Roy Harper

Look, maybe Tinder wasn't the best place to look for a babysitter. People used the app to hook up, for crying out loud.

However, Roy was desperate. Lian was five years old, and her mother wasn't in the picture, and literally everyone he knew was either a vigilante or a superhero or a supervillain or sick of being the person Roy only called when he needed a sitter. And desperate times called for desperate measures, and in this case, desperate measures meant swiping right on people with "loves kids" on their profile and hoping for the best.

Roy's own profile was clear: he wanted a babysitter, not a hookup, not a relationship, not a date, and certainly not a sugar anything. The amount of people who straight up hadn't read what he'd written was surreal. Honestly, he hadn't even thought he'd get that many people wanting to make passes at him, and five years ago he'd have been preening under all the attention, but right now he didn't have the time or the patience. He had stuff to do and his girl needed someone to watch her, damn it.

His fifth match that day looked promising. One of the cleaner-looking profiles, a nice smile, some photos with babies. He was hopeful, but then he'd been hopeful for the past two weeks and his hopes had been summarily dashed each time.

With a deep breath, he began to type. "Hey," he wrote, his messages firing off one after the other. "Nice profile. Please tell me you read mine. Like, I just need a sitter. You saw that, right?"

A minute passed. No response.

"Okay, so I'll just explain. I just need someone to watch my kid for a couple hours," Roy went on, tapping his foot nervously. "I'm paying, I'll meet up with you so we can talk, and I'll need your references and ID. No shady shit. If you're not interested, just let me know, and I'll move on. And, uh, sorry for all the messages. Just, people don't read, and I've done this song and dance way too many times. Anyway, let me know. Thanks."