Page 53 of Swiped
Nat raised her wine glass. “Say cheers!”
Sara shifted uncomfortably across the table.
Nat’s phone pinged. The screen flashed a new BeTwo message — her first since making her profile honest. It was a ninety-nine percent match. “Holy shit,” she said.
“A new match?” asked Sara, eager for a change in subject. “See, you still got it.”
Nat opened the app, saw the message in her inbox, and felt the blood drain from her face. “Yeah . . . a match,” she muttered as the man’s name swirled in her vision — Thom.
Someone named Thom was a ninety-nine percent match for her actual self.
Someone named Thom was a ninety-nine percent match for her entire wish list.
And the little green dot next to his name showed that he was online at that very moment.
Nat shoved back from the table with a screech of the chair legs. “Sorry, I’ve gotta . . .” She looked up, but Sara had alsograbbed her phone and was scrolling. Nat grabbed her wine glass. “Be right back,” she said and ran into her room.
Chapter 14
Nat tapped open the message from Thom with shaky hands. After reading it no less than seven times, she felt confident in saying that his message was original, witty, and sincere — and he’d asked if she wanted to meet up for a drink right off the bat.
She clicked on his profile.
He was English, an interior architect for a prestigious firm that had brought him to San Francisco, six foot three, looking for marriage, a non-smoker, tanned in a way that seemed healthy without seeming vain, a cat lover, religiously and politically aligned with Nat, strawberry blond, capable of referencing literature without getting it wrong or coming off as an elitist, lean with a long, swimmer’s body . . . the list went on, and so did Thom’s perfection.
But Nat didn’t really need to verify that Thom had all the qualities on the list — her algorithm had already done that for her.
Nat looked at Pixel with wide eyes. “Holy shit,” she said.
The cat blinked back at her and yawned.
The glowing green dot by Thom’s username shone at her like a shot of adrenaline to her heart. She took another swallow of her wine and perched on the bed. Obviously, it would be better to write him back now, while he was still online. That way, she was more likely to get a response back right away and not have to spend the night in a kind of sleepless torture, writing and rewriting messages in her mind.
She sat down and opened up a reply message. If he were online and watching his messages, then he would be seeing her typing bubbles. No going back now.
Nat:Hey Thom, nice to meet you! Sure a drink sometime would be good!
She hit SEND and immediately stood back up. She shrugged to her own reflection. Was that good? Was that bad? If this was her ninety-nine percent soulmate, could anything she say ever really be bad?
Her phone pinged with his reply.
Thom:Brilliant. How about Saturday?
She sat back down. Pixel gave her a dirty look and jumped off the bed. That was practically a week away, but she couldn’t exactly suggest an earlier meetup, right? She didn’t want to seem desperate.
She typed her reply.
Nat:Perfect!
Thom:So glad to hear it. I’ll send you some options tomorrow.
Sweet dreams
Thom’s green dot vanished beside his name, and she felt herself exhale as if every cell of her body had been holding its breath. She thumbed over to his profile pictures. If he was her perfect match, shouldn’t she be seeing sparkles in her vision or hearing angelic choirs in her head as she gazed at the image of him leaning against a bookshelf in a lavender hoodie? She scrolled through the picture of him wearing wayfarers and laughing into the sun in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. She paused on the picture of him in a soccer jersey — or “football” to him, she realized — his face flushed and his blond hairflattened into sweaty curls around his high cheekbones. He was undeniably hot, but she felt about as many sparkles as she did during a Google Image search.
The ninety-nine percent match number blinked and twirled inside its heart icon in the corner of her screen. She had allowed Justin to indulge himself on this animation because she knew that achieving this high of a match was very unlikely to happen, so if this was the one corner of BeTwo that sparkled and gyrated outside of her preferred clean aesthetic, it was also a corner very few people would ever see.
Except she was seeing it now. With Thom. And her actual self.
