Page 40 of Swiped
“You don’t?”
She sat up straight and shook her head, her earrings jangling like tiny church bells. “No way. Not for years.” She took a sip of ice water from her metal cup. “I limit myself to consuming one hundred words a day or else it can really lower my vibration.”
“One hundred?” he echoed. The sinking feeling grew heavier. “But that’s like one email.”
“Oh, not even! Pixels count in triplicate.” Gemma delicately slurped up a noodle. “Really, it’s like a recipe, a letter from my pen pal in Gothenburg, my bank accounts statements — yuck,” she paused to roll her eyes. “Then maybe a poem if I have room.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yep!” She twirled some noodles onto her chopsticks with a proud smile. “The universe has a way of guiding any information I need into my reality. Like what are rules made on some hill, even?”
“Capitol Hill?” Rami let a limp piece of arugula fall from his fork. “I’m pretty sure those are laws, but it’s whatever.”
“Right? Who cares! It’s just like voting. None of it is real. Why bother?” She smiled, unaware of the dramatic increase in blood pressure she was causing Rami with her mellow statements. “I’m just about the reality I can touch.” She moved her hand higher up his thigh for emphasis. “Here and now.”
Rami swallowed hard. “Definitely.” His mind raced. He really, really wanted this to work. It would be so easy and simple and beautiful if this could just work. But a dark part of his mind twinged. Even if it was just so he could win the contest.
Gemma leaned toward him and tucked one of his curls behind his ear in a tender, sensual gesture. “Now I wanna know more about you, Real-life Rami. What is it that you do for work, again?”
“Nothing!” Rami blurted. “I mean, nothing really. More of a side gig.”
“Cool, like gigs on those awful apps?” Her lips puckered in a sassy smile. “Maybe you brought me my UberEats one time and I’ve had a crush on you ever since . . .”
Rami laughed nervously. His conscience was not mixing well with the green goddess salad dressing or Gemma’s wide-eyed sincerity. “No, but funny you mention that because I actually built and run a successful app.”
Now it seemed like Gemma finally knew what ISIS was. Her face clouded over in an instant, hazel eyes hardened. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head, setting down his fork.
She scoffed. “So, I’m on a date with a coder right now?”
“Well, I’m an entrepreneur and that’s pretty uncommon,” he offered in a higher-pitched voice than he’d intended. He cleared his throat and continued. “And yes, it is a digital product, but it’s about the weather!” He thought of Ian and took a wild leap. “The forces of the Mother Earth Goddess?”
“That’s so much worse!” Gemma’s eyes seared into him with outrage. “You take the natural world and you butcher it into an information stream. Can you ‘like’ sunny days, or something?”
“Liking is just one part of the functionality,” he said meekly. “But really, I can explain—”
She held up her hand. “I’m gonna stop you there. My truth is that I feel like I cannot take on the emotional labor of your energy right now, or ever, and I just really need you to hear me when I say that.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond to, or even parse, her words. “I do hear you,” he said. “Because I’m right next to you . . . on an otherwise lovely date, right?”
Gemma took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She sat silently while Rami watched, thinking she would open her eyes and start speaking again any minute now. She didn’t, and it gave him more than enough time to notice, again, the adorable bump in her button nose, her smooth, round cheeks, and the pouty lips that had been kissing him just hours before. “Gemma,” he started.
“No.” She opened her eyes. “It’s just that you completely misrepresented who you are. Your whole life is fed by the digital umbilical cord.”
She pulled a glass food saver from her bag and dumped in her pad thai.
“You just had that in there this whole time? With the jars?” he marveled, and then remembered himself. “And no, my life is not like that! I mean, it is, but it’s not that big of a deal that I work in tech, right?”
She stood, and her pink braids swayed sadly. “It is to me.” She put her hands in a prayer position at her chest and sighed. “Enjoy your journey, Rami.”
As she walked away, Rami felt his phone buzz. It was Nat.
Nat:Date was great.
He scoffed as he watched her typing dots dance in their little gray bubble.
Nat:I could still meet up for a postmortem drink if you wanted tho. Gotta keep this guy wanting more.
