Chapter 1
Felicity
Every time I’ve ever gone out on a Tuesday night has been entirely against my will.
I would, on average, prefer to be at home or at the office getting work done than sitting at a bar with open ductwork, eighteen-dollar cocktails, and so-called “small plates” that mean they get to serve you smaller portions for more money.
And a Tuesday night that’s also the night before Valentine’s Day?
Nightmare.
Valentine’s Day has to be my least favorite day to be out on the town, and Valentine’s Day eve is just a preview of what’s to come tomorrow.
The only difference is I get to spend tomorrow at home in my trusty sweatpants.
But tonight, I promised my best friend I would meet up after being a hermit for weeks — and if I’m being honest, I forgot about Valentine’s Day until I saw a sign posted on the door.
Plus, the people who gather in these places are, in a word, insufferable. The Valentine’s Day of it all only ramps up how insufferable they can be. Case in point: I’m currently watching a pair of middle-aged guys try to pick up some girls half their age.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think I’m special or immune from being insufferable myself.
I’m just a different kind of insufferable.
Oh, I know my flaws pretty well, and I’ve been called a lot of things.
Snobby. Cold. Bitchy. (That last one by a past co-worker, who was promptly fired. Eat shit, Colton.)
But when the drinks are flowing, the bar is full of lonely people, and the place is ill-advisedly selling dollar shots…
Vibes: totally off.
So here I am, sitting at a two-top table in a trendy bar (which means it’s overpriced and overcrowded), waiting for my best and only friend to join me.
She is predictably late, and I am predictably early. For this, I only have myself to blame. I don’t exactly need an algorithm to predict that Janae will run five minutes behind, because she’s been doing it since we were fresh-faced new hires at a hot startup that everyone wanted a piece of.
See, there’s not much that’s remarkable about me other than that I’m a female software engineer in an industry—and city—that’s overwhelmingly dominated by tech bros.
You can throw a smartwatch on any San Francisco street and hit a guy who wants to tell you about whatever derivative product he’s building to revolutionize such-and-such.
If I’m being totally honest, I’m doing the same thing—I just happen to be a woman. And not a complete asshat.
I feel like an anthropologist as I sit here alone among the khaki-clad men and (far fewer) sensibly dressed women. A Jane Goodall of the Bay Area tech scene. With a soda to nurse and some time to kill, I slip into this observer role.
Over there: a group of friends down a tray of shots.
Near the door, a person is scanning the room, presumably looking for their date for the night.
The man crowding the table I claimed, hoping he can pressure me to move (he can’t), is swiping through a dating app that’s billed as being for “high value” men.
I make sure to accidentally kick him as I uncross and recross my legs.
At the bar is a motley crew of people. Beautiful women in hoodies emblazoned with company logos, men in hundred-dollar t-shirts, a smattering of young people who look like they’re fresh out of college, and they’re drinking like it, too.
And—my eyes snag on an outlier—someone dressed like an extra in a stage production of Grease.
Huh. Community theater actor, maybe? Midlife crisis? I mull over the possibilities.
Some people might find Janae’s tardiness annoying. Not me. I love the reliability of it, the reliability of her. There’s comfort in knowing not everyone in this place is trying to optimize the shit out of their lives.
Right on time (meaning five minutes after the agreed-upon time, ten minutes after I arrived), I see the crowds of men in puffer vests and chinos part as my best friend makes her way through the bar.
She looks gorgeous as always, in a simple, chic ankle-length dress with flat sandals, a stack of shimmery bangles, and her long braids piled into a messy-but-not-messy bun.
All eyes follow her as she floats toward me—mine included.
Janae crashes into my side with a fierce hug. She sways us back and forth as she embraces me, making my stool wobble. I grapple at the table’s edge for stability with one hand, letting my other wrap around her back.
“There she is, at last!” Janae exclaims, holding me at arm’s length and taking me in like she hasn’t seen me in years.
I roll my eyes at her dramatics. “It hasn’t been that long,” I say.
She pats me on the cheek. “If I had to guess, Fee, it’s been weeks since this pretty face has been touched by sunlight.”
“Oh, hush.” I shove her away playfully, but don’t tell her that she’s right. We both know it’s the truth.
Janae and I are rarities in our industry, and not just because we’re both women who code.
We’re both women who code, who also got in early at a tech startup that made it big.
Which meant that, after working long hours every day of the week for several years, we got a decent payout when the company was acquired by a bigger, hotter startup.
We didn’t get rich necessarily, but we both made enough to move on to something new without stressing about money for a while.
For Janae, that meant working with a non-profit that helps young women break into tech careers. The pay is shit, but I’ve never seen her happier.
For me, it meant I could finally build my own thing, my own way, from the ground up. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past few months—throwing myself into a new project, a new company, that’s all my own.
So, Janae is right. I have spent most of my days holed up at home or in the little coworking office I joined to make this venture feel real.
It’s nice to look up from a computer screen and be among the living for a while—as much as I hate to admit it. I tell Janae this, and she laughs before turning toward the bar. “This round’s on me,” she calls over her shoulder, “to celebrate your big win!”
I follow Janae’s path as she glides to the bar and settles her arms casually on the poured-concrete slab.
Whoever decorated this place must have hated color and personality.
Even against a millennial gray backdrop, Janae shines like a beacon.
Every man in the place turns toward her, unconsciously seeking her light.
I smile to myself before opening my work email out of habit.
When Janae gets back to the table, she slaps my phone out of my hand. “No working! Hold this instead.” I take the cocktail glass from her and take a sip. “And this.” She shoves a shot of tequila into my other hand.
“I don’t think—”
Janae gives me a look, and I throw the shot back without another word. She does the same, and we both cough as we suck on anemic lime wedges.
“Cheers to you and doing the unthinkable!” she says, clinking her cocktail glass against mine from across the table.
“Building an app?” I ask.
She smiles over her drink. “Building the first-ever dating app for incels,” she says. “The haters said it couldn’t be done.”
“Ha, ha,” I say. “Very funny.”
“No, seriously, Fee. You know I’m proud of you…”
“But?” I lift an eyebrow.
“But, I don’t really get this anti-dating app thing you’re building. You’ve been on this anti-love soapbox for a few years, and I thought it was just a phase?” She says it like a question, looking at me with concern.
“It’s not an anti-love soapbox!” I protest. She scoffs. “Okay, so it kind of is. But it’s also more of a pro-practicality soapbox.” Sitting up in my seat, I launch into the pitch for the app I’m building.
“Look, people make a massive bet on another person to stay with them for the rest of their lives, and what do they get from it? Expensive lawyer fees, a broken heart, and the best years of their lives flushed down the toilet. But what if there was a way to find a platonic life partner you could do life with instead? Split the bills, buy a house, travel, whatever.” I stick my fingers out and start listing: “It’s steady, it’s reliable, it’s pain-free. It’s the perfect solution!”
When I realized we’d been sold a lie around the whole dating game, I decided to do something about it.
A new dating app, but one for realists, like me.
An anti-dating app. Clear-eyed, reasonable dating for people in it for the long-haul.
That kind of stability doesn’t come from something as fickle as love.
It comes from compatibility. And compatibility is algorithmically predictable if you have the right data and logic.
Finding a lifelong partner is just as simple as math.
Isn’t that comforting? With math, there’s always a right answer—and the solution is black and white, not shades of gray.
Janae shakes her head and takes a sip of her drink. “Damn, Bryan really did a number on you.”
I frown. “We don’t speak of Bryan, remember? Bryan is persona non grata. Now until forever.”
“Right,” she says, almost pityingly. “So your app pairs people into couples so they can live in what is essentially a loveless marriage of convenience.”
“Lasting relationships don’t have to be based on love, you know,” I say, straightening my shirt.
“But the best ones always are.” She says softly, catching my brown eyes with her amber ones. I quickly blink away the prickly feeling building behind my eyelids.
“Maybe,” I concede, taking a long draw from my drink. “But the worst ones ruin your fucking life.”
“Hear-hear!” she says, lifting her glass in the air. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Once again, I am in awe of my best friend, who lives life without apology, always wearing her heart on her sleeve. Couldn’t be me. In my world, love is fleeting, but a 401k is for a lifetime.
“I’ll get us the next round,” I say, finally easing into the idea of a night out on the town, even if it’s a Tuesday. Even if tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.
“The usual, please! And I don’t know if I told you—” Janae pauses. I glare at her.
“Please tell me you didn’t plan a date tonight.”
She grimaces. “I did. I’m sorry! She’s going out-of-town tomorrow, and tonight was the only night that worked for both of us. But you have me for a whole hour, okay?”
I consider getting mad at her, at least on principle, but actually…
I get out of here in an hour tops? I couldn’t have asked for better news.
“No worries,” I tell her, and I mean it. I hop down and push my way to the bar. I don’t glide, the crowds don’t part, and not a single head turns my way. If Janae is a beacon, I am a black cloud — a bad omen men know instinctively to avoid if they don’t want to encounter trouble ahead.