Page 14 of Swiped

Rami paced the narrow lane between the bookshelves, record shelves, spiral-legged wooden coffee table, and overstuffed leather sofa in his living room.

This is what happened when you let your trust-funder roommate bring in all their parents’ old (“old,” as in, perfectly good) furniture.

He paused occasionally to sip the IPA sweating in his hand.

“I’m supposed to meet her in thirty-five minutes, and I don’t even know her last name.

I can’t google her. I can’t Facebook her.

I’ll actually have to ask her questions about herself.

And I won’t have to pretend like I don’t already know all the answers!

” Rami looked at said roommate, Ian, reclining on the sofa with a baroque bong and a lead crystal glass of rare Scotch.

“The freedom I feel right now . . .” he said, extending his beer in a toast. “It’s beautiful. ”

Ian sipped his Scotch and pondered, which it seemed to Rami he would be doing whether or not he’d just said anything.

Ian’s long face was somehow both much smoother than you’d expect a fifty-something’s to be and just as weathered as you’d expect a lifelong surfer’s to be, with a ruddy tan that almost matched his permanently windblown sandy blond hair.

As such, he was ageless, a trait he used to great advantage on top of his already birth-bestowed advantage.

His bemused expression deepened into a frown and he stretched his long ropey arms and adjusted his hemp hoodie with a satisfied sigh.

“You know, man, I think it’s amazing the amount of blind, almost foolish, trust that you’re showing.

It really makes me want to get back out there, start Uber-ing again, you know? ”

Rami set down the beer. “What do you mean, ‘trust?’”

Ian’s face crinkled with a smile. “To dive so deeply into your shadow self.”

“OK, you keep talking about that and I still don’t know what it is, and how am I doing . . . shadow whatever?”

“Your shadow is the collection of all your weaknesses and traumas. Essentially the inverse of everything that’s good about you.” Ian blinked his large, watery blue eyes. “Like how you’re really good with numbers, but very not-good with people.”

Rami scoffed. “I’m good with people. I’m a people person!”

Ian shook his head with another sip of Scotch. “I don’t think even the DoorDash guy would agree with that.” He squinted up at Rami. “Shit, man, I thought you knew this?”

Rami picked up the beer again. “Oh, really? You thought that I walked around totally content in the knowledge that my friends and colleagues think I’m some horrible asshole from the shadow realm?”

Ian huffed a small laugh. “Shadow realm. Metal.” Then he knitted his furry brows.

“I mean, you do argue with people a lot.” Ian pulled a piece of hard candy from his cargo shorts pocket.

“Like, I stopped watching Law & Order after I moved in with you.” He popped the candy in his mouth.

“I felt like that itch was scratched, you know?”

“Perfect,” said Rami. He downed the rest of the beer and set it down pointedly in front of Ian — he couldn’t bring himself not to set it on a coaster, but still.

A hostile gesture. His point was made! Even if he would definitely throw it out as soon as he walked back in the door, because Ian certainly wouldn’t. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

Rami pulled on his jacket and opened the door to the building hallway, with its blast of damp city-street air. He whirled around to Ian. “And so, you know, it takes two people to argue.”

Ian nodded philosophically. “I suppose.”

“Yes, because it’s physically impossible for me to sustain an argument on my own, so to assume that correlation somehow means causation is a classic logical fallacy.”

A soft, knowing smile spread on Ian’s face as he closed his eyes and said, “Godspeed, conquistador.”

Rami turned to leave again. “OK, see you later.” He sighed. “Also, I brought you some leftover cheese from the event today. A brie. It’s pretty amazing.”

Ian stood up on his gangly, hairy legs and grinned. “My man!”

Rami waved and hurried out the door to his date.

* * *

The chilly fog poked needles along Nat’s neckline as she clutched her scarf tighter and hurried out of the BART train station.

The sidewalk sparkled between rolling tumbleweeds of trash and dark piles that shouldn’t be looked at too long.

She gingerly navigated through the mess in Sara’s beautiful red shoes, checking her phone to make sure she was heading toward the right wine bar to meet Eric, aka Mr. Downtown.

She was. The confirmation was neither a relief nor did it fill her with dread. It simply was.

She was simply walking to a wine bar to meet a man. She liked wine. She liked men. This was fine.

And yet.

Despite how blasé she’d been in agreeing to this date earlier, she had, in fact, looked at Eric’s profile more closely once she was somewhere she knew she would be alone, namely a stall in the women’s restroom at the office.

His pictures were definitely cute, if worryingly outdoorsy and all taken on mountaintops and in parks and before sparkling lakes, but Jo was right — no obvious red flags in any of his answers.

He liked to travel. He liked spicy food.

He liked concerts. He wanted to have fun.

Nat had read his responses over and over like she was scrying for long-lost secrets, but Eric was, by all three-hundred-character-limited indications, a regular guy.

A sixty-one percent match was, statistically, pretty high.

And he was tall. Six foot three! So, he had at least one of the qualities on her checklist, and even if she would’ve culled him from her nightly reviews for his repeated use of the word “hella,” he was, objectively, good-looking.

Besides, he didn’t have to be her match, he just had to be her date to the gala and help her beat Rami.

So, she should just enjoy the simple pleasure of a handsome man, right?

She’d closed the profile and gone back to work, and then home to get ready, and now here she was, walking to meet him.

Yet why were her palms sweating like she was about to give a school science fair presentation?

She’d always planned to go on real dates again at some point — that was the whole purpose of her personal BeTwo searches.

Still, saying out loud to Sara that it had been almost two years since the Golden Gate Park disaster hadn’t felt good.

Was she being too picky? She’d been scouring her user database for so long, and that user base had grown so much during all those months, that she must have looked at thousands of profiles.

Nat did some quick math in her head, almost reflexively, and arrived at a figure — she could reasonably estimate that she had reviewed over five thousand single men.

Her heart fluttered in panic, and she ran the numbers again to be sure.

That estimate actually seemed conservative, but to her credit, the number was probably less than ten thousand.

Still, that seemed like an impossibly high number of men for her to have churned through. And it wasn’t as if they were all awful! It was just that she was waiting for a spark, a flip in her stomach, and for someone to check at least eighty percent of the boxes on her wish list.

She felt the familiar burn of righteous anger bubble up in her chest. She’d only started the wish list because of how many great things she saw in all those profiles, anyway.

It wasn’t desperation. It was inspiration and determination.

In every other aspect of her life, her rigorous research was praised, so why should she suddenly loosen up when it came to matters of the heart — her heart?

No one likes to waste their time. No one likes to be rejected.

She was doing herself and the thousands of men a service by doing everything she could to spare them all pain.

She listened to the clicks of Sara’s gorgeous shoes on the sidewalk with satisfaction.

Besides, she was on her way to meet a real-life man at that very moment.

She was taking a chance. So clearly, she could relax her possibly strict standards a bit, and the fizzy feeling in her stomach aside, it had been fun to dress up and have an actual outing to look forward to.

Maybe she could even make a habit of it.

Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket. She had arrived, and from his text message, so had Eric.

She looked up at huge golden doors, seemingly made for a race of wine-loving giants.

She suddenly felt both impossibly small and lit by a spotlight.

Were people looking at her? It was probably so obvious that she was going on a date.

Her face flushed with embarrassment. Why did she have to wear the fancier shoes?

A dead giveaway. She gripped a door handle and pulled.

It didn’t budge, and she stumbled backward a little.

People definitely saw that. That wasn’t great.

She dug in her heels, apologizing to Sara for any damage, and threw her body weight into her tug on the door.

It flew open with a blast of warm air, and she stumbled backward even more this time.

Amazing. Awesome. She made eye contact with an elegant gray-haired lady watching her coolly from inside the bar.

Perfect. Nat straightened her coat and stepped inside.

* * *

The wine bar was lit with warm amber sconces dotting dark walls lined with books.

A low tin ceiling reflected the glow like they were all being held inside a soft, gauzy candle flame.

Unfortunately, the tin ceiling was not as good for the acoustics as it was for the ambiance, and the place was a roiling ocean of noise.

Pods of well-dressed people clutched highballs and wine glasses and yelled at each other over the din.