Page 13 of Save the Date

THE VIDEO HAD REACHED ALMOST THREE MILLION VIEWSin eight days. Emma never had these many eyeballs on her content before and she was shocked to find all the attention exhilarating. Once Emma realized her breakup announcement was garnering sympathy and encouragement instead of insults and attacks, she’d had a hard time putting her phone down. The tidal wave of engagement was also helping heal her humiliation over Tony. So what if she’d been rejected—again? Thousands of strangers cared enough about her broken engagement to write a heartfelt message or a heart-filled sequence of emojis. Her YouTube comments overflowed with stories of other people who had been abruptly left. Some had found love again and some… Well, no one’s story was ever truly over until they were dead. And maybe not even then! What did little old Emma know about the rules of the afterlife?

Returning to Tony had clearly been a mistake. An emotional relapse. But that didn’t mean Emma needed to give up on her plan, which was why she now found herself in her sister’s second living room—yes, Jackie’s house hadtwoliving rooms—surroundedby ring lights so she could announce it to the whole world. Or at least a small corner of the internet.

“You look stunning,” Jackie cooed as she finished applying another layer of lip gloss to Emma’s now extremely plump lips.

“I’m worried it will look like I’m trying too hard.”

“I’ve never understood that expression. Why is it bad to try to look good?”

Emma stared at her sister with something akin to awe. Yet again Jackie had managed to diminish a widely held societal belief without really trying. “You’re right. I just still want to look like me.”

“Obvi. Go look.”

Emma got up from her sister’s exorbitantly expensive armchair and went to check herself out in the bathroom mirror. The face glowing back at her was completely recognizable yet somehow entirely elevated. Her normally boring brown eyes popped. Her long brown hair looked intentionally wavy instead of confused. And her lips glistened with invitation. She felt like Emma 2.0 in the flesh.

“You’re a magician,” Emma declared as she retook her place in front of the tripod.

Jackie waved the compliment away. “I just work with what I’ve got. And you’re already beautiful.”

Emma felt her face flush. Growing up, Jackie was the pretty one and Emma was the smart one. Maybe they’d each been a mix of both this whole time without realizing it.

“How should I do this? I’m worried that if I launch right into the plan I will seem—and I do not use this term lightly—completely crazy.”

“Maybe you take the audience through your thought process? Like, how did you even come up with Operation: Save My Date in the first place? And then you can do that thing where you list all the reasons it seems like a bad idea before revealingthat it’s actually a great idea. That way if anyone says anything bad about it you can be like,Um… I already addressed that.”

“That’s brilliant. Your talents are being wasted.”

“Not anymore!” Jackie smiled. And for the first time, Emma realized that what she was about to do, whatever mess or success she was about to get herself into, she wasn’t doing it alone. She had her big sister to help.

“Rolling!” Jackie declared. “No, wait. It’s filming me.” She hit a few buttons. “Rolling take two!”

***

As Emma went to sleep that night, one full hour after her normal bedtime, she felt as though the Earth had shifted. Within moments of uploading the video, feedback started flooding in. While there were plenty of comments calling her “desperate” or “delusional” or “delusionally desperate,” there were far more applauding her courage. One follower had commented that it had been over five years since her husband left and she hadn’t been brave enough to move on yet but that Emma’s announcement felt like a sign for her to get back out there too. Many others echoed the same sentiment.

Emma no longer felt like she was going through with this bizarre plan just for herself; she was now doing it for her followers, which was both motivating and terrifying. Through one YouTube video, she had become a role model of sorts. A guinea pig in the search for love. She fantasized about victoriously sharing footage of her wedding day—it would be the social media equivalent of returning home from war with the evil dictator as your captive. Or scoring the winning basket in whatever was the most important basketball game of the year. But in many ways, it would be bigger than either of those things, because it would inspire other people to be brave and not wait around for love to “find” them. She was helping people put aside societal expectations around the “right” way to walk down the aisle and commit their life to another person. Marriage wouldno longer be something people felt they had to wait patiently for even when they were already ready for it; it would become an accomplishable goal and not an otherworldly mystery thatonly happened when you least expected it.

Emma had felt so empowered after explaining her plan to find a new groom through a combination of online dating and old-fashioned setups, she’d let Jackie sign her up for all the apps. Including a new app for divorcees called Leftovers, whose tagline was misguidedly, “One person’s trash is another person’s future.” She’d only agreed to that one because Chris’s friend had cofounded it and apparently divorced men were a hot commodity. They weren’t afraid of commitment and, as a bonus, often knew how to effectively save for retirement—something Emma quite frankly did not understand how to do.

In the wake of all this possibility, it no longer seemed to matter as much that the two men she had loved the most in her life—Ryan and Tony—didn’t love her back. What were two lone people in an endless sea of profiles? For this all to work, she needed to focus on the future. The more she was willing to open herself up to complete strangers, the better chance she had at finding the best fit. She just had to rip off the Band-Aid. Who knows, maybe she’d nail it on her first try.

***

“So many people have a favorite food. But I find it hard to pick one because I like all foods.”

Emma tried not to look at her date in confusion. She hadn’t asked him to identify his favorite food. Tim was a thirty-four-year-old accountant who didn’t smoke but moderately drank; he was also her very first match and she was trying to keep an open mind.

“I do have a favorite movie though,” Tim said. He leaned in as if sharing a secret. “It’sDreamgirls.”

Emma tried not to laugh at how proud he seemed to have an“unconventional” favorite film for a straight white man. “Oh, really? I’ve never seen it.”

“You’ve never seenDreamgirls?” Tim looked the most animated he’d been throughout their nearly forty minutes of first-date platitudes. “It’s incredible. Great music.”

Emma nodded and wondered if she was going to be asked to contribute to this conversation in any meaningful way.

“In terms of sports, I’m definitely a football guy. But I’ll also watch basketball or hockey when it’s on.” Tim continued to answer a series of basic questions about himself without being prompted. It became clear that he was a Hinge veteran who thought the best way to get to know a complete stranger was to monologue about what (she hoped) were the most boring parts of his personality. Emma’s eyes were starting to glaze over when Tim suddenly looked at her expectantly. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been listening to him in over a minute.

“What about you?”

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