Serial Dating

Right Swipe, Baby

They stretched together, arms over their heads with Milo holding Lee's phone in front of him as Tinder loaded. When at long last it was open, Lee relayed his email and suggested password, a little out of breath from doing lunges across the length of the windows overlooking the campus.

On the rubbery ground, Milo put his legs out in front of him and touched Lee's phone to the tops of his shoes, completely folded over his thighs. Lee could barely touch his shins without wanting to die. It was at this point that Milo asked, "Age?"

"Eighteen," Lee answered.

Milo put that in, muttering under his breath, "Male... Gender preference?"

"Men, eighteen to twenty-one," he said.

Milo leant back and spread his legs wide, borderline doing the splits. Lee rolled his eyes away to keep from staring as Milo put his forearms to the rubber mat, idly tapping away at Lee's profile. "Have you dated before?"

"Is that one of the questions?" Lee asked.

Milo shook his head. "Nah, just curious."

Lee shrugged and that was that.

"Is there anything specific you want in your bio? Otherwise I'll just make it plain and simple," Milo said.

"Literate sci-fi junkies only," Lee said with a grunt, reaching as far as he could so his fingers hooked on the edge of the mat. "Death becomes me."

"'Dead... inside... Please... open...'"

"I swear to God, Park," Lee snarled, trying to reach for the phone, but Milo held it out of his proximity. Thankfully, Milo erased the sexy, edgy Walking Dead reference in favor of the following sentence that Milo held out to get Lee's approval of:

"'Just a small-town boy looking for enlightenment, chocolate, and the next space opera,'" Lee read aloud. He hummed, genuinely impressed. "You've nailed the memes, the sweets, and the sci-fi. It works."

"Really?" Milo said, all but glowing. He checked his watch and said, "Okay, planks for two minutes."

"Planks?" Lee repeated. Milo stared at him, his phone slipping a little from Milo's hands.

"You don't... Christ, I really am surrounded by amateurs," Milo sighed, getting up onto his knees.

Lee laughed and said, "Yeah, no shit. What do you think I meant when I said I've never set foot in a gym?"

Planks, as it turned out, were invented by the Devil as a hellish torture device to bring mankind to their knees. Lee could barely make it through thirty seconds, and at the twenty second mark, he thought his soul had left his body, sucked into the unforgiving earth two floors below. Milo was on his elbows, back perfectly straight and legs even straighter. He had Lee's phone between his hands, checking the time on his watch, as he said, "So I'm looking through your photos."

"Jesus Christ," Lee cursed, arms shaking. He put his forehead to his fists where he had them clasped together in front of him.

"Your profile picture on Facebook is pretty okay... I'm gonna use that and then I've enlisted Rushil's help. He's sent me a screenshot he took of you on Snapchat." Milo held out the phone for Lee to see. Lee dropped his stomach onto the mat with a gasp, panting as he stared at the photo of himself. It was a profile view of him during the golden hour, the sunset making his eyes crystal clear and shining blue. He looked like a pale, pale Asian angel.

He swallowed hard and said, "Y-Yeah, sounds good."

Milo cropped out the caption he had had on the photo and stuck it onto Lee's profile. He pulled another from Facebook, and Lee, foregoing the next minute and a half of planks, came to watch from over Milo's shoulder. He watched as Milo saved a photo of Lee during a vacation he and his family took the previous summer for Lee's senior graduation present. They went hiking in the Alps in Switzerland, and the photo of choice was a full body shot of Lee in the sun with the snowy mountains as a backdrop.