“The arm test is a better gauge of long-term compatibility,” Rae said. “Chemistry can grow over time, but there needs to be a certain baseline of attraction. And the arm test tells you that.”
Even the date Rae had half hooked up with hadn’t passed the arm test. She’d just been trying to feelsomethingother than nerves or numbness.
“The arm test,” Ellen said. “Interesting theory.”
“Ready to delete our apps?” Rae asked.
She’d pitched Ellen on the benefits of a dating detox heading into the holidays. They’d take a couple weeks off to let the learnings sink in, revise their forward strategy and focus on becoming their best independent selves, then enter the new year refreshed and ready to go. The data showed that taking breaks led to better leadership decisions, so Rae figured it should lead to better love decisions too.
Ellen had been showing signs of cold feet, as she’d always had at least one dating app active since her sophomore year of college, but she grimaced bravely.
Maneuvering through the living room’s bra obstacle course (Ellen’s were harder to bypass than Rae’s), Rae stood beside her best friend in physical and symbolic solidarity. “Three,” she counted down.
“Two,” Ellen said, reaching for Rae’s fork to snitch an inspirational mouthful of ice cream.
“One.”
“Delete!” they said together, jabbing at theDeleteandConfirmandYes, I’m surebuttons.
“Let the dating detox begin,” Rae said.
They looked at each other, momentarily at a loss as to how to spend their Saturday night without an endless pipeline of potential soul mates to swipe.
“We could still play Snack & Sort,” Ellen said, gesturing to the piles and piles of clothes.
“All right,” Rae said, setting the ice cream down among the laundry wreckage. “Might as well.”
CHAPTER FIVE
REGULATORY LOOPHOLES
“I feel free without the dating app,” Ellen said the following Friday night as she and Rae dumped the contents of their refrigerator into the skillet for what they called a “catch-all scramblette”—tonight it was onion, salami, and sweet potatoes. “Like I can actually be present and hear the universe rather than staring at my phone all day, swiping for a needle in a shitstack.”
“I know,” Rae agreed, though she was starting to miss the swiping. The first few days of the detox had been reasonably successful. She’d gone to the gym two nights in a row, read the first three chapters of a novel her mom had given her last Christmas, and searched the internet for new jobs. Without thousands of romantic options at her fingertips, there was a certain comfort in scrolling through thousands of employment options.
But evaluating jobs wasn’t the same as evaluating dates, and Rae hadn’t realized how much she’d looked forward to swiping prospects from bathroom stalls, cafeteria lines, and subway trains to break up the long days. She missed trying to correlate photos with personality traits, and she missed the ego boost when guys liked her profile, validating high demand for her.
Dating-app withdrawal, she supposed it would be called. If she hadn’t had Ellen staying strong by her side, she would have caved by now and redownloaded the app.
“And the risk of getting hit by another car has declined dramatically,” Ellen went on. “Now that I don’t have my head buried in my phone when I walk.”
“Yes,” Rae said, trying to catch Ellen’s good mood as she gave the scramblette a half stir, half flip. “I told you a hiatus was a good idea.”
“You’re never going to believe what just happened,” Ellen said the next morning, bouncing into the penthouse, yoga mat in one hand and green juice in the other.
Rae was horizontal on the couch, slurping caffeinated cereal. She’d been planning on joining Ellen for hot yoga as part of their detox agenda but hadn’t gotten to bed until twoA.M.after dealing with a late-night “fire drill” at work that involved the life-or-death matter of changing the colors of all the bar charts in a PowerPoint presentation from light gray to dark gray, as the lighter pallet apparently looked “too soft” and would surely be the make-it-or-break-it reason a client chose to do business with them or not.
She had a vague recollection of hissing at Ellen when she’d come in her room this morning. Eventually, she had managed to rouse herself and even made it as far as the kitchenette to scavenge day-old coffee and month-old Cheerios. As she’d been reaching for a mug and bowl, she’d decided it was more efficient just to combine the efforts and add the cereal directly to the coffee. Fewer dishes to wash—or more accurately, fewer dishes to sit in the sink all week. She’d tinkered to get the optimal coffee/cereal ratio and had been feeling rather accomplished until Ellen came in, glowing with post-workout sweat. Ellen was one of the few people for whom the verbglowwas appropriate when describing sweat.
“Did the yoga studio find out you’re not a student anymore?” Rae guessed. They’d given their expired college emails to receive the student discount and were waiting to be discovered.
“No,” Ellen said, wedging her rolled-up mat into the closet and giving the door a few kicks until it stayed shut. “I just met the perfect guy. We were making eye contact all through tree pose, and we talked after class and he asked me out to Per Se tonight. Can you believe it? Apparently he knows the owner.”
Per Se was a three-Michelin-star restaurant overlooking Central Park that booked up months in advance. It had been high on their aspirational list for years.
Rae clunked down her mug on the coasterless coffee table. “But we’re on a dating detox,” she said. “Remember?”
“We’re on a datingappdetox,” Ellen said. “Not a complete dating detox.”
