Page 15 of Swiped
“You know that’s not how this works,” said Jo, looking at Nat with a curious gaze. Nat had a sudden memory of a happy hour where she’d had one too many gin and tonics and told Jo about her nightly searches for her perfect date. Jo had looked at her then much as she was looking at her now, with a kind of ferocious pity.
“It’s fine,” Jo said, blinking her focus back to her screen. “I’ll just crop some from your socials later when I do your posts for you.”
“Have I told you today that you’re the best?” Nat gave her a grateful smile and stood.
“Yeah, yeah.” Jo shrugged in a satisfied little gesture and reapplied her lip gloss.
“Then I think that’s it. We did it!” Nat gestured dramatically at her laptop as if coaxing out a spell from its LED glow. “And upload!”
But before she could hit the button, both twins cried out, “Wait!” Jo put her head in her hands as Justin cringed. They hated it when they accidentally spoke in unison.
“You need a headline, boss,” Justin said, gently. “Remember? We added it last month to increase skim-ability?”
Nat froze in embarrassment. Of course, she remembered. The all-nighters to implement that functionality hadn’t been that long ago. But why hadn’t she remembered just now? “Totally, totally,” she covered, hunching over to type.
NATALIE, F, 35 — Let me know if you want to meet up! Yay!
Now Nat clicked the button. “And upload!”
“Yay!” parroted Justin.
“Yay,” echoed Jo, getting up to switch the lights back on.
Justin cracked open a sparkling water. “Did you guys ever readFrankenstein?” he asked. “I just started it again. That book is so cool.”
Jo lit up, relieved at the new topic. “Um, yes, remember I was stage manager for our high school production of the play?”
“Wait, that’s amazing!” cried Nat, also grateful for something new to think about. “Because I was stage manager for my high school production ofYoung Frankenstein.”
“So that’s like the prequel, right?” said Justin with true innocence.
And as both women turned to him, eager down to their very bones to explain the difference, they were all silenced by the telltale sound of a digitalping!from Nat’s computer.
“Oh my God.” A tingling wave of adrenaline ran through Nat’s body. “My first message!”
Justin put his arm around Jo. “Our baby is all grown up.”
Jo beamed, ever ready to see the fruits of her labor. “Well, come on. Read it!”
Nerves fluttered in Nat’s chest as she clicked open the little bouncing envelope icon and started to read. “Hey gorgeous, any chance you’re downtown for a happy hour?”
“That’s his shot?” Justin rolled his eyes. “Snooze.”
“Give the people what they are mathematically proven to want,” said Jo, also rolling her eyes.
“Totally. Text me!” Nat said the words aloud as she typed them along with her phone number and hit send. She snapped her laptop shut. “Done and done.”
Justin hesitated. “Uh, shouldn’t we, like, look at this guy’s profile first?”
Jo tapped away at her keyboard. “On it. Sixty-one percent match. He seems normal, no obvious signs of criminal intent or Jordan Peterson quotes.”
Nat leaned against the window with a satisfied smile. “It’s fine. It’s just a date!” She watched some seagulls rip hunks off a sourdough loaf. “And I built this app, remember?”
Chapter 6
The hours since Rami left Tech-Talk had not been easy ones. After signing the contracts, he’d walked away from the meeting, down the cascading sets of stairs through the conference center, out of the heavy glass doors, past the throngs of attendees milling about in the nearby park, and then out into the gray grid of downtown San Francisco — and he’d basically not stopped walking since. He’d always heard that it was possible to traverse the entire seven-mile-by-seven-mile city on foot in a day. Maybe today he would test the theory. Because if he stopped moving, he would maybe have a panic attack.
How had this happened?Whither, Weather was pretty much a solo operation, plus the support of a few contractors scattered throughout the US and Europe. So, maintaining it took up a lot of his time, and it wasn’t like the weather ever took a break. Being invited to the Tech-Talk panel had been huge for him, so huge, in fact, that he had put aside his many, many reservations and fears just to give his work the chance to be seen by the kinds of people who could make a difference in his career. Now, he would say that his worst fears had come true, but he hadn’t been nearly creative enough to imagine the horrors that had emerged on that stage.
