Picture Perfect

Chapter Two: Elliot

I can't resist a dual POV book. You know me.

Love, Cam

Chapter Two: Elliot

I give up on dating, for my own sanity.

I hurried down the street towards my favourite bar. I was late, of course, and Rowan was waiting for me. Balls, balls, balls. Time was creeping over the line of me being 'acceptably' late to me being 'inconsiderate dickhead' late.

I burst into the bar and sprinted to my sister's table, where I promptly collapsed into the opposite side of the booth and wheezed loudly.

Rowan looked at me over the rim of her pint glass and said, "Smooth."

I took the pint she'd already ordered me and downed almost half of it. "I'm so sorry," I said, my breathing returning to normal. "I got caught up going through lesson plans and-"

"Lost track of time," my sister filled in for me. "It's fine, I knew you'd be late, so I told you I'd be here twenty minutes before I intended to get here. I've only been waiting a few minutes."

I wanted to be mad, but she had at least ten years of evidence of me being really late to things. I sighed. "Fair enough. How's the house?"

Rowan did not look pleased at the thought of the house. She and her husband, Adam, had recently bought a fixer-upper, as they were both interior decorators, and had promptly realised they were both far too fixed in perfectionism to ever truly be happy with their own home.

"Last thing you want to talk about?" I guessed.

She nodded, sighing as she pushed her lilac hair behind her ears. "Please tell me about you instead, I need a night where I don't think about how much sanding I have to do on the skirting boards."

"Got it," I replied, grinning. "Well, I've decided to give up on dating."

Rowan immediately forgot about sanding the skirting boards. "You what?"

"Online dating," I corrected myself. "Just online dating. It's horrible, Rowan, I can't do it anymore."

She rolled her eyes, taking a gulp of her drink and declaring, "It can't be that bad."

I snorted. "You have been married for nearly a decade, you have absolutely no experience in online dating. You have no idea how bad it is."

"There isn't one person you've had a nice date with?" she asked in disbelief.

I laughed loudly and took out my phone. "Babe, you think I've had a date from dating apps? No, no one wants to go on a honest to goodness date anymore, everyone seems to exclusively use it for sex. At least the men do."

I opened up the latest dating app that I'd tried and handed her my phone. "Here's my profile."

Rowan put on her glasses to look at the screen, where my profile greeted her. "Okay, cute photos, you look very handsome. I like the one of you with the girls."

'The girls' referred to my three rescue cats; Pumpkin, Spice, and Latte. "Well, we're a package deal," I grinned.

"Okay, your bio..." Rowan paused while she scrolled to it. "Hi, I'm Elliot (or Eli). I'm a primary school teacher living in Manchester, and I love my job. I wear the 'crazy cat dad' title with pride. I think I'm hilarious, but my sister would disagree. If you like workaholic men who always have cat hair on their clothes, then I'm the guy for you." She smiled at it fondly. "Cute."

"Now go to the messages," I smirked.

Rowan clicked on the icon and selected the first conversation. She then dropped the phone onto the table, her blue eyes wide with shock. "Oh my god, it's a photo of a penis!"