“Yep. They say it’s the best app for cynics.The anti-Tinder app.”
She giggles and pulls out her own phone. “I’m totally downloading it. How does it work?”
“You set up a profile with very little information. Nothing about your job or education or if you like long walks on beaches or anal sex. Your profile picture is blurred out and the entire thing is really based off your mutual hate of the same things.”
“Your profile picture is blurred out?”
“Yeah, basically they believe that bonding over common dislikes can be better than judging solely on how people look. Supposedly you won’t be able toseeyour potential match’s profile picture until you’re hit some mathematical percentage and algorithm. You just keep swiping at all the stuff you hate and then you chat with someone and eventually hope they aren’t cult leaders looking for their next sacrifice.”
“What if you end up matching with a woman?”
“You could set the parameters beforehand, or you could use it for gender-fluid matches. I set it to only men, between thirty to forty years old, within a ten-mile radius from Manhattan. So, it’s really no wonder why my phone keeps blowing up with notifications. Half the men on this island are misanthropes.”
“It sounds entertaining.”
“Yeah, like a plot for a sitcom. But, honestly, after that humiliating confrontation with Dex today, I went home and swiped at hundreds of things I hated.” I laugh darkly, “It was kind of therapeutic. I seem to hate a lot of things.”
Julia is silent for a few minutes while I start shifting through Gail’s papers again. From the corner of my eye I see her swiping right and left at her screen. “Oh my God. This is hysterical.”
I pick up the last pile of Gail’s papers and find what I’m searching for at the very bottom. “I found it,” I blurt, bolting out of the chair. I lay the page flat on the desk and take a picture of it with my phone’s camera, then flip it over to make sure there’s nothing on the other side.
“What’s it say?” Julia asks.
“It’s just a bulleted list,” I say, and begin reading each thing. “Single Party Cruise. Totally Rad Eighties Mixer. Tinder App. Single Prom Murder Mystery. Escape Room Singles. Date-in-a-Dash. Singles Retreat. Swinger Mixer. Blind Date. Misanthrope App. Rooftop Romance Single’s Mixer. Masquerade Singles Mixer. Singles Wine Mixer. Singles with Fetishes Mixer. Singles Dinner Party. Oh, my God.” I can barely breathe. I can’t go to all these things with Dex and watch him get on with his stupid life. “Fuck my life. They aren’t even in any order! How am I supposed to figure out what’s next?” How am I going to get over him when Gail is forcing me to see him and watch him date people? I’m so angry I want to scream. I have to stop this nonsense. She could fire me for all I care and…I’ll just threaten her with going freelance for Metro.
“Ooh, look at this,” Julia’s phone is out of her hands and now she’s holding a giant box of fancy chocolates. “Do you know what this is? It’sLa Maison du Chocolat. It’s luxury chocolate, they have boutiques all over the city. This stuff is expensive. Their assorted boxes sell for two hundred dollars each!”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, taking the piece closest to me and popping it in my mouth. Jesus, it’s sublime. “I’m eating this entire box then. I can’t believe she’s putting me through all of this with Dex.” I stuff another chocolate in my mouth and moan. “Seriously, help me eat these, they’re like mini orgasms in your mouth.”
Julia’s eyes perk up and she plucks out a chocolate from the box. She has the same orgasmic reaction I did.
We sit down and polish off the entire one hundred-sixty-nine-piece box between the both of us.
“Do you even understand the amount of cardio I’m going to have to do in the next week to work that off?” she asks, rubbing her flat abdomen.
“Come on,” I say, standing up slowly. My stomach feels way too full. “Let’s get out of here. I got what I came for.”
Julia holds up the box. “What should I do with this?”
I take it from her hands and toss it on the middle of Gail’s desk with the lid open. “Let her find it just like that.”
“But what if she finds out—”
“I don’t care, I’m sick of her bullshit. What she’s doing to me isn’t fair, and it’s definitely something I could take to HR.”
“Will you, though?”
“I don’t know,” I say, walking out of her office and back down the hallway toward the stairwell. “Why is she doing this to us?”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe she’s trying to throw you guys into situations that’ll get you back together?”
I push through the door and jog down the steps. “I’m trying to face the fact that the only way Dex and I will ever get back together is if we can somehow erase everything that happened and start from the beginning again.”
Julia’s shoes tap down each step noisily. I didn’t even notice before now, but she’s wearing high heels. Why would anyone wear heels to sneak into their office in the middle of the night?
“But, you and Dex hated each other from the very beginning. The only reason you guys even got together was because of my dinner party.” A strange quizzical look falls over her features, “So, it’s really thanks to me.” Then she smirks, like she’s thought of some gift I could bestow upon her for her matchmaking abilities.
The only reason we got together was our mutual heartache we had to deal with at her dinner party, so we called a truce and somehow fell in love. “Yeah, so like I figured, it’s never going to happen. I have to face it, but facing it while he’s single-mingling in front of me is too much for me to handle.”
