His brow furrows in confusion. “Wait, what?”
My heart drops. What’s going on? Is this some kind of prank?
But before I panic, I try to explain. “Um…yeah, I’m a beta tester for this app-”
“No, no, I know what MysteryMatch is, I’m a tester, too,” he interrupts me, to my relief, “But it told me I was meeting a woman. Here, hang on, I’ll show you.”
He turns his phone screen towards me and opens the app. Once it loads and he logs in, I see that he’s right. The date and time are the same, and so is the place, but instead of having my name, his match is named Sofia, and the photo is of an admittedly stunning brunette girl.
“That’s really strange, here,” I pulled out my phone, “I’ll show you mine.”
I open MysteryMatch and show him the same page he’d shown me, where it lists his name and shows his picture. “Maybe you’ve just got a doppelganger with the same name or something?”
“No, that’s definitely the picture I submitted…this is super weird, maybe it gave me the wrong profile or something? It’s a new app, probably has some bugs they need to work out.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment, “I’m sorry about this, man, obviously I’m not who you came here for, so I should just-”
But before I can finish, the door opens again, and in walks the girl from Marco’s profile. Like my would-be date, she’s even more attractive in person than in her photo. Her long, dark hair hangs in soft waves to her mid-back, and stunning golden-brown eyes shine out of a heart-shaped face with full, invitingly soft lips.
And to my surprise, it’s my face those eyes light on. She walks over to us hesitantly. “Um…hi, are you Russell?” she asks.
“Yeah, I am, and you’re Sofia, right?” I ask.
She nods and smiles, “That’s right, I’m your MysteryMatch for the evening.”
“Um…well, actually, we’re not so sure about that, because apparently you’re supposed to be his match, and according to my app, he’s supposed to be mine,” I say, gesturing with a thumb at Marco, who looks as confused as I am.
“Wait, what?”
The two of us explain and show her our phones, and she shows us her own where, to no one’s surprise, instead of matching with Marco, it’s my face and name.
“Well, guess we really are here to work out the bugs,” Marco quips.
I laugh and nod. “No kidding. It said to reach out to their contact email if there were any issues, I guess we should just try that?”
Sofia shakes her head. “I think I can get us some answers a little bit faster, guys, let me make a quick phone call.”
With that, she steps out of earshot, leaving Marco and I alone together. And I wonder just how bad a glitch this really is. What if he’s not into men at all? Maybe it would be better if I just duck out and leave them to it…