“I need to get out of here,” I said. “I can’t stay in this house with him staring at me like I’m still sixteen and about to let him feel me up in the back of his mom’s minivan.”
“Did you?” Cassie asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“So yes.”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT.”
More matches flooding in. 536. 547. 558. The phone was warm now—actually warm, like it was running a fever, like it was working overtime.
And then, another knock at the door. Not Jimmy’s cheerful rat-a-tat-tat. Something heavier. More confused.
“Diane?” A different voice. Older. Vaguely familiar in a way that made my stomach drop. “Diane Martinez? I got this message and I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening. Where am I?”
I looked at Cassie. She looked at me.
“Who else did you date in high school?” she whispered.
“Just Jimmy. But the app isn’t just pulling people I actually dated?—”
Another knock. Then another. Then what sounded like a small crowd gathering on my porch.
I looked through the peephole.
Standing next to my eighteen-year-old prom date was a man in a leather jacket with slicked-back hair, a cigarette tucked behind his ear, looking like he’d just stepped off the set of Grease. Next to him, a guy in a neon pink mesh crop top and short shorts was doing something complicated with a Rubik’s cube. And behind them both, I recognized Greg from my app—the one with the disco bio—standing in his leisure suit with trulyspectacular sideburns, holding a rotary phone that appeared to be attached to nothing, looking around my neighborhood like he’d just landed on Mars.
The app wasn’t just pulling from my past. It was pulling from every romantic what-if the universe had ever generated—including decades before I was born.
The greaser was examining Jimmy’s polo shirt with deep suspicion. “What kind of square threads are these, daddy-o?”
“It’s Abercrombie,” Jimmy said defensively. “It’s cool.”
“It ain’t got no collar pop. No style.”
The neon guy looked up from his Rubik’s cube. “You guys are so totally freaking me out right now. Is this like a costume party? Are we on MTV?”
“What’s MTV?” the greaser asked.
“What’s… what’s MTV.” The neon guy stared at him. “Dude. Music Television? Videos? Madonna?”
“Who’s Madonna?”
“Far out,” Greg said dreamily, examining my garden gnome. “This little cat is giving me major vibes. Very spiritual.”
“That’s a gnome,” Jimmy said.
“A what now?”
“A gnome. It’s like… a garden decoration.”
“Wild, man. Wild.”
I backed away from the peephole.
“I need to leave,” I said. “Right now. I need to go somewhere with no men, no phones, no?—”
My phone buzzed. 573. A notification popped up:Your cosmic destiny awaits! Don’t keep Greg waiting!
