Page 51 of Swiped
With the pink Breton sweater Jo was wearing, the clashing stripes hit Nat’s senses like a primal warning of danger. Her frazzled emotions and drained adrenaline from the interview made every word rattle like kindling in the tinderbox of her mind.
Nat downed more iced coffee. “Oh, so you were saying that even though I’m a disaster, I still, somehow, managed to come off as better than him?”
Jo let her mouth fall open in shock. It might have been the only time Nat had seen her perfect composure crack in allthe years they’d worked together. “Seriously, are you OK?” she squeaked.
Nat set her glass down on her desk with a loudsmackand glared at Jo. “Do youseriouslycare?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “What’s going on? It feels like you just totally hate me now, actually it’s felt that way for weeks, and I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry, OK?”
Nat scoffed. Even through her haze of wounded pride, caffeine on an empty stomach, and exhaustion, she knew that she didn’t hate Jo, but she did hate that she knew Jo well enough that she could read her face. “Jo, you don’t need to apologize to me, and I don’t need you to be my friend. We’re just here to do a job.”
For example, Nat knew how the tiny, dark mole underneath her left eye disappeared when she scrunched up her eyes with a good laugh or a good cry. She saw a shiny glare fill Jo’s dark brown gaze and knew she wasn’t finding anything funny right now.
“I thought it was both?” Jo’s shoulders drooped underneath their pink stripes, making her whole posture look like a frown. “Yes, this is my job, but you’re also my friend.”
Nat couldn’t hold back a sharp laugh. She couldn’t hold anything back anymore. She felt like she was sitting in a movie theater watching another version of herself crash out, and all she could do was wince as the scene played. “Really? Well let me ask you a question, then. Do you look up to me? Would you want to be like me someday?”
“Of course I look up to you! You created one of the best apps in the market.” Jo gestured around to the silent office as if to support her claim.
Now it was Nat who crossed her arms. “Not my work,” she said. “Me. As a person.” Nat glared into Jo’s confused, searching look. “Tell me I’m not just some cautionary tale to you.”
Jo’s eyes darted around. “Like right now? You seem . . . not in a good place, but I know this is all really stressful for you, and as your friend, I want to help you through it.”
Nat shook her head. The thought of a heart-to-heart was a smoldering ruin, and she was still holding the match. Might as well burn it all down. “Well let me give you some friendly advice, then!” She pointed a finger at Jo’s quivering face. “If you don’t want to end up like me, don’t try to look for friendship at work. It’s pathetic.”
At that, the tears spilled from Jo’s eyes, and she covered her face as she hurried out of the office.
“Have a good weekend!” Nat called. She heard the front door close.
Nat took her coffee glass into the kitchenette and covered it in enough dish soap to clean fifty glasses. She let the soapy hot water scald and sting her hands as she scrubbed the glass over and over again.
Logically, she thought that all she had done was cut the strings of false friendship from someone who didn’t even really like her. She knew what she had overheard on the pocket dial, and since then, all she could see were confirmations of Jo’s patronizing fake camaraderie.
Emotionally, she felt like she was drifting farther and farther out into a dark sea, becoming some untouchable island. But maybe that was just how she was meant to be all along, alone and unreachable, for the good of everyone else who was back on the mainland.
* * *
The weekend passed in relative peace, and Nat could see that Jo’s assessment of the online discourse had been right. Downloads of BeTwo were through the roof, and the generalconsensus seemed to be that Rami was on a fool’s errand to try and meet anyone without a digital go-between.
Languishing in bed, Nat would scan her feeds with a mix of dread and excitement for mentions of her own name. The inevitable fringe takes aside, no one seemed to believe that Nat was a pathetic mess, or doomed to be rejected by the unsuspecting men who would fall prey to her embarrassing advances.
And yet, she kept refreshing her feeds to make sure. Because, even if she never found the indictment she dreaded so much that she could practically taste it in her darkest heart, her new, accurate profile also wasn’t generating any attention. The only invitation that had been extended her way all weekend had been to help Sara make Sunday dinner.
So, Nat sat slumped at the kitchen counter with one eye on her phone and one eye on Sara bouncing between simmering pots on the stove. Nat’s job had been to chop the vegetables, and they were all arranged in neat piles of nearly identical squares. It had felt good to focus on something other than the competition for a while. And now, she had wine. She took a sip and relaxed with the comforting spicy smell of her friend’s cooking.
“I’m sorry, but I have to just say it again,” said Sara. She turned around, her face blotched pink from the heat. “You killed it in that interview.” She waved a wooden spoon around for emphasis. “You were all, ‘my app is the shit and this guy here ain’t shit, so date me, bitches!’”
Nat forced a thin laugh. “Good, glad you liked it.” She took a sip of wine. Had she truly been mean to Rami in the interview? Was her callousness part of the whole reason why she seemed to push people away?
But then, there had been their last kiss, long and full of genuine want. It was true that a lot had happened since that moment, namely her storming out of his bedroom, but shecould still feel it on her lips. She still got butterflies when she remembered the shy way his tongue had darted into her mouth. How she had brushed her hands over his chest and felt the little alert bumps of his nipples. The way she had wanted to bite them once they’d been in his bed . . .
Anxiety seeped into her reverie — her brain’s bad habits were as inevitable as a shadow. She realized that it was also true that they had both been drinking all night before they’d fallen into his bed. So that meant the kisses weren’t exactly the most reliable gauge of his intentions. Maybe he’d regretted everything the moment he was sober.
Her phone pinged with a text.
It was Rami.
As a person who was old enough to remember the time before smartphones were a constant tether, her nerves would probably never get used to the idea that the lines of communication with someone were just constantly open and following you around. Gone were the days when you could step away from your computer and live in ignorance of anyone sending you messages. Now, every waking second could bring any number of soul-crushing horrors with just a digital chime of the relationship reaper’s bell. Of course, that was the cynical take — she supposed it was theoretically also true that any second could also bring a sweet and lovely message. But either way, how did anyone ever relax?
