Page 1 of Swiped

As the evening fog rolled over the city of San Francisco like a fuzzy cardigan, Natalie Lane had a choice to make.

“I’m telling you, Nat,” said her roommate, Sara, through the bedroom door. “This party won’t be weird!”

Nat instinctively shook her head. “So, you’re saying that this time I won’t get cornered by a tech bro telling me every possible detail about his creatine and microdosing regimen?”

“I had no control over that,” said Sara. “It’s like house spiders. You kinda have to assume there’s gonna be one of those guys at every party, but hopefully they stay hidden in the shadows by the craft beer.”

Nat let a smile warm her face as she watched the shadow of Sara’s shifting feet by the bottom of the door.

Making a link between creepy dudes and house spiders was exactly the kind of devastating but nonchalant insight that Sara was known to spout at any moment — just one of many reasons Nat loved her so dearly.

If it had been from anyone else, the party invitation would have been an immediate no.

Milling around a crowded house with a bunch of strangers, drinking cheap wine, and dodging hot takes was pretty much last on Nat’s list of enjoyable ways to spend an evening — she preferred her cheap wine with pajamas and sci-fi TV shows.

But Sara wasn’t just a roommate; she was Nat’s bestie since college, and if anyone could screen through the multiple factors needed to make Nat even consider a social outing, it was Sara.

She also knew exactly which buttons to push.

“Nat, do I need to remind you again of the reason for this little gathering?”

“No!” Nat dug around in her pillows for the oversized men’s XXL T-shirt she wore every single night.

The soft, cottony hug of her Lord of the Rings tee was a compelling argument for staying in.

She could practically hear her body calling out for the sweet embrace of Aragorn’s screen-printed face and her well-worn sweatpants.

“It’s a dog’s birthday party,” Sara reported anyway. “A mini Schnauzer named Dino is turning three years old and, yes, he is a very small and fluffy boy, and yes, he will be wearing a tiny cowboy hat.” She paused, readying her next weapon. “With sequins!”

Nat groaned and opened the door. Of course, Sara knew Nat’s weakness for tiny dogs, and of course, she knew how it went double for dogs in just-as-tiny clothing.

Sara pushed in with a shimmery swish of her mermaid print dress and clomp of her combat boots. “Got ya!” she said, plopping down on Nat’s bed. She tossed the cozy shirt aside, and Aragorn landed, handsome face down, on Nat’s floor. “So? What are you gonna wear?”

Nat gestured to what was already on her body — her de facto work uniform of leggings and an oversized button-down.

Her long hair was loose in her natural, if slightly frizzy, toffee-colored curls, and she may have put some mascara on that morning, but she couldn’t remember.

Being a coder, her job attire wasn’t exactly formal, but how much effort was one expected to put in for a dog’s birthday party, anyway?

“Nope,” said Sara. “You haven’t come out with me in weeks , so I think this calls for something a little more fun.” She pulled a sour face. “Also, the start-up dudes are drawn to athleisure like flies.”

“Fine, fine! But I haven’t even decided if I’m going yet.

” Nat started to shuffle through her small closet.

Half of the clothes inside were Sara’s overflow of items that were way too busty and curvy for Nat’s slim and straight build, but she didn’t mind sharing the space.

Her routine of waking up, commuting, coding, and coming back home didn’t really give her much of a need for a dazzling array of outfits.

“Why not?” asked Sara. “Dude, I get the introvert thing, I really do, but sometimes you have to mix it up a little bit, right? Let the universe surprise you?”

“Most surprises are bad.” Nat grimaced, once again repressing the memory of the time when the popular girls in third grade had “surprised” her with a square of chocolate cake they’d secretly covered in playground dirt.

“Plus, these are your friends,” she continued, willing her mind to stay in the present.

“And you’re bringing along a date, remember? So, I’ll be the third wheel.”

Sara shook her glossy blue-black curls. “Glad you mentioned it, lots of responses. One, this is my first time meeting this girl off the app, so it might go south before we even get off the train.”

Nat flinched.

Sara gave a sheepish laugh. “Sorry, no offense!”

“What was your match score?”

“Sixty-one percent.”

Nat nodded, satisfied. “OK, well, that’s significantly higher than average, but nothing wild. I’d say she’ll be around at least long enough to meet the birthday boy . . . dog .”

Sara smiled, and her glittery eyeshadow sparkled. “Which brings me to my second point. You, as the creator of the dating app that introduced us, cannot possibly be considered a third wheel.”

“Weird logic, but go on.”

“Well, isn’t this great data for you? Observing how one of your BeTwo matches goes IRL is kinda like working, right? And you love that!”

Nat’s brain did tingle at the idea of data, even if the lab was going to be a party filled with people she barely knew.

Sara really was a pro in the ongoing struggle to get her to be more social.

In fact, Nat was pretty sure her mother was urging Sara on in the task, having walked in on them having a weirdly hushed conversation in Sara’s room the last time she’d visited.

They’d both gone silent and stared up at her with saucer eyes, as if she’d flipped over their rock.

Nat had felt the need to announce, “I’m fine!

” before adding, “Also dinner is ready!” and exiting the scene.

But the truth was that Nat was very used to her loved ones worrying about the amount of time she spent alone — it’d been happening since she was the little kid bringing home stacks of library books on a Friday night, who became the teenager running stats on how likely she was to have a good time at a given function based on past enjoyment at similar events (usually not great odds), who became the adult burying her nose and weekend hours in digital piles of e-books about sexy faeries.

After a mandatory school-wide personality and career aptitude test in high school, the counselor had characterized her as “an introvert’s introvert,” as he’d handed her a stack of STEM brochures.

“So, I’m weird because I don’t like going to parties?” she’d asked, fully braced for a quick confirmation of what she’d been bullied into believing for her entire childhood.

“No, not at all,” he had said, with a gentle smile.

“Most people feel some level of ambivalence around social events. They want to go to the party and see friends, but some part of them wants to stay home, too. It’s just a matter of which side wins on that particular day.

” Then he’d held up a laminated card with a black-and-white drawing on it. “What do you see here?”

“A duck,” she’d said. “Does that mean I’m crazy? That I saw a duck?”

“Natalie, you’re not crazy.” He tapped the picture. “Yes, this is a duck and also, if you look at it a different way, it’s a rabbit.”

She’d squinted and sure enough, the beak became ears and the beady black eye flipped to peer over a small rodent nose. A rabbit head, as clear as day.

“See? It is two things at once,” he’d said, slipping the picture back inside a well-worn file folder.

“Everyone has both introvert and extrovert inside of them, at all times, and so do you.” He’d rubbed his beard and smiled at her.

“You very much prefer to be a duck, and that’s OK.

But don’t forget that you also know how to be a lovely rabbit, too. ”

Now, over fifteen years later, she wondered if she’d shifted animal metaphors and fully formed as an indoor cat.

As much as she admired Sara’s endless flow of invitations to cool openings and events, she was genuinely happy staying in to work on her code, even if it would be nice to have a partner to share the time with.

But although she’d had only a few “official” boyfriends in her life, each of those short relationships had died on the hill of how much of a struggle it was for Nat to venture outside of her own pursuits and plans and perfectly curated comfort zone.

It was hard enough when there was a 600-page epic about smoking hot dragon riders that she wanted to finish.

But her single-mindedness reached a new level when it was about staying in to finish some code for her very own app, and her dates fell behind.

That was how Nat learned that the worst part about being an introvert was that no one expected you to feel sad when they left you.

“I’m not some kind of lonely freak, you know,” Nat said, holding a long-forgotten black midi dress up to her body in the mirror. At five-foot-eight, Nat was tall enough to pull it off without heels, which was a data point firmly in the pro column.

“What are you talking about?” asked Sara, blinking her large brown eyes. “Did I say that?”

“It’s not like I need saving, or something.

” Nat spoke from all the years of experience with the not-so-subtle hints and smiles of pity.

Did other single people have to deal with the self-righteousness and semi-shaming about “putting yourself out there,” or was it just the homebodies like her?

She tossed the dress on the bed and went back to her closet for another outfit.

A solid decision needed a viable second option for comparison.

“It’s why I created BeTwo’s algorithm, remember?

To meet someone in a way that was actually comfortable for people like me? ”

“Dude, I know. I was there, remember?”