Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
After reading the PowerPoint proposal, I clicked on the link on the last slide, deciding to give the site a test drive. It took me about ten minutes to set up an account. When it prompted me to begin a search, I felt like I was shopping at the supermarket for the ingredients to make my favorite meal—interests, background, height, body type. I started to get into it and added shit like my favorite slogans and my happy place so the site could match me with women with similar ideals.
My search returned more than a thousand profiles. I clicked on a few, and within minutes, one face began to blur into the next. Every woman I saw at the popular bar of the month must have also had a profile on this damn site.
I clicked around a little more and noticed some ads starting to appear. Within minutes, they knew enough about me to target exactly the type of product I’d buy. I’d listed one of my hobbies as hiking and checked the box for income over two-hundred-and-fifty grand a year. An ad popped up on the left of my screen showing a Patagonia brand, top of the line, all-weather backpack for four-hundred bucks. This site knew their users—probably gathered more intimate details than anywhere else.
After I finished buying the blue Mountain Elite bag, I clicked back to my email and told the director of marketing to move forward. Sold.
With no desire to continue my email cleanup and hours before I had to leave to pick up Bella, I narrowed my Match.com search criteria and updated my profile. The age category took me about ten minutes of staring at the screen.
Eighteen to twenty-four?
Twenty-five to thirty-one?
Thirty-two to thirty-eight?
At the ripe old age of twenty-five, I was done dating the eighteen-to-twenty-four crowd. Been there, done that. I had no patience for games. I wanted a woman who knew who she was, rather than one who tried to be the woman she thought I wanted. Unclick. Later, eighteen to twenty-four.
Leaving the box on the twenty-five to thirty-one age group checked, my pointer then hovered over the next box. Why was I excluding an awesome thirty-two-year-old? That’s more experience. And likely less bullshit. Click.
After all my modifications, I now had only a dozen or so women who were my supposed ideal match. One through five seemed interesting, definitely worth a second look. Then I clicked on number six—a woman from New Jersey. Her profile writeup actually had me laughing out loud.
Intrigued, I clicked over to her pictures. There were only a few, but one in particular caught my attention. It was a photo taken from the side as she cannonballed into a pool. Her dark hair flew high above her, and the portion of her face I could see was scrunched up in a smile. And while I couldn’t get a good look at her body, since it was all folded up, I could see she had the curves to rock the bikini she wore. Even better, she looked like the type of woman who cared more about having fun than her hair and makeup getting ruined in the pool. And lately, the latter was the type of woman I seemed to attract when I went out.
By the time my phone buzzed, reminding me it was time to leave to pick up Bella, I’d wasted almost two hours on a dating site I never thought I’d visit. I started to shut down my laptop, but the last open window had the photo of the woman cannonballing. It made me smile again before I clicked it closed.
My finger hovered over the power button to turn off my Mac, but then I thought better of it and went back to the dating site one more time.
I scanned through my matches, looking for one in particular. Finding Val44, I took one more peek.
What the hell? Why not?
Plenty of people used sites like this.
I clicked the button beneath her profile to let her know I was interested.
***
“This place is so boring.”
I dragged the last of my sister’s bags into my apartment and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. It was pretty damn humid for almost the end of May.
“Manhattan? Is boring? That’s one I haven’t heard.”
Bella rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean Manhattan. I mean your apartment. What fun can I have staying with my brother?”
“Where else would you stay? Besides, you’re here for the summer, not forever.” Thank God for small things. Bella had been fourteen when our parents died five years ago. I’d never thought about not taking her in and becoming her guardian, even though I was only twenty at the time. But I’ll admit I was relieved when she’d decided to go away for college. Raising a fourteen-year-old was sure as hell easier than a nineteen-year-old.