Read Not That Easy for Free Online Page B

at me. I quickly exited his profile and went back to my inbox. There were three more messages. My heart beat in trepidation as I read the next one.
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    Hey, hun. u ok. I hope we could become mates and get to know each other.
    My names percy. I gotta say you are the definition of beautiful and got beautiful eyes. I hope we have the chance to become good mates and maybe more. I think we would get along well and ill always be here for you whenever you need someone to talk to. I will never ever judge you no matter what and i always try to be a good mate xx
    I stared at the message in confusion. He wanted to be there for me? He didn’t even know me. And were the spelling mistakes intentional or could he really just not use punctuation? I hesitantly clicked on Perce69’s profile—I was noticing a username theme here—and was met with a picture of a sweet-looking guy with a receding hairline and blue eyes.
    He didn’t look as horrid as HotDog so I scrolled down. Okay, he worked in sales, was twenty-nine, lived in North London and . . . the most private thing he was willing to admit was that he had a sex addiction. Ew. At least he thought I was beautiful and would never judge me. Feeling more confident, I looked at my third message.
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    I would hug a cactus, then swim through shark infested salt water to the arctic to do battle with an angry mother polar bear on a 2x2 foot iceberg for the chance to share a Nandos half chicken with corn on the cob with you on a webcam over a dial-up connection. X
    Right. At least that was original. Everyone liked a Nando’s half chicken—but if we were sharing shouldn’t we get a full chicken?Not only was Marcus1986 clearly a nutter, he was also stingy. I didn’t bother clicking on his profile and moved on to my last message.
Please be normal
, I prayed. It was from someone called JT_ldn and there was no 69 on the end of his username. This looked promising.
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    Hey, Elk, your profile seems cool. So what kind of media work do you do? I live in East London too. Have you been living amongst the hipsters for a while or are you a new kid on the block?
    JT x
    Oh my God. It was an actual message from a normal person who had read my profile and wasn’t just spamming me with perv-mail. Okay, so he had mistaken my initials for my name, but that was easily done. There had to be a few people out there called Elk.
    I clicked on his profile and was instantly impressed. JT was HOT. He was also twenty-nine—exciting—from Ireland—sexy accent—and worked at Marc Jacobs—shit. Gay??? I quickly scrolled down and breathed out in relief as I saw he worked in the IT section of Marc Jacobs. That was promising, as was the fact that he was six foot three and loved nights in with red wine and film noirs. If you swapped it for carbs and romcoms, that was my ideal night in too.
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    Hey JT, nice to (virtually!) meet you. I’m “working” for an online magazine, which is pretty cool except for the fact it’s unpaid.I’m new to East—what about you? Amazing you work for MJ. Do you get free stuff?
    Ellie x
    I tapped out the message quickly, so that I could edit it afterwards. The awkward “virtually” joke would probably have to go. I ended it with a kiss, which felt weird considering I’d never met him but decided it would be rude not to after he’d given me one. It was probably just Internet dating etiquette. Come to think of it, HotDog69 was quite rude for not putting a kiss on his.
    â€œEllie, what are you doing?” screeched Maxine. I dropped my phone onto my desk and realized with horror that I’d pressed send. Why had I put in those cringe attempts to be flirty? There was no way he’d reply now.
    â€œJust booking the restaurant for your lunch