As we gazed at the house, our eye was drawn to a guy who came out of the house next door. He was dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts. He was perfectly muscled, with dark hair and an action-figure face. He was, maybe, thirty?
“Oh my god!” Tilda Tia said, as the guy reached the end of the driveway and began running. “It’s the hot guy.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you about him? I spotted him two days ago by the harbor. He’s the most beautiful man in the world.” And she took off after him.
Please don’t do this. Please don’t make me do this, I prayed, as I pedaled hard to keep up with her. And because of this foolishness, it happened: I sustained an injury.
The streets in this very tony enclave were riddled with deterrents: speed bumps, small triangular obstacles, and randomly placed metal posts. As I was trying to avoid one of the posts, I hit a speed bump too hard and my feet flew off the pedals but not before one of them spun around and whacked me in the shin.
“Ow,” I said.
I got off my bike. I was going to have a black and blue mark, and it hurt. At some point in the near future it would hopefully stop hurting, but in the meantime I still had to ride. At least far enough to find Tilda Tia.
She had disappeared over a small rise. I called her on her phone.
She answered immediately thanks to her Bluetooth headphones. “Where are you?” she said.
“I hit a speed bump.”
“Are you okay? Do you want me to come back for you?”
No. I didn’t. It wasn’t that bad.
I caught up with her at the crossroads and showed her my leg.
I clearly didn’t need an ambulance. On the other hand, we both decided that ice might be a good idea.
We headed to a popular beachside restaurant that was only, according to Tilda Tia’s biking app, three miles away.
Fifteen minutes later, sweating and exhausted, we arrived. Once considered a hot spot, the restaurant was now filled with thirty- and fortysomething parents, complete with carloads of kids.
We sat down at a table and fanned our faces with the menu. “I can’t understand why I’m so sweaty,” Tilda Tia complained.
“I can,” I said. I checked my phone. “It’s only . . . eighty-nine degrees and seventy percent humidity.”
This made us laugh. What the hell were we doing, two sweaty middle-aged women riding around in ninety-degree weather thinking we were going to meet men?
But no matter. It was nice in the restaurant with its multicolored rattan chairs and overhead fans. Outside the children played on the beach while the tourists pushed each other off a party boat anchored in the bay.
We ordered the house special, the Froze—rosé, fresh strawberries, and a splash of vodka whipped into a frozen confection. We ate French fries dipped in mayonnaise. Then, because it was that kind of day, we called an Uber.
chapter three
The Tinder Experiment
A few days later, having come up empty-handed during the bicycle-boy challenge, I was back in my apartment in the city when an email came in. A person named Emma wanted me to write a piece of experimental jo
urnalism about the dating app Tinder.
It was the word “experimental” that caught my attention. What did that mean I wondered.
I saw that Emma had included her telephone number. This meant the piece was important, because the phone was only supposed to be used for special occasions.
After a few email exchanges, we arranged a time to talk.
“Hello?” Emma the editor said. She explained that she was twenty-six and lived most of her life online. She confessed she wasn’t very good at irl—in real life—and that the phone was very irl.