Page 77 of Swiped
Allison blushed with a small snort of breath. “OK, geez . . .”
“I, on the other hand, have acted like an absolutely selfish piece of trash toward you, and it has to stop.” He watched her face go blank and then recoil, watched her eyes widen at him, and then narrow down to her hands.
“Yeah, that’s true.” Her voice was soft, and her chest heaved with fast breaths. “I know you’re worried about this internet contest thing, but it’s been feeling a little bit . . . wrong.” She met his gaze with a more confident tone. “I mean, wrong between us.”
He rushed to agree. “You’re totally right and I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve never put you through this and we can just call it all off. It’s not your problem to solve.”
Allison sighed and chewed her rosy lip. He had been expecting her to cry. It didn’t look at all like she was about to cry. In fact, her face looked brighter. “So, you’ll show up to this thing with Nat all alone?”
The full weight of that reality swirled around him with a wave of dizziness. He shrugged it off. “Yes. I tried and I failed, fair and square.” Freed from its facade of being Allison’s happy boyfriend, his brain hit him with a new revelation. “This whole thing has been about me railing against how the apps make us treat each other as products, like dolls just to fill a need . . . and it really seems like that is how I have been treating you.”
She gave a rueful laugh and looked at him. “You don’t even really like me, do you?”
“I do! Allison, I do!” He knew this was only half of the truth. “But also . . . maybe not in the way that I thought.”
She nodded. “I know. We don’t have anything in common, really, and you talk about your work all the time and sometimes I can barely stay awake.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “And I said I wanted to hear aboutStargatebecause I thought it was about astrology, and it wasnot.”
Rami laughed in spite of himself. “A fatal mistake.”
“In that moment? I kinda wanted it to be!”
Rami let the quiet settle around them. He couldn’t dare bring up the contest. How could he ask anything more of her?
Allison cleared her throat with a pointedahem. “You need someone more like Nat, don’t you think?”
Her words hit Rami like bitter medicine. “Is it that obvious?”
She rolled her eyes with a nod. “I mean, I tried to ignore it but I saw the way you looked at each other in the check-in interview. And she really likes to talk about tech stuff.” She wrinkled her freckled nose. “Like, even as much as you.”
“That she does.” Rami sighed. “She also found an actual boyfriend during this whole ridiculous charade, and I’m pretty sure that I’m never going to see her again after today.”
“Well, that’s too bad.”
They sat side-by-side in silence for a beat. Allison took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back with a sigh. “I just moved here, you know? I don’t know anyone else, really.”
“Did I take advantage of that?”
She shrugged. “Probably? But so did I.” She twisted a strand of her red curls. “You seem like a nice guy, but also I think I just wanted some attention.”
Rami nodded with ahmm. On principle, he refused to be triggered by being called a “nice guy,” but he also knew that Allison meant it sincerely. “So, maybe we both kinda used each other a little bit.”
“I think we did, yeah.” She punched him lightly on the thigh. “It was still fun, though.”
“It was, Allison. I’m glad I met you.”
“Yeah, me too.” She held out her palm. “Friends?”
He shook her hand. “Friends.” He was about to ask her to celebrate their new understanding over a nice, spicy curry —a joke— when his eyes caught the time on his watch and broke the moment. Specifically, he broke a sweat. He raised his wrist to his face in the vain hope that he was simply misreading it. They were scheduled to be downtown in twenty minutes.
Allison grabbed his wrist. “Oh geez! We’re gonna be late!” She bounded up and rushed to her dresser, grabbing makeup products like a mad scientist.
“We?” he echoed. “You’re still coming?”
Allison scurried into the bathroom with fistfuls of colorful plastic tubes. “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to go viral again!”
Too many questions jockeyed for the front of his mind, but as always, sheer morbid curiosity won out. “Again?”
“You really didn’t even google me, huh? That’s so weird.” She popped her face out of the doorway, newly glamorous in black lashes and red lips. “I posted this video of me tasting a pickletini at the sorority house one night and it got picked up by all the morning shows. I got sent so much free stuff, it was bonkers.”
