Page 12 of Swiped
Jo frowned. Nat knew how much she hated it when people weren’t catching up with the obvious logic of a given situation, or pretending not to. It was one of the many things they had in common. “The most successful keywords for women in your age group were ‘goat yoga,’” she said. “Do you even know what that is?”
Nat gave Justin a breezy smile and managed to quell her impulse to shoot him finger guns. “Yes, obviously.”
Jo frowned deeper. “Oh, really?”
Nat crossed her arms. “It’s an acronym.”
Jo crossed her arms back. “Go on,” she said.
Nat began to pace again. “Gluten-free,” she began. “Obviously.”
“TheOis forobviously? Is that your final answer?”
“No!Ois for . . . outdoor, obviously.” She managed a laugh. “TheAis . . . antibiotic . . .” She trailed off, pretending to watch something fascinating at the rat restaurant.
“And theT?” asked Jo.
Nat looked her in the eye. “Tanning,” she said loudly, as the word echoed off the concrete floors and exposed beams.
“Wow,” whispered Justin. “That was rough.”
“Exactly,” said Jo, flipping open her own laptop.
“Wait, is it just actual goats? Like from a farm?” asked Nat. A Google search would bring her dangerously close to checking her email and socials, and she couldn’t risk that, no matter how much she wanted an answer.
“Just let her cheat,” said Justin, eyeing Nat with clear pity.
“It’s not cheating!” said Nat. “User data is just a tool in my toolkit. A toolkit that I built, by the way.” She pulled a chair up next to Jo, who was already searching around BeTwo’s backend reports. “So come on, hit me with the magic stats.”
“It’s much less shady when you say it like that,” Jo muttered, typing as Justin hit the lights and cast her screen to the big monitor on the wall.
Nat grinned as reports and keywords filled the big screen. “Looks like the forecast calls for me to bring the thunder, weatherman.” She ignored Justin and Jo giving each other one of their telepathic twin looks, aware that this signal was almost certainly about her. “Now let’s build me the perfect profile.”
Chapter 5
Justin stretched his arms tall above his head as Jo clicked rapid-fire around the BeTwo reporting interface. Nat pulled up a blank profile on her laptop and projected it to their other big monitor.Just like any other user, she told herself, before squinting into the analytics spinning on the adjacent screen.
“OK, so the data shows that mentioning international travel gets high engagement rates among straight male users,” said Jo.
“Well, you kinda used to live in London, right?” offered Justin.
Nat flashed to the last time she’d been in that city — her undergrad study abroad program over ten years ago. Sara had stayed in Bloomington for a sports media work-study job, commentating for the women’s soccer team — just one of the five majors she’d sampled in college. But Nat had made fast friends with a jock-ish guy named Jake, and fast enemies with her London roommate, a model-gorgeous mean girl on a dance scholarship named Katie. By the time London had influenced them enough that Katie was insisting on being called Kate, and Nat was downing several cups of PG Tips a day, their dynamics had been set. Nat was in love with Jake, who was in love with Katie, who was in love with Jake’s attention.
The routine was that Nat and Jake would have hours-long chats in the pub, and swap homemade mix CDs before class, and marathon Monty Python DVDs together in her dorm, but Nat would all but vanish as soon as Katie swept into their tiny room.
Then Jake would jump up from where he almost always sat, on Nat’s bed, and stutter and brush off his time with her like Cheetos dust from his fingers. Katie would inform Jake of what party they would be going to that night as she touched up her makeup, and Jake would turn back to Nat, suddenly sheepishwhen they’d been cracking each other up just moments before, and ask, “Uh, Nat, do you want to come with us?”
And Nat would reach for a book, pull on the drugstore reading glasses that she thought made her look sophisticated, and shake her head no. Katie would roll her eyes and scoff, and Jake would shuffle out behind her, floating away from Nat on a wave of Katie’s fruity body spray and flat-ironed hair, while somewhere deep inside Nat’s heart she believed that one night Jake would come back and choose to spend the evening with her, instead. Night after night, she clung to the hope that maybe a twenty-something guy on a semester abroad would see the romance of staying in and doing the crossword with her. After all, she thought it was pretty ideal.
He never did.
“We’re not putting London in my profile,” said Nat. She pulled her hair into a time-for-business ponytail and began typing.
MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT ME: I’m a total travel junkie, always down to visit a new continent. Wanderlust is my middle name!
Jo sighed loudly. “That keyword only works if you misspell it.”
Nat blinked at her in confusion.
