But she’d frozen, staring at the screen. Her thumb must have swiped across it when she caught it, because the display had switched from my cookie data to a different sheet in the same workbook. The wrong spreadsheet.
Oh no.
“Is this…” She scrolled slightly, her expression shifting from curious to horrified. “Is this a spreadsheet of women you’ve dated?”
“I can explain?—”
“You rated them?” Her voice rose. “Intelligence, appearance, conversation quality, ‘long-term potential’? What is this, Yelp for girlfriends?”
“It’s not— I was trying to identify patterns?—”
“Patterns?” She looked at me like I’d just kicked a puppy. “These are human beings, not data points. Did you tell them you were doing this?”
“Of course not?—”
“Of course not,” she repeated, her tone icy now. “Because you know it’s creepy.”
“It’s not creepy, it’s methodical?—”
“It’s reducing complex human beings to a handful of arbitrary metrics.” She thrust the phone back at me. “And for someone who supposedly needs my help, you sure seem confident you can quantify everything that matters.”
“That’s not— Look, I’m just trying to optimize?—”
“Optimize.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You can’t optimize human connection, Nicholas. That’s the whole point of it being human.”
“But you algorithm’d your cookies,” I said.
“Cookies are chemistry. Dating is not.” She grabbed another snowball cookie from the table, clearly stress-eating now. “This is exactly what’s wrong with tech bros and data analytics. You think everything can be reduced to a formula.”
“I never said?—”
“Your spreadsheet said it for you.” She dusted powdered sugar off her hands. “And you know what? I bet that’s exactly why your holiday predictions are failing. You’re probably optimizing for all the wrong things, measuring what’s easy instead of what matters.”
That hit uncomfortably close to home.
“So you won’t help me?” I asked.
She paused, studying me again with those too-smart eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t?”
“Your methodology is clearly flawed. And you’re obviously brilliant enough to build a successful company and just stubborn enough to not see your own blind spots.” She took another bite of cookie, thinking. “It would be professionally interesting to diagnose where your models are breaking down.”
Hope flickered in my chest. “So that’s a yes?”
“That’s an ‘I’ll think about it.’” She pulled out her own phone. “Give me your number. I’ll let you know.”
I rattled it off, watching her type it in. No spreadsheet visible on her screen, I noted. Just a clean contact entry labeledNicholas—Cookie Stalker.
“Cookie stalker?”
“If the spreadsheet fits.” But she was smiling slightly. “I’ve got to get back to my roommates. Thanks for the entertainment.”
“Wait—” I caught her arm gently. “For what it’s worth, you’re not in the spreadsheet.”
“Obviously. We just met.”
“No, I mean…” I searched for the right words. “You wouldn’t be. You don’t fit any of my criteria.”
