200 miles - Narry

Prologue

"Okay, let's do this," I say and stretch my fingers, lingering them above the keyboard of my laptop.

"Www," I mumble out loud.

"Okcupid.com."

"Join the best free dating site on Earth," I read out loud what the site says, scrunching my nose. 

It sounds weird, the welcoming text on my screen. I ignore it, moving my eyes to the next part. It says, I am... and I quickly select gay male before pressing the continue button.

"Almost there! Just a little more to go," I read out loud again, knowing if my mum was home she would think I'm going crazy.

It asks for my birthday, location and e-mail and I quickly type in all my info. Next step is to select a username and insert a password, and this is always the hard part. I'm rubbish at creating a username for myself and after trying to find one that isn't taken for fifteen minutes, I get frustrated.

"HaroldEdward," I mutter and type it in but no, taken.

"Harry_Edward," is the second try but that is taken as well.

"HarryEdward," I harshly spit out and type it in almost violently, a green mark popping on my screen. It's available and I sigh, quickly typing in a password and suddenly, the site is opening to me.

"Alright then," I say and smile to no one, looking at the site with fascination, thinking this could be fun after all.

To be clear, it was never my intention to join a worldwide dating site to look for a partner. The idea came from my sister, she encouraged me to start talking to new people but since I'm rubbish at making friends face to face, I decided online was the better option.

I didn't know any sites I could join until my sister mentioned OkCupid. I know it sounds stupid and lame, I'm an 18 year old guy from England, registering myself into a dating site. I'm not looking for a partner, I'm just looking for someone to talk to.

I guess you could say I'm lonely. I'm not a people person, I'm shy and awkward and I don't talk much. I go to school every day but I never talk to anyone. I guess people don't really like me there. To be clear, it's not because I'm gay. No one in my school even knows since I don't have friends who I could spill my secrets to. I'm a loner and I don't exactly fit in.

I only moved to Cheshire recently. I'm from this area but we moved away for a few years and when we moved back, I started going to different school and didn't know anyone. Since I'm socially awkward and it's hard for me to make friends, I quickly became a loner. I went straight from being the new guy to being the lonely guy, who no one wanted to befriend. I guess it's fine, I'm better off on my own anyway. 

My sister who studies in university, doesn't think it's healthy. She always tells me to find new friends and I know signing up to a dating site isn't exactly what she had in mind, but it will have to do for now. If I somehow manage to make a friend on the site, it will count.

After spending two hours on the site, my profile seems to be ready. It took me ages to fill in everything, mainly because I suck at talking about myself so making a profile wasn't exactly easy. There were all these questions I didn't know how to answer to, but I tried my best creating an interesting looking profile. I even put a picture of me there, mainly because I thought it might catch someone's interest.

I scroll through my profile, changing a few things here and there, finally starting to be happy with it. I have somehow managed to make myself sound somewhat interesting.