Olivia
“Do you ever find it ironic that we’re single,” Kiersten asks as we walk into our studio.
It’s a small rental right above a Banger Coffee Shop and honestly, that’s prime real estate at its finest.
“We who?” I ask, swirling my iced macchiato to mix the espresso and milk together. Macchiato, the American flavored kind, are all about aesthetics. You have to shake them up a little to get to the real stuff.
Kind of like first dates.
“You and I,” Kiersten points between us.
I inwardly chuckle at my cleverness before giving her my full attention.
“Think about it,” she says. “We run an anti-dating app podcast. We give people advice about navigating the world of finding their soulmate. Meanwhile, neither of us even talk to men on a regular basis.”
“I take offence to that,” Henry says.
Henry’s our tech guy. He handles our equipment, the recording, the streaming, and the advertising. Pretty much everything but the podcasting itself. That’s all me and Kiersten.
“You don’t really count,” Kiersten says, and Henry’s jaw drops.
“I take offense to that, too. Just because I’m not into women doesn’t mean I’m not a guy,” he says. “In fact, the guy I’m seeing would say I am all man…” he says, pulling out his phone.
“You met a guy?” I ask.
“Where?” Kiersten asks.
I frown. “I swear to God, if you say–”
“Realr,” he says with a grin, and as he shows what I assume is an overly filtered profile picture, Kiersten swoons.
Meanwhile, I pinch the bridge of my nose.
Realr is the number one dating app on the web right now.
It has drop-kicked all the others, from Fish in the Sea to Tumble to Buzz and even Melody.
“Come on, Henry. Realr?” I groan.
“I know. It’s the bad guy,” he says while still scrolling through photos.
“It’s the enemy!” I blurt out. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but we’re running a little podcast here called Unmatched? A podcast about the evils of online dating?”
“You’re in for it now,” Kiersten mumbles with a smirk.
I ignore her and turn to Henry. “In the monarchy that is online dating, Realr is king. By having an active profile on Realr, you, Henry, are kissing the hand of that king.”
“And a jeweled hand it is,” he says, biting his lip before taking a screenshot of whatever photo is on his phone.
“Listen, you needed a tech guy, and I needed a job. And I’m good at my job.
You have hundreds of thousands of listeners, Livv.
Whose marketing and social media skills made that possible? This guy.”
I sigh as we all take a seat around the recording table.
We don’t have an episode to record today.
We recently ended a series for the Unmatched podcast called Left on Read.
Five informative episodes about why someone you went out with never called you back for another date.
And yes, thanks to Henry’s marketing and social media spamming skills, it was a very popular series.
But that means our next series is going to have to top it.
Which is why we are here, drinking coffee from downstairs and arguing about Henry’s latest Realr match.
“I just think it’s funny that we are single,” Kiersten circles back to her original statement. “And a little depressing.”
“Not me,” I say, poking at my tablet to wake it up. “I don’t have time to date. I’m too busy figuring out everyone else’s relationship problems. That said…we need to come up with the topic for the next series.”
I am smiling enthusiastically, coffee in one hand and a stylus in the other.
Henry is pulling up social media on his phone. Hopefully for the podcast, and not his Realr profile again. Sigh.
Meanwhile, Kiersten is using her phone camera in selfie mode as a mirror to fix her septum piercing.
“Any thoughts?” I press.
“Well, let’s see,” Kiersten says in a nasally voice as she wrestles with the ring. “We’ve talked about people to avoid.”
“Ah yes, the Red Flag Hall of Fame,” Henry muses. “That was a good one.”
“And The Rookie’s Guide to First Dates,” she adds.
“That was a hit,” I nod.
“Then there was the Emotionally Unavailable Epidemic, Attachment Style Scapegoats, Outside the Algorithm, and of course Dating Gone Wild: Meeting People in Real Life,” Kiersten lists off on her fingers, and I smile.
We have covered a lot of topics on this podcast, all of them more successful than I could have hoped for.
And it almost seems crazy. I mean, if you had told me just two years ago when my college boyfriend broke up with me, opening my eyes to the fact he was waving every red flag in the book, that I would be running a dating podcast one day, I would have thrown my empty box of tissues at you.
All because I was na?ve for the first half of my twenties.
Nothing gives a girl more material to talk about than experiencing a bad match firsthand.
Despite the heartache from the clichés, lack of effort, and warning signs, I do believe in love.
Not just love, but romance.
And not just romance, but soulmates.
As a girl who has been through the spin-cycle and hung up to dry, there’s nothing I love more than helping people find the real thing.
In my opinion, there is not an app for that.
“We need something fresh,” Kiersten says. “There’s a doomscroller pandemic going on out there. Most people have the attention span of a four-year-old at Chuck E. Cheese.”
“She’s right,” I say, taking notes on my tablet.
“What about the Psychology of Swiping,” Henry says enthusiastically.
“Boring,” Kiersten says. “We aren’t all techies, Henry.”
“Ooh, what about I Can Fix Them? Except we call it You Can’t Fix Them?” He lights up again.
“In that case, we might as well just call people out on their bullshit and call the next series, You’re All Addicted to Narcissists?” Kiersten says.
“I don’t see you coming up with any good ideas,” Henry argues back, and this is my cue to intervene as usual. I love both of them, but playing ref has definitely become part of my job description.
“I think we need to avoid overcomplicating it,” I cut in.
“What about Profile Photo Do’s and Don’ts,” Henry goes on.
“You mean those guys that post a pic of themselves standing in front of a grill with a beer bottle in one hand and a spatula in the other?” Kiersten asks. “All while wearing a t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and their favorite sports team ball cap to match. Those are the worst…or fish pics.”
“Fish pics are definitely the worst,” Henry shudders.
“All those photos do is tell people you spend your Saturdays lounging around at home watching football and guzzling domestic beer,” Kiersten says.
“And that you smell like fish…” Henry adds.
“Okay!” I talk over them. “Great brainstorming, guys, but these topics are useless. Guys are never going to stop taking photos of themselves standing on a boat with a rainbow trout in their hands, and girls are never going to stop using filters. We need to address the problems people are facing on dating apps to drive home the point that organic dating is better.”
“Men getting ghosted,” Henry says, checking his phone.
“Happens to women too,” Kiersten adds.
“Okay, people getting ghosted,” I say as I write it down. Then I stop, and a smile crosses my lips. “Or better yet…people getting catfished.”
“Oh, that’s the worst,” Kiersten says, sitting upright. “When you go out with someone, thinking they’re one thing only to find out they’re something else entirely.”
“A problem you rarely see in the organic dating world,” I conclude with a grin. We all agree on it and I tuck my iPad back into my bag. “I’ll come up with the content.”
“I’ll look up the stats,” Kiersten says.
“And I’ll advertise. Right Swipe, Wrong Person: An Unmatched Podcast Series About Catfish,” Henry says, and we all love it.
Later that evening, I curl up on my couch in comfy clothes, my golden blonde hair in a messy bun, my contact lenses swapped for horn-rimmed glasses, and a glass of wine in my hand.
On my right, Vivien Leigh (my Airedale terrier) is sleeping soundly. Across the coffee table, reruns of The New Girl are playing softly just for the sake of background noise. And on my lap is my tablet, where I am writing the script for the new series.
It’s a perfect Saturday night. Just me, my dog, a little Cab Sauv and–
My phone buzzes with a text from my friend Sadie.
I know it’s her because she has her own text tone.
Best friend privileges.
And while I normally love hearing from her, getting a text at 10pm on this Saturday night in particular is a little worrisome.
Because tonight she has a date.
A date with a man she works with.
A man she’s been pining over for weeks. Needless to say, a 10pm text means it’s either going really well, or really badly.
Sadie: Olivia. We need to talk. ASAP.
Olivia: Okay, first tell me you’re okay. This isn’t an SOS, is it? You’re not in the back of a van, are you?
Sadie: No! But it is serious. The date was a disaster.
Was? It’s over already? God, it must have been really bad.
I get off the couch and slip my shoes on.
Then I grab my keys.
Olivia: I’ll be right there.