Mom
Piper? Sweetie, are you there? Meredith’s birthday is TODAY
I grit my teeth and type.
Happy birthday, Meredith. Have a great day.
The response is immediate.
Meredith
Omg thank you so much babe!! Can’t wait to finally meet you! Jackson talks about you all the time!
“She seems nice,” Riya observes, reading over my shoulder.
“They always seem nice. That’s the point. Marina seemed nice too. And Madison. And the one before that who lasted long enough to come to Easter brunch.” I close the family chat. “Six months from now, Mom will be deleting Meredith from the group and adding whoever Jackson’s moved on to. Probably another blonde who thinks his high school football stories are the height of entertainment. They’re nice lovely girlsunluckyenough to have met my brother. I don’t blame them; I blame him.”
“You really hate football players.”
“I hate what they represent. Jackson spent four years making my life hell with his teammates. They’d mock me for reading at lunch, call me ‘Robot Renner’. And now he acts like we’re best friends, like he didn’t spend my entire adolescence making me feel like a freak.”
“Hey.” Riya’s voice goes soft. “You’re my freak. And for what it’s worth, everyone I know who’s actually cool got shit in high school. It’s like a prerequisite for being interesting.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Is it working?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Maybe a little.”
“Good. Because Jackson and his meathead friends peaked at eighteen, and you’re out here building something that could change how people find love. I know which one I’d rather be.”
She reaches over and squeezes my shoulder before going back to scrolling on her phone, giving me space to process.That’s the thing about Riya—she knows exactly when to push and when to let me be.
I stare at the prompt that’s been mocking me for an hour—‘Tell your match a fun fact about yourself.’
For the fifth time today, Ethan’s voice invades my brain with its stupid optimism.Give them something unexpected. Like she’s allergic to strawberries. Little quirks make people care.
Which is ridiculous because Ethan’s probably just another Jackson. Star athlete, center of attention, collecting girls like Pokémon cards. Sure, he seems a bit different because he knows movies and is good at storytelling, but Jackson probably seemed different to all those Madisons and Merediths too.
I delete the prompt. Retype it. Delete it again.
This app needs to be logical. Clean. Algorithmic. Not... whimsical. Not full of unnecessary details that serve no matchmaking purpose. The algorithm doesn’t care if someone’s allergic to strawberries—that’s not a compatibility metric.
But his voice keeps echoing—People need something to connect to. Something human.
I reword it again… ‘Tell me a quirk about you.’
“You’re glaring at that screen like it’s your sworn enemy,” Riya observes.
“It may very well be. I just want to get this right. I don’t want to do this just for me. I want to do this for every girl who’s been fucked over by her heart. Who trusted it and then was crushed.”
Riya’s face drops to something sympathetic. “Is this about Mi?—”
“No,” I butt in, “This is abouteverygirl. No more Merediths getting their hearts broken when Jackson gets bored. No more getting distracted by abs or hair or whatever else our bodies are evolved to find attractive.”
“Why are you stuck on that prompt then? Everything else has come pretty easily to you?”
“Ethan.”
