Page 24 of Swiped

Rami sat on a blanket in Dolores Park, gazing at the lavender clouds that glowed with orange haloes in the early evening sky. He loved this idea for a date. Watching the sunset! How wholesome and environmentally conscious of them, and not at all boring or aggravating to his allergies!

Gemma approached him through the immaculate golden hour light, her long white skirt shining like an angel’s robes.

“There you are!” he said. “You’re, like, the third person with pink hair that I’ve waved to.”

She sat down and handed him one of two mason jars full of what looked to Rami like green sludge.

“And you brought . . .” he trailed off, peering into the dark concoction.

“Probiotic green super smoothies! My own recipe,” she said with a bright smile. “To say thanks for the kombucha the other night.”

Rami was genuinely touched. “Aww. Thank you!” he cried. But he hesitated as he brought the glass to his lips. “So, you just carried these here? On the bus? Open like this?”

Gemma held out her jar. “Yeah. Cheers!”

Rami wiped the rim of the jar with his shirt and took a sip. It tasted like sucking on a rusty nail and had the consistency of toothpaste.

Gemma dropped some crystals onto the blanket around them. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“Super good,” he croaked. He thought she’d been joking when she mentioned bringing her crystals for him. “What are we doing with the rocks again?”

“An energy cleansing.”

She pushed his shoulders and gestured for him to lie flat on the blanket. He gratefully put down the jar of vegetal goop and nestled against the cool ground. Gemma lit a sage smudge stick.

“No thanks,” said Rami. “Makes me paranoid.”

She giggled and shushed him. “No joking!” She waved the smudge stick at his feet. “Just try and surrender to the moment.”

Rami took a deep, fragrant breath. “Surrender . . .” he said, wondering what that should feel like, exactly.

He closed his eyes. The fading sunlight made shadows flicker across his eyelids.

He could sense Gemma moving the smudge stick over him, waving her hands inches away from his body.

He liked that image. He felt her warmth leaning over his chest. Her long braids dragged up from his belly button. He liked that feeling.

Then, suddenly, she was on top of him.

“Whoa!” he cried, opening his eyes. She was straddling him, skirt hiked up around her thighs.

The sunset lit her from behind, and all he could see were her sultry eyes and glistening lips as she leaned in.

She pinned him to the ground with a deep, delicious kiss.

Rami’s hands flew to her soft hips before he could stop himself. They were in public!

Gemma leaned back with a smug and satisfied expression. She put her hands on his chest.

“Wow,” he said. “Was that part of the cleansing?”

“No.” She winked and waved the smoking smudge over his head. “I just really wanted to.”

* * *

Nick held the door open for Nat as they left the tapas restaurant.

“Well,” he said in the no-nonsense tone of a father at a road trip rest stop. “We finally met.”

Nat willed herself to smile. “That was fun!” she said. “How long were we in there?”

He nodded with a polite chuckle. “A while.” He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “Well,” he nodded again, “that was good.”

For Nat, asking how long they’d been talking had not been a rhetorical question.

She knew it had been nearly three hours because when she had excused herself to go text Sara from the bathroom while the second round of drinks arrived, she’d seen that they’d already been talking for ninety minutes.

She’d groaned — actually groaned out loud — because ninety minutes was a very decent amount of time to know if she liked someone, and her heart was definitely, tragically, not excited in the least about the IRL version of Nick.

And yet she’d agreed to the second round of drinks.

That was on its way! Because it didn’t make any sense!

Nick was even more handsome than his pictures, and was clearly as kind and intelligent as he’d been in their messages.

She’d touched on the hobbies mentioned in her profile, even making a deeply googled joke about goats eating her yoga mat, which had gone over well.

They agreed on pretty much everything they’d talked about.

He even had a blind rescue dog! The man was a saint. An angel.

And, to her, a total bore.

It eased her conscience to know that he clearly felt the same way about her. Yet here they were, just standing and smiling at each other outside the restaurant like two utterly happy and polite people, when there was a figurative sign blinking NOT A MATCH between them in neon letters.

“We finally met!” Nat said again, nonsensically.

Nick extended his arms for a hug. “Should I?” He hesitated. “Um, here.”

He leaned in with his deep blue eyes and perfectly salt-and-pepper stubble and gave Nat a dry, motionless kiss.

“Wow, thank you!” She grinned at him. All she could think to do was keep grinning.

“Well.” He nodded, back in Vacation Dad mode. “I’ll call you.”

“Rad, yep!” said Nat, waving and still smiling as he walked away.

She watched until he was out of earshot, then let her face fall.

“What. The. Fuck was that?” she said out loud and kicked at an empty can on the sidewalk.

She checked her phone. No new messages, BeTwo or otherwise.

She knew in her heart that she would never hear from Nick again, but she also didn’t want to.

She just wanted to understand what the hell had happened to make such a promising date, and an eighty-five percent match that was so statistically very high for her or any app, fall so epically flat.

Yes, her profile was just some cobbled-together Dream Girl of popular traits, but she had taken those traits from her own data.

They were the traits men wanted, and she hadn’t deviated from the script.

Although now with some field research under her belt, she had to admit that she was surprised by how little what she’d put on that profile ever came up in any conversations with her dates, Nick included.

Plus, their messaging had been honest and genuinely fun.

Nick should have liked her, but that wasn’t what happened, and she didn’t quite know why not.

Worst of all, it reminded her of Rami’s warning that IRL meetups were often much different than what was promised by profiles and DMs. But why would that be?

She decided to think about it over the best gin martini in the city.

* * *

Rami took in the scene around him on the patio of the vegan restaurant where Gemma had brought him.

Twinkle lights dotted the tall jasmine bushes like stars, and colorful glass orbs gleamed in macramé nests from the trees.

Wind chimes tinkled in the breeze. Everyone spoke at a low, companionable volume.

“I legitimately feel amazing,” he said. “When can I cleanse again?”

Gemma laughed over her bowl of tofu pad thai. “Whenever you want.”

“Really? Hey, do you think there’s sage in my salad? Does that count?”

Gemma giggled again, and the sound made Rami’s heart swell. He was funny. He could make a woman laugh.

“You know, I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she said, leaning in over the flickering tea light on their table. “I know it’s not chill to say that right away, but I believe in radical honesty.”

“Me too!” Rami noticed how the candlelight sparkled in her gemstone nose piercing when she smiled. “I mean, I couldn’t stop thinking about you either.” Emboldened by the profound sense of peace all around him, he offered her his open hand to hold.

She nestled her palm in his with a shy smile. “I think what you’re doing is amazing, you know? Taking a stand for real life.” She squeezed his hand. “Real-life Rami. You could take down the whole online dating system if you win.”

“That’s what I said!” He shook his head at the overwhelming luck of it all. “I knew you would understand.”

Gemma moved her hand to his leg and scooted closer.

The excitement flew straight to Rami’s head. “When you think about it, why do we even need computers to introduce us?” he continued, on a roll. “Is there anything more natural than one person just going up to another person because they think, ‘Hey, you look interesting and I want to say hello?’”

“Totally.” She scooted even closer. “Now people get all freaked out when you talk to them in public, like they feel safer staring at a screen than a human face. It’s so messed up.”

He liked the way Gemma’s voice pitched a little lower when she was expressing a big thought. He really liked the way her hand felt on his thigh.

“Totally,” he said. “You should see the looks I got when I tried. I’m pretty sure some of those women thought I was trying to recruit them for ISIS.”

Gemma’s face lit up. “Oh, is that your band?” she asked. “I’m down to join.”

Rami laughed. “Good one.” Gemma beamed, clearly waiting for him to explain. A sinking feeling crept into his gut. “ISIS . . . the terrorist group?” he said as she blinked at him. “Because I’m brown?”

Gemma frowned sadly. “Oh, see, that’s just awful. That kind of negativity is why I don’t read the news.”

“You don’t?”

She sat up straight and shook her head, her earrings jangling like tiny church bells. “No way. Not for years.” She took a sip of ice water from her metal cup. “I limit myself to consuming one hundred words a day or else it can really lower my vibration.”

“One hundred?” he echoed. The sinking feeling grew heavier. “But that’s like one email.”

“Oh, not even! Pixels count in triplicate.” Gemma delicately slurped up a noodle. “Really, it’s like a recipe, a letter from my pen pal in Gothenburg, my bank accounts statements — yuck,” she paused to roll her eyes. “Then maybe a poem if I have room.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yep!” She twirled some noodles onto her chopsticks with a proud smile. “The universe has a way of guiding any information I need into my reality. Like what are rules made on some hill, even?”

“Capitol Hill?” Rami let a limp piece of arugula fall from his fork. “I’m pretty sure those are laws, but it’s whatever.”

“Right? Who cares! It’s just like voting. None of it is real. Why bother?” She smiled, unaware of the dramatic increase in blood pressure she was causing Rami with her mellow statements. “I’m just about the reality I can touch.” She moved her hand higher up his thigh for emphasis. “Here and now.”

Rami swallowed hard. “Definitely.” His mind raced. He really, really wanted this to work. It would be so easy and simple and beautiful if this could just work. But a dark part of his mind twinged. Even if it was just so he could win the contest.

Gemma leaned toward him and tucked one of his curls behind his ear in a tender, sensual gesture. “Now I wanna know more about you, Real-life Rami. What is it that you do for work, again?”

“Nothing!” Rami blurted. “I mean, nothing really. More of a side gig.”

“Cool, like gigs on those awful apps?” Her lips puckered in a sassy smile. “Maybe you brought me my UberEats one time and I’ve had a crush on you ever since . . .”

Rami laughed nervously. His conscience was not mixing well with the green goddess salad dressing or Gemma’s wide-eyed sincerity. “No, but funny you mention that because I actually built and run a successful app.”

Now it seemed like Gemma finally knew what ISIS was. Her face clouded over in an instant, hazel eyes hardened. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head, setting down his fork.

She scoffed. “So, I’m on a date with a coder right now?”

“Well, I’m an entrepreneur and that’s pretty uncommon,” he offered in a higher-pitched voice than he’d intended. He cleared his throat and continued. “And yes, it is a digital product, but it’s about the weather!” He thought of Ian and took a wild leap. “The forces of the Mother Earth Goddess?”

“That’s so much worse!” Gemma’s eyes seared into him with outrage. “You take the natural world and you butcher it into an information stream. Can you ‘like’ sunny days, or something?”

“Liking is just one part of the functionality,” he said meekly. “But really, I can explain—”

She held up her hand. “I’m gonna stop you there. My truth is that I feel like I cannot take on the emotional labor of your energy right now, or ever, and I just really need you to hear me when I say that.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to, or even parse, her words. “I do hear you,” he said. “Because I’m right next to you . . . on an otherwise lovely date, right?”

Gemma took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She sat silently while Rami watched, thinking she would open her eyes and start speaking again any minute now.

She didn’t, and it gave him more than enough time to notice, again, the adorable bump in her button nose, her smooth, round cheeks, and the pouty lips that had been kissing him just hours before. “Gemma,” he started.

“No.” She opened her eyes. “It’s just that you completely misrepresented who you are. Your whole life is fed by the digital umbilical cord.”

She pulled a glass food saver from her bag and dumped in her pad thai.

“You just had that in there this whole time? With the jars?” he marveled, and then remembered himself. “And no, my life is not like that! I mean, it is, but it’s not that big of a deal that I work in tech, right?”

She stood, and her pink braids swayed sadly. “It is to me.” She put her hands in a prayer position at her chest and sighed. “Enjoy your journey, Rami.”

As she walked away, Rami felt his phone buzz. It was Nat.

Nat: Date was great.

He scoffed as he watched her typing dots dance in their little gray bubble.

Nat: I could still meet up for a postmortem drink if you wanted tho. Gotta keep this guy wanting more.

He let the Gemma-shaped hole fill with annoyance. Nat. This was all her fault.

Rami: Yeah best to limit exposure

Nat: Is your date mad that you’re texting in front of her or did she already bail?

Rami looked around the moonlit patio. This place smelled funny, and it had flies, and a meatless salad had cost him thirty dollars, and he needed a stiff drink.

Rami: Ha. See you at the place.