Chapter one
George
I’ve been staring at this spreadsheet for twenty minutes, and I still haven’t absorbed a single cell. The cursor blinks at me like it has all day. Patient, insistent, maybe even a little smug.
There are 412 data points here, each one representing a successful match I facilitated. Four hundred and twelve people I’ve helped find a functional, sustainable partnership, complete with thank-you notes, holiday cards, and the occasional wedding announcement.
And yet I can’t manage to find a girlfriend for myself before my sister’s wedding.
I’m well aware of the irony.
ERS exists for exactly this kind of problem. Billionaires who need a plus-one for glitzy galas. Influencers suddenly desperate to look settled before a career-changing deal. CEOs who treat dating apps like hostile terrain. We solve relationship problems for people whose schedules don’t allow for normal dating.
I solve these problems. Daily. And, I dare say, I’m pretty good at it.
I sip my coffee. It’s cold, of course, with a faint burnt taste. Heating it up would require standing, walking to the break room, and pretending I’m capable of basic life management right now.
Instead, I open the email my mother forwarded last night. It's Eleanor’s engagement announcement.
It’s already mutated into a digital monster with attachments, sub-threads, and ambitious little planning offshoots multiplying by the hour.
Appointments spread across the screen in cheerful fonts, reproducing like fungus in a damp basement.
My mother’s voice echoes in my head like a never-ending notification: “George, you really should know someone by now.”
I’m still staring at the spreadsheet when the soft sound of my office door announces someone in the hallway. I register the sound automatically but don’t look up. The door opens and closes dozens of times a day with assistants ferrying files, analysts checking projections, Noah wandering in to ask questions he already knows the answer to.
Statistically speaking, it’s probably not urgent.
A moment later I glance up anyway.
Tessa Bloom stands in the doorway of my office, one hand still resting lightly on the frame like she’s just stopped mid-stride and might change directions at any second.
Most mornings, she pokes her head in, delivers a quick greeting, and occasionally drops off a file she wants me to look at.
But every time she comes in, something in me straightens to attention before I can stop it. It is deeply inconvenient.
“Morning,” she says.
Her tone is easy and familiar, warm without being overly bright, the voice of someone who has stopped treating my officelike hostile territory and started treating it like a normal stop in her day.
Tessa crosses to the file cabinet where I keep the overflow files from ongoing cases. She opens the top drawer and begins flipping through the folders she dropped off yesterday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the spreadsheet on my screen remains stubbornly unchanged, every neat row waiting for me to behave like a competent adult.
I reread the same line for what must be the fourth time, tracking the numbers with my eyes and absorbing absolutely none of them.
It is unlikely the cells have reorganized themselves during Tessa’s visit, but I look them over just in case. They have not.
I glance at Tessa again.
She’s already walking out the door, scanning the contents of a file.
I return my attention to the spreadsheet and attempt, once again, to absorb the data.
The cursor blinks at the bottom of the screen. Patient. Insistent. Still faintly smug, if I’m being honest.
Apparently for me to catch up.
