Chapter 1
Q: Why did the shoe go on a dating app?
A: It wanted to find its sole-mate!
“Who has the champagne?” Chloe asks. “Olive, champagne me!”
The office—because they have moved out of the coworking space and into an office of their very own—is cramped with bodies and Christmas trees and boughs of holly and a menorah in the middle of it all.
Danny keeps trying to work, and Chloe keeps coming over and turning off his monitor.
She has placed a Santa hat on his head, which he has begrudgingly accepted.
Tonight is the night Soulmates becomes available on streaming. It’s a dating show based on and sponsored by Pattern. All the contestants pair off and vie to have the highest score by the end of a month, and then the winners get an all-expenses-paid wedding.
Danny had nothing to do with Soulmates. Danny prefers his reality TV to involve polar bears or baking bread. From start to finish, Soulmates was Julian’s baby, and this solution suited them just fine.
The month of December has been their biggest month to date.
Danny has launched new privacy features (which probably no one will notice but of which Danny is immensely proud) and begun work on version 2.
3, which will include Same Page. Same Page is a feature where users can ask Bug if they’re on the same page—does she also want to cancel dinner?
Does he also think our friend is kind of annoying?
Bug will keep quiet if you are not, in fact, on the same page.
For the first time, Danny gave everyone on his team a holiday bonus.
Today is the last day before the office closes, so he handed out cards to the tech team.
Everyone was paid commensurate with the recent success of the app.
Checks upon checks. Olive said, “This is kind of surreal.” Danny knows.
For the first time in his adult life, he is not in debt.
Julian clinks his champagne flute from the front of the room. Danny glances up; back at his screen; up again.
In their early years of collaboration, they worked together incessantly.
There was not a day when they did not eat at least one meal together.
But with success (and age, and marriage), there’s distance.
They manage their separate teams. They attend different meetings.
In October, Julian caught a cold and didn’t give it to Danny.
This was the first time this happened in a decade.
Which is why Danny didn’t fight back against Soulmates. From the start, he thought it was a bad idea—they’re trying to sell their ability to create real, lasting love, not dating-show infatuation—but Julian was excited, and Julian’s instincts are right more often than they’re wrong.
Now, Julian thanks everyone for their help on making this happen. He shows a graph of their downloads, and the spike when the show began advertising.
“And we just keep going up from here,” Julian says. “Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and let’s crush it next year.”
Danny hates the phrase crush it. It gives him the proverbial ick.
This is a trait he shares with Gigi. The first time Danny and Gigi met, they were at brunch at Our Lady of Perpetual Breakfast, and Julian kept saying—with the best of intentions—that Danny was totally crushing it at work.
After the fifth instance, Gigi said, “If anyone says anything else about crushing it, getting this bread, making these gains, or grinding on this KPI, I am legally entitled to put my head through the wall.”
Now, Gigi sits on a desk pushed at the front of the office. She meets Danny’s eye and gives her head-through-the-wall smile.
“Just before we get started,” Julian says. “I want to shout-out my brilliant, talented wife.”
Some whoops from the crowd. Chloe goes, “Ow ow!”
“A year ago, I was complaining to Gigi about our Seeker user base—which was only twenty-one percent women. Just a whole bunch of lonely dudes. And Gigi goes, ‘Yes, because you keep talking about love the way a lonely dude talks about love—like it can all be solved with data. You have to start telling love stories.’ That was where this whole thing began. Gigi’s been part of Soulmates from the very start—which is why I was so pumped when she agreed to host the show.
And also why I’m stoked to announce that our Seeker user base is now thirty-six percent women—and it’s going to keep rising from here.
Babe, we all love you, but especially me. ”
“Gross,” Gigi says. “I love you back.”
“Okay, okay,” Julian says. “Without further ado.”
Chloe turns on the projector, and the title screen of Soulmates fills the wall. Everyone cheers. A song about bells and sleighs begins jingling, and a woman’s voice says, “There’s no way I’m going back to my hometown alone this Christmas.”
Danny stays through the first episode, then he does his round of goodbyes. Everyone boos. He says he has a late flight that night. When he reaches Julian, he feels the eyes of the company.
Danny hugs him. “Merry Christmas, man.”
“Hey,” Julian says. “Have a good one.”
He kisses Gigi’s cheek.
“Don’t get eaten by a bear, okay?” she says.
Outside, in the cold dark, Danny zips his parka. All the bars are lit with twinkling white. A delivery truck goes by playing “Carol of the Bells.” When Danny exhales, his breath hangs in the air.