acting chops to ensure a heartfelt ceremony.

She thumbs the corner of the airplane napkin she wrote it on and clears her throat.

“We gather here today to celebrate and mourn the life of Whiskers.--” She can hear her mother blowing her nose into the tissue she’s been emptying her tears into, and she has to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Instead, she inhales shakily, ready to bring on the fake tears that will keep her mother satisfied. “While some may argue that he’s just a cat, those close to him know he was so much more than that. Even in his old age, he held the whimsy and charm most cats lose long before their deaths.”

Her mother sobs, a soft, “Oh, God,” escaping from her lips. Glancing up, she can see her mother’s husband pulling her in for a side hug, running his hand up and down her back soothingly.

“When I met Whiskers, I was twelve years old. From then, he helped me through the horrors of Middle and High school. Whether it was a pimple, a bad grade, or an unrequited crush, Whiskers always knew exactly when I needed him.”

And suddenly, the tears that Jennifer was set on faking don’t feel like acting anymore. There's a tightness in the back of her throat and a stinging in her eyes. She wasn’t meant to tear up just yet, and yet, there she stood, in front of Whiskers’ favorite scratching post, eulogy in one hand, and urn of cremated remains in the other, with a rising bubble in her throat.

She tries to blink the tears back, tries to swallow the bubble and focus. But it’s hard. 

“I still remember one time in ninth grade, the day after I got my braces, some girl on the bus home made a snide remark about how I looked like a horror movie villain with a cheese grater in my mouth. I ran home from the bus stop sobbing, and right when I got home, Whiskers, who normally hated my touch, crawled right into my lap and fell asleep.”

A tear falls down her face, and the words on the napkin become blurry. She wipes at the wetness on her cheeks, but it does nothing. The thought of having to utter the next words, about the weekly Whiskers updates she’d been getting from mom every Sunday for years becomes too much. She looks up at her mom and her husband on the living room couch, both dressed in all black, and absolutely loses it. 

She racks out a sob, and the hot tears bleed freely down as she remembers all the years of Whiskers’ life she missed. She’s vaguely aware of them both standing up and walking over to her, wrapping her up in a hug, but she can’t help but wish it was Whiskers comforting her.

Nonetheless, she leans into their embrace, feeling the catharsis of coming home all at once.

She once thought there were no downsides to moving to New York City, but now, thirteen years and a dead cat later, she finds a hole in her heart where a life in Salt Lake City could have been.

—

That night, after a couple of drinks and more than her fair share of her mother’s ice cream supply, Jennifer makes herself comfortable in her childhood bedroom-turned-guest room. Though her mom continues to insist it’s still her room, there’s a clear lack of Britney Spears posters and Broadway playbills on the walls. Along with that, half her books seemed to have vacated her shelves and been replaced with a mix of philosophy and self-help books.

The hole in her heart grows larger at the realization that life in Salt Lake City has moved on without her.

To distract herself, she opens Tinder on her phone and begins her shameful yet constant swipe through the app.

It’s the same as it always is, but there’s a few stark differences. All the men seem to be more conservative, religious, and desperate. She supposes being single and thirty-one in Salt Lake City is usually reserved for recent divorcees with kids, men with something wrong with them, or rarely non-religious men.

After forty-five minutes of swiping and a night of crying, Jennifer is exhausted. She’s about to put the phone down and end the dopamine-seeking cycle when she gets a match.

She looks at the profile. A man named Benjamin. He only has three photos, two awkward selfies, both in the same dress-shirt-and-tie sort of garb, and one photo, the one that made her swipe right, that’s cropped from a larger one, where the brown-skinned man with a mustache is laughing at something off-screen. There's a warm light in his eyes and despite the awkward stance of the two photos before, she feels butterflies in her stomach. 

He messages her first.

Benjamin: You have a very pretty smile.

Jennifer: Thank you.

Jennifer responds. And when she sees his typing bubble, she adds:

Jennifer: Before you say anything else, you should know I leave town tomorrow and won’t be able to go on any dates with you.

The typing bubble goes away, and Jennifer turns off her phone. That’s certainly one way to filter out a man who only wants one thing. 

Then, her phone buzzes.

Benjamin: That’s fine.

And again.

Benjamin: What brings you to Tinder if you’re leaving so soon? Will you be back?

She thinks for a moment. Part of her knows she doesn’t owe this man an explanation. But part of her wants to give it to him. Part of her wants someone to talk to. Even if it’s some random man from the internet that could be, for all she knows, a serial killer.

Jennifer: No, I won’t be back.

Jennifer: Not to dampen the mood, but I had a funeral to attend. 

Jennifer: I live in NYC.

Benjamin: That’s far. I’m sorry for your loss.

And then, almost laughing at herself, she says, 

Jennifer: Don’t be. It was a cat funeral.

He types, and then stops. And after a minute, Jennifer turns her phone off again.

And then, it buzzes. Again.

Benjamin: Still, it must be hard.

Jennifer: Honestly, 

She starts, before she can decide if she even wants to be honest with this virtual stranger. 

Jennifer: I’m more upset about missing so much of his life than about him dying. Had he died when I was eighteen, before I moved to NYC, I think It might have been easier.

Jennifer: As awful as that sounds.

Benjamin: Not awful. At least it doesn’t seem awful.

She doesn’t know why this random man is humoring her, but she likes it. It’s not normally how she’d talk to a match, but it feels almost relieving. If she talked to her mom about this, she’d go into full-comfort mode, wrapping her in a hug and hushing her all while repeating, “It’s okay, baby, you’re okay.” 

However, this Benjamin guy, whoever he was, was saying the perfect things. And she had nothing to lose, so why not continue to talk to him?

Jennifer: I don’t know why I thought life in SLC would stop once I left.

She hesitates, then continues. 

Jennifer: This all feels like something I should have felt years ago, like in my twenties. Why is it coming up now, of all times?

Benjamin: How’s life in New York?

Automatically, she says,

Jennifer: Great.

Benjamin: Really?

She furrows her brow. How dare this man question how happy she was with her life? She means, sure, she hasn’t gotten the lead in her theater troupe since she was twenty-five, and sure, her hours at the hotel have been cut since they hired that, younger, prettier bartender, and sure, she’s had to turn to door-dashing just to keep the roof of her three-hundred square-foot apartment over her head, but, really, how dare he?

She types for a minute, backspacing every word every time she thinks of something better to say. Before she can respond, though, he says,

Benjamin: Your response was just quick, is all. You just didn’t seem to think about it much.

She sighs. 

Jennifer: Maybe it’s not perfect.

Benjamin: Why don’t you move back, then?

She laughs.

Jennifer: You must think my smile is gorgeous if you’re trying to get me to move back just for a date. 

Benjamin: Maybe.

Benjamin: Or, maybe, you just seem like you need some advice. And maybe I have nothing better to do.

She sighs and turns off her phone. He might not have anything better to do but she should be sleeping. She doesn’t need an oddly insightful Tinder match to make her consider uprooting her entire life. Especially not now, right after Whiskers death. She shouldn’t be making big decisions while mourning. That's, like, Greif 101.

She hears her phone buzz again, and she ignores it. In the morning, she’ll delete her account on her way to the airport. And she won't consider what Benjamin said until she gets home to her tiny apartment in the city that’s always failed her. But when she decides to move home, it’ll be on her terms. And completely not because a handsome Tinder man advised it.

Chapter Text

She’s been living in Salt Lake City for a little over a year now, and with Zackey Roy for two months less than that. She had initially settled back home with her mom and step-dad #4, but it quickly became clear that their lifestyles were too different.

There were only so many times you could walk in on your own mother practicing nude hot yoga before you realized that despite the many insistences that it was your home, too, it just wasn't.

And besides, Zackey was a changed man. And recently, he seemed to be everything she wished for in one. 

Sure, he had cheated on her when they were teenagers, but that was years ago, and who didn’t do stupid things in high school?

He was a teacher, now. A drama teacher to be exact, and it often made Jennifer ask herself where she went wrong in life. The dream had always been Broadway, and while she sometimes landed just a couple steps shy of it, it was always just barely out of reach. She’d never even considered being a teacher. And every day that Zackey comes home with a smile on his face and a fond anecdote about a student, she considers it.

It’d require some schooling, and lots of late nights, if Zackey’s increasingly busy schedule was any indication, but the more she thinks about it, the more she likes the idea. It’s not like her current part-time retail job was going anywhere.

The theater troupe where her and Zackey met was only doing so much to satiate her ambitious drive. And in Salt Lake City, there were only so many places off-screen she could audition for.

Fortunately for her, Zackey gets it. If she needed to spend the night a couple of towns over in order to make it to an early-morning audition, he understood. As clingy and protective as he was, he understood that she valued her craft more than anything.

On Friday morning, when she gets home, Zackey is, expectedly, at work. She wants to just sleep off the post-audition jitters, but as she sits down on the edge of their shared bed, something catches her eye on the floor, just inches away from her feet. There’s something shiny there, and under further inspection, there seems to be a silver hoop earring just sitting there, in between the fibers of the shag rug that lies underneath their bed. 

She picks it up and looks at it, but even with a closer look, it doesn’t magically turn gold to match the rest of her own jewelry.

There’s been a woman in her bedroom. One other than herself. One who wears tacky silver-colored jewelry and exerts enough energy for said tacky jewelry to fall off. On the floor next to the bed. 

She frowns to herself. Could Zackey really be doing this to her? Again? 

She supposes, looking back, teaching high school students couldn’t have possibly yielded so many late-nights. 

Her heart thrums in her chest, and when she falls back onto the bed, the linens smell freshly washed. It feels like walking in on Zackey Roy and Valerie Prescott backstage of their high school production of Grease all over again, except this time she has no proof.

His smooth talking is one of the things that made her fall in love with him; she knows with the right words he could easily convince her that silver goes better with her skin-tone anyways.

She needs something tangible– something he can’t talk his way out of. And more than that, she needs something she can’t talk herself out of. As incriminating as a stray piece of jewelry was, she trusts Zackey, and for every image she pictures of his tryst, there’s a voice in her head that has a perfectly rational explanation. 

Maybe it was his sister’s earring– or maybe it’s a part of a gift for her– two silver hoop earrings…

But it’s just one earring, and she’s pretty sure he knows she only wears gold. Deep down she knows what it is. 

That night, after Zackey’s gone asleep, Jennifer tries his phone. It’s locked, and though she once knew the code to unlock it, her birthday doesn’t work anymore. She wonders when he changed it– when she lost his attention entirely. She’s about to roll over to fall asleep when it goes off. 

Any other time, she would have ignored it. She would have trusted that Zackey had nothing but good intentions. But it was almost two in the morning, and anyone that texts him this late must be involved.

She flips the phone back over and taps the slightly warm screen, expecting a name, or at the very least, an unknown number. Instead, the Tinder logo pops up, and Jennifer supposes that answers that question. Her heart sinks to her stomach, and though she wants to shake him awake and beg him to explain, she knows all he’ll do is flip things around on her for invading his privacy and disrupting his sleep.

She turns the phone back over and tells herself she didn’t see anything– that the man in bed next to her is truly as honest as he claims. It’s the only thing she can do. She’s heard horror stories– on the internet and from friends– of men who claim to use the app just to see what’s out there, and of women who decide to stay.

She doesn’t want to be one of those women, and if she doesn’t go into this prepared, she fears she might become one.

So, taking deep breaths, she convinces herself to go to sleep, telling herself all will be well in the morning.

-

It’s not though, and when Zackey wakes her up by pulling her into his chest, she has to fight the urge to push him away. She pictures him doing the exact same thing to Silver Hoop Earring, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her rage and despair from pouring out of her.

When he leaves for work, Jennifer can no longer sleep things off. She can no longer convince herself that she wasn't cheated on or that everything will be okay. The first thing she does after making her already wired self some coffee, is download the Tinder app on her phone. She wants screenshots. She wants proof. And the only way to do that is to stoop to his level.

She pulls a couple of selfies together– not any where she looks particularly great at all, just enough for it to look like a complete profile. And in the bio, she says she’s looking for her cheating boyfriend, just so no one gets the wrong idea.

Then, when she’s done with all of that, she starts swiping. First, she just mindlessly swipes left, eyes trained in on the name in the bottom left corner. When she passes a Zack a little too fast, she realizes she might need to slow down a bit. She also realizes he could be under a completely different name, too. It might help to look at the faces.

She recognizes some of them. A couple guys from her high school, and some other guys she’s seen on the app before, years ago. It just goes to show how ineffective these apps are, and that she made the right decision ditching them for Zackey.

(Or, it would have shown that, had Zackey not cheated on her.)

As the number of likes rises in the bottom center of the screen, so does her heart rate, and she wonders what harm it would do to swipe right on just one of these guys. It’s just an ego boost, and besides, it’s not like she has any obligation to stay faithful anymore.

She chooses an attractive man named Benjamin, and based on his profile, he seems to be a teacher at Zackey’s rival high school. Other than a candid shot of him smiling with some protective eyeglasses on, he seems serious. If it weren't for his soft brown eyes, it'd be intimidating instead of endearing.

He matches her, and immediately sends her a message. 

Benjamin: Did you find him yet?

She responds immediately.

Jennifer: Not yet. 

Benjamin: So, I’m just a detour?

Benjamin: Do you even know if he’s on here, for sure?

Jennifer: I saw the notification on his phone last night. 

Jennifer: And yes, you’re a detour.

Jennifer: It’s not like I’m the first person to step out of my relationship.

She feels a little defensive, which is weird, because she doesn’t know the guy. Something feels vaguely familiar about him, but she’s sure if she’d met him before, she’d have remembered him. He was a handsome guy, after all.

Benjamin: Why stay, then?

She scoffs.

Jennifer: Who says I’m staying?

Benjamin: No one has to say it. I’m watching you stay, right here, right now. You’re on Tinder looking for proof instead of packing your bags.

She narrows her eyes at the screen. She has half a mind to unmatch him then and there.

Benjamin: I’m just saying, if you don’t trust him, why not leave now?

Benjamin: You don’t need to justify it to yourself. Lack of trust is a good enough reason.

Sighing, she realizes he’s right.

Jennifer: You’re trying awfully hard to get a date out of me.

As she types it out, she’s overcome with a wave of deja-vu, as though she’s been here before, talking to a stranger on the internet and desperately insisting there’s no point in talking because she refuses to go on a date.

She takes another look at his profile, and it hits her. This is the same Benjamin that convinced her to move back home. Or, influenced her to make the decision for herself.

Jennifer: Do you have anything other than wise-guy advice to offer me?

Jennifer: So far, it’s two for two.

He types for a minute, and she smirks to herself. She wonders what brought him back to Tinder– or if he ever left to begin with. She wonders just how many women he’s swiped on to not pick up that they’ve done this little dance before– the “You captivate me– but we can’t” dance. The “Tough love advice” dance. The “Who even are you?” dance.

Benjamin: Two for two?

Jennifer: A year and some months ago we matched and you low-level convinced me to move back to Salt Lake City.

He types some more, then stops. 

Benjamin: I’m sorry, I’m just not remembering.

Jennifer: Consider; a cat funeral. A bit of oversharing on my end. You read me like a book.

He takes several minutes to respond this time, and in that time, she’s swiped left on no less than fifty not-Zackeys. 

Benjamin:  I remember. Had to take a closer look at your profile, but I remember! You’re just as stunning as before, BTW.

Benjamin: If the circumstances were different, I’d say this calls for a real date.

But they’re not, and as she keeps swiping, she finally finds what she’s been looking for. Zackey Roy… using pictures she took of him for a dating profile. She goes to screenshot, but when her fingers find the buttons, she hesitates. She lets her eyes run over the man on her phone screen, lets them glaze across the arms she once felt safe in and the smile she thought she knew. 

What is she even doing? She doesn’t trust him, not truly. Had she, she never would have done this. 

She looks at the time. 10:43. Plenty of time to pack up her few belongings and bring them back to her mother’s house before Zackey gets off work. Plenty of time to leave without a trace and let the man she once trusted everything with wonder where he went wrong.

She deletes her Tinder profile without responding to Benjamin, as much as she wants to. Then, with nothing but a broken heart and a new resolve, she calls her mother to come help her pack.