Page 11 of Swiped

Jo cleared her throat and tapped the screen with a square pink nail. “Is it really that hard for you to think of an actual sports-like activity?”

Nat blinked back into the present and looked at the list of certified sports words she had just entered into her new dating profile. She ignored the wet sting in her eyes and just replied, “This is fine. What else gets high message rates?”

Jo sighed. “OK, well this one is weird, but don’t use any question marks.”

“What? Why not?” asked Nat. The sensation of being surprised by her own data made her skin prickle with dread.

“Or semicolons,” said Jo. “Colons are OK though.”

“Semicolons I get.” Justin scratched his chin and nodded. “Too symbolically loaded.”

“A semicolon,” Jo repeated, flatly. “Really?”

“Semi means half,” Justin explained. “Body horror is not sexy.” He smiled. “To most people.”

“Gross.” Jo buried her head back in the data.

The words on her profile stared at Nat like a puzzle, which happened to be one of her actual favorite activities. “What about exclamation points?”

“Strong positive performance,” Jo reported.

MY PERSONAL MOTTO: Here’s my philosophy: Let’s have fun!!!!! Where we’ll have it: Everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jo scoffed. “Come on, no one is going to say anything about not letting women have their periods?”

Justin leaned in for a twin high five. “Nice one, sis!”

Jo let a smile creep onto her face. “I mean, the joke was right there.”

Nat shot Jo an approving smirk. Jo had been her first hire, Justin had been a later decision, and although Nat had spent years designing BeTwo on her own, Jo felt as woven into it as the code itself.

She was fastidious and focused. She was an overachiever who never stopped pushing for the best. She was, in Nat’s mind, a younger and more socially savvy version of herself, and having someone who not only got her app but also got her as a person — it almost felt like family.

Nat clicked to the next part of the profile, where users answered a randomly generated personal question. She read the prompt aloud, “When’s the last time I cried?” and choked on a dry laugh. “Yikes, did we really include that?”

“Oh yeah!” Justin piped up. “That’s a good one. Our beta showed that asking the user at least one emotional question created a sense of buy-in, remember?”

Jo wagged her finger. “But then we also found that the responses generated way more matches for straight men, and way less for straight women, so we muted the answer on female profiles.”

Nat breathed a sigh of relief, and not just because the honest answer had been earlier that week over an Instagram reel showing elderly dogs Photoshopped next to pictures of their puppy selves. “Cool, I’ll just skip that one then.”

Justin pumped his fist and sang out, “Time for the pics, boss!” He unfolded his gangly legs and sat up straight. As Nat’s go-to for all things visual, from design to how they measured photo engagement, she trusted him completely. And yet, pictures?

Nat crumpled against her chair. It’d been mostly a full year of nights on her couch, overfilled glasses of wine, and takeout for dinner after working late, and she’d stopped even making excuses for why she wasn’t going to the gym.

So, she wasn’t really feeling ready for pants with buttons, let alone a camera.

“User engagement shows that you need more than two full-body shots, outdoors, no babies, no group shots, no pets,” said Justin.

“No pets?” asked Jo, offended. “Still?”

“Yeah, dude. Cats I get, but dogs?” Justin shook his head sadly. “Man, it’s really tough out there.”

Nat used their distraction to make a move, pulling her headshot from the Tech-Talk conference panel website and making it her profile pic.

“A headshot?” Jo squinted into the monitors. “Do we even have data on that?”

“If we do, it’s way down in the dregs,” said Justin, searching the data.

“Great!” chirped Nat. “That means it’s unique and will stand out.”

“You know that’s not how this works,” said Jo, looking at Nat with a curious gaze.

Nat had a sudden memory of a happy hour where she’d had one too many gin and tonics and told Jo about her nightly searches for her perfect date.

Jo had looked at her then much as she was looking at her now, with a kind of ferocious pity.

“It’s fine,” Jo said, blinking her focus back to her screen. “I’ll just crop some from your socials later when I do your posts for you.”

“Have I told you today that you’re the best?” Nat gave her a grateful smile and stood.

“Yeah, yeah.” Jo shrugged in a satisfied little gesture and reapplied her lip gloss.

“Then I think that’s it. We did it!” Nat gestured dramatically at her laptop as if coaxing out a spell from its LED glow. “And upload!”

But before she could hit the button, both twins cried out, “Wait!” Jo put her head in her hands as Justin cringed. They hated it when they accidentally spoke in unison.

“You need a headline, boss,” Justin said, gently. “Remember? We added it last month to increase skim-ability?”

Nat froze in embarrassment. Of course, she remembered. The all-nighters to implement that functionality hadn’t been that long ago. But why hadn’t she remembered just now? “Totally, totally,” she covered, hunching over to type.

NATALIE, F, 35 — Let me know if you want to meet up! Yay!

Now Nat clicked the button. “And upload!”

“Yay!” parroted Justin.

“Yay,” echoed Jo, getting up to switch the lights back on.

Justin cracked open a sparkling water. “Did you guys ever read Frankenstein ?” he asked. “I just started it again. That book is so cool.”

Jo lit up, relieved at the new topic. “Um, yes, remember I was stage manager for our high school production of the play?”

“Wait, that’s amazing!” cried Nat, also grateful for something new to think about. “Because I was stage manager for my high school production of Young Frankenstein .”

“So that’s like the prequel, right?” said Justin with true innocence.

And as both women turned to him, eager down to their very bones to explain the difference, they were all silenced by the telltale sound of a digital ping! from Nat’s computer.

“Oh my God.” A tingling wave of adrenaline ran through Nat’s body. “My first message!”

Justin put his arm around Jo. “Our baby is all grown up.”

Jo beamed, ever ready to see the fruits of her labor. “Well, come on. Read it!”

Nerves fluttered in Nat’s chest as she clicked open the little bouncing envelope icon and started to read. “Hey gorgeous, any chance you’re downtown for a happy hour?”

“That’s his shot?” Justin rolled his eyes. “Snooze.”

“Give the people what they are mathematically proven to want,” said Jo, also rolling her eyes.

“Totally. Text me!” Nat said the words aloud as she typed them along with her phone number and hit send. She snapped her laptop shut. “Done and done.”

Justin hesitated. “Uh, shouldn’t we, like, look at this guy’s profile first?”

Jo tapped away at her keyboard. “On it. Sixty-one percent match. He seems normal, no obvious signs of criminal intent or Jordan Peterson quotes.”

Nat leaned against the window with a satisfied smile. “It’s fine. It’s just a date!” She watched some seagulls rip hunks off a sourdough loaf. “And I built this app, remember?”