We also started to share expenses. He uses the things I buy just as I use his whenever we okay it for each other—an act that is becoming less regulated the more time passes.
We agreed to clean the apartment together once per week, and on the two Wednesdays we tried it, we listened to music through his powerful speakers, brainstorming for the project while teaming up to dust the shelves and clean the bathroom and the kitchen.
We mock each other’s habits now. We say crap and laugh at stupid things when we are both tired and working late at night.
And sometimes he says things that could be flirtatious, but we just laugh at it because our new intimacy allows for it.
It’s incredible what ten days of intense work in our living quarters has done for our friendship.
“I need to show you this,” Erik says, looking at me. “Took me the whole day.”
I take a seat by his side and let him present his work.
We sit shoulder to shoulder many hours per day, but whenever I’m leaning in to look at something on his computer—or he is putting his head next to mine to see what I’m doing—I must force myself to focus. My mind drifts away to dangerous places as my body reacts to his overwhelming presence.
And it’s addicting.
I tell myself all the time that it’s the project that thrills me. It’s the pleasure I feel working on something exciting that makes me impatient to arrive home in the evening.
But it’s hard to convince myself of that when the feels come.
Sometimes, it takes a while. I can sit at this table for many minutes, or hours, totally immersed in the work before they hit me.
The shivers. The butterflies. The fireworks. The whole darn circus.
It’s usually triggered when he leans too close, his breath tickling my skin. When his laugh chimes like Christmas bells next to my ear. When his smile grows until he shows his white teeth, and a little dimple appears on his cheek. When he is freshly showered and his delicious cologne kills a few of my neurons.
Right now, it might have started so quickly because of what he said about my shampoo. I distract him. Could it be in the same way that he distracts me?
I don’t dare let my thoughts go in this direction. Things are going too well. What we have, this new friendship, is uncomplicated. So long as we keep it as is.
He is ridiculously hot, and my body reacts. So what? I can still work with him and silently enjoy the effects. I try not to be greedy. I try never to think that if touching his shoulder with mine feels good, imagine what it would feel like to have his hands on me.
Oh boy. No. Stop.
That’s how it goes. Every day. It’s tiring, good, scary, and thrilling. I let my heart leap and warm up in his presence. Sometimes I steal a harmless touch with a silly or “accidental” excuse. I allow my eyes to feast on his beauty and my ears to celebrate at the sound of his voice. And it’s all good in those hours when I have him all to myself.
“It’s great, Erik,” I tell him, meaning it.
Unlike how it is at my work, here I’m not afraid to be honest. I don’t have a reputation to keep, a status to maintain, or people to please. When something is trash, I tell Erik—in a joking way so it won’t hurt, but he doesn’t mind. He’s learned to expect my truthful statements and even laughs in anticipation, imagining what I will say.
“What’s the catch?” He raises an eyebrow, smiling.
“Nothing. I like it. Let’s go for it.”
He pours tea for us, a smile of satisfaction brightening his face. “We’re getting there then.”
“We are,” I say proudly, and we tea-toast. “It’s funny to think that the day I matched with you on Cinder, I thought it’d be cool if there was a dating app in which looks mattered less and it would be more about finding like-minded people.”
“That’s what Love Birds is about, and now you’re helping me fulfill this vision. Our vision.”
He looks at me with the cup of tea in his hands, steam spiraling in front of him. He is staring, and I stare back, both of us sipping at the same time, spying on each other over the rims of our identical cups. There is almost no distance between our bodies, and something about the way he is looking at me makes my butterflies go wild.
“I think we can make the mini games better though,” I say, trying to keep my mind on the project, not on its creator.
“Agreed. Let’s try to come up with some new ideas.”
Essentially, the app is a game. You are a bird trying to meet another bird, but you don’t get other people’s profile information right away. You slowly discover who the real person is behind each bird avatar. By interacting with others, you gradually give information about yourself and learn something about the other players. You join matches and tournaments based on your location and interests, so you are more likely to meet a person who will be a good match for you. You then invite another player for private mini games, which might lead to an individual chat room, which might lead to a date.
We still have a lot to figure out, like how to monetize the app. Many of our ideas are good but too ambitious, and we must often take a step back and rethink things we believed were indispensable.
What is essential to us is that people have fun together before talking about themselves. We want gaming pals to fall in love and meet in the real world.
“What really motivated you to create Love Birds, Erik?”
He looks at me, surprised by my question.
“I know you didn’t like Cinder and other similar apps,” I continue. “But I want to know, why dating apps? Out of all the things you could make.”
He rests his chin on his hand, thoughtful. “I don’t know, I just...” He pauses, and I wait. “My sister, Frida, was very into those apps some years ago. She was only seventeen back then, and I was twenty-four and living with my parents for a period while I was writing my bachelor’s thesis. I ended up, you know, trying to see how the apps worked so I could be a good big brother and protect her.”
I mirror his smile.
“Frida told her friends in high school that I’d made a profile on Cinder. She set it up and took my picture, and I let her do it for fun. One day, she made me give glass shoes to a few girls, and later, when I started getting bombarded with matches, I found out that some of the girls knew my sister from school and were lying about their age in the app to get college-age guys interested in them.”
He snorts like an old man who lightly reproaches young people.
“After this, a number of Frida’s friends I’d never met before started coming to our house all the time. They kept whispering about me, giving me looks...” He shakes his head, uncomfortable. “I hated that kind of popularity. And I hated how my sister’s friends were falling in love with me, or being plain obsessed, because I’d made that stupid profile.”
