Chapter One
Josie
After the third attempt ended in another jagged smudge, I sighed in frustration. "Do you think you can do this for me?" I asked my best friend, Sofia, "My hands are shaking too much."
I pass her the eyeliner and pick up the can on the counter, taking a sip as I carefully wipe away my messed-up line with the other hand. Sofia raises an eyebrow at the energy drink in my hand. "Gee, I wonder why," she remarks drily, "Not like anyone else would be shaking if they'd consumed enough caffeine to keep an elephant awake for a week."
“First of all, the caffeine might be a contributing factor, but it’s no the primary one. And it might also the only thing keeping me even remotely functional,” I remind her.
“When was the last time you actually slept?”
“Last night,” I shoot back indignantly.
“More than six hours?”
I press my lips together and she laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Turn towards me,” she orders.
I obey and after she instructs me to close my eyes, she swipes a careful wing of liner on either side. When I hear the cap click back onto the eyeliner pen, I open my eyes and glance in the mirror. “You have a superpower; how do you do that? I can’t get them that straight even when my handsaren’tshaking.”
“Lots of practice,” she replies.
“I’m nervous,” I blurt out, letting out a breath, “I can’t believe it’s finally going to be real.”
“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about. Your team has worked so hard, Josie, you guys have put together an amazing app. I can vouch for that,” Sofia smiles.
Tonight is the official launch of my dating app, MysteryMatch, my passion project and the result of almost four years of development. I’ve invested so much time, money, blood, sweat, and tears, and poured my heart and soul into this thing, and tonight, it goes live to the whole world.
MysteryMatch functions somewhat like a friend setting you up on a blind date; everything is arranged, you don’t talk to your matches until you actually meet in person. But unlike a blind date, your match isn’t just some random guy your friend picked out because you’re both single, or the son of your mom’s friend who you justhadto meet.
I interviewed hundreds of happy couples, couples’ counselors, relationship experts, sex therapists, and more to develop my match criteria, then worked with some amazing tech experts to help me create the algorithm and the program.
And Sofia had been a huge help for me when it came to putting safety measures in place. About five years ago, she’d been the victim of a stalker who had harassed her relentlessly. She only went on one measly date with the guy, which she left early after he immediately got pushy with her. But he hung around for six months until finally breaking into her apartment. She woke up with the creep in herbed.
He was arrested, although frankly more of his sentence was because he was loaded up with a pocketful of the same PCP he’d snorted before climbing into bed with her.
Fortunately, she was unhurt, but the incident had left her deeply shaken, and after one last disastrous attempt, she’d given up on dating altogether.
At least until she’d agreed to be part of my beta tests. I’d regretted asking her, feeling immensely guilty after watching her panic at the suggestion, but to my surprise, she’d decided to go through with it.
That was nearly three months ago now, and I was immensely glad she’d taken place, because she had accidentally uncovered a major bug in the app that also inadvertently led to her finding the men of her dreams.
Yes, men. A bug in the program had sent her on a date with two men at once, because they’re bisexual, and it had sent them on a date with each other, as well. It was an unexpected event that had totally tripped up our programming, and one that had inspired some massive changes.
But now, after tons of tweaks and tons of testing, it was really ready, and we already had hundreds of customers pre-registered for the service.
“I know logically there’s nothing to really worry about, but I guess I just have that lingering feeling like I’m forgetting something, you know? Like there’s something I had to have overlooked.”
“And if there is, you can fix it later,” she tells me, “Lots of apps have some bugs to begin with. Hell, even a giant like Facebook launches updates every few weeks.”
“Okay, good point.”
“And look how many success stories you have, just from the testing! Didn’t you say three of your beta test couples are engaged already?”
“Four,” I add sheepishly, “Another one proposed last night.”
“That’s amazing!”
“But we never ran a beta test of the ‘Mix n Match’ feature,” I protest.