The Right Swipe (Modern Love, #1)(13)
“For heterosexual relationships, you also permit women to choose whether they prefer to initiate contact or not.” Helena cupped her chin. “Why not default let the woman start the conversation? Isn’t that the more empowered move?”
“There’s no real one size fits all for empowerment. I will say, our data shows that women who choose to make initial contact do seem to receive less unsolicited dick pics, but that may be anecdotal.” She grinned when the audience laughed. “We immediately block anyone who does that, of course. Zero tolerance on unrequested dick pics.”
Helena turned to him. “Samson, what do you have to say to that?”
He opened his eyes wide. “I’ve . . . never sent a photo like that and don’t understand why anyone would send one without explicit permission.”
The audience laughed louder, and so did Helena. Rhiannon took another drink of water.
“Seriously, though, Matchmaker’s app encourages accountability as well. In fact, if you came to our open house earlier today, you probably saw the launch of our new FaceMatch system. It basically requires users to take a selfie to confirm that they are who they say they are.” That feature had been a real hit at the open house, and it caused a ripple through the audience now.
Rhiannon raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Have you tried it? Because facial recognition is notoriously poor, especially when it comes to differentiating between the faces of people of color.”
“There’s no software. We have a team that personally reviews the photos and confirms the match. Matchmaker might be a huge company, but the Kostas sisters wanted everyone to feel like they’re receiving the personal touch.”
Helena consulted her notes. “Is it true that your parents met via Matchmaker?”
He blinked, but recovered quickly. Annabelle must have given that info to Helena’s team. It wasn’t a commonly known story, because the general public didn’t know much about Annabelle, including that she’d been Big Joe’s partner for close to forty years. That was a feat, given how cameras had followed Uncle Joe around at the height of his career. “Kind of, yes. They’re both gone now, unfortunately.”
“Right.” Helena grimaced, and it appeared genuine. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about—”
“No, it’s fine. It was a long time ago.” If Annabelle had been willing to talk about this, he could too. “For those who don’t know, my father was Aleki Lima.” The rumble of excitement in the crowd gave him a minute to take a sip of water, swallow past the jumbled mix of pity and love and guilt that came with the thought of his father. “My mother’s name was Lulu. She was born in Samoa and moved to San Francisco when she was in her early twenties. Lulu was looking for love. She came to Matchmaker’s office to find it and took the original version of the questionnaire. Hard copy.” He softened, thinking of his sweet, loving mother. “Annabelle and Jennifer set her up with bachelor after bachelor, and they all struck out.”
“One of them was Aleki?”
“Oh, God, no. The Kostas sisters knew my dad pretty well, and they were sure that the only thing he might have in common with my mom was that his family was Samoan too. He had a reputation at the time. But according to the story I was told, my dad saw my mom leaving the Matchmaker offices one day. He fell in love at first sight. Family friend or not, Annabelle refused to introduce them until he took the test too. Once he did and she vetted him . . .” He shrugged. “They were married in six months, had me nine months after that.”
Helena clapped her hands. “What a beautiful story. So this is a bit more personal for you than a standard spokesman gig, huh?”
“Oh yes. When I say Matchmaker works, I really mean it works.” He hadn’t told anyone outside his tight inner circle that story in a while, and he’d forgotten how sweet it was. No matter what had happened to his dad after, his parents had started their lives together in love. He took another sip of water and looked at Rhiannon. She didn’t look as impressed with his origin story. “I’m guessing your parents didn’t meet on Crush.”
“Nah, they met at a grocery store,” Rhiannon replied. “I’m sure we have users whose parents met on Matchmaker. Not as old as you, though.”
Helena held up her hand to halt Rhiannon, chuckling. “Easy there, tiger. Why don’t we talk about what features you both have in the works?”
They ran through some lighter, easier questions, designed to make the audience laugh. Forty-five minutes flew by quickly. Then Helena paused. “Before we get to questions from the audience, I want to just ask about one thing: the terminology. I’ve been married for five years, and I feel like the language of love has changed, hasn’t it? There are so many new words, I can’t keep up with them.”
Samson was nodding before she finished speaking. For the last two years especially, he’d been so wrapped up in taking care of Uncle Joe, he hadn’t been online much.
“Language changes when progress happens. I think the way we talk about behavior makes total sense. For example, benching someone is stringing them along in case your first pick doesn’t work out. DTF is down to . . . mess around.” Rhiannon’s teeth flashed. “But really, maybe the most descriptive word we could possibly use is ghosting.”