Chapter Two
Unlike Sammie, Frank didn’t have a job. He didn’t have anything to do during the daytimes except read books, watch movies, play video games, listen to music and go on the internet. Occasionally, he’d leave the house and go for a wander round outside, but most of the time it was too hot to go on walks. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, therefore, that he spent a large amount of time on the dating site almost as soon as he’d signed up. This one seemed a lot more interesting than his previous efforts, and he had high hopes that he might find someone suitable.
He changed the setting to United Kingdom so he could find himself a nice, pretty English girl, and searched through the dozens of profiles night after night.
Initially, he was going purely off looks, and he shortlisted seventeen girls that he found attractive. Then he went deeper; clicking on each profile and reading through the information they’d given about themselves, reading about their jobs, hobbies and interests, including how old they were. He liked the idea of someone younger, but not too young that she was immature and unable to understand him on an intellectual level. Being able to converse on a daily basis with his future wife and have interesting chats was a must.
A similar taste in movies, video games, books and music was also important but not essential; especially video games. He was fairly sure that girls didn’t like video games anyway.
The way the website worked was as follows: he inputted his tastes into a form, and an algorithm on the site narrowed down his list even further for him, doing the work on his behalf so that he didn’t have to trawl through every single profile on his short list. That was part of what he paid for.
Once he was down to a mere six girls, he paid a little bit more money so he could activate the messaging feature, then he proceeded to contact each of them in turn and start up conversations with them. That was the real test, to see if they were able to maintain a conversation together.
Two of them fizzled out immediately, one girl didn’t reply, and the second didn’t really keep up the chat, later telling him that she’d already found a different match via the website. Down to only four then.
One of them was Sammie.
***
The ratio on the website was definitely imbalanced, with more men on there looking than there were women. As such, Sammie was inundated with messages and potential matches from the moment she signed up. It was a touch overwhelming but, like Frank, she judged them on their profile pictures first and filtered out the ones she didn’t find attractive. She had already set up her filters to only receive offers and messages from men based in America so that was a good start.
She got her shortlist down pretty quickly, due to the amount of weird, creepy messages she received from guys asking her for nudes or sending pictures of their dicks. It was a surprisingly large amount. She deleted those straight away. She was looking for someone who had a bit more intelligence and didn’t just think with their cock all their time, although obviously a good sex drive was important too.
Frank’s message definitely stood out to her from the offset due to the fact that he’d mentioned her favorite bands, movies and TV shows, telling her which ones he also liked. Of course, he could have been lying about that but it at least got her attention.
His was among seven messages that she actually replied to. She didn’t have to pay any money for that either; it was all free, which was another bonus for her that was different to some of the other sites she’d been on.
Frank was the first to reply, which showed he was either keen or desperate, but she would give him the benefit of the doubt. She was still online chatting to people when she got the reply through, so she was able to message him back almost immediately too. It was nice to be able to chat in real time rather than waiting a couple of days; she knew it could be difficult, especially with time zone differences.
She replied to his remarks about the movies and music he’d referenced, and that led them down an easy, relaxed chat about their interests, discovering they had more in common than she even expected.
She looked at his profile again and re-read what he’d put, seeing that he’d mentioned some video games he was into and steered the conversation round to that, much to Frank’s delight.
***
Sat in his large, lonely ranch in Texas, he couldn’t believe he’d found a cute English girl who played the exact same games as he did, liked the same movies, TV shows and music. During their first initial chat, he threw loads more names at her, telling her things that she liked, and she responded enthusiastically, making references to them which proved she really was a fan and not just saying that to try and impress him.
It was easy to talk to her about those kinds of things, but there was something else he really wanted to know about her; something that was actually kind of important but slightly awkward to bring up.
“So…how come you’re on a site like this?” He asked her after they’d been chatting for about an hour.
She took a little while longer to reply than she had been to the other messages and for a moment he was worried he’d scared her off, but then she got back to him about five minutes later.
“Not really had much luck on other sites, and I don’t have time to meet people locally with my job and stuff. How about you?”
He ignored the ‘how about you’ part for now. This seemed like the perfect time to ask her about what she actually did for a job. She hadn’t put that in her profile although, to be fair, neither had he. Jobs were boring, but he still kind of wanted to know. Did she have much of her own money, or was she looking for him to support her full time? Not that he minded either way, seeing as he was pretty damn loaded, but it would be useful to have an idea up front about what the arrangements would be. He couldn’t exactly just ask her that outright though; he had to be subtle about it.
“It’s nothing too interesting,” she told him. “I work in an art gallery. Then in the evenings I work on my own art, which I occasionally sell or take commissions for.”
Although she said that wasn’t “too interesting”, to him it was fascinating and incredibly impressive. He was terrible at art and couldn’t draw to save his life, although of course he could appreciate good art when he saw it. Finally, an aspect that they didn’t have in common, but he was very keen to learn more about it.
***
Sammie was reticent. She appreciated that Frank was showing interest in her art and her work, but she was self-conscious about sending him anything to look at, which was what he’d asked her to do.
When she hesitated, he pointed out that surely she must have to show people her work when she was attempting to sell it, and that this wasn’t any different.
“Just imagine I’m a potential buyer,” he told her, followed by a winking emoji.
He had a point. For some reason, she just felt shy around him; maybe because his opinion was starting to matter to her. He seemed like a nice guy; and she didn’t want him to think she was a shit artist.
As it turned out, he didn’t. She sent through a couple of pictures and he was raving about how good it was and how impressed he was with her skill.
Sammie could feel her cheeks heating up. He was probably just saying that to be nice; she told herself. She really wasn’t used to taking compliments, especially from handsome American men.
Oh God, she wondered what his accent was like. Maybe she should ask if they could Skype. No, she told herself almost immediately. Too soon. They’d only been speaking for half an hour. Or was it an hour? Or maybe two? Time had flown by so fast and she was really enjoying their chat. In the meantime, another message had come through from one of the other guys on her shortlist but she hadn’t answered it, as she’d been too busy chatting to Frank.
After him asking her about her work, it seemed only polite and natural for her to, in turn, ask about his. It also steered the conversation away from her for a while, which she was only too glad about as she was already starting to feel pretty self-conscious.
“So, what do you do for a job anyway?” she asked, vaguely wondering how much money had.
Money wasn’t particularly important or crucial to her, but it had said on the website that all the men on here were rich, so she was just…wondering. She wasn’t going to say no to a rich man, obviously. Not having to worry about whether you could afford food or to pay your phone bill that week must be pretty nice.
There was a long pause, during which she assumed he was answering.
Perhaps he had a very complicated job that required a lot of explaining.
“I don’t have one”
Well. That wasn’t the answer she was expecting.
“How do you afford things then?” she asked, followed by a laughing emoji.
“I’m rich” he replied, with the same emoji. “I inherited the money and now I don’t need to work. It will see me through for life.”
That must be so nice, she thought to herself. She’d love to be able to not work, although obviously she would still do her art no matter what. She wasn’t in that for the money; it was just her passion. Besides, she would get bored if she just did nothing all day.
This thought process led her to her next question.
“What do you do all day then?”
“Not much, haha! I get up at 11 or 12, watch the news, have lunch, then read, watch movies, or play video games. Occasionally I’ll go for a walk. In the evenings, I’ll have a few beers and go on the internet, watch TV or listen to music.”
“That sounds incredibly relaxing!”
“It is! It does get boring though. I should probably take up a hobby like you.”
“How long have you been living like this for then? I’m fairly sure it would drive me insane if I just did nothing all day forever!”
“It’s been about a year now.”
She kind of wanted to ask him what he did before that, and how he came into all this money. She presumed he must come from a rich family and that his parents died and left it to him, and she felt a bit unsure about asking. She didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable or think she was prying, especially since it was only the first time they’d spoke and they’d only just met. Hopefully there would be plenty of time to find out everything about him if the two of them continued chatting.
“Awesome!” she said instead, then added: “And yeah, you should totally take up a hobby. They’re fun! Maybe you could go horseback riding or something seeing as you live on a ranch.”
This moved the topic on neatly and they went on to discuss horses, other animals, and hobbies.
Before she knew it, it was two in the morning and her eyes were feeling sore. She had to get up for work at 7 and needed to get some sleep so sadly, she had to excuse herself from the conversation.
“Maybe we can talk tomorrow?” Frank suggested.
She was glad he was the one to suggest it rather than her, and smiled as she read the message, replying: “Sure. I’ll look forward to it!”
The two of them said goodnight, and that was that.
It was the start of something very exciting and special between them.