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The elevator door slid open. He stood there waiting for me in the hallway on the other side, looking fifty shades of perfect. Gray, low-hanging sweatpants and a white muscle shirt hung loose over his V-taper frame and broad shoulders. And when his mouth broke into a smile, I knew it wasn’t the only thing that was going to break.
He was the sunset, burning bright on the cusp of something dark and forbidden. If he were a song, I thought wistfully, he’d be a ballad. Sweet and forlorn and full of hidden meanings. “Wildest Dreams,” maybe.
I’d trained myself not to dream for so long, not to dare hope for something better, that Rhyland posed a threat to my very existence. He reminded me there might be something more to this life. And hope was like crack. Risky but addictive.
“Hey,” he said breathlessly.
“Hi.” I tucked a tendril of hair behind my ear, scurrying out of the elevator and into the apartment.
He closed the door behind us. “Wanna see?” He raised his phone up in his palm.
“Um, can I pee first?”
He rolled his eyes, downplaying his excitement. “I mean, if you must.”
I went to the bathroom thinking he looked too thrilled to have me, an objectively ill-informed person when it came to mobile apps, view his work.
Had Row, Tate, and Kieran given him the time of the day—taken his idea seriously? I doubted it. Rhyland was always celebrated by his friends for being silver-tongued and handsome, but people naturally assumed all he had to offer was his charm. He wasn’t outwardly talented at anything, like Row was with food, Kieran with soccer, and Tate with pissing people off.
After I washed my hands, I snuck in to check on Grav. She was sound asleep. I joined Rhyland at the breakfast nook, sliding onto the stool next to him. The mock-up app was already splayed on the screen of an iPad he must’ve brought with him.
“I thought I was going to see this on your phone.” I grabbed the iPad from him.
“This’ll give you the full experience. I made some tweaks to it after little stinker’s bedtime story.”
“What did you read?”
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar, for the fourth time.” Pause. “In a row.” Pause. “That caterpillar has untreated binge-eating issues. The book is romanticizing eating disorders. Parents should make more of a stink about it.”
He was blabbering because he was nervous about the app. Which, at first glance, looked sleek as hell.
“Dude, are you, like, hardworking and shit?” I tilted my head, grinning.
He puffed up, his face twisting in abhorrence. “Please. I did this with Paint while dropping a deuce.”
He’d brought his iPad so he could work here after Gravity went to bed. I didn’t know why, but it made my heart squeeze. I scrolled through App-date. It looked like if X’s elegance and Instagram’s aesthetic had a baby, yet it was completely its own unique brand.
The logo was the app name in lowercase letters, along with an engagement ring, the diamond exploding into tiny, torn Polaroid pictures of loved-up couples. The slogan was “Your ex’s pain is our gain.”
“You went a little overboard with that slogan.” I cleared my throat.
“The world runs on feelings, Cosmos. Every good marketing executive knows that in order to tap into people’s emotions, you have to make them feel shitty about themselves first.”
“You’re literally so toxic I’m afraid to breathe in your direction,” I muttered.
“Shh.” He elbowed me. “Concentrate on the experience.”
The background was probably one of the coolest features of the app. You had to choose where you were from, and the background immediately turned to a backdrop of your location, be it the New York skyline, the London Eye, or an open cornfield. The search engine was surprisingly specific. Location, age, gender, occupation, income, and exact goals. The app focused on people finding dates they could flaunt or play pretend with, not actually on finding love. But there were also broader searches for people who wanted to travel with like-minded individuals, befriend people with certain traits they missed in their exes, et cetera.
“It’s different from Tinder and Bumble,” Rhyland explained, licking his lips. “The goal here isn’t to find a hookup or a partner. It’s to have a strictly professional, quid pro quo relationship withsomeone willing to help you pretend like you’ve moved on. Or—and this is even more interesting—to find someone with the same traits as you to do something you already planned to do with your ex before you broke up. Like go on a hiking trip, backpack, and so on.”
“Are there really that many people out there who want to pretend to have someone?” I turned to him, mesmerized.
He motioned with his hand between us. Fair point.
“Plus,” he mused. “It’s not just for fake dates and partners. It’s a fill-in app. A place where you find a replacement to fill the gaping hole the person you broke up with left behind.”
You could find anything on the app. A one-off date for an event. An entire fake relationship. A friendship between two heartbroken people. This app basically promised to be your best friend after a breakup. Which was ironic since Rhyland, its creator, had never had a girlfriend.