Page 29 of Debugging Love

“Oh. Ow,” Christopher says.

“Maybe he was misunderstood.” So much for keeping my mouth shut.

“No. I understood him perfectly. The only communication barrier was his lies.”

Brown stems connect with the white flowers on Danni’s shirt. The color matches her eyes. And her hair, which has a metallic sheen. If we ever get along for five minutes, I need to ask her about her haircare products. I’m not against using women’s products to tame my waves.

“He lied?” Christopher asks. “How do you know?”

“In his profile picture, he’s blond. In real life. He’s a brunette.”

Are you sure about that? My hair is black, not brown.(I manage to keep the comment to myself.)

“Did he dye it?”

“Nope. Just full on lied. Tried to catfish on MatchAI. A serious offense if you ask me.”

“There’s no law against it,” I mumble.

Christopher widens his stance and crosses his arms. His pecs bulge, getting in the way a bit. “Did you provide feedback?”

“You can do that?” Danni asks.

“Sure. You can rate your date and leave a review.”

“You can reviewpeople?“ My face scrunches.You’re rating your dates in your spreadsheet, a phantom voice says. It’s not my mom’s.

“Yeah,” Christopher says. “It helps the AI learn. Also, Cassie doesn’t want a database full of jerks. If your rating gets too low, you lose access.”

Danni smirks at me. “I’ll be sure to leave my feedback.”

“So will I,” I blurt.

Christopher looks at me, confused.

I grab my phone and dive into a Wordle session.

“I’m just a one-timer,” Danni says. “I’m done with online dating. It’s just not for me. Unlike some people.”

That doesn’t burn nearly as much as she thinks it does.

“Maybe your date won’t be going on any more either after you leave that nasty review,” Christopher says with a laugh.

I keep my eyes glued to my phone and resist pursing my lips because I know it would make Danni happy.

“Well. I’m sorry my gift sucked. Hopefully the showboat cruise was fun, at least.”

“Yeah, it was nice. The food was great.”

“Good.” Christopher thumps Danni’s desk. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work.”

When he’s gone, I squint at Danni. “I thought the food gave you intestinal ‘stuff.’ You spent forty-five minutes in the bathroom.”

“No. You caused that.”

“It wasn’t the shrimp?”

“The shrimp was great. Your ego was putrid.”

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